My ass meets my heels as my knees meet my chin. My mechanical top hat has seemed to fall back from the roof above my head closing in. A chain stationed at the hips rattles its way up to the weightlifter's elbows, only to meet a crossroad of different levers and directions. Everything is connected. My finger connects to the dirt below my bottom position as I draw lines and circles reflecting past memories and future ideas. Sick with tea, cold from the fever. When I am sick the weightlifter is sick as well. A run of bad luck runs a line around my body as to say stay away. A part of the sport that's not talked about. Life affects sport and sport affects life. My fort of blankets that stretches from one end of the living room the the other, keeps me hidden from anymore back pains or illnesses that seem to have a hit on my head. The dirt below my feet has turned into murky bubbly mud from the tea that has fallen from my cup from swaying side to side, while still being hunched over in this ever so low bottom position. The sheets above my head flap as I forgot to close one of the windows outside the fort. Cold wind sneaks through the red glow from the blankets around me. Falling like opera curtains as the chattered whispers overflow the room in preparation for the show. Top hats and long smokes, glasses with no frames, and mustaches that look like the line of bar path in a weightlifting instructional video. Some, more vertical than others, and some so extreme it looks as if a child with a crayon had a go at them. An odd time in my life, a stuck time that has stopped the clocks and erupted more thoughts than I knew I even had. Thoughts like sand slipping through your hands. There then gone. A feeling of whole, followed by a feeling of empty. A call to an old friend across the world for a midnight chat leads to a dial tone of "this number is no longer in use, please hang up and try again". This is how I feel.
Me.....popular.....no my friend. I am one of the loneliness people you know. Old travel receipts lay at my feet, while plane stubs have made a permanent home in my wallet of crinkled white papers and scattered change that always makes it extremely hard to close while trying to slide in my back pocket. Pictures and lovely memories of PR's and bar slamming keep me company in my fort of red. Faces appear and fade. Glossy memories make it hard to sleep as I scroll down and up my phone looking for someone to call. Always leading me to the same place as always....a smoke outside with a hot coffee to keep my mind sharp and intact. Facebook friends I don't know, while chatting with friends on twitter I have never met nor scene before. "Come alive" I scream! Come alive and let's shoot some pool, break balls, and get in trouble. Let's run from the cops. Let's push over every shelf in Walmart telling them to start treating their animals better. Let me raise this mechanical top hat high and enter a whole new experience outside of this red blanket glow that forces me into a fantastic bottom position. I am sick from this bad back and living room fort I scurry under after a long weekend.
A weightlifter body moves from chains and levers that pull and pry, squeak and chatter. Bone against bone as we catch the weight in the whole, stretching the chain tight, as your face makes odd emotions from the small razor thin strings that attach to your pores. A rusty chain means under recovery, or too much time away from operation top hat. The higher the top hat, the stronger you will be. The top hat holds the engine underneath its black leather shell, producing all of the levers to work as one. This is why all of the great weightlifters have tall hats, hats that hold wisdom, experience, and knowledge. Or your top hat can be broken like mine. Broken from injury. Everything must move together with no hitches. A rhythm lifter has mastered the art of body, bar awareness. One who has done the movements over and over until they become second nature. If wind passes your ears on the pull, and you are hanging onto the bar like a kid on a roller coaster, then you have mastered your style of technique. All of your levers and strings now sound like an orchestra of beauty. This my friends takes time. This my friends takes many nights under a tree fort of red. This my friends is more bad days than good, more bomb outs than wins. This my friends is a lifestyle of hell.
Where I'm at now is where I chose to be. These living room forts are at times necessary. Dark days are like misses, they happen, and there is such a thing as a good miss, and good dark days. I sit in this red fort over dirt, passing my finger back and forth while understanding and gathering thoughts on what it takes to succeed. I have been here before, understanding the darkest, coldest nights always bring the warmest, brightest days ahead. Sometimes you have to take three steps back, to take 20 steps forward. Salute.
