CHAD AICHS ON BEING HARDCORE by Chad Aichs

 

I happen to be scanning though some of the powerlifting forums and read a interesting post my Billy Mimnaugh. I usually don’t spend much time reading forums because most of the people are just a bunch of bitches complaining about squat depth, gear, drugs, and other judging problems. Maybe if these people would learn to appreciate all types of lifting and use the internet to as a educational tool, then they could help the sport grow instead of trying to kill it. This does not go for all the people posting, but there are a lot of idiots. I am getting off the subject, i will write about forums at another time. Anyway i have never had the chance to me Billy Mimnaugh in person, but i usually will read a post if i see his name. He has been in this sport for a long time and i usually agree with most of what he says. Plus he is one funny SOB.

In this post he says that my training is not hardcore. He does say that i am a GREAT lifter (he caped great, not me) and i appreciate that. It means a lot to hear that from him. I remember when i first started competing in around 99 or 00 and he was competing with Jon Grove for the 308s in all the big meets. I looked up to those guys and strived to be that strong some day. I would say that Billy has walked the walk and talks the talk, but i see myself as hardcore. I believe he is wrong this time.

I am not sure i could write down a definition of hardcore, but when i was a kid i remember looking up to all the crazy lifter of the 70s and 80s with there wild hair, beards, and acting like animals at the competitions. I thought these guys were hardcore and i wanted to be one of them. So i began training when i was a freshman in high school. I eventually built a gym in my basement by asking for equipment on every birthday and christmas. I saved most of my money to get more equipment. This stuff meant everything to me. I used to fight with my brother because he did not put my dumbell back in the right order. My gym was always clean and all equipment was used to the extreme, but respected.

Those early years were very intense and i pushed it as hard as i possible could. I would often go through a squat routine and when i was done i would try to go up the stairs. If i could walk up them then i would turn around and go squat until i could not make it up them. My workouts always ended in me being soaked in sweat and completely exhausted. There were many times i would fall asleep in my little gym because i could not walk to my room. Most of this time i trained alone because i could not find a partner that had my dedication. I even told my best friend he had to leave and could not workout with me. We stayed best friends, but never trained together. He just did not push himself as hard as i expected. Once i even got a lecture from my father about spending to much time training and that there was more to life. He said i need to find some balance. I used to turn down tickets to MLB games and concerts because i had not trained yet that day. Even if it was my favorite band or team. Training was my life.

I had this same drive even in college. I went to the University of Nevada to throw the shot put. This was one of the first times i got to train with other serious athletes. I had a hard time in college because i worked full time, went to school full time, and was throwing. Sometime i would not get to throw until it was dark. So i would have to throw my shot over this 10foot fence and then climb it to get to the ring. I would throw until very late into the night even though i had to be up by 5 to get to work. Sometime my coach would be able to stay late with me, which i really appreciated. There was a couple days a week i could throw with the rest of the team, but my schedule was screwed up. The weight training i alway made time for and we had some great guys. Ray East was one the first guys i ever saw rep out 700 plus pounds. Then there was Kim Johanson from Sweden and he was just pumped in the weight room. He liked to work up a good sweat then sniff his armpit and start scream in Swedish before heavy lifts. Kelly Harris always had a ton of anger he let out too. Me and Ray would go stuff ourselves before squat workouts and the go to the dungeon. We had a couple gyms to use, but the dungeon was this small, very dark, and hot room in the basement of the girls gymnasium. It was all cinderblock walls with no windows and only had one bench, two platforms with rubber plates, and two powerracks. Lots of people bitched about it, but i loved it. No phoo phoo shit, just hardcore equipment to lift heavy. We had some great workouts there, people puking, sweating buckets, and the smell of testosterone.

When I had to quit throwing because of my compartment syndrome, my workouts definitaly dropped down a notch. I still lifted heavy and was way more intense then most people, but not the same. I started spending more time making money and trying to buy stuff. I just lifted to stay in somesort of shape (i now, that is gay).

