Posts from — September 2009

The Iron – Henry Rollins

I believe that the definition of definition is reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself.
Completely.

When I was young I had no sense of myself. All I was, was a product of all the fear and humiliation I suffered. Fear of my parents. The humiliation of teachers calling me “garbage can” and telling me I’d be mowing lawns for a living. And the very real terror of my fellow students. I was threatened and beaten up for the color of my skin and my size. I was skinny and clumsy, and when others would tease me I didn’t run home crying, wondering why. I knew all too well. I was there to be antagonized. In sports I was laughed at. A spaz. I was pretty good at boxing but only because the rage that filled my every waking moment made me wild and unpredictable. I fought with some strange fury. The other boys thought I was crazy.

I hated myself all the time. As stupid at it seems now, I wanted to talk like them, dress like them, carry myself with the ease of knowing that I wasn’t going to get pounded in the hallway between classes. Years passed and I learned to keep it all inside. I only talked to a few boys in my grade. Other losers. Some of them are to this day the greatest people I have ever known. Hang out with a guy who has had his head flushed down a toilet a few times, treat him with respect, and you’ll find a faithful friend forever. But even with friends, school sucked. Teachers gave me hard time. I didn’t think much of them either.

Then came Mr. Pepperman, my advisor. He was a powerfully built Vietnam veteran, and he was scary. No one ever talked out of turn in his class.Once one kid did and Mr. P. lifted him off the ground and pinned him to the blackboard. Mr. P. could see that I was in bad shape, and one Friday in October he asked me if I had ever worked out with weights. I told him no. He told me that I was going to take some of the money that I had saved and buy a hundred-pound set of weights at Sears. As I left his office, I started to think of things I would say to him on Monday when he asked about the weights that I was not going to buy. Still, it made me feel special. My father never really got that close to caring. On Saturday I bought the weights, but I couldn’t even drag them to my mom’s car. An attendant laughed at me as he put them on a dolly.

Monday came and I was called into Mr. P.’s office after school. He said that he was going to show me how to work out. He was going to put me on a program and start hitting me in the solar plexus in the hallway when I wasn’t looking. When I could take the punch we would
know that we were getting somewhere. At no time was I to look at myself in the mirror or tell anyone at school what I was doing.

In the gym he showed me ten basic exercises. I paid more attention than I ever did in any of my classes. I didn’t want to blow it. I went home that night and started right in.

Weeks passed, and every once in a while Mr. P. would give me a shot and drop me in the hallway, sending my books flying. The other students didn’t know what to think. More weeks passed, and I was steadily adding new weights to the bar. I could sense the power inside my body growing. I could feel it.

Right before Christmas break I was walking to class, and from out of nowhere Mr. Pepperman appeared and gave me a shot in the chest. I laughed and kept going. He said I could look at myself now. I got home and ran to the bathroom and pulled off my shirt. I saw a body, not just the shell that housed my stomach and my heart. My biceps bulged. My chest had definition. I felt strong. It was the first time I can remember having a sense of myself. I had done something and no one could ever take it away. You couldn’t say **** to me.

It took me years to fully appreciate the value of the lessons I have learned from the Iron. I used to think that it was my adversary, that I was trying to lift that which does not want to be lifted. I was wrong.When the Iron doesn’t want to come off the mat, it’s the kindest thing it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling, it wouldn’t teach you anything. That’s the way the Iron talks to you. It tells you that the material you work with is that which you will come to resemble. That which you work against will always work against you.

It wasn’t until my late twenties that I learned that by working out I had given myself a great gift. I learned that nothing good comes without work and a certain amount of pain. When I finish a set that leaves me shaking, I know more about myself. When something gets bad, I know it can’t be as bad as that workout.

I used to fight the pain, but recently this became clear to me: pain is not my enemy; it is my call to greatness. But when dealing with the Iron, one must be careful to interpret the pain correctly. Most injuries involving the Iron come from ego. I once spent a few weeks lifting weight that my body wasn’t ready for and spent a few months not picking up anything heavier than a fork. Try to lift what you’re not prepared to and the Iron will teach you a little lesson in restraint and self-control.

I have never met a truly strong person who didn’t have self-respect. I think a lot of inwardly and outwardly directed contempt passes itself off as self-respect: the idea of raising yourself by stepping on someone’s shoulders instead of doing it yourself. When I see guys working out for cosmetic reasons, I see vanity exposing them in the worst way, as cartoon characters, billboards for imbalance and insecurity. Strength reveals itself through character. It is the difference between bouncers who get off strong-arming people and Mr.Pepperman.

Muscle mass does not always equal strength. Strength is kindness and sensitivity. Strength is understanding that your power is both physical and emotional. That it comes from the body and the mind. And the heart.

Yukio Mishima said that he could not entertain the idea of romance if he was not strong. Romance is such a strong and overwhelming passion, a weakened body cannot sustain it for long. I have some of my most romantic thoughts when I am with the Iron. Once I was in love with a woman. I thought about her the most when the pain from a workout was racing through my body.

Everything in me wanted her. So much so that sex was only a fraction of my total desire. It was the single most intense love I have ever felt, but she lived far away and I didn’t see her very often. Working out was a healthy way of dealing with the loneliness. To this day, when I work out I usually listen to ballads.

I prefer to work out alone. It enables me to concentrate on the lessons that the Iron has for me. Learning about what you’re made of is always time well spent, and I have found no better teacher. The Iron had taught me how to live. Life is capable of driving you out of your mind. The way it all comes down these days, it’s some kind of miracle if you’re not insane. People have become separated from their bodies. They are no longer whole.

