The Road Not Taken

Olympic lifting often provides a perfect metaphor for life.

Many beginner lifters find that the hardest part of learning the clean/snatch is not the technique, but having the balls to drop under the bar- especially when it gets heavy. We spend our whole lives conditioning ourselves to watch out for heavy falling things, therefore it goes against everything your mind knows to propel your body under a heavy moving object. In order to be any good at the sport, that is exactly what you must do though. This requires you to shut out fear, and to boldly and ferociously pull yourself under- to take the drop of faith, faith that your body will be able to hold up what you have just caught. Like I say, olympic lifting distinguishes what kind of man you are- are you the kind that only power cleans/snatches because you are afraid to drop, or are you the kind that rips the  head off of freaking lions (to quote the great Donny Shankle).

Life can be very similar. We spend our whole lives taking the path of least resistance, the road most traveled, the easy way. It goes agains everything we know to go agains the grain and do what is more difficult. One of my favorite poems is by Robert Frost, and it speaks of this phenomenon:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry i could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then, took the other as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

It takes real gumption and a repression of fear to voyage into the unknown, to take the road less traveled. This hits home to me lately, because I have been offered a job in Beijing, China. One of the main reasons that I am struggling to accept it is because of pure fear; fear of the unknown, fear of the known, fear in the fact that all my safety nets (parents, friends, comforts) will be out from under me, and that the tight rope of life will be to thin and wobbly for me to stay on. I have a choice; to let that fear dominate me, or to sack up and take the road less traveled. It would be easy for me to stay here in Houston. It would be easy for me to not take the step of faith. But that is precisely the reason I must go, because it is not easy- it is very, very hard indeed. Part of what makes a man a man is his ability to go through seasons of forging. It is in the trials and fires of life that he truly discovers what kind of man he is.

In the end, there are still a lot of things that have to work out just right before I move to the other side of the planet- contractual stuff, not getting another strength position that I have been interviewing for, things with my family. But if the stars align and the decision comes down to if I want it or not, I will take it.

Be great. Rip the head off lions. Drop under the bar. Go down the road not taken.

Blessings.

"Ender through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it."

-Jesus, Matthew 7:13-14

Intensity

This guy is quickly becoming one of my favorite olympic lifters. The intensity with which he lifts is truly inspiring, and makes me want to attack the bar in the same way. Olympic lifting is a sport that requires not just efficiency, technique, and accuracy, but also a ferocity. You cannot simply hope to coax the bar above your head- you have to dominate it, to own it. Milko seems to not only understand this, but to fully embody and embrace this concept. Another man who has a firm grasp of this that I deeply respect is Jon North. Check this out:

Be tenacious, be ferocious, be aggressive, crush weight

Smolov

This motivated me to never get stuck in the hole again. To solve this problem, I have started
smolov.  After week one of the base mesocycle, I am officially fried. Upper back, lower back, hips, quads, brain. Two more weeks to go, then we shall see about these claimed "huge gains"

Go under the bar

Sometimes, you just gotta get under the bar.

Life can get stressful- believe me, I'm there. So many things fluctuate on a day-to-day basis, and so many questions remain unanswered: where will I live next semester? what job will I be doing? will my current relationship work out, or is it going to fold (lookin' like a folder at this point...)? These are all things that are (unfortunately) out of my control. What I do have control over, is how I respond to those stressors.

I could let them dominate me and drive me into a dark hole of fear, anxiety, and depression. Instead, I choose joy. Joy is an internal state of well-being that is independent of one's external circumstances. Happiness is an emotion, therefore it fluctuates. Joy is a choice- not an emotion. That is why the apostle Paul can exhort his readers to "be joyful always" (1 Thessalonians 5:16).

One thing that brings me a lot of joy is weightlifting. Not working out, but training. If you don't know the difference, then it's probably because you have never trained. Anyways, I digress. There is something very fundamental and primitive about lifting. From ancient times, men have lifted heavy stuff, sometimes for survival, sometimes for sport. When I go under the bar, it's almost as if I am going back and reconnecting to something woven deeply into my soul. The feel of the bar against my body; the strain of my sinews yanking on tendons and bones; the voice in my head telling me to give up, and the other one telling that voice to shut up- these are things that make me feel alive, that in some small way connect me to men who have come before me all the way back to early man. When I am under the bar, my world stops spinning. No longer am I thinking about life and its many uncertainties. All that is on my mind is "move the weight".