Sometime around 1997 i really started to get the hunger to compete. It was always there, but not as strong. So some friends talked me into doing a meet were i benched 405 or 410 raw. That’s show i was training somewhat heavy. This lit a huge fire in me and my first three lift meet i totalled 1700 with out changing my training very much. Like i said i always lifted heavy because i liked it, but the intensity was not the same as when i was competing in a sport. Now i had a sport to compete in again and things were about to change.

I decided this was what i wanted to do and that was all it took. I started quiting jobs because they were screwing up my traing schedule. I had cut back to just 40hrs a week so i had more time to train. This lead to not having as much money. So i had to start selling off my toys. This was ok because i wanted to get bigger and stronger. At one time i had 3 awesome motorcycles and 2 very nice cars, all gone. I even had to sell my Hayabusa which i had up to 197mph because i was getting to big to ride it and money was getting real tight. That bike was one of my true loves and i promised myself that someday i will have another one. I even moved back with my parents at one point because i needed money to got to the bigger meet i was starting to do. I alway managed to keep all my bills payed, but my focus was to train so my ordinary life expenses had to be cut to a bare minimum.

My training was very extreme in the beginning. The workouts were like in my high school years. I was again training by myself and would push it to the very edge. My neighbors must have thought i was some kind of freak with all the yelling and screaming coming out of the garage. I even dragged the sled up and down the neighborhood. I think it was around 2002 when i finally started training in a commercial gym. I had started training with my brother by this time. He has a lot of things i don’t like, but i can not say that he is not intense. We trained very hard no matter what. If i was soar, which i often was. That was not excuse, i trained. I would not sleep for days, but never missed a workout. If i had one of my terrible headaches, i would worry about it after the workout. I even trained when i was sick. When it was a scheduled day to train, i trained. There was one point during this time that i worked 5 days a week with the county and worked the other two building decks with my brother. The county would switch my shifts so my sleep was really screwed up and then doing physical labor on the weekends. I got almost no sleep, but never missed a workout. Money was very short so i had to make some extra with my brother, and i quit that county job when they told me i could not have the time off for a meet. I have plenty of stories of spewing blood all over the floor and training until i was dizzy. For a while i rented a condo on a concrete slap. I moved all my weightlifting equipment into the living room. The furniture got squished into the kitchen and dining area. I am not talking about for a little while either, that is how i lived. One time i was doing heavy rack pulls and when i finished i turned around to see my brother laughing at me right before i passed out. He could see it coming and i wedged myself inbetween the rack and the wall. When i came to and got myself up we had a great laugh about it. My neighbors there probably hated me too.

My personnel life and friendships have even been affected by my dedication to powerlifting. I used to take these great motorcycle vacations with my family and that has not happened in seems i got into powerlifting. Infact all my vacation time is spent on meets. My friendships have definitaly suffered. Most of the people i hangout with now are on the team. I still have some good friends that are not into lifting, but i don’t get to spend much time with them. I am lucky because most of them want to see me more, but understand and respect what i am doing. A serious relationship with a girl is almost out of the question. I don’t even try that hard anymore. Lifting will almost always come first and i don’t think it would be fair to them. Plus most girl don’t understand why i do this and would want more of my time.

I trained this way for a long time, but at some point i discovered that in order to keep getting stronger i will have to cut back. My body had learned to recruit more neurons and muscle fibers. So i was able to push my body further with less work. I had also gotten so strong that inorder to push myself in training i was lifting huge weights all the time. Now i could have kept up with the intense long training schedule, but i got into this to be like the hardcore guy from the 70s. I did not know how they trained, but i knew they kicked ass at the meets. So i adapted my training so i could kick ass at the meets and continue to get stronger. Anyone who has seen me lift knows that i give everything i have a the meet and i am well aware of the result of that. It is no sleep that night followed by the headaches and full body pain the next few days. If you have not seen me compete please visithttp://www.chadaichs.com and watch some videos. You will see the effort i put into the meet.

Billy says that the guys that don’t appear to train hard have god given strength and not work given strength. In some cases this maybe true or maybe these guys learned something we have not learned. In my case, my strength is work given and i am damn proud of that. I was never the strongest or the best athlete, i work my ass off for what i did achieve. My high school lifting numbers are nothing impressive and that is with insane dedication. The only so called god given gift i have received is the stubborness i have. The never give up and positive attitude i have.

