John Berardi - Large Professor: Sticking the Landing (Text Version)

The Large Professor
Sticking the Landing
By John M Berardi
First published at www.johnberardi.com, Jul 26 2002.

Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep…Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep…

Over and over again the alarm clock's inhuman tonality pierced the pre-dawn silence. As usual, it wasn't until a few moments after the rude reveille that my cognitive and sensate systems began to respond. On this particular day however, the typical questions provoked by this type of premature awakening - who I was, where I was, and why I wasn't still in the midst of my slow wave stage 4 oblivion - were more difficult to answer than usual. While it's well known that the brain remains suspiciously active during sleep, on this particular day, after an especially lengthy revival process, you couldn't have convinced me that a single neuron was transmitting before that dastardly device began its assault on my slumber.

Name - uh, John Berardi

Check.

Location - humm, my bed, I guess…which is in London…in Ontario…in Canada

Check.

Reason for Awakening - oh, that's right, we're doing a 50K bike ride this morning

Ch…WHAT?!?

Even with its early morning coat of frosty dew, it turns out that the old noodle was actually processing. Well, revolting might be more specific. As a result, the reasons for John Berardi to stay in his bed in London, in Ontario, in Canada began outnumbering the reasons to begin my patented "first step", which involves a rapid right hand initiated sheet and cover toss (to the right of the bed) with a simultaneous ½ torso twist and left leg swing dismount (to the left of the bed). It's a great wake-up move and you'd better believe that I always stick the landing.

With little else of importance to worry about on this particular Sunday morning, the biggest debate that raged on in my head, while still in my bed, was whether or not I, a weightlifter and bodybuilder, should be getting up to crank out 50 kilometers of largely aerobic (and catabolic) leg work.

When contemplating whether or not to spin my wheels for a few hours on that particular Sunday, the ever-persistent bodybuilder slash physiologist inside me insisted that I was crazy for even considering such a ride. While well developed, my legs are, in terms of pure muscle size, my weakest body part. Rather than taking them out for a 50-kilometer "stroll", said the large, PhD educated Austrian in me, I should be concentrating on resting them. After all, I've seen the research by Dudley and colleagues indicating that concurrent strength and aerobic exercise compromises muscle strength and size gains. Since I was in the midst of a great hypertrophy phase in which I had already gained 10 lbs, putting me exactly 10 lbs away from my goal of a 20 lb weight gain, I didn't want anything to stand in the way of my progress. Even if the 50k ride didn't eat away at my muscle size or strength, it sure wasn't going to make me any bigger, now was it? The bodybuilder physiologist (in his best Hanz and Franz imitation) chided, "With all this wussy bike riding, how are you going to get your skeletal muscle contractile protein apparatus (pause - clap - point) pumped up?"

While this first objection was a pragmatically physiological one, it stimulated a second, more philosophical objection. "You, JB, are a bodybuilder in discipline, in sport, in lifestyle, in demeanor, and in vocation. Rather than using a clock or a sundial to mark the passage of time, you observe the passage of time as marked by 8 distinct feedings per day. These feedings, in turn, are arranged specifically to enhance your training in the gym and your recovery outside of the gym. Your sleep-wake schedule is designed to maximize your ability to train intensely and to recover from those intense training sessions. Like it or not, your entire existence revolves around the bodybuilding lifestyle. So, what's the point of waking up earlier than optimal in order to go ride 50k? It's irrational and illogical in that it doesn't align with your goals or with how you've chosen to live your life."

Compelling arguments, both of them. I rolled back over.

At this point, if you're a cynic, you may be chuckling to yourself, realizing that this internal debate could very well be the ultimate in justification, one of the most rationalized, lazy man's excuses for not getting out of bed in history. Don't think I didn't consider this myself. Upon further inspection, however I realized that there was a lot more at stake than my Sunday morning sleep-in.

To more comprehensively explain my thought process one must understand that I'm not writing this article as a recreational weightlifting and bodybuilding hobbyist. I assure you that my involvement in the iron game is rooted in fertile soil much deeper than that. How could it not be when I haven't missed a planned workout in over 10 years? Throughout this time weight training has been an intimate companion, my inanimate best friend. I've turned to this friend when physically and mentally strong and I've walked away a conqueror. I've turned to this friend when physically and mentally weary and weak and I've been taught the meaning of fortitude. I've turned to this friend when under duress from a wide spectrum of emotions - joy, insecurity, frustration - and I've been taught self-reliance and have been instructed in the tremendous potential of the human spirit. But simply, on a less grandiose and more pedestrian level, the big weights are excellent nullifiers of life's small annoyances. So of course I keep coming back for more.

Therefore through better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness and health, thick and thin, empowerment and detriment I have been and will continue to be a weightlifter. Try as I might, I can't change that any more that I can change the color of my eyes. Some view the world through "rose colored" glasses. Me, I view the world through a bad assed set of "iron-colored" Oakleys.

