Choose Strong
For Tim.
I haven't been to the workplace for over two months by now. The structure it
provided has been seemlessly replaced by my own routines. I do yoga and train
with weight almost everyday and run or hike at least three times a week. Reading
the dictionary takes a big chunk of time. Since the revelation on my lack of
ankle/calf flexibility, I have been stretching even when watching videos.
Cooking and eating the cannellini beans has led to growing sage and summer
savory. (The latter was to prevent gas.) And there was work, of course. There
were so many things to do.
What I missed the most about the workplace was the barbell. I had progressed to
deadlifting 275 lbs in the company gym. As much as I was aware of my ego,
nothing seemed to compare with the satisfaction of lifting a personal record.
The carryover to running made me giddy. I was even thinking about adding a
barbell set at my home gym.
It was however too late once shelter-in-place came. I was reported by security
when I was trying to fit in a lifting session on my last visit to the workplace
(which led to an explicit company-wide ban of gym access). Public gyms were
among the first non-essential businesses to close. Walmart's fitness section,
especially shelves of things measured by pounds, looked robbed and never
re-stocked. Trying to order a kettlebell online at Onnit or from Pavel, I was
told to wait as all sizes were out. It was crazy.
My progress in weight-lifting, however, was not stopped. My left wrist has
recovered and I have been single-arm swinging the 40kg for the past two months.
(Some days, my left could not do a set of 10 as the grip was not as strong. I
would do more sets of less reps to get to a total of 50 swings.) Meanwhile, I
had tried fastening a 15-lb bell to the 88-pounder and swung with two arms. The
kludge was awkward at best and dangerous to train with over long term. It has
been hard to imagine: do I need a 48kg finally?
Maybe not. Let's meet the standards with the 40kg first. To do that, I need to
be able to swing a 10x10 in five (I could barely do it in 10 min as of now) and
do 10x1 Turkish Getups in 10 minutes. (I haven't trained the TGU for a while and
need to restart.)
