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We Are All Sisyphus: Weightlifting and the Absurd

Our would be mascot at Albuquerque Strength Academy is the infamous Sisyphus. The story of Sisyphus begins at the end of his life, wishing to postpone his journey to the underworld he developed a scheme. Sisyphus tricked the god Hades, and having bound him, left him in a closet within his home.   When the gods discovered what had happened, they were furious. They sentenced him to an eternity of rolling an enormous boulder to the peak of a mountain, only to watch it roll down to the base and the process began anew. His eternal afterlife was to toil and strain only to accomplish nothing in the end, adding to the madness of his sentence. Imagine yourself in this position, exerting yourself day after day in a never ending loop, knowing full well that at the end of the day that boulder will once again be at the bottom of the mountain.  If you are a weightlifter you already know this feeling all too well.

 

The Absurd

 

It is natural for us as human beings to seek meaning in the universe, you want to believe that what you do matters in a real way. Our time on this earth is short, and our pursuit of meaning is a way to make our inevitable demise seem less frightening. But the universe doesn’t care that you are scared, and the world as we know it is chaotic and lacks any true objective meaning. This clash between our pursuit of meaning and the lack of our ability to find it in any measurable way is what is referred to as the absurd. Trying to find meaning in a meaningless world. The use of Sisyphus as a metaphor, by Albert Camus, for the absurd is what draws me to him as an icon. In a world without purpose, we are all like Sisyphus. Working day after day, knowing deep down that in the end what we are doing lacks meaning.

At first this realization can be met with despair, and leave you feeling like there is no reason to continue with the futility of our modern lives, but don’t you worry. If nothing matters, we are free do determine our own meaning for the world, giving ourselves our own purpose. You don’t have to listen to the herd and blend in, you can choose your own path. A path that gives your life meaning and isn’t dependent on the universe giving you anything. The idea is Sisyphus, knowing his task is meaningless, chooses to spite the gods by enjoying the details of his work.  

“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”- Albert Camus

And so must we find the things in our daily struggle that we can enjoy, the feeling of the chalk on our hands, the weight of the bar on our backs, the numbness in our faces after a heavy lift, all forming a world. In this way we can live in our present moment, and choose what gives us meaning on a personal basis.

Weightlifting

The most obvious connection to Sisyphus is how his struggle relates directly to the challenges of daily training. Success in Weightlifting is fleeting at best, and if you are seeking happiness through only your results, your satisfaction will be short lived. We train, three to five days per week for weeks on end, for the chance to spend six minutes on the platform. Holding our achievements over our heads for the fraction of a second needed to get a down signal, only to watch them fall to the ground once again. To someone on the outside it may seem futile to work as hard as we do, day after day, seeming to get little to nothing in return. However, we lifters know the truth. It is not the weight being overhead that matters in the end, it is the process that gives us meaning day to day.

Meaning

Sometimes the world seems bleak, unfair, and devoid of meaning. Like many people, I occasionally struggle with depression. Before I found Weightlifting I frequently felt adrift and lost, having nothing to pour myself into. I won’t say that after training I never struggle with despair, but in those moments having time focused on Weightlifting has been more meaningful than I can express. Those times when it is just you and the bar, everything else fades away, and for a moment all that exists is the next lift. The universe won’t provide me a meaning, so I choose that meaning to be a pursuit of physical strength, and helping others to find the sense of fulfillment I find in the training process. Don’t worry yourself about what the herd tells you is important, they are no more right than anyone.  While our passion may seem arbitrary, tedious, and meaningless from the outside, we know that every atom of that barbell creates a world. We create our own meaning. We create our own happiness.

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How Bad Do You Want It, Really?

