29 September:
I drove to Dane’s today
anticipating bringing home some eggs, milk and maybe a frozen chicken or two,
and didn’t want to cycle with them on my back. Plus, the weather looked
threatening and I’m a sissy when it comes to cycling in the rain. Instead I
took the windows out of the front doors of the Jeep and rode over listening
loudly to the Foster the People cd I bought in West Reading at Vertigo. Kate
and I ate lunch at Good Eatz, then carpooled down to the OTB to watch Lightning
Madison come third at Monticello with Mommom and Pappap. Kate drove me back to
West Reading to get the Jeep, before which we popped into Veritgo. The album is
fantastic.
I met Dan in the garage (barn). I
didn’t know it then, but he works for Dane, and was a football player in college
looking for a place to train when they first met. He’s young. He told me Dane
was out back next to the chicken pen traning some guys in shot and discus. He
had built a regulation throwing circle in the adjacent field, two shot circles
an a discus circle, and is able to transition from the weight room to the
practice area in a few steps. Evan and Jason, two SV throwers were there with
him, and he spent the 30 minutes I watched relentlessly hounding them and
telling them how much they suck. Typical Dane. He made fun of me in high school
much the same way, going so far as to tease me for the peach fuzz on my face
before I started shaving. I sympathized with Jason especially, who gets upset
about it on occasion. Dane even makes fun of this.
The shotput the guys were using
is a pound and a half heavier than competition, and Evan was wearing a leather
device that attached his wrist to his first three fingers to alleviate the
tendonitis that can form after intense and repetitive training. I watched each
of them make about 8 or 9 throws, querying Dane between each on what was
actually going on. He has high hopes for Evan especially, though on that day
there numbers were unimpressive, in the high 30s and low 40s. Dane threw 62’ to
win the PA State Championships in 2002, a number he claims would still be good
for the win today. A good thrower in high school is in the high 50s.
Back in the gym, Dane started me
on what I hope to become a month-long training program, participating in the
same style exercises that he trains others. I met Jason, a high school senior
at SV who started going to Dane in March 2011. He weighed 340 poounds then.
Yesterday he was 260, and Dane commented that he was a new version of me. I
topped out at 255 in high school (and held the squat record at one time, 455
lbs), and go to an all-time low of 155 when I came back from Costa Rica in
2002. My sister Kaitie called me Skeletor when I got off the plane. Dane said
that Jason has gained so much confidence in his new body that he has started
hitting on one of the hottest girls that comes to the gym. Dane has had to tell
the other youngsters to tell him to cool it so he doesn’t embarrass himself. I
told him to show Jason a photo of my wife Mia to see just how high his
prospects could become if he works hard enough.
Dane started me out on the
platforms doing power cleans, after first warming up with two sets of front
squat on an empty bar. The power clean is a move I remember fondly from high
school, and one of the Olympic lifts he uses on all his clients. A
forty-something physical therapist that came in just as I was leaving can clean
over 150 lbs, more than her bodyweight, which is seriously impressive. She was
lean and wiry, by no means ‘bulked up’ and quite attractively fit. I started
doing reps of three, and finished with a max of 170 for two, making all the
reps along the way. I have to ask Dane if the low reps is part of a particular
theory.
I moved on to one-legged squats
and jumping lunges, as I’ll call them. The last set of squats saw me holding 45
lbs dumbbells for sets of eight. Then it was the ‘prowler.’ I pulled a sled
stacked with 45 lb plates across the 50-feet of the floor, which he’d covered
with astroturf. Going backwards was easy enough, but the trip back saw me
nearly on the floor as I had to push the thing the opposite way, considerably
more difficult, especially in my bare feet. It’s awesome that I can train there
barefoot. These moves were immediately followed by box steps holding dumbbells
again, for sets of 10 per side, or twenty total. Dane says this will be good
for my tight hamstrings, and my legs were burning by the end. I bought some
eggs and a frozen chicken from the freezer right in the gym, and left, as we
were taking Pappap out for dinner that night and I had to get home in time.
