Soul of a Lifter

By Gino Arcaro

Gino Arcaro’s journey from childhood obesity to natural health and strength was not made alone; he relied on the Soul of a Lifter. In telling this tale, Arcaro draws on life lessons learned from his careers as a football coach, police officer and college teacher to inspire and lead the reader in a soul-searching quest to reach his/her own potential. This is not your run-of-the-mill motivational book. Discover insights about what drives the soul... what happens when you listen and when you don’t!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gino Arcaro
• Release date: Sep 19, 2014

Gino Arcaro

I started lifting as a dysfunctional 12-year-old, trying to overcome my obesity. Lifting transformed my life physically and mentally. I have been lifting for 43 consecutive years, 100% natural. I lift almost every day. It’s part of who I am and it will always be, but it doesn’t define me. At 18, I started my policing career. A few years later, I became a SWAT team officer and then at the age of 26, a detective. At the same age, I accepted the head coach position at a high school, a decision that began a lengthy volunteer coaching career. I wrote my SWAT No-Huddle Offense and Defense manuals, (and recently published them) explaining the systems I had created and refined throughout 40 seasons of coaching football at the high school, college and semi-pro levels. After 15 years, I left policing to teach law enforcement at the local college. During the next 20 years, I became a bestselling academic author, writing 6 law enforcement textbooks that are used in colleges throughout Ontario. Also during that time, I earned a Master degree, an undergraduate degree, and Level 3 NCCP Coaching certification. Then, in 2001, I opened a 24-hour gym called X Fitness Welland Inc. The gym continues to enjoy success entering its 13th year of operations. eXplode: The X Fitness Training System is a book I wrote that explains my workout system, based on 40+ years of lifting. In 2010, I left teaching to make the literary transition to motivational writer. My first book, Soul of a Lifter was published in 2011. In the last year, I’ve added several books. Blunt Talk is the name of a series I’m writing dealing with everything from fat loss to interrogation. Soul of an Entrepreneur is a 3-part series meant to enlighten business owners – current and potential. In the series, 4th and Hell, I tell “David vs Goliath” tales about my Canadian club football team playing in the United States. When my first granddaughter was born, I wrote, Beauty of a Dream and last year, Mondo piu Bello to commemorate the birth of her cousin. I am motivated in my writing by my belief that we all have a potential soul of a lifter. We are called to lift for life. We can lift ourselves. We can lift others. Keep lifting, Gino Arcaro, M.Ed., B.Sc.

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About the Author

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Gino Arcaro is a Canadian football coach and former police officer. During his unique 35-year professional career, Gino has worked as a patrol officer, SWAT officer, detective, college professor and program coordinator.

He is a best-selling policing textbook writer, strength training coach and business owner – founder of X Fitness Welland Incorporated.

Soul of a Lifter

∞

Forward … and Backward

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Here’s what this book is about … and is not about.

This book is about how odds were beaten. It’s a theory about what happens when you listen to your soul and when you don’t. I believe that our soul is our connection to our physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual health – potential, and destiny. We have the choice of strengthening our soul or killing it.

This book is a personal philosophy – developed through insights and lessons learned from countless connections with remarkable people.

This book is about addictions.

First and foremost, I am addicted to working out. One of the worst workout addictions in the history of wo/mankind. A seven-day iron-sweat-and-pain addict. I can’t take one day off without heavy withdrawal symptoms.

Every morsel of food I eat has one purpose – the next workout. Every song on my iPod has one purpose – how it affects my next set. When I go out of town, the first priority is Googling gyms. Where is the nearest 24-hour gym? Does it have enough free weights? Does it have heavy bags and speed bags? And where can I run? How can I eat enough protein? Packing priorities – workout clothes, iPod and charger. My addiction led to starting a business – a 24-hour gym. X Fitness Welland Inc.

I am addicted to not talking about anything related to working out. And addicted to ensuring no one confuses me with a bodybuilder, powerlifter or anyone remotely associated with the fitness industry. Example. X Fitness recently sponsored a bodybuilder. The gym manager convinced me to attend the contest – a daughter knows how to manipulate her father. After sitting only minutes in the deepest, darkest recess of the auditorium, I left through a side entrance to avoid talking about biceps, pecs and posing. The question, How do you build your arms? has the same appeal to me as bee-stings and viewing autopsies.