Of course, there's a price to pay for any such devotion to one type of lifestyle, especially the obsession with a fringe pursuit like the one I've chosen. While this obsession has brought all the aforementioned benefits as well as a really nice set of biceps peaks, a lot has been given up in exchange.

First, when you live the bodybuilding and weight lifting lifestyle it's difficult to forge friendships with other people who, while no less intelligent or hard working, may have chosen different obsessions or devotions. While we may not be able to understand why they shun the lifestyle we embrace, they most likely feel the same way about us. After all, our dedication to punishing the body to the point that it's forced to adapt to survive seems a bit odd, especially since our daily demands don't necessarily require Herculean feats of strength such as those performed in the gym. In addition, the monastic avoidance of foods that might lead to the very normal storage of excess calories as adipose tissue is also a bit extreme to the person who eats for pleasure rather for purpose. With profound differences in the way we live, it's often a monumental task to establish commonality and community with such people, a task that many of the weight lifters I've known have simply avoided. And it's to their detriment. Many of them have become dreadful bores. All they think about and converse about is the gym. This is no surprise since they surround themselves with other people who only think about and converse about the gym.

In addition to the relationship barriers that this lifestyle imposes, there are experiential barriers. Growth often comes through the experiences gained by exploring previously uncharted territory, even if it's only uncharted in your own mind. Therefore what better way to experience how other people live their lives than to travel, uninhibited, immersing yourself in different types of lifestyles? Now that's tough to do if you're carrying 10lbs of protein powder and wondering whether or not the local Venetian gym has a squat rack.

For everything we gain, there is something we give up.

At 28 years of age and no delusions of the reality of my obsession, I'm beginning to understand my obsession with training and physique perfection. For starters, I know that I'm a slave to the bodybuilding lifestyle; a willing slave, no doubt, yet still a slave. But in my servitude I've realized that there are things in life worth experiencing that can only be sampled if the rigid weight lifting discipleship is relaxed - even if it's only for a short time.

Getting back to my bed at 5:00 on Sunday morning, it's now easy to see that what made my morning debate so salient was that my decision to get out of bed and go cycling (no, not just go cycling but go cycling for a few hours) would represent a departure from the single-minded devotion to this lifestyle. What was at stake here wasn't just a morning's slumber. It wasn't the fact that the ride might chew up a few of my recovery resources. It wasn't the fact that I might not gain a couple grams of leg mass on that particular day. What was at stake was my faith in my chosen priority structure. I was debating whether or not the lifestyle I had chosen was enough to sustain me physically and mentally or whether there were other things that I needed to accomplish in order to be a complete individual. The bodybuilder in me was struggling to justify his existence. At 5:00 am on a Sunday morning my mind was wrestling with the ultimate question, who am I, which, perhaps not coincidentally is the first question brought to my mind each day upon awakening.

While I've chosen to notate and expand this particular experience, make no mistake about it, this type of internal dialogue plays itself out on a daily basis with me. But I remember a time when it didn't. Back then I was a devotee through and through. The thought of taking a week off from the gym was a heretical one. The thought of missing a planned meal or, oh the horror, eating out at a restaurant instead of chowing down on pre-prepared, Tupperware contained grub was cause for punishment. Decision-making, back then, was relatively easy. If something was congruent with the rigid definition I had chosen for myself, I would choose it. If not, I didn't think twice.

What an easy way to live. What a boring way to live.

With each passing year, I've realized that mature decision-making, for me, couldn't be so simple. It's become a struggle between who I think I am and who I'd like to be. Which type of lifestyle is superior, the single-minded devotion to a specific end or the continual redefining of who you are and where you want to be, I can't know. All I know is the path that I've chosen and the mistakes I've made along the way. Being a young man of 28 affords me the interesting opportunity to, with a touch of perspective, witness first hand the effects of my decisions without offering me the confidence that I wont make the same mistakes again. I only wish that one day, as an old man, the answers will appear clear and that I will have earned the right to a confident decisiveness.

So what did I do on that particular Sunday morning? At 5:05 I took the patented "first step" and after a good high protein and carbohydrate breakfast I was on the pavement maintaining a steady 100RPM. A rising sun and a cloudless sky greeted my labored breathing as I assured the bodybuilder inside that I would take good care of him later on. After 25k of effort, at our predetermined turn around point, we stopped for fuel. (Hey, this is a tough ride for a 200lb guy who is more used to cycling his creatine than cycling for 25k). While we sat around the table, 6 fatigued men, in typical male bonding fashion, mocking each other's physical abilities, I ate like a bodybuilder - a hungry one. 25 kilometers of lactic acid later I was back at home to eat and sleep the rest of the day away, feeling content that I had done the right thing. My morning dismount was a success. And of course, in more than one sense of the words, I stuck the landing.

In retrospect, considering my early morning dilemma, I came to a final realization. Weight lifting may be one of my best and most enduring friends. Yet none of my friends know exactly how I should best live my life.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

--Mark Twain