So what is hardcore and am i hardcore? In the end it doesn’t really matter if anyone thinks i am hardcore because i know what i have given up to acheive what i have done and how hard i worked to do it. What does matter to is that people understand my idea of hardcore. It is to give everything you can and push yourself beyond what you thought you could. It is way harder to back off and not train as much. For me going to the gym and going crazy is easy. I always go to the gym to help my partners even if i am not training that day. That is one of the hardest thing in the world. The other day Larry and Scott were maxing out on rack pulls and i was not supposed to workout. That sucked ass and it was insanely hard to not workout. Doing the best i can do means going to the meet and putting up the best numbers possible. Billy mentions that he would give his small (his discription) testicles to be as strong as some of the lifters out there. Maybe if he would learn to back off and let his body recover more then he could still do number like that. I think training is a progression were you have to train like a mad man early on and get a good base, but then it must get less as you get stronger. Maybe that is the best way for it to be. I spent lots of time training and missed out on lots of stuff. Now inorder to keep getting stronger i now have to train a lot less. These leaves me more time to do some of the thing i missed out on. I know have more time to start attacking the busness end of lifting, riding my quad and motorcycle, photography, and who know might even find a girlfiend. This is kind of like a reward for all my hardwork.

In closing i would like to thank Billy again for saying i am a great lifter and i really don’t have any hard feeling towards him. I look forward to the day we get to meet in person and i hope the Billy gets to read this long winded article sometime. I think the theories of hardcore are great to talk about and it will hopefully make people think a little more. I just want everyone to learn better training skills and get as strong as possible. Even if this means competition for me and if my training theories are wrong then i hope we can at least learn from them.

more about hardcore
I figure i should explain why the subject of Hardcore means so much to me. This is a very strong word in the world of powerlifting and most lifters want to be considered hardcore. To the point that they will train like maniacs so that people think they are hardcore. This really irritates me because i am a person that hats wasted potential. It drives me nuts to go to a meet and see someone lift less then there potential. If this person is a friend or someone i respect, it is even worse. I already have a hard time trying to get people to listen to my theories and learn from the mistakes i have made. If these lifters believe that my training is not hardcore, then there is know way they will listen. I have completely push my body to the edge. To the point were i was about to loss it mentally and physically. My blood pressure was way up, i was not sleeping at all, and i am sure that if i keep up that pace there was only two options. Those were death or a mental hospital. I just could not quit competing because i had not reached my goals. My only choice was to adjust my training and find the balance that let me keep getting stronger while not literally killing myself. Maybe this is something that a lifter must go through inorder to understand what i am talking about, but it was the most miserable thing i have ever gone through. I even had a very close friend say that he thought i should move on to strictly highland games because powerlifting was screwing me up. I just want to help people avoid these feeling if possible and to help them get continually stronger. Maybe my program is a little on the extreme side because of my sleep problems, but i see a lot of lifter that would get stronger if they just let there bodies recover a little more. I am not talking about going to the gym and lifting lift. I am talking about listening to your body and when it is ready then go crazy in the gym. I can not definitely say that my program and theories are the best, but i think that i have earned the right to ask people to look into them. Most of my theories are not set in stone, they are more like guidelines to help a lifter find the things that work for him. So i hope that people will see that i did train hardcore and still train hardcore.

Is this Hardcore?

Say a lifter never misses a workout and pushes himself as hard as possible. Then he comes in for a max box squat workout. He doesn’t feel his best, but will get jacked up and go for it anyway. He screams, yells, and bleeds to get a 750lbs box squat. Now the same guy during his next session decides to miss a couple workouts or spread his workouts out. Then it comes time to max box squat again. He again screams, yells, and bleeds. He feels much more intensity then last time and his positive attitude is over the top, he feels great. He gives it everything he has and hits a 900lbs box squat. Which workout is more hardcore and which workout has given him more from a training standpoint?