Bar whip will whip your ass under the bar like a sling shot on pink pills. A shot from a sling that will pay off when catching. Rhythm, timing, bounce, fast, explosive, coffee, love, hate, steak, Shankle and a lion, and green monsters in your belly. Oscillation is behind all of these tricks to the game. Street weightlifting. Not talked about movements that hide in the dark of this orchestra only to come out and play when fast moving freaks like us give their day job the finger and smash weights through the floor pissing off every damn neighbor in sight. More pink pills means more strong, and if you can't take pink pills like myself, then bar whip is the next best thing. USADA has single handily given me the full use of bar whip, while other countries get two sides with their main course rather than just one. Screw it, no excuse, let's just use what we have been given by the weightlifting gods to our advantage.
Oscillation means more float time. Float time for the arched angel to flap her wings, her 20 kilo wings that is. A spoon full of sugar and a shot of coffee can make any weightlifter fly while still keeping their toes planted on the floor, giving off shock waves of massive destruction to those commie North Korean sons of bitches. A golf club that bends can make the white ball go further. Whack! Hips to bar when done right and timed right can do all the work for you, slapping you smack dab in a roller coaster of speed and power. What do I think about when I lift? Hanging on. The wind passes my ears like a kid out the car window headed to Disney Land. The harder you push back, the harder the force of contact you create, giving the bar longer time to flap her wings and make love to you.
Why do you lean back so much on the finish Jon? Oscillation, I answer while chugging coffee as if I have been stranded in the desert for 2 weeks without coffee. On a side note.....could you even imagine no coffee for two weeks? You can't, me neither. Awful......let's move on. As I was saying, the longer your hips come through the bar, the longer the bar will oscillate in mid air, giving you just enough time to dive under, pull under, drop under, shrug under, Ali feet under. Whatever term you want to use, it's all the same. This is why Tiger Woods follows through his swing......power. The hips are the golf club, the ball is the bar. Cut your arch short, and you will cut the make short right on the back of your neck. Now drink more coffee and keep reading, for hopefully this might help you the next day with gaining a relationship with the bar, which is the number one road block for a weightlifter at any stage. Relationship. An understanding. Not a scientific understanding, but a personal understanding. Only one you can have, no one else. James Tatum said it best, YouTube is a great way to learn and be coached. I agree full heartily, but when not knowing what to look for, it can cause head scratching and frustration. It can blind what's really in front of you. I went through this Ray Charles syndrome for many years. What the fuck am I looking at or for. I would have just done what any man in my shoes would of at that time, drank more coffee, but at that time of my life I didn't know miss brown eyes. I know, crazy right. Why the hell do I keep getting off on coffee when trying to write a blog on the whip of the bar. Good Lord, I am addicted. Wait......better yet I am in love. OK fuck it moving on. Understand it, see it, then feel it. The feeling part might take a while, like years and years a while. It took me about 3 years to really get the timing of her wing power. And once I found it......what the hell was I suppose to do with it? Reps, reps, reps, reps, reps, reps, and more reps. Turn up the volume and dance along.
When the initial hit occurs, the bar will act like a belt wrapping around your waste. The bar will try to touch both sides of the weights on either side behind your back. Before the weights have the pleasure to meet each other they will have a rude awakening from the bar. As you bring your hips through the hit portion of the finish into the full extension (aka) arched angel - the bar will then start to whip out in front of you with much speed. But Jon, this is the problem, it's not good to have the bar swing out in front of you. Hold on.....let me take my coffee cup and bash it upon this triple extension's head. This is the triple extension's go to attack method. Use the force on the outward moving bar, and guide it back towards you. This is why the elbows must face back, never up. If the hips don't come through, and the elbows are straight up, then yes......the bar will swing out in front of you. Come at me bro, I can literally go all day. Especially with this very odd song I found that has put me in an ever so interesting mood. I am definitely going to put the song above the blog on this one. What if the bar never did bend? Then A) the hit would hurt like hell, this is why the better the bar you have the truly better your lifts will be. I hate to say it, but it's true. B) Since the wave effect of the bar would not be in affect, the bar would fall much much faster. This is actually a pointless question in the first place, because the bar will always bend, unless you're lifting with concrete.....or triple extension.