Our society is all about quick fixes and shortcuts, and in weightlifting there just aren't any of those (minus the whole steroid thing, but thats another topic for another day). You have to wake up every day and decide to be strong, to be better than you were the day before. That goes not just for weightlifting, but for life. The bar is a great litmus test for what kind of man you are because he is unbiased and unforgiving. He wont BS you. He does not care if you are rich or poor, sick or tired, happy or sad, smart or dumb, handsome or ugly, cool or geeky. He does not care if you just got promoted or fired, married or dumped, all A's or all F's. All he cares about is if you have the gumption to get under him and move him. One thing is for certain: you find out what kind of man you are when you enter the world of weightlifting. There are days where you will love it. There are plenty of days you will hate it. The bar does not distinguish between those days- only you do. That is why, regardless of your circumstances, you just have to get under the bar.

Make the choice to be great. Find your bar, and get under it.

The Butterfly Effect

According to wikipedia (so it must be true, right?) the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions, where a small change at one place in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state. The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the theoretical example of a hurricane's formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks before.

As you can see from the clip, one small occurrence that seeming creates tiny ripples can actually create large waves. Many people call this coincidence, fate, or luck. I have come to believe that instead, the Lord in His infinite wisdom orchestrates and ordains these occurrences to fulfill His perfect will. The scriptures affirm this viewpoint, as seen in Proverbs 16:33 which says "The lot is cast into the lap, but the decision is wholly from the Lord." Why am I bringing this up? Because recently I have found myself in a place that I probably should have never been, and when I traced how I got here back to the beginning, I found that seemingly unimportant events earlier in my life were providentially ordained by the Lord to lead me to where I am now. Let me explain via a snippet of my testimony.

It was spring break of my junior year of high school and me and a few buddies decided to go snowboarding. A church from our area was going to the same mountain as us, so we decided to meet up with a few folks we knew, one of whom was a cute girl that I had been wanting to meet (why is it that every story starts with a girl?). Anywho, we met up with them and decided to spend the afternoon hitting the same runs. Long story short, I am not a great snowboarder, and when you combine that with teenage testosterone, pretty girls, and no parental supervision, it is a bad mixture. Of course, I wipe out pretty bad trying to impress her, and manage to just about tear my arm apart from my body in the process. 

Fast forward about 9 months later, and I am finally having surgery (didn't wanna sit out my senior year of football, so just played gimp). I was told that I would have to do rehab for three months, and they set me up with a physical therapist by the name of Michael Perkins. I walked in his door the first day, he took me back to my office, sat me down, closed the door, put his hand on my shoulder and prayed for me. His prayer wasn't just that I got better soon, but that Christ would shine His light on me and make me a man after His own heart. I was floored. The weeks rolled on, and I don't remember too much of the physical therapy, but what I do remember is the conversations I had with Michael. We talked about 3 things: Jesus, Texas A&M football, and my shoulder. Jesus took up the vast majority of that time. Michael's love for Christ was contagious, as was his love for people. I finished my physical therapy, said my goodbyes, and moved on with my life, inspired by the time I had spent with him.

Fast forward two more years to a backyard pickup game of basketball. I was beastin', that is until I decided to go up for a layup, come down and destroy my left knee (I made the bucket though!). Surgery soon followed, and I knew right away that I wanted Michael to do my rehab. Again, Jesus took His place as the main subject of our conversations. This time, through the physical therapy, I felt the Lord whispering to me that I could have that same influence on people that Michael did. I decided at that point that I wanted to become a physical therapist. That semester, I would change my major from business to Applied Exercise Physiology. 

