Gems from Josh Bryant

[woojos]

Encouragement: Not Always A Pat on the Back

I had a great workout today, in fact, it was almost too good and got me too fired up. I try to avoid these workouts a lot because then I want to start to compete again…and I’m happy in my path right now not competing.

Around Metroflex, at the gas station down the street, there is always a number of illegal aliens looking for work. Lately, there are some rough looking cats hanging around. In fact, one guy has tattoos all over his face. When the work is slow, many times these guys will pass the time by going and drinking 40′s at the mechanic shop next door. The group that hangs out there consists of a 70-year-old mechanic from Vietnam named Mr. Hip, a retired Dallas homicide detective and now the guy with face tattoos.

Anyways, on my last set of running the wheelbarrow up the hill (extremely heavy), I got so fired up I miss-timed the distance to Metroflex and literally ran the wheelbarrow straight into the concrete building. I fell over and bounced back up with a big smile on my face, this is extreme heavy weight we are talking. The guy with the face tattoos saw it and instead of laughing, he had a noble expression on his face and raised his 40 oz to me as a sign of respect. I don’t know this guy’s history, but dollars to donuts says he has probably been in knife fights in Juarez’s toughest cantinas. For the rest of the day, anytime I would walk by, we would nod to each other as a sign of mutual respect. This story may sound a little strange, but there is a take home lesson here.

Not always does encouragement come in a typical pat on the back. Two men, two different cultures, two different belief systems had a great male bonding experience. I was truly honored to earn this man’s respect.

 

[woojos]

Muscle Intention

During high school I worked at a hardcore gym, it exposed me to a wide arrange of characters, like one member whom challenged another member to a dual in 1997. You read that correctly, a dual in the latter part of the 20th century.

Another old-time powerlifter with a mullet known as “The Veteran” threatened me with seriously bodily harm after missing a 405 squat. Needless to say, I came back and smoked the four wheels like Rob Ford smokes crack rock in a drunken stupor.

I still remember the tension between this huge black dude we nicknamed “Zeus” and this yolked up cat we called “The White Power Guy” because of his white power tattoos. My friends and I debated for hours who would reign victorious if these two truculent terrors escalated to fisticuffs.

To this day, one of my proudest moments is when Zeus asked me to spot him on the bench press my senior year of high school, speaking to me like a capable equal.

A few years earlier, the former owner of the gym used to snort coke and then take his drums up on a rafter, beat ‘em and scream; it was sort of macabre but if you got past that, it made for an aggressive deadlifting atmosphere!

This brings us to James “Fed” Carrol, one of the lifters who frequented the gym and the bouncer at the local “burlesque” show. Over time, our conversations ranged from the emotional imbalances plaguing some exotic dancers to unorthodox training techniques.

One example of the latter came from his stint behind bars. From this experience, he spoke of a dude named ‘Red’ who had a massive chest (or ‘hood’) and the biggest ‘back arms’ he had ever seen, both of which he developed by doing 500 push-ups every morning before ‘chow.

Fed would talk about how Red would slow down the negative and try to feel the muscle contract when doing push-ups. Purposeful muscle intention, Red claimed, was his secret to building a herculean hood.

Fed was not a science guy, he did hard time and preferred hard work over hard data.

As a kid I remember the “Yukon Hercules” writing about Chuck Sipes, focusing with purposeful intention on the muscle he was working with isolation movements.

This concept seemed logical, so what does science have to say?

Research recently revealed that when you focus your mind on a specific muscle during a workout, you work that muscle 22 percent harder according to EMG (measures the electrical activity of muscles).

The study showed this when subjects bench pressed 50 percent of their one-repetition max, it did not hold true with 80 percent intensity.

Red was a very strong man, a push-up would have been close to 50 percent, or maybe even less, of his true limit. Science backs what he says.

Great to see Penn State catching up with the state pen!