Anabolics Anonymous

an·a·bol·ic

ˌanəˈbälik/

adjective

BIOCHEMISTRY

1. 1.

   relating to or promoting muscular growth.

   
   

   
   

So, it has been 100 days since that last horrible night.  No, not the last night I came home from the bar drunk.  I'm talking about the last night I forced myself to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.  I've only been to three AA meetings, but I found each of them to be almost unendurable.

Don't get me wrong; AA has helped millions of people, and I completely support those who find their recovery through AA.  But I don't think that it works equally well for all types of people.  I think it works well for those who by nature have a strong sense of belonging to a group, and for those whose outlook on life emphasizes their common humanity with other women and men.  I believe that Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't work as well for those who have an unusually strong drive to be different, in whom the Passion for Distinction is over-developed.  And, such a one am I.

When I was in counseling to try to end my habit of staying out late at bars and drinking to excess, my counselor told me:

"Paul, you have an addictive personality.  Probably the only way that you are going to succeed at this is to find a healthy addiction to replace your unhealthy addiction."

And, I believe his advice was spot on.  In his book Addiction and Virtue, Kent Dunnington describes addictions as being "totalizing".  That is, these addictive behaviors cease to be merely things that we do.  They become, in fact, the entire organizing principles for our lives.  Whether it is alcohol addiction, tobacco addiction, narcotics addiction, or sugar addiction, the effect is the same.  The behavior becomes one that comforts us when sorrowful or in distress.  It becomes our way of celebrating in times of joy.  It begins to push out other behaviors that compete with it for our time and energy.

If my therapist was correct, I had to find another addiction, another totalizing behavior, an activity capable of taking over and becoming the organizing principle for my entire life.  And I found it:  bodybuilding.

Bodybuilding is really difficult.  Everyone who tries it, with the exception of a few genetic freaks, seems to be a "hard gainer".  It is not easy to build lean muscle tissue on the human body, especially beyond the age of fifty.  But then, ease and convenience were never requirements, and rarely even considerations, in choosing an addictive behavior to pursue.  Better, in fact, that it should be hard ... that will keep me at it for a good long time.

Bodybuilding is the perfect addictive behavior in my battle against alcohol, for several reasons.  I always feel weaker in the gym if I have been drinking, and weakness must be banished from the body if one is to have success at bodybuilding.  Then, too, there is the time factor.  Doing bodybuilding correctly requires not only a great deal of time in the gym, but a great deal of time doing other things:  making sure that there is the right kind of food available at all times, ordering supplements, and researching the latest theories of muscular hypertrophy.  It all takes time.  But one is glad to spend the time, once one has acquired the addiction.

And, so, I don't plan to go back to any more Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.  Instead, I go to one or two daily meetings of a small and completely informal group at the gym, which I like to call "Anabolics Anonymous".  Granted, we don't sit in a circle.  And I don't preface my remarks to my friends with the words:

"Hi, I'm Paul, and I'm a meathead."

But you get the idea.  It is a brotherhood of addicts.  We each know what we are after.  It is pretty much the same thing everyone else in the "meeting" is after:  muscular size, definition, strength, perfection of proportion, health, longevity, and simple fitness for the daunting tasks fo life.

And, for me, the one additional goal:  continuing not to drink alcohol.  And, it is working.

Damping And Inertia In The System: Sometimes They Are For You, Sometimes Against You.

Engineers tend to lump under the term "damping" any kind of energy dissipating effect in a system.  Thing of your car's "shock absorbers".  Those are actually dampers, and most engineers would refer to them as such.

What your dampers (shock absorbers) do is to calm down the oscillatory motions of the vehicle after it passes over a bump, for instance.  Without the suspension dampers, the vibrations caused by traversing a set of railroad tracks would still continue on even miles further down the road.  But the dampers resist relative velocity of the suspension and the frame or body of the car.

When I speak of damping in non-mechanical systems, such as the stock market industrial averages, or housing or gasoline prices, what I mean is anything that works to keep these things relatively constant and stable.

In some cases, the term "inertia" might be a better choice.  Inertia means resistance to acceleration of a variable.

When I first begin a bodybuilding contest prep diet, it is hard to get rolling at the beginning.  The first several weeks of progress photos look nearly identical.  The fat weight comes off slowly at first, if at all.  This can be viewed as inertia in the system ... a resistance to getting rolling.  

But gradually the process does get rolling and weekly progress begins to be visible.  Week after week, the pounds of fat come off and the muscles become more prominent in appearance.  At the beginning of the process, I felt that nothing I did was working.  The inertia in the system (i.e., the body's resistance to change) seemed so great that no useful progress could be made.  Inertia was against me!

But near the end of the process, when I am almost in contest shape, and things are succeeding, my fear completely reverses.  Even though I am very close to being in stage condition, I suddenly fear that the inertia of my body will drop to nothing, and that one morning I will wake up 20 or 25 pounds fatter, as if the last 20 weeks of progress had been obliterated overnight.  But in reality, the body still wants to change gradually.  One cheat meal or one diet misstep, or one missed cardio session will not suddenly undo 16 or 18 weeks of hard, steady, consistent work in the gym and with the diet.  Inertia is my friend!

