Ron Harris as Archer
It’s funny how your attitude about certain things can change as you get older. When I was a kid, late August was a miserable time of year. It meant that the glorious summer vacation was almost over, and very soon life would return to the monotonous drudgery of waking up every day and going to school, doing homework, and counting the days until the next vacation – much the way prisoners mark the days until their release into freedom. I think I actually used to mark the days in hash marks on the wall of my cell, er, I mean bedroom.
I would even stay awake through the entire 36 hours of the annual Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon for muscular dystrophy, as this truly represented the last gasp of summer. It was my desperate attempt to distract myself from the inevitable return of the school year, which I equated with boredom, confinement, and suffering. You would think I attended The Hitler Military Academy and my instructors were Saddam Hussein, Genghis Khan, Idi Amin, and Benito Mussolini. Apparently I greatly exaggerated the cruelty of my teachers and the torture of the school day in my feverish little mind. Now, seemingly centuries later, I find myself anxiously awaiting the start of the new school year rather than dreading it. As a father of kids entering third and ninth grades, I would at last have them back into a routine and out of my hair for most of the week.
No longer would I be pressured out of guilt into endless trips to beaches, amusement and water parks lest my precious little angels ever have to experience boredom, and made to feel more like the activity director on a cruise ship than a parent (“Macarana lessons on the main deck at noon!”) My daughter had a vast social network yet was still too young to drive, which put me in the position of her personal chauffeur on call 24 hours a day. Now, blissfully, many of those hours she would be stuck inside a classroom and I would be free to work, train, or do whatever I pleased all day.Actually, at two weeks before the first day of school, Marisa was already being kept busy practicing for her new sport, field hockey. Never have I seen a piece of sporting equipment that seemed more suited to bludgeoning a human skull than hitting a ball than the field hockey stick. My client Jared was now in football practice, the only sophomore playing on the varsity squad. Physically, he was now just as muscular and powerful as his older teammates (if a bit shorter), which was a testament to his hard work in the gym over the past year and a few months. And like a real trooper, the kid was still keeping up his lifting despite being out working his tail off in practice for five or six hours in the sickening humidity of Massachusetts in August.
Under my advisement, he went home and had an enormous meal of steak and potatoes and laid down for a solid hour-long nap before meeting me at the gym. I also had him slugging several 50/50 PlusTM shakes during breaks in practice to keep his strength and endurance up, in addition to using other products like Max EnduranceTM, Liver AminosTM, and Muscle AminosTM in copious amounts due to his grueling physical activity regimen. I was at the gym with him now, putting him through the paces of his very basic routine that wasn’t much more than bench presses, deadlifts, squats, and power cleans for a few sets of five reps each. We only did this three nights a week, as practice was so incredibly demanding even for someone so young and in such excellent physical condition. This was not the time for him to be training like a bodybuilder, and he knew it. Still, I was impressed with the effort he was consistently putting out in our brief sessions. “Are you drinking one of those energy drinks before you come here, like Red Stallion or Pop Star?” I asked. Recreational drug use thankfully seemed to be on the decline among teenagers lately, but they were all knocking back those energy drinks.
I knew there were jittery kids bouncing around my town that would suck down three or four cans a day, the equivalent of 12-15 cups of coffee. Teenagers need that much caffeine about as much as morbidly obese people need more donuts and ice cream. I would hear them howling and hollering as they marched down the sidewalks in packs like rabid wolves, occasionally attacking each other or the nearest inanimate object. All that energy had to go somewhere. Too bad we couldn’t harness that manic energy as a replacement fuel source for gasoline.”Naw, the nap recharges my batteries pretty good,” he said, loading another ten-pound plate on one side of the Olympic bar as I got the other. “And after I get home, eat and shower, I am out like a light until the morning.””With the schedule you’re on now, you need all the rest you can get. I have always tried to make you understand how critical rest and recovery are.””I know,” he said, sliding the spring clip on the bar’s sleeve to keep the plates from flying off during his explosive power cleans. “Most of the Seniors on the team are out every night partying.
I don’t know how they do it.” He did his set of five authoritative reps with 175 pounds, and we added another dime to each side.”They just don’t know any better,” I told him. “Those kids would be doing better in practice if they were getting a few hours more sleep instead of chasing girls around town until one in the morning and probably having the occasional adult beverage.””Lucky I have you to guide me,” Jared said, “You know everything.”I let him do his set before responding. “Jared, I do not know everything – far from it.” He appeared puzzled.”Yeah, but you’ve been doing this since way before I was born.””True, and the funny thing is that the longer I’ve been doing it and the more I learn, the more I realize how little I actually know and how much more there is to learn. When I was in my early to mid-twenties, I really did think I knew it all. I look back now and wince at how obnoxious and pompous I was back then. When it comes to weight training, nutrition, and supplements, I eventually had to realize that you need to continue learning forever. So basically, I’m a student at it all just like you are.
I may be considered to be in a higher grade or level, but I am definitely nowhere near finished with my education. Okay, last set now, concentrate.”Jared pulled five good reps off the floor and on to his clavicles, and looked like he had a couple more in him. That’s exactly what we wanted. I wasn’t trying to work this poor kid to death, not when he had to be on the field again in about ten hours for yet another marathon practice session of drills under the blazing sun. We stripped the bar to 135 and together set it up on the stands of the power rack so he could start warming up on squats. He gestured to the gym floor, which was reasonably crowded.”These guys don’t all spend time trying to learn anything new, do they?””No, they probably don’t, and that’s why they usually don’t make much progress over time past the initial first couple years of training when everyone makes decent gains. I always say that the day you think you know it all in bodybuilding, you are all done.
There are so many different techniques to try that you would be foolish to not learn about as many as possible and try the ones that sound like they may have potential. It could be something so simple as experimenting with a new exercise, or even just changing your hand or foot position on an exercise you already do. It could be grouping bodyparts differently, or adjusting your pre or post-training meal, or using a new supplement. There are so many different variables to play around with, but unless you make an effort to find out about them, you wouldn’t even be aware of them.””So I guess I have an awful lot more to learn, then, huh?” he asked.”Yeah, but don’t feel bad – so do I.”While Jared did his squats, I pondered the implications of what we had just discussed. With all the magazines, books, and web sites available these days, the only reason someone would not be able to perpetually bolster his or her education in all things iron-related would be out of sheer laziness or stubbornness. In my own youth, an out-of-control ego and a stubborn resistance to accepting my own relative ignorance kept me mired in mediocrity for years.
Only when I opened up my mind to new information and allowed the possibility that I still had much to learn did I truly begin to make significant progress again. When I got home, I turned on the TV and the first thing that came on the screen was a commercial for Old Navy. In it, kids from what appeared to be ages 8-18 were dancing around ecstatically in their cool and colorful new fall fashions, practically frothing at the mouth in glee about going ‘Back to School.’ What a crock of crap, I thought. If anyone right now feels like celebrating the new school year, it’s us parents!Ron Harris is the author of Real Bodybuilding, available at www.ronharrismuscle.com