Bobcat plots his next move…Chuck DeLuxe as recovery role model…leprechaun assistance
31 July 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Marty,A little irony for you: We also play bridge - but not frequently. Usually just in Perrysburg with Vondah’s stepfather and her stepsister-in-law’s mother. I learned to play bridge at 15; I was introduced to strength training at 14, and I believe I got my first barbell at 15. I supposed I narrowly escaped becoming a bridge master! But there is nobody happier than I that Vondah has decided to come along. Lower blood sugar = longer life expectancy. Plus, she’s tearing up NASA’s records. An update on the future contest with EB. He and I have been conducting a cordial conversation on the NASA “Real Powerlifting” forum and in e-mail this evening. He wondered if I’d be well enough to go at it at NASA’s Unequipped Nationals. That’s the same weekend as AAU Worlds. I suggested he think about coming to Richmond. He’s thinking about it; he has a brother in Roanoke. The AAU would take the knee wraps out of the picture! I’d even order a new belt–smaller waist–for the occasion! Well . . . I’ll probably do that anyway within the next couple of weeks. After yesterday’s Physical Therapy session, I’m supposed to try benching and deadlifting again; I look forward to it. Imagine that: I, of all people, am looking forward to the bench press! So now a training question. Richmond is 12 weeks from this weekend. I’m entertaining two ideas. First, 2 to 4 weeks of non-competition lifts (e.g., Manta Ray squats, stiff-legged deadlifts, dumbbell benches) followed by a standard 8 or 10 week cycle. Second, something like Chuck DeLuxe’s “Better recovery” plan from pp. 93-96 of the December 2004 Milo, which I would need to start this weekend. Your thoughts?
Chuck DeLuxe is an old training partner. He is a savage trainer in the gym. Having said that, DeLuxe is self-admittedly “the world’s laziest man.” His ultimate goal is to own a series of self-storage units (”Think about it Marty - you do nothing and money comes rolling in. Perfect!”) He finally went to the trouble to take and pass the Bar exam ten years after getting his law degree. Though “straight” he reminds me EXACTLY of the boozed-out lawyer Jack Nicholson played in EZ Rider….Chuck would certainly be a “recovery expert.” In his recovery article did he suggest upping the recovery ante by spending hours lying beside his pool out back of his country home? Or eating a dozen chicken breasts in a single sitting (“These are great Marty – sorry I ate them all – need me to run to the store to buy some more?”) Did he mention getting “Mar” his lovely wife to give him deep tissue massage? Did he extol the virtues of sub-freezing air-conditioning while watching hours of lifting tapes or UFC fights on a widescreen TV while prone on a sofa drinking a gallon of milk? Did he mention any of these “recovery aides?” Perhaps he was saving them for a more “advanced” article. His studied approach to recovery reminds me of the time powerlifting great Mark Chaillet told me with incredible sincerity and great gravitas that “Beer is good for recovery.” Hell yeah! Is it any wonder Big Mark had an army of power followers? Chuck is in my humble opinion one of the nation’s leading recovery experts and carries forward the recovery battle flag of “re-energizing through doing less” in the great Chaillet tradition.
Yes indeed let’s do all the whacky stuff now – get it out of your system then roll into one of your methodical power cycles. In the interim, make yourself sick of clown training. Coan, Furnas and Karwoski (Plus Gene the Machine) at the end of their careers would and could go through an entire 12-week power cycle and never miss a single rep. Think about that a moment. How is it that a man can sit down with a pencil and a piece of paper, plot ahead 12-16 weeks and never once overestimate? Then roll into a competition and make 8 for 9 or 9 for 9 attempts while setting a slew of world records? This is something we mortals need to shoot for: an incredible ability to self access and inject training with a degree of realism and cold clinical planning that was/is positively frightening. Those giants never, ever tried or expected things that were one inch further than their realistic grasp. You sir have that streak in you, for better or worse. Being Irish in every sense of the word I would always assume the leprechauns would come to my aide at the very last moment (think Darby O’Gill and the Little People) and save my overreaching ass - the scary thing was on more than one occasion they did! Keep me posted.
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