Most people use Christmas Eve as an excuse to drink and eat to excess and sit around on their ass all day. I, on the other hand, have a Christmas Eve tradition that involves me, and a rotating group of friends, throwing some serious iron around.
Every year, I have an impromptu lifting competition on this day against my previous year's self and anyone else who has the huevos to join me.
The competition is a one rep max back squat, a one rep max strict press and a one rep max deadlift. This is better known as the Crossfit Total. You add the three weights together to get your score. If you can achieve a score over 1000, you are a complete badass. Anything above 900 and you are well on your way to having your posterior chain registered as a lethal weapon.
One caveat about the squat. I am talking about a true, deep, below parallel squat. To achieve this depth, the crease of your hip must be below your knees in the bottom of your squat. Anything above that and your lift does not count.
This will come as a complete shock to the globogym meatheads who are partial to inflating their squat totals by restricting range of motion. You know the guys I'm talking about. They load up a barbell with 405, put it on their back, bend their knees five times and say they can squat 405 for five reps. Um, I don't think so, fellas.
A quick tip from Tewks: 95% of the time, when a guy from a big box gym tells you how much he can squat, automatically take off 100-150lbs off of his answer. This rule does not apply for any Crossfitter.
The other part of my tradition involves watching two movies to get myself psyched up: Rocky Balboa and Rambo 4. That's right, Christmas Eve around the Tewks household is a testosterone and carnage fest. I usually tell women to stay at least 50 feet from me at all times today, because the 'eau de man' emanating from my sweat glands is enough to get you pregnant.
Check back around 3pm for my lifting results.
Update:
I had a total score of 900. A 315lb back squat, 155lb shoulder press and a 430lb deadlift. Plus, I got three girls pregnant.
This is my last post of the week.
Merry Christmas to all of my readers and I will be back with a vengeance on Monday.
A bientot.
I just wanted to quickly touch on the comments from Monday’s article. I need that first one translated into English, but I’m slightly concerned that the result will be a recipe for dog burgers.
I’d like to thank Thy Drunken Rookie for his kind words and book suggestion, but I will ask that, in the future, he refrain from using words I don’t know.
What the fuck does ‘epistemological’ mean?
The World Junior Hockey Championships begin on Boxing Day with the best players under the age of 20 vying for hockey supremacy.
The tournament is always one of my favourite traditions of the Christmas season. We rally around these kids, ensconced in a patriotic fervour only surpassed by the Olympics. It also helps that Canada is pretty much a lock to be in the gold medal game every single year.
This year’s team is striving for Canada’s sixth straight gold medal. For some reason, the World Juniors are taking place in Canada again, which hardly seems fair to the other countries, but who really gives a shit?
If you can’t be xenophobic during the holidays, when can you be?
It is this national pride that leads me to today’s column topic. If I’m eligible to play in this tournament, I’m playing no matter what (and judging from my hockey skills on that video I posted a while back, my only detriment in not suiting up for Canada is my age).
This is why I can’t understand that every year Canada fails to dress its top players as there are always a few tournament-eligible players playing their rookie season in the NHL.
I understand that the NHL is ultimate goal of every youngster to lace up a pair of skates in this country, but that doesn’t mean they can’t take two weeks off at Christmas for one more chance at World Junior glory.
A quick and less than thorough search has given me the following list of players who could play for Team Canada on Saturday, but are currently on NHL rosters: Ryan O’Reilly and Matt Duchene of the Colorado Avalanche, Tyler Myers of the Buffalo Sabres, Michael Del Zotto of the New York Rangers and John Tavares of the New York Islanders.
That is quite a bit of firepower that Canada could have at its disposal. That could be your number one power play unit for Christ’s sakes!
Obviously, NHL teams are reticent to loan out their valuable assets for the tournament, but wouldn’t it be prudent for these kids’ development to be the alpha dogs for Team Canada instead of playing ho-hum regular season NHL games at the end of December?
I would think playing in the pressure cooker that is the World Juniors and having the expectations of a nation on your shoulders would be a boon for these players’ progress into bonafide NHL stars.
You can play in the NHL for 20 years; you only have a finite number of chances to represent your country at this tournament.
I would love for one of these guys to stand up and say that they want to suit up for Canada on Saturday. National pride and patriotism seems to be at an all time low in this country. We need to get that back.
Unfortunately, a couple of Russians are leading the way. I love the declaration by Alex Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin that they will take a break from the NHL to represent Russia at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi (whether NHL players participate or not). Consequences and forfeited salary be damned.
That’s a fantastic precedent set for national pride and hopefully some of our boys follow suit.
Go Canada Go!
Carrie Underwood is engaged.
Really?
This is the news I have to wake up to this morning?
This, after I spent yesterday pouring my heart out in tribute to a beloved pet—not only that, but I spent an entire column two weeks ago professing my love to Ms. Underwood.
Come on!!!!
Call me old-fashioned, but I do not appreciate my future wife getting engaged to someone else. I don’t understand why she would break my heart like this.
What? I’ve never met her before and she has no idea who am I?
Well, be that as it may, I am still a human being with feelings and stalker-like tendencies. I could have at least been consulted before that dickwad Fisher took it public when pressed by reporters yesterday.
I don’t really know who Mike Fisher is, but I suppose he must be a somewhat decent guy if my Carrie has decided to shack up with him.
Unfortunately, I am a small, petty man, so I am going to try a little experiment to see how powerful this World Wide Web truly is.
In this era of sensationalistic journalism, even the most ridiculous and untrue stories can have a brief stay in the mainstream media consciousness. Therefore, I have just been handed a hot little rumour from my spy in Ottawa.
He tells me that “Mike Fisher has been caught cheating with a Kanata-area Tim Horton’s employee.”
I repeat “Mike Fisher has been caught cheating with a Kanata-area Tim Horton’s employee. And she has the texts to prove it.”
There we go. Now, all I have to do is wait for this post to make it onto the gossip websites, have Carrie find out and go all Before He Cheats on Mr. Fisher’s Ford F150.
I love the internet.
I suppose I should at least pretend that I’m following the world of sports, so how about that Marty Brodeur? He has officially established himself as the greatest goaltender to have ever played the game with his record setting 104th career shutout (to go along with the record for wins and games played).
Why is it that Brodeur doesn’t have the same media cache as Patrick Roy? Is it because Roy is an attention-seeking blowhard and Brodeur is a consummate professional who keeps his mouth shut and goes to work everyday?
That, friends, is what is called a rhetorical question.
I actually just looked up some stats (Wikipedia) and Brodeur has completely re-written the goalie record book. The guy is #1 in everything, but he also seems to somehow be slightly underrated.
Also, do you realize that the Vancouver Olympics will be Brodeur’s fourth? And third as an integral part of the team (he didn’t dress in Nagano). Undoubtedly, he will be the number one guy in February because, at 37, he is on pace to have one of his best seasons statistically.
Martin Brodeur. Greatness personified.
I still hate Mike Fisher.
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