The oscillation helps wonders in the catch portion of the clean, much much more than the snatch. Why? As the outer part of the bar whip finally meets you in the bottom position of the catch, you are now going to catch the "bounce" and try your best to shoot up out of the "hole" aka the dark deep sea of missed lifts and wrist breaking. The bar whip now starts to swing back up from its long drop down, and gives you that helping hand to add speed and power to stand tall in front of the crowd. I say the oscillation works better in the clean rather than the snatch because the snatch is more of a balancing act. You must at times sit down in the hole, watch a movie, make sure the bar and you are under control, and then stand. Rushing out of the bottom position in the snatch is death, don't do it. The weight is light compared to your back, front, and clean lifts. The bottom position in the clean is NOT YOUR FRIEND! Get the hell out of there, and fast!
Everything applies the same in the jerk as well. The biggest problem I see when watching people jerk is the slight pause, or for a better word hesitation, in the lowest portion of the dip before the drive. Why is this bad? You will miss the bus. This is why. The bus meaning the bar, the bar meaning the whip, the whip meaning the oscillation, the oscillation meaning you holding onto a hot air balloon and taking you high into the air. Miss the timing of the whip like I do many times a week, and your knees will collapse from the you trying to drive up while the bar is now coming back down like a coke head up for three nights straight. Don't be the coke head, and drive out of the dip like you do in the clean. A drill to work on for this timing and relationship is taking out a very heavy weight in the front squat position, and dip and drive over and over for 5 minutes until you and the bar are on the same page.
I hope this helps. I haven't written a technique blog in a while, it was fun. There is so much more in between all of this. I think this topic needs more parts on this blog in the future for sure. I find it very interesting. Goodnight.
Itching to itch while itching for the future. The closer the near future moves my way, the further away it feels. I wait, for waiting is all I can do. Ideas will soon blossom into reality, but for now they are only ideas that live in my head. Fuck I am drunk off coffee. Fuck it's hard to write with so much on my mind. Fuck I can't wait to train again. The paragraph you are reading is and will be my final draft, no editing, no starting over, just mud that I am slinging at this screen. Triple extension vs catapult vs my way all intertwined together in a story....yes this is what I want to write about. But can't, my mind can't stay focused on one thing for longer than two minutes. So I itch, scratch, and pace, drink coffee in the same place, while slapping myself in the face to wake from this realization of being completely alone in a big world. I have been here before though. I am a life vet, a weightlifting soldier who has been to war and back. I like the dark, no fuck it, I love the dark, wait... I welcome the dark. Come on Jon, there is no difference from then to now. Doubt only lives in going under 400 pounds, never in the pursuit of ripping the heads off lions. It's either you don't or you do, and I do, we do.
Let's be blunt, is my back getting better?... Better? It's ready for war, and war is what I am about to walk into. Alone? Never. I must only train with gladiators. Spit in my face and remind me why I am doing this. You wanna fight? Let's go. After we throw down let's then shake hands and eat a steak. Drink milk as it runs down the side of our mouths. Grow a beard and give the world the finger. Tough skin makes for tough body, tough heart and a tough mind. Let's play call of duty between sessions and then go ham fucken sandwich on the platform. I fight, and I will die fighting. Swing this axe and cut down the trees we must. Rip this head off this lion and drink its blood. Let me set up an atmosphere of dark, real, no chains and freedom. Let me tell you about it, because as of right now that's all I can do. The next time I look at the calendar I am going to rip it off the wall and send it to those who wait to compete in their first a local meet. Stop waiting! Get your ass out there and kill! Shankle nods his head while ripping the scabs off his rough hands. The ideas and plans I have in my head are driving me crazy. I want to open my mind and slam them down in front of me.