I am addicted to coaching football. Sometimes two teams per year – unpaid. Spring/Summer. Then Fall – just in case the withdrawal symptoms threaten to get out of control. During football season, I forget which body parts I’ve washed during my shower. Water on, water off, on, off, on, off. Did I shampoo? Did I rinse? Back out of the driveway, stop the car, run back in the house to brush my teeth and gargle because trying to diagram pass plays in my head knocked out any memory of whether I took care of basic personal hygiene.

The addiction teams up with other addictions – addiction to being unconventional and the addiction for more and more challenges – like how to personally fund Canada’s only collegiate-level football team that plays in the United States. A match up that is the equivalent of David meeting Goliath without five smooth stones. Getting pounded by Goliath over and over until David makes a choice – flee … or find bigger stones.

I am addicted to avoiding any conversation whatsoever about professional football. Saints or Colts? is the verbal equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. Do you want Bills tickets? another classic, is like getting punched in the gut during a panic attack. Talk radio debating the virtues of a four-three defense feels like a jackhammer attacking my mind.

I was addicted to policing. First I was a street addict – addicted to uniform patrol. Then like a vampire, addicted to midnight shifts because that’s when the big stuff happens. Any call that didn’t start with 9-1-1 was an emotional letdown. Only the heavy calls were a quick fix – disturbance, domestic violence, death. Destruction out of my district was an outrage. Not because of senseless pain and suffering … only because I couldn’t be there. Addicted to backing-up … having to be there. Addicted to going-in-first. Getting shit from the platoon boss for crossing districts was worth it – conflict mismanagement. When a major crime happened while I was off-duty – inconsolable. The audacity of criminals killing and hurting people when I wasn’t working! Day shift brought on darkness. Minor fender bender – no injuries, was a direct insult. If weapons weren’t involved – frustration.

Addicted to being on the SWAT team. White-knuckle anticipation. Fingers tightly crossed hoping that some mad gunman would take hostages while I was working. Finally, addicted to being a detective. Addicted to getting informants – not just a few, a network bigger than Facebook. And not just the local degenerates. The big-leaguers. The most information, the craziest informants, and the best information. I know who stole a car stereo, was like offering coffee to an alcoholic – no buzz, small stuff … not a big enough fix. Severely addicted to getting confessions – from anyone. Friends, family … didn’t matter. Any confession was a quick fix. Bullshit. Tell me the truth! became my signature statement – everywhere. My only motivation to go to Confession was the thought of getting one from the Priest. To an addict, a rush trumps redemption.

Then I got addicted to avoiding any talk whatsoever about policing. Ex-colleague lunches became a pain-in-the-ass … Didyahear Regis got booted out of the detective office? brought on symptoms similar to constipation. Didyahear about the break-in? prompted involuntary anti-social responses – leaving the room, hanging up the phone, block sender on email. To this day, acid reflux, gas and bloating are still more pleasurable than watching cop movies.

I was addicted to college law-enforcement teaching. Ordinary lesson plans weren’t enough. Nope. A curriculum overhaul was the answer to the problem – the one invented by my addiction – soft curriculum, soft minds. Solution: Advanced investigative concepts taught to 19-year-olds – the same teenagers who were posting self-portraits of debauchery on Facebook. Advanced homicide investigation to hung-over kids who couldn’t muster enough energy to get a driver’s license or find a part-time job.

But I didn’t stop there. I got severely addicted to coordinating and growing two college law-enforcement programs. A program with only 150 students wasn’t enough. Neither was 300, 450 or 600. For my cause, I started more academic street fights than anyone in the history of post-secondary education. Cries of, quality of education! consumed meeting after meeting with administrators – the same ones who I’m sure were recalling that the sign at the campus entrance was Community College not Harvard.

Then I got addicted to writing. Publish or perish – literally. Not one textbook, not two … 19 editions of six different policing textbooks and 200 case law articles – written long after I became addicted to not talking about policing. Finally, my addiction spread to writing about another addiction – football. Describing systems that advocated suffocating pressure and Formula-1 racing speed. Unheard-of concepts. Warp-speed no-huddle, no punting, no kicking. And 3-D Offense – go Deep, go Deeper, go Deepest. That crazy sonuvabitch! – flattery unmatched by even a Hallmark card.

I am addicted to earning university degrees. I want enough initials after my name to fill a two-sided business card. And while working toward those degrees, I’m addicted to being the class pain-in-the-ass, refuting everything taught by academics.

