This Is Me - Part 2

In the first part of this two part post, I talked about the motivation that got me to pull up my socks and change some things about myself that I wasn't happy with.  But prior to that, I wrote about some of the things I wanted to get gone this year, mentioning that a list like this helps to motivate me.  That post contained a set of specific goals I set for myself.  One of the things I wrote was this:

My best lift is the deadlift.  Pick a weight up off the ground and put it back down.  Simple enough.  I can usually do something like 350lbs to 365lbs for five or six reps depending on the day with a bodyweight in the low 140lb range.  Not bad.  This should translate into a 415lb+ one-rep max... So...

Goal #1: Deadlift 405lbs for a single rep.  That's four wheels a side.  This goal should be doable.  I just have to do it.

Italics added.  Keep those in mind.

I also wrote in Part 1 about some of the reading I've been doing in regards to working out.  One of the sites I didn't mention there that I hit up pretty regularly is Jamie Lewis' most excellent Chaos and Pain.  This site is NSFWOAE: Not Suitable For Work, or Anywhere Else.  Don't click that link.  You have been warned.

This Is Not Me

Jamie has a way of writing that doesn't just give you a wakeup call: his writing delivers violent and repeated blows to the head using your own arm as a club.  It leaves you lying in a pool of your own blood and other bodily fluids.

In this recent post (once again, don't click that link), he wrote:

One of the most virulent and offensive exhibitions of this "I suck and can't help it" mentality is the practice of setting a New Year's resolution.  In setting a NYR, you're doing a couple of things, all of which are about as cool as those grown men who brag about watching My Little Pony and write fan fiction for the show.  First, you're announcing to the world that you've identified a fault within yourself and refused to resolve it.  Second, you've decided to procrastinate on even pretending to resolve the issue until an arbitrary date.  Third, you're making a hell of a lot of noise about nothing, since only about 12% of people who make New Years Resolutions enjoy anything resembling success.(Quirkology)  It's a fucking embarrassment of fat, drunken David Hasselhoff with a hamburger proportions.  If you think you suck, fucking stop sucking immediately.  Women, I'm pointing at you and your motherfucking diets- there's no goddamned time like the present.  Stop putting shit off until tomorrow like you're a modern day J. Wellington Wimpy, who is perhaps the cartoon character most deserving of a curb stomp in history.

Can you hear the wake-up call?  One of my goals for the New Year was to do something I already believed I was capable of doing.  So why hadn't I done it?  Because I suck.  Because walking up to a bar loaded with almost three times your body weight and lifting it off the ground is hard.  It was time to grow a pair.

I did this two day's after reading Jamie's blog.

This Is Me

Not only did I hit a goal I had set for myself just days before, but it looks like I could have gone heavier and still have made it.  It isn't everyday that I can say I learned something from a barechested crazy man in an Viking hat, but I can today.  So can you.

Now go click on a few of those links.