An old friend Id never met
19 August 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I had a great conversation with Keith Riverhorse Wassung yesterday. It was like attending the gathering of a large extended family at a reunion and finally meeting that 4th cousin that youd never met but heard so much about. Keith grew up in Nebraska so immediately we began comparing Nebraska notes: Peary and Mabel Radar, the great Mark Schlean, Roger Benjamin, Jim Cash, Flex Magazine uber-scribe Julian Schmidtonto the military where Keith had been a member of the armed forces powerlifting squads in years gone bywe remembered Coach Sean Slim Scully, Sly Anderson, Gene the Machine Bell, Ausby, Sly Anderson, the great OD Wilson, Steve Murdochwe shifted gears and began comparing notes on other athletes wed both known over these many yearsrunning down our list of mutual acquaintances took the best part of an hour.
Talk shifted to training and I quizzed him on his amazing overhead pressing abilities. No armchair quarterback, the previous week Keith had done six reps in the seated overhead press with 280-pounds weighing 245 (somewhere between 244 and 246 to be precise) his press abilities are world level for a lifetime drug free athlete. He has done 340 in the overhead press and bench pressed 490 before shoulder aggravation forced him to jettison heavy bench pressing altogether. The meat of our conversation revolved around how best to create a format to better display his musings within this website.
In my professional opinion he has an authoritative voice and needs to be read regularly. I told him I wanted to carve out a column for him wherein he can post whatever he wants whenever the spirit moves him. Too often, I related, I would find his writings buried deep within the site, often a lengthy response to a query or question why not excerpt these nuggets and place them all in a formal Riverhorse Column?
In the fitness business, articles generally break down into two types: the ones penned by individuals from journalism school who have no real passion for fitness and could just as easily be writing about lawn chairs for the latest K-Mart ad or pimping a new line of radial tires for Sears. These types view fitness as a JOB and typically produce grammatically perfect, lifeless, passionless, DOA-articles that appeal to those who know nothing and like to be shown the path of least resistance. At the other extreme are the steroid monsters that stare out from the covers of the muscle mags and through ghost writers (I used to be one) tell readers about their two hour leg training programs that would cripple anyone taking less than $400 a week in anabolics who was dumb enough to actually attempt to replicate these slaughterhouse workouts. One extreme: softball journalism pros who know zip about getting results the other extreme: steroid mutants whose approach has zero applicability for normal people; even those willing to exert real effort in search of real results.
In the muddled middle there exists a distinguished school of writers who can really write and also have earned their bones in the white hot heat of athletic competition. Guys like Bill Starr, Dave Shaw, Fred Hatfield, Steve Justa, Art Dreshler, Hugh Cassidy, Jeff Everson, Bill Pearl, Dave Draper and Pavel Tsatsouline. Guys who can temper theory with reality to provide normal people seeking paranormal results battletested training grids that actually work assuming theyre applied with the requisite grit and gumption. Keith Wassung has the athletic credentials and the literary chops to join this most exclusive walk-the-walk, talk-the-talk club. Rest assured that any tip or tactic he shares will have been tempered and tested, honed in battle and proven effective.
I intend to give him the format to share his considerable experience and the ultimate winners will be his readers.
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