I was asked a question by an athlete recently. The question was, “What do you do when no matter how bad you want it, it doesn’t happen?” I watched the athlete step up to the barbell, set up their starting position, and go for the lift. There are times when no matter how much you psych yourself up, no matter how many people are cheering for you, no matter how many scoops of pre-workout you took, your ability to make it happen isn’t there. Sometimes, that’s just how it goes. A little later I thought more about what it means to really want it? I came to this conclusion, you don’t show how bad you want it when you step up to the barbell, it starts well before that. Sure, sometimes you can pull off a lift on sheer will but is that something you want to rely on when it really counts (like in competition). Beyond those rare moments, it starts in how many times you show up to the gym when you don’t feel like it. It’s in how much you push yourself in your training session and not checking your phone every 5 minutes. It’s in how well you eat, sleep, and commit to self-care. It’s in how much you’re willing to give up in exchange for an ounce of performance. When someone says they’re committed and will work harder than anyone else, I don’t care what they say, I pay attention to what they do. In the age of social media, I can tell if an athlete really means what they say. If they’re out on Saturday night, cracking a cold one with the boys, I know they don’t want it bad enough. When they spend the week eating junk food, barely making it to sessions, and skipping out on accessory work, I know they don’t want it bad enough. Words are wind, and I’m from the Show Me State (not really, but metaphorically). Athletes who don’t do the seemingly small things, don’t want it bad enough. It’s a way to make an excuse later on, to avoid personal responsibility. “Oh well, I gave it my best shot, and that’s all that matters. Next time.” Did you really give it your best though? An athlete has to be selfish, and they’re rarely satisfied with their performance, and a single-minded focus with a relentless pursuit of their objective is necessary to achieve something beyond mediocre. Mediocre effort will get you mediocre results. An athlete has to set aside life balance to achieve great results, and that applies to anything else in life that requires a lot of time and effort to achieve. Look at any historical figure or athlete that accomplished something great, and I’ll show you a person who shunned balance. When their teammates were out stuntin’ and flossin’ at the club, they stayed behind and kept practicing. They didn’t tell themselves they did their best, they gave their best, in and out of competition. Telling yourself you did your best with a mediocre effort is the equivalent of giving yourself a participation trophy. I’ve given myself that participation trophy, telling myself it didn’t go as planned, but I tried my best. Did I though? When you step up to the barbell, whether it’s in training or on the competition platform, is the wrong time to ask yourself how bad you want it. The time to ask yourself is when you need the self-discipline to avoid junk food and not have to nearly kill yourself to make weight, when you get an invite to drink yourself into a hangover, at the start of a training session, when you need to go to bed early, when you don’t feel like doing it. Those are the moments where saying you’re committed and showing you’re committed are separated. If you do as much as possible to set yourself up for success, you can be proud of your effort, no matter the result, because you can say with integrity that you really did give it your all. Ask yourself what kind of effort you have really given, leaving no room for excuses…How bad do you want it, really?

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How did I get here?

The year was 2010 and I was a skinny and scared private in the US Army, heading to Afghanistan. My company was tasked with working for the NATO training mission, helping to build the Afghan Army, a task that nearly ten years later appears to have been very fruitful (sarcasm). While the days were long, my job was about as safe as you can get for an infantryman, and we had enough down time to chain smoke, read, and of course hit the gym. I was always somewhat insecure about myself, and lacked confidence in a variety of areas, and I saw the muscularity of some of my peers and wanted to try to achieve that myself.

I had no idea what I was doing in the gym, and was essentially following the instructions on the exercise machines, and training almost exclusively my upper body. After a month or so of trying to figure things out on my own (and ordering an excessive amount of supplements off bodybuilding.com) I began training with one of my friends in the platoon. He was an imposing figure (until you saw his legs) and he had a better idea of what to do than I. We spent the next eleven months training for three hours a day, six days a week (not a single squat was done). What my program, if you can call it that, lacked in structure and balance was made up for in the intensity we trained and the amount of food we ate. Over the course of my deployment I went from 175to 200 lbs, and certainly increased my strength and confidence. I for the first time found an internal stillness that I can only tap into while training. When in the midst of a workout, the world drops away, the ego dissipates and all that is left is the task at hand, and for the first time the world appeared without the blinding layers of my neuroticism.

