Coaching CrossFit Total today, wringing the last of my voice from my exhausted throat, I was asked about my first 300lbs deadlift. It's been a looooooong time since that happened, but the story will be familiar to many of you:
100lbs: after months of doing floor presses and curls with textbooks in my room, door closed, while I was supposed to be studying, by parents relent and finally bought me a set of weights for Christmas. They were golden and beautiful and filled with concrete. They came complete with a chart of "weight lifts" by Joe Weider (or was it York?) which I followed faithfully for approximately 9 days. Included in the chart: cleans, squats, floor press, snatch, sumo high pull, and deadlifts. Realizing the futility of working only with these limiting exercises, I switch to the REAL moneymakers: biceps curls and pec flyes. I can actually remember calling the barbell the "curl bar."
200lbs: foggy, but definitely while in Illinois, doing Men's Health workouts verbatim. While trying to "add 12 pounds of ripped muscle by tonight!" I pile some tiny weights on a deadlift bar in the "fitness centre" and try not to attract any attention. Biggest concern: setting the bar down too quickly and making the plates clang! together.
300lbs: after closing hours, lights off, in the fitness equipment store where I worked. Tennis shoes and steel plate on indoor/outdoor carpeting by the light of the computer monitor. I was reading a lot of Fred Hatfield at the time (Dr. Squat) and had decided to try powerlifting as a way to bulk up. Without a gym membership, I secretly use the bars, plates, and cages at night, being careful to replace them just so every time. More than once, I have to repaint the TuffStuff cages from bailing on my squat attempts. On the upside, I've since purchased more cages than I sold there.
400lbs: at Northern Lights Health and Fitness on Gore Street. Doing a linear periodization program by the percentages, I grind out the ugliest deadlift I've seen before or since. Yelling in my ear is Kieran Foley, the only other soul in the gym at 6am. He probably doesn't remember. Having hit my all-time goal, I decide never to deadlift again. The next day, I decide to deadlift every day for the rest of my life.
435lbs: First meet at Kinross prison. On the way through the border (this was pre-9/11,) the guard asks where we're headed. In the front of the truck, the Morgan brothers respond, "powerlifting meet with the inmates." Looking at me: "Where's HE going?" Mike Morgan: "He's the bait."
500lbs: Wolverine Open APF Meet in Grand Haven, MI. I'm already disqualified for bombing out on the bench press, but the meet organizer figures there's no harm in letting me deadlift anyway. I shake all the way up, but the bar keeps moving and I keep squeezing. Somewhere, there's a picture of me giving that bar the finger afterward, but it's all black. The referees call me for hitching. No lift.
510lbs, meet legal: Outdoor meet, back at Kinross Prison. Missing most of his teeth, the scorekeeper rushes me into a decision. "What's your best?" he says. "500lbs two weeks ago, but I got called for hitching. I'm thinking about 480 or 485 next." He writes down 510. I do it. The sky turns white midway through the lift.
There's been more since, but that's another story. Or two.