Fast forward 3 years later. My grades were... not... great. Not even close to what they would have to be to become a PT. But that's ok, because my heart had changed. No longer did I want to become a PT, but a strength and conditioning coach. When you think about it, they are really the same thing. Anywho, before I could graduate I had to do an internship. After many searches (and many, many closed doors), I finally landed at the University of Houston with their strength and conditioning program. That is a whole other story, but basically God funneled me right where he wanted to be. The other internships I was looking at were crap anyways, and though I didn't think I would be in Houston, God had other plans and planted me here. And I couldn't be happier. But the thing is, I'm not from Houston, nor did I know many guys who were living in Houston. The question of "where am I going to live, and who am I going to live with?" was unanswered, that is until about halfway trough the summer. 

I received a random text message from a friend I had known for several years. We were cool with one another, but never really hung out. His text? "Hey do you have Jon's phone number". Not exactly an answered prayer, right? Wrong. I gave him the number, and we small talked for a bit. He found out I was moving to Houston, and it turned out that so was he. After talking for a while, we decided to live together. In fact, he was actually from Houston, in a suburb on the northwest side called Klein. He invited me to live with him and his family for a semester, while we both got our feet under us, and then to move into our own place after a few months. Free rent, a momma to cook dinner for me, and a warm bed to sleep in? Sounds good to me!

Anyways, this past summer Klein Younglife took 20 or so high school guys to camp. Many of those guys accepted Christ, and began walking with Him when they got home from camp. Klein is a school of about 4,000 students. For a school this size, a typical Younglife team would have about 7-8 guy leaders. Klein? 0. This is when the story comes full circle.

I was approached by a friend about becoming a Younglife leader for these guys. Doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but to me it is. What my buddy would have asked someone else for Jon's number? What if I had got one of the internships i originally applied for? What if I had guessed better on a test, gotten a better grade, and gotten in to PT school? What if I would have passed the ball and not gone up for that layup (ha, yeah right, like I would pass the ball)? What if I had been assigned a different physical therapist? What if Michael wouldn’t have been bold and shared Jesus with me? What if we would have taken a different run and I wouldn’t have destroyed my shoulder trying to impress some girl?.... the butterfly effect. Seemingly small events have now led me to the exact place the Lord wanted me to be. When I tore up my shoulder, there is no way that I ever thought it would have triggered a strand of seemingly unconnected events together that would lead me to where I am now. But the Lord is good, He is faithful, He is all knowing, and He has perfect wisdom. He knew that there would be a group of boys that would call upon His name, and that He would want me here to walk through this time in their life with them. So He provided. For them, and for me. Sometimes His provision was painful (torn shoulder and knees always are). But it was always good, it was always for my best interest, and most importantly it was always for His glory. That is ultimately what God is about- getting the glory that is due to His name.

I am thrilled that I am in Houston, that I am getting to work with U of H and their amazing group of coaches, and that I am getting to lead a group of young men closer to their Father.

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!... For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever! Amen.”

Why some folks are strong, and how you can be like them

If you start reading this and get bored or confused…. Well just skip to the last paragraph. The rest is just me trying to explain the workings of the neuromuscular system in layman’s terms. I find it quite fascinating.

The human body is an amazing machine. The Lord, in His infinite creative majesty, has wired us in such a way that our bodies will respond and adapt to repetitive stress. One such stressor is resistance training, or simply lifting weights. Whether you are a first time gym goer, or an elite athlete, the goal of any weight lifter is the same: to get stronger. What you may have noticed though, is that some people are just naturally stronger than others. Strength, or the ability of muscles to produce tension and therefore torque around a specific joint, is a product of both hard work and genetics. There are three primary components that account for individual differences in muscular strength: neural efficiency, muscular size, and the distance of the force arm.

For a muscle to contract, an electrical signal must be sent from your brain via a motor neuron to a designated group of muscle fibers. This is called a motor unit. A motor unit is simply an α-motor neuron and all of the corresponding muscle fibers it innervates. The human body is extremely efficient, and therefore it only recruits as many motor units (muscle fibers) as are needed for a given task. For example, if you are going to lift a 5 pounds, your body will only recruit a few motor units, because it will only take that many muscle fibers to lift 5 pounds. It would be a waste of energy to recruit more muscle fibers to lift such a small weight. If, however, you are going to lift 200 pounds, recruiting only 10 motor units will not get the job done. To account for the increase in weight, your body will now recruit a higher number of motor units. The idea here is that as intensity increases, motor recruitment increases. This holds true for an activity such as running as well. To go on a easy jog does not require many motor units (and the ones it does activate are Type 1, but that’s a whole other story). Conversely, going on an all out sprint requires many motor units.

