Leathered

Pull back with all your might……for us the skeletons should never stop fighting the good fight. Heave! Pull! Use your back to attack and your heart to win; the greatest gift an athlete is given is the strength within.  Pinch your shoulder blades tight to cut through the wind! Fast with a swoosh and quick like a hush……this will keep the weight from pounding us against the dust.  “Back not up!” the lifters yell from behind, as water creeps around the bend.  Don't try to move a bar; for it will always disguise itself as a friend, only to steal your gold and rust your crown, athletes are kings that continually drown. Under we go, heavy we constantly throw, as buckets of water sink us low.  Move around like sound, let the bar unite you with the ground, as heels dig and tears falls……let your body move as your fear dies.  

Chest up young lifter…. as the leathered faces crack a dry smile, tying their shoes makes them remember days of denial. A heavy chest means a weighted down soul, one that carries too many problems on a platform of weight.  Adding extra baggage becomes a weight too much for any plate.  Your knees will break and your heart will stop, as your eyes look around an audience of silence.  Let your chest rise as you break through the air……let your lats spread like flight to a bird……let your confidence soar as a lion with his roar.  Donny Shankle watches from the back of the room, blue hat low and jeans full of blue.  If you have lost your chest and your shoulder blades aren't tight… look at the man postured in the back with a hate that blocks the light.  A face on an interview half covered from shade, half light, one half leathered and the other half brave. The Cal Strength interview of Shankle is a reminder on how to train. If you are a lifter reading this blog, you must learn to learn, tighten your back like the curve of a spoon.  Tight and strong not just flat and solid, for a tree will lie when lying down flat.  Some look sturdy, while others look hollow.  To find the right tree takes years for the eye to see, the body to feel while your hand falls free, once you stand long enough by a tree, you will know every itch of its matter and how it may be.  Learn how to keep your back tight, and your hands free… this young lifter, is when skin becomes leathered and the weight of the world becomes free.

I write to you from a corner booth in Starbucks.  The day outside is cloudy and the air is full of salt.  I write by the ocean of peace, thinking about tight backs, weights being made, and how a lifter’s movement to me is never the same.  This is why technique is so intriguing to my brain, a brain that has never been good at much besides movements that mock the flow of rain.  For we are the best athletes and dancers alike, we move like the ocean on a stormy night.  I lift weights for the expression it gives, freedom of movement in a life of constant heartache. You know as well as I that quick sand is quick to find…. grabbing a bar will always relieve you of your pain, giving you another feeling of ache…and well…pain.  The microphone has consumed me far too long… I am back home in the dark where I belong.  I raise my fist, full of wine and C4.  Cheers to you, the ones of bones and salt, not from the sea but by the stage of the never forgotten.  Right through us they see our past in the same room as me, and a window open from the Orchestra to the sea.  I ink my pen, I shed a tear, I write directly to you without any fear.  

Without this blog I fake smiles.  Without this blog I lose myself.  I am the dark, we are the Orchestra….

Olympics 2016