Ring ring ring....hello....let's go....OK. Grab your bar and meet me here in 2 days. The eyes are watching so be calm and collect, duck under and stay hidden. Bring your towel for sweat you will wipe, blood to clean up, and shade you will need. Hey Dad, how am I doing? You want to come visit me and see all that I have done? No response like usual. Fuck em, I have you, we have us, I have weightlifting. I am typing this incredibly fast, and I have no idea how it is going to come out. This is the kind of writing you must do when the block of writing takes over. It's funny, writer's block only comes from too many thoughts, rather than what some might think, not enough thoughts. What to do when your thoughts are running all over the place? Run with them, run your fingers over the keyboard and don't stop. Don't look up, don't worry about the spelling for right now. Don't do what your English teacher taught you. Listen to you, very close family and friends. Snap back a monster and train. Write write write. Listen to the song Shankle told me about, and drink drink drink more coffee. This watch I wear across my wrist will not move any faster, and it's making me wish I knew how to time travel. Maybe I should of stayed in school and taken a class on this topic. Maybe I should eat a whole bag of mushrooms and let my ideas surface to new sights. Shit, can't do that, USADA won't leave me alone. Plus, I am not into drugs nor alcohol anymore. I battled that war and thankfully won. Anyone else want to get in the ring with me? I am here all day and night.
Light money on fire to warm ourselves in this cold gym. I could care less about that green devil. Turn up the techno to drown out our thoughts. Slam bars and you know the rest. I can't believe I am still writing without stopping once. I must keep going before the block gets me and haters reach me. Hater you can't find me. I sit behind a wall full of hard work that they know nothing about, nor will they ever. Haters equal excuses for their own let downs in life, I ain't got time for that. See, we have many let downs and failures that we have had to come to grip with. It's how we handled them that sets us apart from the haters. We have dealt with them in our own way, accepted situations that we take blame for, said sorry for, and then learned from. We succeed past our failures from understanding our failures. I believe haters have never dealt with their own loses and let downs. It's like an alcoholic who will never admit he or she is an alcoholic. It simply doesn't work, and the work they put in only leads to work they channel towards others. Look, understanding the mind set of a hateful person is hard, I am probably just scratching the service. I don't want to act like a know it all. I must stop writing for just a second, my coffee is all out, and I am pretty sure I have a Rockstar in the fridge.......one sec...........................................................................................................
Knees back then crack, I am back. Posters, paint, platforms and bars. Athletes, music, and plates. Coffee machine, sitting bench and chalk. Smiles and frowns, fights and hugs, pr's and misses. A family of skeletons is what makes a gym a gym. Itch, scratch, hot shower, cold shower, tapping fingers, clock watching, what are people thinking thoughts, too many smokes from too many coffee shots. Come to think about it, this is the longest I have been away from training in 6 years. My body looks different. My face looks skinny. My hands look soft and clean, while my back and knees no longer shoot pain up my neck and into my brain. I am a different person. A bitten zombie turned into a civilian who plays basketball outside and who shops at malls. Disgusting is what I am. This fever that has come over me has made my bones weak, and my bubble butt smaller. I find myself even taking the stairs for the extra cardio.....CARDIO PEOPLE! Good Lord, save me from this hell. When a weightlifter chooses the stairs over the elevator something has gone horribly wrong. Rest has taken over. Soon, upcoming, around the corner I will again breath in the dust, hear the plates slam, feel the bar whip, and shoot rest in the fucken head. I will soon become a weightlifter. I will soon be home.
The 29th Attitude Nation Support The Troops Certification Seminar was crazy fun. We were so grateful to be able to show our gratitude to all the soldiers who make it possible for us to do what we do everyday. This is only the very start of our support the troops events and fundraisers. The Attitude Nation will be putting on fundraisers for the Wounded Warrior Project in the near future, and more of these free clinics for our troops. We will keep you posted with details for the events, times, and dates. Anything we can do to help and show our appreciation. Thank you all again.