Upon returning from Afghanistan I kept up my routine, but the addition of mandatory physical training in the morning quickly brought my bodyweight down from the heights it reached on deployment. The gym became a habit, an obsession, not from the results I was trying to achieve, but with the process of training itself. I began to realize that my methodology was not the most efficient way to conduct training, and I began to look for new information to further my strength. Around this same time, I was promoted to sergeant and was tasked with writing workouts for my squads daily training sessions. I owed it to them to create a quality program, afterall fitness in the infantry means life or death. I began to drift our morning workouts away from long distance running and into “functional” training with kettlebells, jumps, sprints and plenty of body weight workouts. And thus it went for the better part of a year, functional training and running in the morning and bodybuilding style splits in the afternoon. (still…no squats).

Toward the end of my time in the Army, I began a program focused around the big three (squat, bench, deadlift) as I had reached a stalling point with the split style training. I began to do full body workouts, with progressive overload, after reading about the idea of linear periodization. I was blown away. Not only was the training harder and heavier, but progress was no longer measured by the look in the mirror but the weight on the bar. My obsession was renewed, I wanted to be the strongest I could possibly be. It was at this time I first witnessed the the performance of the Olympic lifts. Strength training inherently made more sense than physique training, I appreciated the simplicity. You master the movements, and add weight, no gimmicks, just simple hard work. When you being to follow a strength program your concerns about how you look wash away, and you are left with a feeling of accomplishment at the end of each workout. I lifted five more pounds, I did two more reps, it was simple. I had found my home.

Upon my exit from the Army, I wanted to learn how to do the Olympic lifts. I joined a CrossFit gym and I learned the basics of the movements. For the first time had help with developing my technique in all aspects of lifting (something that was severely lacking). I knew fitness and nutrition were what I wanted to study; therefore, I began a program focused on nutrition and exercise science at the University of New Mexico where I graduated in 2015. Eventually the gym I attended started a Olympic lifting program, and I immediately abandoned my crossfitting and threw myself wholeheartedly into Weightlifting.  The technical difficulty of the lifts and training was unmatched for quieting my mind. More importantly though, it began to give my life structure outside the gym. I focused on eating right, doing mobility work, and getting to bed early. My single minded focus allowed for my insecurity about social relationships, physical appearance, and demands of society to drift away. This left only the task at hand, adding one more kilogram to the bar. I had structure. I had routine. I had a passion. I had freedom.

I began working as a CrossFit coach in 2013, and soon after attended my USAW level one seminar so I could begin assisting to coach in the very program I had grown up in. I trained as much as I could, read every article I could find about Weightlifting, listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts, and focused all my research in school around lifting performance. When the time came that our current head coach was moving, I was ready to step in and take over as the head Weightlifting coach. Beginning with coaching at as many local meets as I could, I slowly but surely began having athletes achieve high enough results to attend National level weightlifting meets. My passions began to shift as my athletes abilities  quickly began to exceed my own. Coaching the lifts became my priority.

And here we are at the beginning the next chapter. Albuquerque Strength Academy will serve as the home for continuing to develop lifters of all ages, and skill levels. We will ask you for hard work, you will experience joy and pain, and through the process we will aid you in achieving your strength goals. I want you to feel the inner calm and belonging that training has brought me. Society will try to impose its values and priorities upon you but you needn’t give in. We live in a world that lacks objective meaning, and thus, we are free to decide what is truly important. There is freedom in the practice.  Come train with us, and discover yourself.

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You Missed A Lift, So What

How many lifts do you take during a session? During a week? During a month? During a year? Some people act like a missed lift is the end of the world. They start to pout, and each successive lift gets less and less intentional and you can see the inner toddler who isn’t getting their way start to emerge. They get defeated, start the negative self-talk, and pretty much start giving up. I’ve been that lifter before, hell, I’ve been that person in general. There is a point you have to reach, where you realize that kind of mentality isn’t productive. You have to learn to let it go, whether the lift was successful or not. Either the lift went over your head, or it didn’t, you can’t change the result after. You can’t change the past, and that lift is in the past. The lift you are about to attempt is the only one that matters, because that’s the one you have control over. No more pouting if your session isn’t going well. No more negative self-talk. No more giving up. You’ll get another chance. Treat a lift like your life depends on making it but remember that life goes on no matter the outcome. In the grand scheme of things, and the many reps you still have waiting for you…you missed a lift, so what.