I am addicted to being different. No, not just different – addicted to Culture Shock. Raised eyebrows isn’t enough. Speechless isn’t enough. I am addicted to thinking so far outside the box that the box disappears. I am deeply committed to not doing things by the book – while writing my own book … books. My addiction has spread to how I write books. Chapter numbers, structure, content. I have trouble with conventional anything. Like numbering chapters in order starting at 1. I am addicted to being a mystery and writing mysteries – forcing readers to figure out the message. The enigma paradox – simultaneously revealing and concealing everything about myself.

I am addicted to coffee. The intravenous kind. Because it helps fuel my life-long addiction – working out.

Then there are the serious addictions – addiction to the rush, addiction to risk, addiction to making the biggest impact humanly possible on as many lives as humanly possible. My greatest fear in life is being bored straight to death and boring others straight to death. It’s not an ordinary fear, it’s hell. It’s connected to an intense aversion to ordinary, routine, mundane, IQ-dropping mind-numbingness. Hey, did you hear the one about? scares the shit out of me worse than, How ‘bout that cold?

The fear of boredom is worse than my other dread – the intense fear of wasting my life, the only life that’s been given to me. The fear of spending eternity regretting the trashing of the potential I’ve been blessed with. The intense fear of replacing destiny with mediocrity. Being asked, You work out after midnight? is scarier than seeing a ghost but nowhere near as horrifying as THE living-dead question, How long ‘til you can retire? Legislation is needed to criminalize any communication of the R-word. The government should ban it.

But my worst addiction, the one I’m most proud of, is wanting to put up ladders for every soul who asks for help. It’s the worst because it leads to another addiction – saying, Yes, no problem, follow me.

My wife says I have the E-Gene. Extreme. I deny it. Won’t confess. I’m not sure if addictions are part of DNA. Our three daughters haven’t revealed any of the above symptoms – yet.

This book has several messages that correspond with my 3-M Beliefs. I believe in Miracles, Messages and Misery-busting. They’re connected.

I believe that miracles didn’t stop happening 2,000 years ago. They happen every day. Seeing just one would have been an honor but I have had the great fortune to have witnessed countless miracles. It’s tough to rank them but the top three have been the birth of my three daughters. Childbirth is mindboggling. It’s impossible not to believe in God after witnessing a child enter planet Earth. And I have been an eyewitness to many, many more modern-day miracles. Like seeing the desperate, untalented, forgotten or discarded – all members of the St. Jude Club for the hopeless – reach higher and higher and higher. Back-of-the-packers pushing and shoving to the front of the line. I have been privileged to coach thousands of student-athletes on the football field, in the weight room and in lecture halls. Infinite blessings in teaching the science of survival to young warriors and wannabe cops at the lowest levels. The bottom of the ladder. No actually, to those standing at the bottom of the wall without a ladder.

There is no greater rush than telling a group of student-athletes (formerly classified as assholes) to, Go out in this world and make an impact! – and witnessing them taking it seriously. Feeling it sink in. Especially when it happens on a plot of grass after a loss or in a lecture auditorium late on a Friday afternoon when no one gives a shit about anything except which bar they’re going to later that night. The epic thrill and chill of making an impact. Makes the skin bubble. Watching potential unexpectedly unleash from a hiding spot, buried deep inside kids who have been beaten down with self-doubt and negativity, has given me a front-row seat to a world of infinite miracles. And fuel for my addictions.

I believe in good and evil – and that they fight hard for our attention. I believe both send messages that are eerily similar. Evil is a copycat – good with a twist. I believe that we are bombarded by unconventional text messaging – the mysterious kind – that need to be figured out, analyzed. I believe we receive omens – signs telling us what to do and what not to do. The problem is recognizing the signs, translating the messages and trying to figure out who sent them because good and evil both work extremely hard to recruit to their team. It’s up to us to see the message, interpret it and make the call.

I believe in connections. Nothing just happens. Nothing just happens automatically and nothing happens randomly. All events are connected. We have to work extremely hard to make things happen.

I believe in free will. We are blessed with decision-making – the freedom to make the call. Total control in choosing how to respond to everything that happens so that we can make more good things happen.

I firmly believe that every human was created for one purpose – to reach full potential so we can fulfill our individual calling or callings. I believe that we have a built-in need to grow. To change. Not simply to re-invent ourselves but to keep adding-on. I believe that we have a natural need to keep building. And ignoring that need leads to misery.

