MUSCLE CHURCH: Our Father, the Iron

I think that over time we attach meaning to things but don't often ask why something means a lot, we just know that it does. Over the course of my life I'm guilty of not letting myself get attached to things that I should because I've lived by the code that "everything is for sale." However, there are some things that have managed to get into my very exclusive "not for sale" category. I regret that there is a belt out there that was mine for many, many years and I let a friend hold it and he lost it in a move. I can't be too mad-I should've never let him borrow something so sacred anyway. However, one man's sacred is another man's optional-never forget that. What matters the most to you, might not mean anything to someone else and that's okay. We all have our loves and likes and there are times when we have to accept that something is just valuable to you and that's it. Which brings me to the subject of this post. You see this...

Lately online there has been some serious back and forth about the deadlift. There is a pretty vocal contingent in the powerlifting community that balks at the sumo deadlift while over in the strongman world the sumo deadlift is regularly frowned upon. Which made me think, when is a deadlift NOT a deadlift? In the powerlifting world the bench press is one of the three main lifts, and in gyms across the world on Mondays between 4 and 10pm the flat bench is king. However, so is the incline bench, the decline bench and for many, so is the close grip bench. No one ever complains that one or the other is NOT a bench press, just a variation of it. Though the squat is not as widely practiced by the gym-goers of the world, no one ever looked at World Record Powerlifter Ray Williams and said “that bar is too high.” Conversely, no one has ever gone to multiple time World’s Strongest Man Brian Shaw and given him grief for bar placement either. Yet, there is rarely confusion over high o...