Doing nothing is harder than training. Pacing is more leg work than squatting, and waiting is more nerve racking than getting a look from a competitor in the warm up room. Coffee and a clock, an itching body and too many thoughts. Tea at night as I sit in this Orchestra of dark hoping to see the light soon enough. Just writing about training makes my thumbs hook when typing. Loud techno music replays in my head when the night is at its most quiet. I close my eyes and see dead coffee cups scattered everywhere around my feet. Every last empty cup is a teammate I have lost throughout this journey. The only way I know how to repay their sacrifice is to drink more coffee. I must be happy, this is the single most important part of training. Happy leads to good mood, good mood leads to motivated, motivated leads to heavy weights, heavy weights lead to the Olympics. I would rather be a happy person and not a weightlifter, than a weightlifter that is not happy. Both happy and weightlifter is the number one goal for any weightlifter, or athlete at that.
Details I cannot go into, but ideas and plans I must follow. The bridge is strong and sturdy, and has two lanes that cross both ways. But I must walk one way, I must walk with a barbell on my back, to a place where happy lives, where people get me for me, who yell at me like I do them, who have similar ideas and methods of atmosphere and attitudes. This is everything. Atmosphere is the home of happiness which leads to lots and lots of bar slamming, lots and lots of yelling, smiles, and tears. Some people like a certain way of training, a certain way of getting jacked up, a certain way of being motivated, which is great. There is more than one way to lift weight, just like there is more than one way to look at the sport, view training, and get jacked up. Many different attitudes and outlooks mix and match for training. Just like there is no wrong way to lift weights, there is no wrong way to train. Their are a million different atmospheres scattered all over the world in a million different gyms. I must find mine. This is a message for everyone across the world. If you are not happy doing what your doing, then stop doing what your doing. I would rather live homeless than be trapped into a web of regret and self captivity. Winning only matters if you love winning in the sport you are winning in. "No comfort zones" - Shankle.
Never lay your sword down and surrender to a situation or atmosphere that isn't personally working for you. Fight! Lose! Live fucken homeless! I would rather rebuild from the bottom to someday be happy on the top. Winning the gold of happiness is the hardest gold medal you could ever achieve. Let's talk about happiness, let's make happiness our number one goal, and let the rest follow without ever resting. Let's use happiness to lift weight, big weight. Not some top secret program, or technique, but true self worth, true love, true living. I must go back to the start. I must find "Jumping" Jonathan North again. I must write Arnold across my chest while training. I must slap hands and scream, chest bump teammates while at times becoming nose to nose with one about to fight at any minute. I feel this is a win win for all. No more walking on egg shells, no more apologies. Just Johnny Cash with his guitar.
Calm before the storm is what I was before the Arnold. The Arnold never came for me due to a horrible back injury I received by the weightlifting gods in the warm up room. The storm never came. The calm still surrounds me. The storm has yet to show its face. The storm will come.
My interview on Barbell Shrugged at the Arnold! Thank you guys for having me on your bad ass podcast. I never miss an episode of this highly motivating, funny, entertaining and most importantly knowledgable podcast. If you haven't ever tuned into BarbellShrugged then your missing out! Again, thank you Mike Bledsoe, Doug Larson, Chris Norman, and Chris Moore. Go to Barbellshrugged.com to check out all the episodes. Salute! (link Below)
Feet dangled from the tree branch, as he sat and stared. A million miles with a million thoughts were lit up from the sun that slowly drew the night closer and closer up the tree's trunk, reaching for his bare feet. Cold, but inviting. Quiet as a mouse, with nothing but the sound of the boy whispering his thoughts out loud. All it took was a snap of a branch for the boy to become startled. But soon back to a non-blinking stare into a million miles that sat upon another tree facing back some where a million miles away. The sound of constant chatter with himself, the boy felt at ease on this empty tree. A buddy named Max appeared beside him as they admired the view of challenges and triumph, rolling hills and windy trees, while never once talking nor looking at each other. Max, sitting beside him, stopped the boy's chattering amongst himself. A full conversation with no words, just the smell of cooking from the town people below that caused their eyes to close while their heads tilted back catching all the scent had to offer. The