I believe that miracles are gifts waiting to happen every day if we let them, see them, recognize them because every miracle has a natural struggle – it’s easy to get tired, quit, or simply not realize a miracle is happening. I believe we have to fight through the natural struggle to make things happen so we can receive our gifts. No shortcuts. I believe that the secret to witnessing miracles is facing misery, busting it up before it busts you up … using your tag-team partner – your soul.

This book is about how to change what you don’t like about yourself. About overcoming obstacles that stop you from becoming what you want to become – that stop you from doing what you need to do … what you’re called to do. It’s also a cautionary tale – it’s easy to get sidetracked.This book is about how to get on track and stay on track.

This book was written for many reasons – somewhere between 254,400 and 1,766,550. The estimated number of requests for free advice about:

How to lose fat.

How to make big muscles.

How to get/survive a police job.

How to get/survive a college teaching job.

How to get/survive a coaching job.

How to get a scholarship.

How to write a book.

How to start a business.

How to change/get a better job.

How to cope with and change rebellious or underachieving teenagers.

How to be escape the misery of a dead-end job.

How to achieve more.

How to pass a job interview.

How to deal with a bad relationship.

How to find your calling.

How to be fearless enough to follow that calling.

And, what to tell the curious … How do you find the time to do everything? How do you do it? I’m repeatedly asked how to make things happen.

I got addicted to writing the answers to every question I’ve ever been asked. The addiction of saying, yes to every single request for help. The yes addiction gave me a vision – to write a record-breaking number of books … the most books written by one human. Soul of a Lifter is only the first.

This book is not specifically about making big muscles or losing fat. But it will explain what I firmly believe is the secret – the basics. The essentials. This book is not about crime-fighting, coaching football, college teaching, business, or playing sports, but it does give insights about how to overcome the toughest, fiercest opponent we will ever meet, in anything we do in life – fear.

This book explains a different perspective about working out – its connection to life performance – making things happen, getting things done. Unique, life-altering lessons. This book guarantees to motivate you. And to inspire you to achieve more. To hold on to every dream and never, ever let go.

I believe I am not the only addict. I believe I am not the only person who hasn’t figured out what to do when I grow up. But I know that I don’t want rehab. I don’t need an intervention. I intend to workout hard for the rest of my life. I’ll be lifting heavy at 102. Supersets. Dropsets. Megasets.

I remain addicted to creating opportunities for anyone who wants to reach their full potential. I remain addicted to the belief that the greatest reward is putting up ladders for others, looking outside ourselves and developing as many people as humanly possible. I remain addicted to enjoying the success of protegés, those willing to take full advantage of opportunities to grow.

I remain addicted to lifetime learning – to reading everything I can, going to school, piling up degrees … to never stop learning, even when I think I have learned enough. I am addicted to learning as much as possible because I believe knowledge is more than power – it’s internal peace.

Soul of a Lifter

The most powerful weapon on earth, is the human soul on fire.

- Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch

Chapter 20

Unnatural Causes

The unchallenged body softens.

The unchallenged mind weakens.

The unchallenged soul rots.

40 years. 2,080 weeks. Over 10,000 workouts.

No stage, no judges, no medals, no trophies, no posing, no photo shoots, no endorsements. No anabolic steroids. Forty years of continuous lifting without a conventional purpose. Heavy weight, heavy metal, heavy lifting – between 200,000 and 400,000 sets … two-million to four-million reps. Day after day. Six, sometimes seven days a week. Completely natural. Drug-free. No audience, no applause, no glory. On the surface, no apparent reason fueling a four-decade drive to tear down and rebuild the body for the slightest improvement.

There’s a blurry line between obsession and passion. They share the same DNA. They look the same, talk the same language, drive at the same break-neck speed and … no off switch. Just a jammed on switch. And neither obsession nor passion just happen. Nothing just happens. The key is to go deep. Then go deeper … and deepest.

A 40-year heavy-lifting career is unnatural. But it makes a deep impact.

