I might not be too smart, but I could once move heavy objects...

There was a time I thought lifting, pushing or squatting a lot of weight was just plain fun...

In college, I started competitive powerlifting my sophomore year. My last sanctioned meet, however, was a distant 1985 ago. After attending Officer Candidate School for the Marines between my junior and senior year, I went into that last match very light at 161 pounds...or 20 pounds below my normal competition weight. During the meet, I remembered exactly why I had previously packed on pounds to compete in a heavier class in prior years because I finished an embarrassing 8th to the more technically proficient lighter lifters.


I really didn't lift heavy much during my days in the Corps because an emphasis was placed on endurance and stamina. Carrying the extra muscle weight wasn't worth the trade off during long formation runs or keeping my 3-mile run time under 18 minutes on the Physical Fitness Test.

Right around age 30, I picked weight lifting back up again. It was here where I started getting into physical trouble because my ego just wouldn't let go of the used to factor. One routine day in the gym, a young whipper-snapper a decade younger scoffed and remarked I'd never be as strong as I once was because physically I was passed my prime. What?! That sounded like challenge time. Even though I had only been back to the grind at most 2 months, I told him that in another 30 days I could put up more weight than him in any lift he picked.

Bench press. Of course. The gold standard for dumbbell heads. Overall strength is much more accurately depicted in either squats or the dead lift, but the bench press was the How much do you...question of chose around the gym, and what he didn't know, my strongest event from previous competition days. So for the next 30 days, I trained. The event got blown way out of proportion leading up to lift day, and I very much resented the old versus young spin the contest came to represent. Who's old?!

Wasn't even close. Like any competitive event, the psychological factor can never be underestimated. We flipped a coin, and he lifted first starting a little above warm-up weight. Easy lift. I knew about where his max lift should be, and compensating some for adrenaline, I went straight to that weight. The shocked look on his face screamed to me check and mate as I made the lift look easy. Truth be known, I only had another 20 pounds at the most in me. He had to match my lift but was already physologically beaten thinking that was just my starting point and his target weight. He couldn't do it. You can insert the cliche about age and treachery here...

I couldn't sleep on either of my shoulders for quite some time after that.

Fast forward another few years when, for some dumb reason still unbenownst to any of us, four of my friends decided to have a dead lift contest one evening after the gym had closed. Three of us were over 33 and one was pushing 40...lifting...as much as we could. With due respect to Freud's psychic apparatus involving the id, ego and super-ego, some stunts are just plain stupid...and this one perfectly fits that category. Stupid. We should have all ended up in the hospital but were each too proud to be the one to breakdown and go lest the others find out. I watched an entire weekend of sports flat on my back stretched out on the floor in front of the television and barely made it to work the following Monday. I just hope none of them are reading this...

That was over 13 years ago. A period of time during which my motivation to lift heavy objects has greatly diminished. I tell you all of that just to make myself feel better before sharing this- I spent the entire day yesterday incapacitated after just a single day of landscaping in my yard. Nothing major either. Dug up a dead tree and planted a new one. Boxed in my tomato/pepper/herb garden. Spread a little dirt and manure.

Done in by a small Bradford Pear tree...



I couldn't go to church yesterday morning much less sit on a drummer's throne and play drums. What an embarrassing text message to have to send. I couldn't teach my Sunday School class of college-aged kids whose backs are nearly invincible to overexertion . Yet another embarrassment. 46 is NOT the new 30...let me tell you!  Apparently my alter ego just doesn't understand the decrepit state of the reality involved in a winter of continuous inactivity for the aging. Not that I'm looking for anyone to compete with in a dead lift competition... I just need to still mulch my flower beds!

 Maybe I'll just take a walk during lunch...tomorrow...when my back feels hopefully much better.