MUSCLE CHURCH: Our Father, the Iron

It's easy to get bogged down in the goal-setting, poundages and blood, sweat and tears on a blog about working out but funny things happen too. Maybe some of us old school blood and guts trainers don't always want to admit it but there is a lot of nonsense that goes on in the gym, and this is one such tale. For those that don't know me well, you will come to learn that I find myself in weird situations-often of my own doing! When I worked night shift I came to fall in love with overnight workouts. For about 4 solid years I was working a shift of something like 5pm-5am and on those rare nights off, I spent a few hours training. I am not a before-work trainer and sometimes after work on night shift was just too much for my brain to handle, so I always took advantage of my nights off to get a good long one in. My old gym, East Shore Athletic Club in Charleston, SC, had a 24 hour facility and it became my second home. I'd mop and take the trash out and clean up some n

The old saying "failing to plan, is planning to fail" is true in every situation. Like most things in the iron game, the simplest things are the most effective and planning your routine, program, week-hell, even planning your day can lead to greatness. We get too interested in the outcome that we ignore the work to get there, and once we ignore the need to plan-we wind up settling for much less than what we set out for. Whether it's a strongman contest or a bodybuilding show, setting accurate expectations for yourself is the way to achieve anything. But how much time do you sit down thinking not about the endgame, but about the steps along the way? How much time do you devote to benchmarking or setting a time frame for certain things? Probably not much. I'll pull the curtain back and talk about some successful programming I had once. My goal was to deadlift 700 pounds from the floor. I only knew that had about 3 months before competition and I was healthy, so why