Personal Anecdote from the life of a power lifter

One of the great things about having a blog that is mine, I can post about things completely unrelated to Oregon football!

Today is such an occasion.

Over the past 6 weeks, there have been some struggles for me away from football and work. Several weeks ago, I had a tooth become infected that caused a bunch of other issues.

I have maintained my body weight at a competition level of 235 pounds for nearly 15 years. As a competitive power-lifter, this was something that was difficult for me, yet important.

Then; suddenly; my weight began to drop for no reason. I thought I had been maintaining my same dietary intake even through the tooth pain. I had the tooth extracted which caused one day worth of change, but I had already lost 10 pounds by then.

The following Tuesday, as I got to the gym at the same prescribed time as always, I was down another 3 pounds for the week. As I looked down, I noticed a large lump on my left arm right by my elbow. There had been some minor pain in that arm that day, but I thought it was simply the muscle being tight from an awkward sleeping position.

After struggling with my lift that night, I went straight to the doctor. At the time, I was a little bit worried. Significant weight loss; big painful lump on my arm that appeared from nowhere. Okay, I admit it, I was more than a little worried.

I was skeptical when he said "don't worry about the weight loss, come back in two weeks if you keep losing weight. The lump is soft fatty tissue, probably a lipoma and the pain is tennis elbow."

Uh, sure doc.

Then he suggested not lifting weights for a couple of weeks. Well telling me not to lift weights for two weeks is like telling anyone else not to breathe for two weeks.

So, I worked through it. Slowly but surely, the pain in my arm has started to fade. The lump actually appears to be getting better, even though lipoma's are not supposed to just "go away" and my weight has rebounded to the point where I am back to 235 pounds again.

So tonight, we are in the second week of a 13 week wave program and it was a great workout. Near the end of the workout, on the fourth set, my training partner and I played a little game of bench press poker.

I told him I was about to change my last set and go up by 10 pounds. He hates it when I up my weight without telling him; so he decided to up his weight... he saw my 10 pounds and raised me by 10! Uggghhhh...

But it went great. Here was my rep scheme:

365x4, 385x3, 375x4, 415x3 (the last set was supposed to be 395... damn me and my competitiveness!)

That last set was FUN! (Not really, but it was awesome to get through that weight.)

So, yeah, I was happy with our workout tonight!