breeze from the trees ahead had finally met their arrival as friendly mother nature whistled through their toes like a subway train in New York. Max soon disappeared, and the boy was then alone. His head sunk and his stomach turned. The whole time Max was a branch. The shadows from the sunset can play tricks on your mind. Jared appeared to the right side of the boy and pointed out a giant deer that was sprinting across the field. The boy never once asked himself where Jared came from, or how Jared got up the tree so fast. Frankly the boy didn't care, he was just excited to point at a deer with him. Simple. They both laughed at the exact same time, in the exact same way, sitting on the exact same branch. A tree that makes you see things in a whole new perspective. The boy didn't want to climb that high, and sit on the branch that far out, something just told him to. Situations that led to an outcome that no one will ever know, led him to this branch looking over a million miles of thoughts and ideas. Jared swung his feet and told stories of the old times. A tear dropped from the boy's face splashing down upon the dark that was rising further up the tree and closer to his cold feet. The cold hard truth is hard to make warm at times, and this was one of those times. Jared's stories reminded the boy of just how long true happiness had been detached from his life. Jared didn't seem to see the boy's sadness as Jared soon vanished and the night sky started to close over the boy's head, making branches and leaves look like past friends and funny stories. Jared was never there, and the boy knew this all too well. The boy could only sit on the branch and remember when Jared once was there, as a journey of memories played over in his head.
A man named Shankle came across the boy's path pulling a wooden cart full of rocks and stones behind him. The horns from his viking helmet were bent sideways as if he had been in a few battles himself. His voice was deep and his body was covered in tattoos. "What are you doing up there young man!" Shankle asked as if he was giving a speech in front of a handful of town's people. The boy's feet stopped swinging, the boy looked back out into the million miles of land, and this time noticed a group of swordsmen practicing battle in the open hay field below. Roughly 1,000 feet away. The boy's head didn't move, but his eyes shifted down. Reality can be hard to face. The boy noticed his sword upon his waste was becoming rusty laying in its case, and the possibility of it sticking in battle could be costly. The boy spit on his light brown leather vest that had signs of wear and tear all over it, and wiped his sword clean. Reality can sting, but the breeze that passed through his toes snapped him out of his trance, and back into the question the man with the viking hat asked him. The boy confidently and proudly replied, "I don't know". The viking below leaned up against the tree with one arm, and began to eat an apple with the other. "What do you want to do?", replied the viking. The boy wanted to take another gaze into the millions of miles, but knew that the answer to this question could only be found in his mind and not through his eyes. Big Ben appeared beside the boy as the boy was in a battle of thought. Big Ben slapped the boy on the back and chuckled, "this viking's really got you thinking doesn't he?". The boy thanked Ben out loud, for Ben was his first coach, the start of it all. The viking asked the boy who he was talking to. "Big Ben" Shankle looked at his apple in a funny and confused way, and then violently took a heaping bite out of the shiny red apple, while rocking his head back and forth. Ben leaned over and laid a Sac State towel in the boy's hands. Then before he disappeared, turning into another tree branch, he said fast and upbeat, "Start from the beginning". The boy cracked a smile that even a scientist with a microscope couldn't find. The boy kicked his head back and grabbed one of the branches above his head with his left arm, while letting the right arm clinch onto the branch as if he was going to leap at any minute. The boy replied to the viking eating the apple, "I want to be a weightlifter". Shankle smiled while nodding his head. The boy smiled. The viking patted the tree a few times as if he was praising a horse, and then continued pulling his rocks and stones to where ever his destination may have been. The boy looked back out into the now dark fields of the million miles. There were no more swordsmen practicing battle in the distance. The deer was no where to be found, and this time there were no branches that came to life in the form of an old friend, just the boy and a small light from the ideas and plans coming from his head.
The boy shed a tear as the black faced man he once fought for walked away, his pigeoned toed feet swaying him side to side . The black faced man disappeared over the hill from afar. No more tree branches came to life. Just a real man and a real scar. Real sadness with a lot of respect. The boy took a deep breath.....black.
