7 November 2023

Last Friday I succeeded in my 200 lbs bench press and it felt like I still had fuel in the tank. I’m technically the strongest I’ve ever been and getting stronger. There are two big reasons for my weight lifting gains. Specifically effecting the bench press was that I improved my technique. In preparation for the wedding I wanted to do 100 push ups in a day with the goal someday being 100 continuous. While researching push ups technique I discovered I’ve basically been doing chest exercises wrong my whole life, my hands needed to be lower than my shoulders and elbows closer to the body, that allowed me to perform bench press correctly for the first time. The other factor in my strength is that I’ve had the land for over three years now and have gained considerable farm strength. There’s also baby strength from carrying that weight around the house and up the hill. Caring for a baby has improved my endurance by requiring me to be attentive at all hours. The lack of sleep never bothered my wife and I much because we’ve both trained in it before. The infantry is an endurance type of training, everyone is in competition to be the last man standing. Genetically I think my family is gifted with endurance capabilities, while in the Army I felt I could literally run non-stop for any amount of time. There was an incident during my first 25 mile road march where I fell down and immediately popped up before I knew what happened, this was after I had been smashing my foot for hours hoping I’d get injured and could stop that stupid road march. 25 miles doesn’t seem like a crazy number, but that’s because civilians don’t know road marches. The first road march I did in basic training was one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve felt, all we had to wear was our helmet and carry an M-16 for 3 miles. By the time I was doing 25 miles I had a 45 lbs rucksack, a kevlar vest with front and back ceramic plates, and I had traded the M-16 in for an M-249 of almost twice the weight. In all that gear we still had to be capable of carrying another man and his rucksack in case of injury, we trained for that.