(C) Copyright 2015 Adam Palmer
Photo courtesy 9for9media.com

This past June, I went to Russia for the IPF raw world championships. I met one of the Austrian lifters in the 120kg class — Alex. He was a real nice guy and we had a good chat about training and such. Fast forward until a few weeks ago. Alex emailed me to let me know he would be on a road trip and they would be passing through my neighborhood. So they stopped by yesterday and we trained. It was really cool to have a training partner, even if we did tend to chat too much between sets.

One of the things we talked about was the feeling you get after going to a big competition. For both of us, it’s this imperative feeling that you MUST train more. You MUST find a way to get better. In lots of ways, it makes the obsession deeper. It’s a reality check of sorts. “Hey, there are plenty of other strong folks out there. I better get back to work!” Speaking for myself, it makes me want to train more, train harder, and basically pour more effort into perfecting this craft. Read more…