MUSCLE CHURCH: Our Father, the Iron

Eric Thomas always says "THANK GOD IT'S MONDAY" and that has become something I identify with. It wasn't always that way for me and it's taken a lot of trial, error, anger and downright sadness for me to be the incomplete person behind your computer screen, but nothing starts without a plan! So, it's Monday. Maybe you're reading this on a Tuesday or a year from now, doesn't matter. #ItsMondayEveryday when you have goals. Take today and lay out a plan for yourself. Having big dreams is great and I wish everyone did, but think about how much easier life would be if you just had a plan to get dinner done on time. Or what if you had a concrete plan to get your meal prep done for the week? Don't get so lost in the clouds that you forget these dreams begin and end on the ground. Take today, right now, and jot down 3 things you KNOW you need to do this week and then write down 2-3 simple steps to ensure you get them done. That simple exercise takes abou...

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...

--> Some thoughts on setting yourself up for success and avoiding some major markers for failure. There are much more complex and complicated things at play these days compared to the dingy weight room of my rural high school in 1997. Social media is awesome, but so many people, myself included, don’t seem to figure out the negative effects of it until it’s too late. Aside from the constant desire to remain connected and the endless battles with trolls, we get exposed to so many messages and that alone can skew our perception of what we want and who we are. Instagram is the de facto social network for fitness and training, but it’s easy to forget that most of the major players in that realm do that for work, because their job is to be models and spokespersons for products. I’m sure that many of them would love for you to achieve your goals, but at the end of the day they need followers and engagement in order to make a buck. These perfect bodies performing incred...

There I was, out on the road with the new job, in a nice rental car with two people I barely knew, and no one wants to go eat dinner but the restaurant at the hotel is closed. What is a goodbrother to do??? Well we stopped at the grocery store. One of my compatriots grabbed a six pack for dinner and the other grabbed a bag of chips and a candy bar. I headed to the deli and got myself some lean ham and provolone cheese. At the checkout I was met with the scrunchy face and the "you're eating THAT?" Yes, I'm gonna get my protein in, not too many carbs and it's gluten-free, that's what I need in my diet. And I do have a weakness for lunchmeat... My normal was not beer or chips at night, their's wasn't a nice, easily-digestible snack. We all have different goals and we all have our own normal!

It's easy to get bogged down in the goal-setting, poundages and blood, sweat and tears on a blog about working out but funny things happen too. Maybe some of us old school blood and guts trainers don't always want to admit it but there is a lot of nonsense that goes on in the gym, and this is one such tale. For those that don't know me well, you will come to learn that I find myself in weird situations-often of my own doing! When I worked night shift I came to fall in love with overnight workouts. For about 4 solid years I was working a shift of something like 5pm-5am and on those rare nights off, I spent a few hours training. I am not a before-work trainer and sometimes after work on night shift was just too much for my brain to handle, so I always took advantage of my nights off to get a good long one in. My old gym, East Shore Athletic Club in Charleston, SC, had a 24 hour facility and it became my second home. I'd mop and take the trash out and clean up some n...

It's that time of year, you guys all know it. The gym is crowded like a club on half price drink night and you're lucky if you get to bench at all during the week. The masses are adorned with the brightest of yoga-like material and the smell of fresh New Balance trainers and discount Amazon "fitness hoodie" is like a low-hanging cloud over the gym. Those of us who visit the gym 12 months out of the year know that January is impossible, February is complex and March is usually the end of the line for the Resolutioners, but I'd like to submit that there is something we can all learn from them. It's easy to get wrapped up your own bullshit. Even if you're a successful lifter or competitor, it gets very easy to start believing your own hype. I like to think I stay pretty grounded but this New Year I had to take a step back and it was good for me. Why do people make resolutions and why do they fail? This isn't news at all, but it's so simple the less...

So only about, what, 9 months between posts. Not bad, right? Well here I am, back again to underwhelm and disappoint with my tales of woe and injury.  At least, that's what the testosterone fueled, excitable and immature young adult version of myself would say. The mature, injured and somewhat refined man that sits here typing on this ergonomic keyboard feels very different. The truth is that I am injured, pretty badly. I have a minimum of two hernias, at least as of my last MRI/X-Ray which went down about 16 months ago. I also have diastasis, which is essentially a tear in my abdominal wall that probably won't go away. Aside from that, I still battle with problems in my surgically repaired left knee which has very little cartilage left, arthritis in both hands and a little tear in my left Achilles tendon that flares up once I put in too much cardio. Fortunately, the worst of my problems, my stiff, nearly straight neck with precious little space between discs, is the least ...

I went in with every intention of doing some deadlifts but my good friend Sciatica had other ideas. The problem with being and old war horse is that sometimes those old war wounds dictate your future battles! However, I managed to shift to a shoulder routine that would keep me from standing so much, but ultimately pain won the day and it got cut short. No regrets though, shit happens and you have to improvise, adapt and overcome. I'm not quite at the level where I can 'redesign, rebuild and reclaim' but I'm getting there. Hoping to post a new video this week and update the columns on the site.With that, enjoy this moderately heavy shoulder workout! Stretching 8-10 minutes Elliptical 20 minutes Side Raises 15/12 reps x2, 20/12 Seated Overhead Press 105/15 x2, 155/12, 195/10, 215/8, 230/4 Shrugs (Neutral Grip Apparatus...I'm sure there's a better name) (add about 30 pounds for the apparatus) 270/20, 360/15, 520/15, 660/15 (with a reverse grip) 270/15 ...