By engaging in high intensity exercises, the human body will adapt and be able to recruit more motor units. This is the primary reason that many sedentary people see large strength gains in the first 12 weeks of weight lifting regimen. Contrary to popular belief, it is not primarily due to your muscles growing, though that does happen. At first, the large gains that you will see from week to week, and even day to day, are due to your body’s increased neural efficiency. For example, lets say you wanted to lift 100 pounds, but you were not strong enough. After a week of training, all of a sudden you can lift it. This is most likely due to your central nervous system being able to send enough of an impulse to recruit the required amount of motor units for the given task. After consistent resistance training, your efficiency gains start to taper off, and you become about as neurally efficient as you will ever be. To continue to gain strength, your body must undergo another adaptation: muscular hypertrophy.

Muscular hypertrophy is simply an increase in the size of a muscle through an increase in size of its component cells. Strength is directly proportional to the cross sectional area of a muscle, therefore the more cross sectional area (the larger the muscle) the more strength. Muscular hypertrophy can be increased through strength training as well as through high intensity interval training (H.I.I.T.). Lower intensity, longer duration aerobic exercises such as jogging generally do not result in very effective tissue hypertrophy. This is why athletes that compete at short, high intensity events (like sprinters) are jacked- their muscles, because of the demands put on them, have adapted and undergone hypertrophy. This is also why athletes that don’t put these kind of demands on their muscles (like marathoners) are tiny- their muscles, in an effort to be more efficient, have not undergone hypertrophy and are therefore small. Like I said, the human body is amazing, and it will adapt to whatever you throw at it. Marathoners don’t want to carry around an extra 20 pounds of muscle for 26 miles, and sprinters need to exert maximal force in minimal time.


Now let’s say there are two individuals who both are equally neurally efficient, and both have the same size muscles. Is it possible for one to be stronger than the other? Well actually, yes, and its all thanks to levers.

Before I start, credit must be given where credit is due, so thanks goes to Dr. Ernie Kirkham, my professor at Texas A&M. His a brilliant man who shared with me the concept of muscular torque and outside resistance. A deeper understanding of this concept can be seen in his notes, found here: http://kirkham.tamu.edu/Muscle%20Torque%20-%20Outside%20Resistance.pdf


Ok, so here is how movement is produced. Your brain sends a signal to your muscle. The muscle, which is connected to a bone by a tendon, then contracts and begins to pull that on that bone. This occurs at joints, which is where a bone meets a bone. Therefore, strength is not linear, but rather angular. This means that when you lift something, the path of that object around the fulcrum (the joint) is not in a straight line- it is curved. This means that muscular strength is actually a measure of the torque that a muscle can exert around a joint. For those of you who don’t remember (or failed) high school physics, torque is just a force exerted (the "effort") multiplied by the distance of that force arm, or DFA (the distance from the green triangle to the red arrow). Therefore, by increasing either the force, or the distance, more torque can be produced. We have already discussed the way that your body can increase force (neural efficiency and hypertrophy). But what about increasing your DFA (just quit being lazy and go look at Kirkham’s notes. I promise it will all make more sense). Well, unfortunately that is something that the good Lord decides for you- there is no changing where the tendon inserts into the bone. Short DRAs (the distance from the downward blue arrow to the green triangle) and long DFAs are what account for the success of many powerlifters and strong fellows. Think about it- that’s why guys with (relatively) short arms tend to be strong. The torque opposing the muscle (DRA x Load) is not as high as someone with longer arms.

 Ok, so I realize that not everyone finds this as fascinating as I do. I hope you can have a deeper appreciation of the human body, and its vast complexity. To me, my study of the body has deepened my faith in the Lord, for how could we ever have simply evolved from some lower life form. No, I am confident that our creative creator knit us and wired us in an amazing way, and that ultimately we are manifestations of His power, splendor, and majesty.

“To the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen” -Jude 1:25