strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees...

This Rosario diet thing has to go. Well, not really, but when I see a chart that says 3 oz of steak for a meal, I think, “I haven’t settled for 3 oz of steak since I was 3 years old.” I could eat steak even if I had a case of cholera. But, it’s working, so you can’t argue with that. A few years back I had found my way into Olympic weightlifting. It was about the last 8 or 9 months I was in Winchester. Then we got to Louisville, Melissa got sick and I fell out of the habit. It’s a slow process to get anywhere in Olympic weightlifting, but you lose it quick. The moves are complicated, taking in all the joints and needing a fast, coordinated move of major muscles. I had to work a few weeks just to get the ankle flexibility to start the motion. And it’s embarrassing that no matter how strong you are, you have to start with an empty bar. But once I got past that, it brought good results.

I was attracted to for a variety of reasons. The positive reason is that I was interested more in strength than how I look, and the negative was I hate sit ups, any kind of ab work, and preparing for the last part of the clean-and-jerk or squat-snatch works your core like nothing else. Especially when your coach ties huge rubber bands to the ends of the bar, and you have to hold not just the weight, but keep it stable on the way up. So no more sit-ups, crunches, anything, for me. The beautiful thing is that the way you have to attack the work is exactly the way you have to attack the spiritual life. The very words the New Testament uses to describe spiritual discipline is the language of training. It will be good to get back into it.

I still don’t know why I let my no-good brother-in-law talk me into interval training. It will be what kills me. I didn’t like that stuff in soccer practice, and I had a reason to do it, then.

We’re putting a gym downstairs at The Rock. So in addition to starting to get better food into people’s lives, we hope to start people exercising, especially our young people. I’m looking forward to it, as well. We’ll have all the stuff to get back into Olympic weightlifting, which isn’t much. Just lots of space and some weights. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll find our way to a Methodist Church—strengthening body and soul to salvation.