Why Does Life Have To Be So Hard?

Perhaps this blog answers one of the great philosophical questions of the ages.  More likely, it just "kicks the can down the road", raising an equally imponderable one.

Why does life have to be so hard?  Because without hardship, we would not grow, and growth is what God is after in our lives, not ease.

Imagine a gym in which all the weight plates had zero mass.  They provide neither inertial resistance to acceleration nor gravitational loading.  You can get some awesome workouts there, right?  Load the Olympic bar up with 7 or 8 big wheels per side and knock out an effortless hundred reps.  It would be great, right?

Well, it might be good for your ego, for a minute or two.  But then two things would occur to you.   One thing is that everyone else in the gym can also effortlessly push the same "weights" you are pushing.  The other thing is that you find it impossible to grow your muscles.  Week after week, you start to atrophy and lose strength.  Why?  Because it is no longer hard.  Your muscles are no longer challenged, so they cease to grow.

It is like that with the rest of life.  Life throws challenges at us.  If we strain against them, we eventually get strong.  It is hard.  Sometimes, we would like to give up, or trade the massive "weight plates" of our lives for the magical massless ones.  But we are not given that option.  So we get in there and lift what we can, as hard as we can, for as long as we can.  And we grow.

Now this begs the question:  Why did God decide to make it this way?  Certainly, He could have chosen to make things easy for all people at all times.  This is the next question down the road, and I don't have the answer.  If I figure it out, I will let you know!

Another Poem - The New Athena

This poem is hot off the press.  I wrote it for my bodybuilding friend, Athena Siganakis.

The New Athena

That famed Athena known by all of old

(Who from the head of Zeus was birthed and hurled)

With Aphrodite, for an apple gold

Competed, and was sung by all the world.

The ancient world declared divine her sense.

In three dominions they affirmed her rule:

In wisdom, warfare, and intelligence,

And beauty was her fair monarchial jewel.

But now the Third Millennium has dawned.

An iron goddess springs from iron birth,

For whom the modern devotee has longed:

A new Athena strides upon the earth.

In beauty, she is worthy of her name,

With muscles far beyond the ancient norm.

Nor could that old world’s pantheon lay claim

To figures of such arch-majestic  form.

But I desire to know her as a whole,

Not only for the glory of her frame:

The wisdom and the warfare of her soul

And all intelligences of the same.

I pray you, New Athena, take this verse

As  token quite inadequate, but true,

(Until such time as fate lets us converse)

Of my esteem and high regard for you.

-           © 2013, Paul Erlandson

YouTube Video Features Eliot's 1963 Meteor!

It's one thing to take video of my son racing his car, and to post it on YouTube.

But it is a different sort of thrill to realize that someone else thought the car worthy of capturing in an extended-length video.

Here is some cool footage of Eliot racing his 1963 Mercury Meteor at the recent High School and College Nationals at Milan Dragway.

All Bodybuilding, All the Time

I'm afraid that this blog is going to get very boring for most of you for the next seven weeks or so.  I have three bodybuilding contests coming up that I will be competing in:  September 28, October 5, and October 19.

The intensity of my preparation for these contests is a bit overwhelming.  Most days, my carbohydrate intake is low enough that I don't always think clearly.  I also begin to have paranoid worries that I will wake up fat the next day, dreams about bread, etc.

It is hard to describe what an all-encompassing, totalizing thing bodybuilding contests prep is.  It goes WAY beyond the lifestyle of a normal "gym rat" or fitness enthusiast.  There are so many little details to be taken care of.  Where did I put my NPC card?  Where did I store the Liquid Sun Rayz tanning color?  Where is my elastic band for pumping up the day of the contest?  How do I get to the venue?  Who will watch my stuff while I'm on stage?

But mostly, my thoughts revolve around doubts of the quality of physique I will bring to the stage.  I think I'm getting fat.  I've plateaued ... should I have a cheat meal or should I do an extra cardio session?  Opt for extra sleep?  Do I have time to join a tanning salon for a month?  I think I'm getting fat.  I look really small in the mirror today.  I'm behind where I was three years ago at this point in the prep.  And, that all-time favorite:  FEED ME!  I'm STARVING!

So, I hope you will bear with my temporary monomania for the next 6.5 or 7 weeks.  At least, you can be thankful it is not you going through all this.  And now, without further delay, a short video of one of my exercises at the gym this morning.

Bodybuilding Methods for Fat Loss -vs- the Armchair Dieticians

I've had several discussions on weight loss with folks who know everything about it, but for some reason cannot lose their own excess fat.  Maybe it's just me, but I don't think you should cop a know-it-all attitude when conversing with people who are very successful in doing what you yourself cannot do.

This is my rant about it.