Welcome to my blog, Strength is the Glass. After many months of deliberation, procrastination, and maybe just good ole’ laziness, I decided it was finally time to put the myriad of random thoughts pertaining to training and fitness bouncing around my brain into digital writing. You won’t find an abundance of technical information, nor 100% grammatically correct writing for that matter. There are enough trainers smarter than I already proliferating the web with technical training jargon. You won’t find typical sugar coated motivational personal trainer pieces, although I hope you are occasionally able to find motivation through my musings. I won’t try to sell you training sessions, although I’m always open to “spreading the gospel” to new people. What you will find is honest writing, whether that is to your liking or not is your prerogative.
I am not an elite athlete. I am not an excellent writer. I am by no means an expert in exercise science. I don’t live on a diet of chicken breast, broccoli, and brown rice. What I am is a man that has developed a love over the last decade for picking heavy stuff up, and getting others excited to do so as well. My posts will rarely be heavily researched, as the content will be heavily drawn from not only my experiences of the last 14+ years as a coach, a lifter, a personal trainer, and a martial artist; but also as a normal person that realizes that life is not meant to be lived in the gym. Along with that I will occasionally post snippets of my own training, not out of any intent to claim my methods are superior, but only to let them be known and to perhaps enlighten others. So let’s get started.
What the hell does “Strength is the Glass” mean, anyways?
I first heard this term several years ago by a strength coach named Brett Jones. I’ve never really read any of his other work, nor do I know if much of it exists. But this one quote alone was enough to change my entire perception on strength training, and fitness in general. In his metaphor, strength is the glass and all other facets of fitness were the liquid. As strength grows, so does the amount of liquid that can be contained in the glass. You will be able to train conditioning longer and more intensely, motor control issues than can affect mobility and bracing will begin to alleviate, and technique will be easier to pick up because you will be able to worry less about strength being a limiting factor. No, strength training does not automatically make these facets of fitness better. It just allows you to make them better. And that’s why strength is so important.
Outside of just a performance aspect, strength is a powerful feeling. Strength is addictive. Strength takes patience. Strength takes discipline. Strength sure ain’t easy, but damn it is it worth it. Strength is there when the rest of your life feels like it’s trying to shove your own shoe down your throat. In the the words of Henry Rollins, “Friends may come and go, but 200 lbs is always 200 lbs.” I’ve found few things more satisfying or rewarding in life than adding something as small as 10 lbs to my deadlift, even if it took a year to do it. My goal is to get as many people I can to feel the same way. Hopefully this blog can get a few of you to catch the iron bug as I have.
strengthistheglass 