I see them move from their offices to their cars and on to their suburban homes. They stress out constantly, they lose sleep, they eat badly. And they behave badly. Their egos run wild; they become motivated by that which will eventually give them a massive stroke. They need the Iron Mind.

Through the years, I have combined meditation, action, and the Iron into a single strength. I believe that when the body is strong, the mind thinks strong thoughts. Time spent away from the Iron makes my mind degenerate. I wallow in a thick depression. My body shuts down my mind.

The Iron is the best antidepressant I have ever found. There is no better way to fight weakness than with strength. Once the mind and body have been awakened to their true potential, it’s impossible to turn back.

The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.

Belated congrats to my Dad for doing FGB on Saturday. In addition to doing it as RX’D, he was the largest individual donor at Crossfit Newport Beach.

Keep killin it.

H/T Gawker

Paleo ‘Tortilla’ Chips

• 2 cups Almond Flour
• 2 egg whites
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 tsp each: cumin,  chili powder, cayenne, ground coriander, ground annato, ground dried orange peel
• 1 tsp onion powder, garlic powder

1. Preheat the oven to 325.
2. Mix all the ingredients together to from a firm but supple paste. Roll out the mix between two pieces of parchment as thin as you keep even. THIN. As in really thin. Peel off the top parchment and gently cut.
3. Bake for about 10 minutes. You’re looking for light golden brown, dark means nasty bitter, if some chips color faster than others, use a flexible spatula and take them out.
4. Use for guacamole or whatever.

Recipe courtest of Eat.Move.Thrive.

From Peter Ustinov’s Romanoff and Juliet:

In the play Ustinov, as the Prime Minister of a small, neutral country squeezed between the giants of East and West, calls on the American ambassador and learns that the Americans know about a secret Soviet maneuver in the contest to dominate his country. After a bit of reflection the Prime Minister- crossing the stage- calls on the Soviet Ambassador. After some preliminaries he says to the Soviet Ambassador, “They know.” The Soviet Ambassador replies calmly, “We know they know.” Back to the American ambassador goes Ustinov, “”They know you know,” he says conspiratorially. The American Ambassador smiles confidently. “We know they know we know,” he answers. Ustinov returns to the Soviet Ambassador. “They know you know they know,” he says. To this the Soviet Ambassador replies, triumphantly, “We know they know we know they know.” Once again the Prime Minister calls on the American Ambassador. ” They know you know they know you know,” he says, weary and curious at the same time. The American Ambassador repeats it after him, counting on his fingers. “WHAT?!?” he suddenly cries in horror.

A bunch of people in my Olympic Lifting Class were having trouble with the split position while going overhead. Check out a couple of the pictures below. Remember, you have to drive yourself under the bar.

Split Jerk

Split Snatch

Split Clean

This is an excerpt from an article that is set to be published  in Newsweek magazine in a week. The first person account from some of the Taliban fighters are really interesting. I also thought the Afghans’ hatred for the Arabs in Afghanistan is noteworthy. The Afghans derogatorily called them “camels”.   Here is the opening paragraph:

“During wars and after them, the real voice of the enemy is rarely heard. Propaganda is plentiful, as are prideful boasts—and the Taliban have certainly been quick studies at the modern art of information warfare. But the fears and ambitions of ordinary fighters are too often buried under statistics and theories propounded from thousands of miles away. That’s been even more true in Iraq and Afghanistan, where reporters who might accurately convey the other side’s perspective are at risk of being kidnapped or killed for their efforts.”

——–

“After two months of hard training, we graduated. There were 200 of us: about 160 local tribals, a few Punjabis, and about 40 Afghans like me. We were divided up into 10 groups. Each had two or three Arabs assigned to it as commanders and instructors. We split up: some groups went to Khost and Paktia provinces, and others to Ghazni and Kandahar. Three of our groups were bombed by the Americans crossing the border. It was very dangerous back then. We had to run quickly and stay out of sight. We didn’t want villagers to see us. At that time they weren’t very supportive, and there were spies looking for us. We wanted to reach the cover of ravines, rocks, and trees before the sun rose.”

Read the whole article here

From Mark's Daily Apple (Great Blog)

——————-

In talking to people about how the Caveman Challenge is going thus far, I’m seeing two common errors (One of which I am guilty of myself)

Mistake #1: You aren’t eating enough fat. If you pull out a bunch of food from your diet, you need to replace it with something. Eat more fat. I see this mistake more from women. Seriously, stop it. If you have questions about how to eat more fat, why to eat more fat, or if eating more fat is going to give you a heart attack(it won’t), just ask.

Mistake #2: You aren’t eating enough carbohydrate. This is the one I’m guilty of. It is always easier to just grab a bunch of almonds or some chicken instead of a fruit or vegetable. This is mostly because I can freeze meats and store nuts, but I have to shop for fruits and veggies a couple times a week. If I was going for only body fat loss, limiting carbohydrate as much as I am could be desirable. However, as I have experienced in the last couple weeks, if I’m not eating enough fruits and vegetables I have no “gas in the tank” during intense workouts. This might be the greatest advantage to the “Zone” and other similiar eating plans. It forces me to eat adequate carbohydrate with every meal instead of just hammering down some cashew butter. I just need to make a focused effort to eat more fruits and veggies as this challenge continues.

See you tomorrow.

I CELEBRATE myself;
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my Soul;
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the shelves are crowded with perfumes;
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it;
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it is odorless;
It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it;
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked;
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
The smoke of my own breath;
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine;
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs;
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore, and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn;
The sound of the belch’d words of my voice, words loos’d to the eddies of the wind;
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms;
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag;
The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides;
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems;
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun—(there are millions of suns left;)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books;
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me:
You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself.

-Walt Whitman, first two sections of Song Of Myself, from Leaves of Grass