Steven Segal was Hard to Kill, I Am Not

Everyone loves Steven Segal movies right? He had one called Hard to Kill and it was pretty awesome as far as 80’s action movies go. If they made a movie about me it would be Easy to Kill. You see, I am a creature of habit; I thrive on my daily routine. I get up at the same time every day, I go and eat breakfast with the same bunch of guys every day, I go to work and have a routine. I go home at the end of the day and repeat it all the next day. It works for me so if you were trying to kill me I am an easy target, so easy I actually said that many years ago to a guy who called me up and said he was going to pound my head in over something stupid. I gave him the daily schedule and told him to surprise me at his leisure. He didn’t show. That’s a whole ‘nuther story though. Back on topic: I am off my routine this week and I don’t know what to do with myself. This week I took a vacation with the family to Cape Cod, or ‘down the Cape as we say in Boston. As a matter of fact, it’s’ the first one since 2000. If you are a hands on business owner like me there is never a goodtime to take a vacation right? Might as well do it now. We rented a house in Wellfeet for the week, loaded up the mighty Dodge, tossed in the dog and were on our way.

She's grumpy.

I fully expected to sit in traffic on the way here for about 8 hour as Cape traffic is brutal and it is the 4th of July week. Surprisingly we hit none at all and made it here in about 2 hours. If you live here you may not believe me but it’s true. We got here and settled in and I planned on taking a week off from training and doing a little lounging, drinking some Jameson and Guiness and taking the week as it came. Oh, and some writing and programming too. The programming needed to be done as we our lifting team is about to go on a meet prep cycle for October and Jane, the World’s Strongest Granny has a meet coming up right after that. I also had only one thing on my agenda for the week, everything else would be gravy: I wanted to take my son to the drive in. We don’t have drive in theaters in the Boston area anymore since I was a kid and he has never been to one. Lucky for us, Wellfleet has one that is virtually unchanged since the 60’s and it is right next to the house we rented.

I killed this North American Landshark with my bare hands. My "Masshole" shirt gave me luck.

On another note, I am not used to being in a crowded house and we had 9 of us in the same house. My brother in law, my nephews and my father in law all came down too. It took some adjustment on my “set in my ways grumpy codger” self to adjust but I did. We did all kinds of touristy vacation stuff and by Wednesday I was all jacked up and needed to train to get rid of some nervous energy. I am not like this by nature or at least I don’t think I am. Maybe the week off my routine made me this way. Before the trip I spent some time on Google and looked for a gym. I found nothing on the Cape except a really small place in P-Town that didn’t look promising. To my surprise I saw a gym on Route 6 that looked like it might work, it was HUGE and had a Crossfit box in it. I contacted Chris the owner of Crossfit Nauset and asked if I could train there for a day. He said yes and I was all set to go. I had the house to myself on Wednesday so I did some programming and at 4:00 I took off to train. I arrived at Willy’s World Gym and went inside. Wow. This was weird. They had a waterfall in the lobby, a huge rock wall and an insanely big reception area. They also had a full bar with top shelf booze and a deli. That’s an odd mix for a gym to me. Smash some weights and then go and have a few snorts of booze after? Anyway, I went down to the Crossfit, met Chris and began training. I am used to having every piece of training equipment you could ask for but this box was as basic as you could get. Rack, bumpers, GHR’s, med balls and that’s about it. Cool. I would need to go back to basics for the day and that is just what I needed. I decided to deadlift beforehand and I had a great training session. It was just me, Chris the owner and one other guy there at the time I trained. My training for the day went like this:

Speed Pulls: I warmed up and hit 6 singles with 30 seconds rest at 365. These went surprisingly well considering I did not bring my gear and was out of my element. All work was done RAW, no Rehband sleeves, no belt and no Chucks to pull in. Exactly what I needed: to be out of my element. I did block pulls for 2 sets of 5 after. Some Koklyaev Deadlifts next working up to 365 for 5’s and then I tried the GHR. A word on GHR’s. I have used many and one stands out as the best. The EliteFTS GHR is simply the best one on the market and this was reinforced to me at the box. The one I used had a neutral pad angle and I felt like I could do about 50 reps on it. The angle of the pad on the EliteFTS GHR makes it far superior to all others. Take my word here. If you can do 50 reps on an EliteFTS GHR you are in pretty good shape. I don’t know anyone who can. Anyway, I wrapped up the session with some cool down work and helped Chris with his bench. I’d like to give Chris and Crossfit Nauset a big thanks for allowing me to come in for the day and train. If you are down the Cape and need a spot to hit some weights, tell Chris I sent you in. I grabbed a few frosty chocolate milks at the gas station for a post training refuel and headed back to the house to throw something on the grill that had parents. After that, I scrubbed up and loaded up the Dodge and headed off to the drive in. We got all white trashy and sat in the back of the truck bed with the dog and snacks and had a great time watching the movies. If you have kids, find a drive in and take them. They’ll love it and you will too.

The rest of the week went wicked pissah. I killed myself in the gym and was too tired to be stressed out about being off my routine. The week starts again on Monday and it’s back to the routine. I can’t wait. That’s all for this week. Ask me a question-Be sure and Type to Murph in the header Find me on Google-search for Total Performance Sports Everett, Mass. The Best Gym in Boston, Facebook too. Oh, yeah, follow us on Instagram too. TPSEverett #bostonsstrongest Vincere vel mori