SORE

Excuse me son…are you okay? You are walking like you got a stick up your… “Yes sir, I am fine!”. There is nothing worse than being sore. Not the usual sore, but that feeling of uncontrollable shaking while walking down a flight of stairs sore. My quads quivering before I sit down sore. That dreaded moment that I have to actually exert myself to stand up after sitting on my sore ass for the last hour sore. So sore I have a battle with the mirror in the morning. “You did this to me you son of a bleep!” I say in that tone of total disgust myself (You know, that tone your dad used the only time you came home drunk in high school, yeah that tone). Which is actually a hundred percent true, it is my fault. There is some crazy thing that comes over guys in the weight room. That thing that makes us compete and push our body to its max every day. That same thing that makes the weight room stink so good, the windows fog up, your shirt looks like you walked through the car wash. It even makes some guys groan, fart and spit simultaneously. This competitiveness (known as our “egos” to the general public) is what makes us work ourselves to this state of soreness. Which I do love for some reason! To be honest I didn’t know what sore was until I was introduced to college football. There isn’t a lot of lifting out there in “God’s Country”. The closest thing I ever knew to being “sore” was when I was twelve and bailed hay. But the first time I ever felt this butt cheek burning, hamstring tearing, quad killing feeling was my senior year of high school. My brother for eternity, Stillman Blake Fenn and I just got our summer work out book from Coach Bennion. Of course we lied to him and told him we squatted 450 lbs., benched 350 lbs., power cleaned 305. So our eight sets of fifteen reps were out of this world hard for some homegrown boys like us. It didn’t help that we had never really squatted before. Yes, the occasional three sets of ten with 135, but nothing too exhilarating. Two days after this work out we couldn’t move, we had never felt this foreign thing before. This, what the hell, oh sweet lord, cheese and rice, son of a…, "MOM help me put on my britches” sore… (Blake). But now four years later I would have to say we almost look forward to putting on that extra ten or twenty five lbs., maybe staying after and doing “21’s” with the buff dudes. We just have to make sure you get that unmistakable, never hurt so damned bad, gotta love it, stick up your… soreness.