∞

When we open our mouths, we can either be mind-numbing mumblers or memory-makers. Like, Say No to Drugs speeches. They are either more mind-numbing than actual drugs, or memorable – depends on the impact. I used to tell my football players and wannabe-cop college students that steroids are for cowards and chickenshits unwilling and incapable of working hard to achieve a goal. And that anything worth achieving involves a natural struggle. And that avoiding the natural struggle is not only a hideous form of laziness, but also an enormous disadvantage intellectually because you miss out on all the valuable insights and lessons learned from the natural struggle. And that bypassing the natural struggle keeps you in the dark. Unenlightened. And that the results of steroids are artificial, superficial and unofficial.

Their faces showed tension … but not real attention. So I changed the speech.

Here’s why you don’t want to do steroids. The last death I investigated is the best reason not to do steroids or jam anything into your arm or into your nostrils or into your lungs.

2:00 a.m., a uniform officer arrives at a dark, dingy house in response to an unknown problem – a message just like we get in real-life over and over again. Unknown problem can paralyze you with fear if you let it because it’s made up of the two most terrifying elements known to wo/mankind – uncertainty and risk. Unknown problem forces you to fight through it or run from it. One makes you stronger, the other makes you weaker until you shrivel up and crumble.

The officer knocks. Silence. No one answers the door. No clue about what’s inside, but walks in anyway. Into the darkness and starts searching, with one hand on a flashlight and the other on his holster. Room to room – nothing. Until he goes downstairs, deep in the basement and sees him. The unclothed body of a man, slumped over, perched on a toilet in the bathroom. Bent-over like he had been beaten down. Lifeless. No pulse. Rigor mortis has set in, just like that stiff feeling after a brutal workout, except this kind of stiffness leads to decomposition instead of recovery.

I arrive next. The lead detective. I’m surrounded by people old enough to be my parents. It’s my job to determine what happened. Like arriving at the end of a movie. Or opening a book filled with blank pages, except the last page that reads, The End. I have to write the rest of the book – the beginning and the middle – tell a story without having witnessed it. And it has to be a true story, not fiction. Even if it becomes a horror story, it has to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I can’t make up parts of the story to entertain the reader.

Everything in the house sends a message, telling parts of the story. I search the house, in case someone – something – was missed. Nothing, no one. No other human to help tell the story. I have to look for clues – signs. But here’s the key. It’s impossible for anything to happen without there being signs left all over the place – a trail of clues. All I have to do is find them and figure out what they mean.

The house is unkempt – filthy. And it stinks. A nauseating stench that builds up with stillness – immobility. Non-movement. I walk downstairs into the washroom, look at the dead guy’s face … and have a flashback, 15 years.

I’m an 18-year-old rookie cop working out in the basement of the hardest of hardcore gyms. No socializing. No cell phones. No tight shirts. No mindless chatter. Just the symphony of heavy metal. Two streams of it, mixing together. One from the radio, the other from the plates.

From my position at the squat racks, I see a guy casually walk to the main powerlifting bench. Jed. We nod to each other. An unwritten rule from the Hardcore Gym Code of Conduct: Non-verbal communication only. Talking is limited to essentials. SUAL – Shut Up And Lift.

Jed’s ritual starts. He takes ownership of the bench, even when he’s not using it, until he’s finished, violating another unwritten rule: Don’t hog the bench. Violators get tagged with the punk label. A pain-in-the-ass. An asshole. But in a place with zero tolerance for punk behavior, no one bothers Jed. He has earned the right to be a bench hog. Not through entitlement – earned. Bigger, scarier lifters give him implied consent – go ahead, hog the bench. Performance counted.

Six days before this workout, I had encountered Jed at a call at a bar where he worked as a bouncer. The bar was a drug-infested assembly of sociopaths, a community of violent social misfits. Jed was a 27-year-old factory worker, moonlighting as a bouncer. His T-shirt was two sizes too small. Layers of clothes removed to show layers of another kind – vein-popping, fat-free, magazine-cover mass of muscle. I wonder what his workout program is? I wonder what his diet is? The gullibility of an 18-year-old rookie cop has no limits.

Three fighters were arrested at the disturbance. Jed never got involved. He never moved a muscle. Standing near the bar casually looking on, playing with his mustache, Jed looked bored. Like he always did. Like he did now, sitting on the bench with no shirt on, committing counts #3 and #4: Must wear a shirt, and, Shirt must be baggy.

Jed is in no hurry to start the first set. No intensity, no sense of urgency as he commits count #5: Grooming in the mirror. Staring at the guy in the glass without lifting a weight. Self-admiration. Like strong paper towels, self-absorption. I’m wondering if he is preparing to go on a date or getting ready to lift. Ripped, lean, massive, eight-pack … and doesn’t even work out hard! Must be genetics! Losing gullibility doesn’t just happen. It doesn’t leave automatically or mysteriously. It happens with experience – reps.