Big Loz just practicing for carrying the groceries in! Oh look at you! Big strong man! Strongest man in Europe? Oh you mean The Mountain??? WRONG! Ha ha! Europe's Strongest Man came and went and while Eddie Hall's amazing world record deadlift stole the show, the real winner of the weekend was Laurence Shahlaei who came in spectacular fashion to win the contest and set a new record in the Car Carry. Laurence, or Big Loz, as he's known, is a hell of an athlete with quite a story. Just a few years ago he was sidelined with a host of injuries that took him out of the World's Strongest Man. He was seen famously laying on the doctor's table with ice packs on both torn biceps saying, "I think it's over for real now." Only to come back from that and tear his quad, in the process losing lots of size and sponsorships. Loz maintains a crazy positive attitude and through all of it he kept posting encouraging messages on social media and cheering on othe...

So I’m on the final lap of contest prep and I’m feeling the strain. In my head I can hear Colin Bryce yelling “take the strain” as he is so famous for doing at World’s Strongest Man. If he was here I could assure him that the strain has been taken, and soon it will be over for a time and I cannot wait. For all intents and purposes, the hard work is done now. With two weeks before contest time, trying to move the needle any further along will probably be counter-productive or cause injury. So there’s a part of me that gets to hit the brakes a bit and look back on the last 12 or so weeks of training and seeing how far I’ve come. I could train all I want in the next two weeks but I’m not going to make myself more ready for this contest. Sure I’m going to have some good workouts and maybe up the cardio a bit, but the time for progression has passed and now it’s time to reap the rewards of my labors. Oh have there been some labors. I present to you the face of fatigue and prog...

Thor's shirt really makes a statement! Hey everyone I’m back with two updates today, both featuring 2 time Europe’s Strongest Man, Hafthor Julius Bjornsson AKA The Mountain. What a lucky guy to get such a cool nickname…and the paycheck that surely comes along with being on one of TV’s hottest shows! Well, while he is strolling around collecting paychecks and challenging for World’s Strongest Man later this year, I am trudging along in my gym getting ready for my next contest in under 4 weeks! I’m not a huge fan of publishing my training journals because the pounds you lift in the gym don’t always correlate to what you can do at a contest. Oh let’s say a 700 pound squat in the gym when you're fresh and rested might only equate to 600 at a contest held outside in the summer and after a truck pull! I’d like to start sharing some more of my specific training theories though, but after this first contest when I can really sit down and analyze how my preparation related to m...

Few characters have inspired me during my life as the fictional slugger Clubber Lang. Made famous in Rocky III, the iconic character was heavily based the actor that made him famous, Mr. T. (Don't forget, the T stands for "tough!") Lang's tenacity and braggadocio spoke to me as a kid who was bullied and alone but as an adult the character's behavior had a deeper meaning to me that I've had to revisit in the last few months. "I live alone. I train alone. I'll win the title alone." In the movie Lang said those words to a reporter while calling out the champ, while Rocky's nervous compatriots watch on. One day in the distant past I was watching Rocky III for the millionth time and realized that those words are true and they apply to me and many others out there trying to make themselves champions. Look, training is a solitary endeavor and there's really no way around that. Even if you have a dedicated training partner and you ...

How's it going out there everybody??? I want to talk a bit today about specificity and why it's important to you as an athlete and how you communicate certain things to a non-athlete. It's important to make that distinction here because A) I don't know how many people come here who compete and who doesn't and B) I think sometimes we get tunnel vision when we talk to non-athletes and alienate people who would otherwise be interested in what we're doing. For instance, I give you the King of Exercises, the deadlift! And by 'deadlift' I mean 'Conventional Floor Pulls with A Standard Bar.' I posted on Facebook a few weeks ago (link is to your right, btw) that I failed at this weight which is 485 and why I thought that was and how I planned to not fail the next time I tried this exercise. Now, to the average person they might think I 'deadlift' every week, and they'd be right, but I won't be doing these again for a...

Dig, if you will, a picture...of iron and steel so cold! That was my terrible homage to Prince (RIP) while I welcome you to my inaugural post here and talk about things being HEAVY! Now that might sound a bit silly considering this blog is about weightlifting and bodybuilding, specifically my journey into the world of strongman, but allow me to elaborate... What you see below is a wee bit over 900 pounds situated on the wonderful Nautilus branded deadlifted platform. I love this machine when I'm getting ready for a contest because the handles mimic how one would deadlift a car and they are about mid-shin level, so not too low and not too high. The day this picture was taken I was working deadlifts, specifically THESE deadlifts. My goal that day was to work up to as much weight as possible. That's about as much programming as I do these days, but I digress... The most I'd ever done on this apparatus was about 630 I think, so this day, I wanted to push 700 ...