MY PHILOSOPHY OF STRENGTH

What does it mean to be strong?

A discussion on reddit recently brought it into focus for me that my view of
strength is different from most peoples. I do not think you should call yourself
strong until you are one of the very best, until you can drop the jaws of your
competition and potentially make your mark on history. If youve trained
moderately hard for a few years and can dunk 4 plates, or pull 500, youll amaze
most. To me, thats meaningless. Someones whos truly strong can walk into
any meet and leave their competition speechless, and leave no doubt that no one
in attendance had any chance of beating them that day. Think Ed Coan in his
prime, or the ease of Shane Hammans 900+ squats, or Magnussons absurdly
easy 1015 deadlift.
I dont care if you are stronger than 90% of people in the world and neither
should you. Thats an apples to oranges comparison. Assuming 10% train for
some sort of strength sport (obviously its lower than that, but just to make the
numbers prettier), being stronger than 90% of the world means youre one of the
worst at your sport. Any sort of descriptor such as strong is context specific,
and if you train, then apply the term in the appropriate context. The definition of
strong used by John-Q-Everyman should not be your definition of strong
unless youre training more for your fragile ego and less for any sort of goal.
Take free throws as an example. 90% of the people on planet earth cant hit five
out of ten free throws. If you play basketball and hit 50% of your free throw
attempts, do you pat yourself on the back for being better than most, or hang
your head in shame for failing miserably in the context of your sport? If its me,
youre getting the latter reaction.
Well then, why not draw that 90% line to be context-specific and go from there?
Why not draw it at the top 10% of people in your sport? I dislike this notion on
the basis of camaraderie. If youre putting in work and striving for a goal, you are
my brother or sister. We may have more or less experience, more or less
academic background, differing philosophies, and differing training histories, but
our comradeship is defined by our mutual journey.
When you draw lines and say this is the standard for strong' and set the
standard at a fairly attainable level, you create division. Some of us are strong
and some arent. Were defining ourselves by our current location, not the road
were on. Im in this town and youre in that one, rather than primarily
recognizing all of us as travelers on the same road. This is the biggest reasons I
detest standards that anyone tries to set. So what if Ive set a couple records,
and someone else is prepping for their very first meet? We can both learn from
each other. Im not above him or her in some way. I can share my experiences,
and he or she can share perceptions and ideas that havent been colored by a
decade of reading and developing a particular conceptional schema and set of
assumptions. Never underestimate the insight you can get from newbies who
arent afraid to speak their mind. They come to lifting with somewhat of a blank
slate, which you probably dont have at this point. Consequently, theyll see
things youll miss.
One day most of us will be forgotten, especially by the sport of powerlifting.
Sure, your meet results will be buried in some internet archive, but whos going

to stumble upon them and actually care? The people who will remember you are
the people who you met while you were journeying together. Id despise
accepting any label that says Ive done THIS and youve merely done THAT as if
it actually matters. Im me, youre you, and we are not strong or weak. We
are lifters. My biggest accomplishments at my last meet werent the records I
took or the awards I won. They were teaching a 10 year old how to mentally
approach heavy weight and learn from failure rather than running for it, and
showing a 30+ year veteran some self-myofascial release techniques to help him
with some SI problems that had been bothering him for several months. If you
think you matter in some special way because you are stronger than most, you
need to reassess your priorities.
My second qualm with most definitions of strong is that they define the word in
such a way that it sets people up to accept (or even celebrate) mediocrity. When
you define a word, you give it power. Phonetic utterances are meaningless in and
of themselves. Our own perceptions of a words meaning draw its domain of
influence. Despite my egalitarian impulses, I do think there needs to be some
definition of strong. If youre a lifter you want to become strong (thats the whole
point of the sport), so it helps to know what youre actually aiming at. I realize
everyone has their own definitions, but I essentially want to explain why Ive
chosen mine.
Assuming you care about getting strong, your definition of strong plays a
significant role is setting a (perhaps artificial) ceiling on your potential. Worst
case scenario: you define strong as something fairly unimpressive, and become
satisfied upon attaining your classification. At this point, youre effectively at
your destination; no longer on the journey. Your motivations are no longer my
motivations, nor are they the motivations of most people involved in this sport.
More likely scenario: you embrace the same definition of strong that celebrates
mediocrity and reach it. You still want to get stronger, but youre swimming in
uncharted waters, and fail to progress due to your own low expectations. This
one scares me more because its a common phenomenon, and helps explain why
strong people tend to flock together, and as top guys get stronger, entire gyms
get stronger. People define strong based on what they see on a daily basis,
and as the standard moves, everyone else can move along with it.
If your definition is low, you could very will be ensuring you dont reach your full
potential. Im not saying that high expectations and standards somehow make
you stronger (this message has been misinterpreted in the past), Im saying that
youre placing an artificial psychological barrier in the way of pursuing your
physiological potential. Once youre strong in your own eyes, getting
significantly stronger means venturing further and further from what you view
and reasonably attainable, and you thwart yourself mentally. Rather than an
argument for the power of positive thinking, this is a warning against the
detrimental influence of negative thinking. (As an aside, this is the main reason
why Ed Coan is and will be the greatest ever. Im sure people will break his
records eventually. However, he rolled the ball a long way. He showed what was
possible, and people will nudge the ball down the road 5 or 10 pounds at a time
as long as people are lifting. However, I doubt anyone will ever cover as much
uncharted territory as Coan did or be as dominant against both their own
competition and the record books as Coan was. By any definition, Coan was
strong).

These are the basic reasons why I define strong as the ability to do something
truly awe-inspiring. To pin down something bordering on objectivity, Id say
youre strong if youre setting all-time records or are at least within 5% of them.
This means the untested all-time records. If you take exception with my
unwillingness to grant drug-free lifters some sort of immunity or break, then Ill
address that in another post at some point.
Heres what this definition does for you: odds are there will never be any barriers
between you and your comrades, and youll be much less likely to hit mental
blocks as you progress. Sure, some people will have more to bring to the table
and others, and you may hit a mental barrier when you see a new plate on the
bar, but those things are just inherent in the nature of human interaction or
pushing personal frontiers. The only way you separate yourself is by attaining
TRULY exceptional results. This is a necessary consequence of pinning down any
sort of objective definition, but the people set aside, in my eyes, SHOULD receive
an additional measure of respect because odds are they arrived in that position
by training harder, being smarter, and generally being on a different level than
most lifters.
Heres what this definition does NOT do for you: it does not massage your ego,
nor does it tell you youre a special snowflake for being the strongest person in
your commercial gym. It does not give you any reason to think youre better
than someone because you hold a state record in your with class in some noname fed. If you think this definition is elitist, I dont particularly care. As I see it,
its as egalitarian as they come. It is the realization that Im no better than you in
any meaningful way, nor are you better than anyone else in any meaningful way.
It resists assigning superlatives to merely above-average performances. Im not
strong and neither are you. A few people are strong. A few people are weak.
The vast majority of people are neither. We can still use strong to describe
somethings relationship to something else (i.e. a 500 pound squatter is stronger
than a 300 pound squatter), but using the word itself to be the primary descriptor
of something or someone should be reserved for rare occasions that truly
deserve praise.
People in the general population can use whatever definition they want, as can
you. However, strength is our pursuit so I think we need to have an idea of
strong this is more in line with that pursuit, more likely to unify than bifurcate
or stratify, and more likely to nurture greatness than permit mediocrity.