Jed is not a giant. Only 5’10". But he casts a big shadow because of what he’s done in the past and is about to do now. His first bench press set has two 45-pound plates on each side of the Olympic bar. Twelve reps. A warm-up set. 225 pounds for 12 reps – strictly, slowly, effortlessly. No bouncing. He doesn’t use his chest like a trampoline. No primal screaming. And nowhere near failure. The miracle of Maximum Muscular Failure (MMF) is one of the secrets to making big muscles. But Jed doesn’t care. He leaves at least 15-20 reps hidden inside. Plenty left in the tank. He wastes a glorious opportunity – a growth opportunity. 225 pounds is a heavy weight. It’s the bench press testing standard used by university and pro football coaches to measure the strength of world-class athletes. Yet, here is a part-time bouncer using it as a warm-up set – effortlessly. And lazily. Does less than half of what he could, should do.

For set #2, Jed slides another 45-pound plate on each side for a total of 315 pounds. After a mini-vacation rest, he casually completes 10 reps. Again, strictly, slowly, effortlessly with plenty left in the tank … leaving unused reps inside. Hiding them. Locking them up with the rest of his potential he keeps packed away. Afraid to go to failure. Fear of busting through limits – not even getting close to the edge. And, most of all, fear of pain. Scared of the thought of discomfort. The needle on the tank barely budges after two sets. Hidden reps, concealed potential, buried treasure, wasted growth opportunities – the road to misery.

He adds one more 45-pound plate to each side– 405 pounds. Set #3 has almost doubled in weight from the first set. Jed sits down on the bench like he’s waiting for a bus. No rush. A few more glances in the mirror, another straightening of the hair, one more smoothing of his mustache. And silence.

He’ll wait forever to do the next set. Fuckin’ asshole pisses me off. A guy I would arrest three years later whispers the outrage shared by the entire gym. The hog is in no rush. The dual sacrilege of too much rest between sets … and of not going to failure. But no one bothers Jed. No one challenges him. Jed gets a free pass. Left alone, he becomes a victim … of enabling.

Spectating is prohibited – Code rule #6: No gawking – at women or men. Staring is reserved for tourists. So the best one can do is watch using peripheral vision while trying to look busy. There’s no way he can bench 405. The naiveté of an 18-year-old is infinite.

There is one exception to the SUAL rule.

Can you spot me?

Sure.

But I forget to ask when he intends to lift.

I’ll let you know when I’m ready.

After another long-weekend type of rest, Jed casually announces, Ready. Don’t touch the bar unless I tell you. Just stand there.

I’m not a spotter. I’m an eyewitness. Proof. Evidence of performance. People use a 400-pound bench press as the benchmark for fabricated glory days.[1] Like fiction novelists, they re-write the past – insert false realities – to entertain the present: I used to bench four plates until (insert an ailment or a misfortune). But, like information cops receive from a confidential informant, there is no way to prove a claim of a 400-pound bench press. It could be the truth. Or it could be bullshit. A heavy pile of bullshit.

Fictional bench press stories share three elements – no witnesses, no video and, a vague narrative … no evidence and an abstract story – the red flags of deception.

When did you lift four plates?

Oh it was awhile ago.

Where?

Errr, a bunch of places.

Credibility depends on how the story is told. Abstract narratives are suspicious – inspired by some true events, but most likely out-right lies. Science fiction. Only concrete stories have substance.

Witnessing a 400-pound bench press for the first time is Culture Shock. Like a perfect game in baseball, it rarely happens. The odds are staggering. So when you see it, it’s memorable. Especially memorable because Jed never asked for any help to take the bar off the racks, lift it, or put the bar back onto the racks. And especially memorable since it was obvious he could have lifted it again. More hidden reps, more concealed potential. More waste.

One isolated, single rep at 405 pounds. And … plenty left in the tank.

∞

Witnessing incredible performance makes an impact. Huge impact. First, you face the realization of how far you have to go – what your competition is doing … and what you’re not. Secondly, it causes you to re-define personal best. Mine was 85% of Jed’s. An insult. A disgrace. A sign to get better. No, a loud message: You’re not as good as you think you are. That being good at