Say a lifter figures out that by moving the chest of his bench shirt up and down he can regulate the tightness of the shirt. He does a meet were he measures the line on his chest and draws them with a pen. It worked get, so he goes directly to his tatoo guy and has them tatooed on his chest. Is this hardcore?

Say a guy has trained for years. He has lived the life of a powerlifter and given everything to the sport. He works out everyday as hard as possible pushing himself to the limit. He begins to feel weak and his body starts to get run down. His health is slipping as fast as his strength. Is it more harcore to keep pushing, try to work through it and die or is it more hardcore to adjust your training, let your body heal up and come back to hit bigger numbers than ever before.

Say a legendary powerlifter is done competing but still stays around the sport and has a lot to offer. He works with kids and could still teach tons to other lifters. Well he has been big and strong for a long time. He wants to stay that way even though he is done competing and his health is in question. Is it more hardcore to stay big and strong then die or to loss some size, still be stronger than most, and live to help other people in the sport? This comment is about lifters like Anthony Clark, O.D. Wilson, Doyle Kennady, and many others like them. These men were amazing lifters and had earned my respect wether they were still big or not. They will be missed and we will miss a ton of knowledge that they learned.

Billy said he reads the logs everyday and i want to thank him for that. Sometime i wonder if anyone reads this damn thing t all. I also have the same problem that i have trouble explain what my crazy mind is thinking. I just get to rambleing and my mind is to fast for my fingers. I am sure my punctuation and spelling aren’t very good either. Infact i hardly ever reread my logs. Billy comments that he looks in my log and does not see the heavy work that he would expect. Well i have done a lot of heavy work in the past and still do on max effort days. Lately i have backed off a lot and am trying to let my body get back to a neutral balance. On max effort days i go to a full max and then throw on an extra 50lbs for good measure. I good morning 1000 plus (it is a cross between a good morning and 1/4 squat, but i like to go heavy), 900 to 1000 box squats with belt and briefs, botton pin rack pulls of 815, and good mornings with various bars all over 800lbs. On dynamic day i squat 415 to 500 with blues that are 100lbs on bottom and over 200 at top, but this day is about speed and they are still pretty quick. Even to this day i have had to finish some squat workout with toilet paper shoved up my nose because of the pressure and often get light headed after max effort lifts. Lately these workout have been few and far between though.

Billy talks about how he would rather push his workout to the extreme and not worry about the meets. I completely and totally understand what he is saying. One of the things that attracted me to lifting and kept me doing it all these years is what Billy is talking about. You get to go to the gym and push yourself everyday. It kind of like doing a meet everyday, only it is not the total that wins. You win by getting in a great workout and overcoming all odds like being tired, soar, injuried, headache, bad day, relationship problems, stress, and so one. The feeling you get after a great workout is awesome. You may be soar and exhausted, but you feel incredible. Its like testing yourself everyday and seeing how far you can push it. No BS, i absolutely loved that. I am all about pushing and testing myself. Somewere along the this trip i decided that trying to acheive the highest all time total is what i wanted to do. I had done enough of that type of training and was confident in my ability to push myself like that. Infact it had gotten easy to do, i didn’t even think about it anymore. I just went in and pushed it. The new challenge was to train for the all time total. This meant training smart for strength and letting my body recover. No this was the challenge amoung challenges for me. Even after 6yrs or so i am still struggling with it. Luckily for me i have great training partners that call my stupidity. We often argue and yell about it. They keep me in line better than anyone could. What i am trying to say is that i look at training this way as a new challenge, a new way to test myself. Can i stay disciplined enough to keep training this way and reach the all time total. I feel that i have gotten fairly close to that total and have confidence in my training, the only question is if i have the discipline.

There was a few comments on how i can take two weeks off and not lift that heavy in training, then open with big numbers. Well i did not hop right into this, it was a gradual progression. The whole theory behind this hinges on confidence though. I once had a conversation with Andy Bolton (deadlifter of all time) and he talked about lifter having confidence in themselve. You will not get weaker of a couple weeks and you have lifted plenty of heavy weight, you body know what to do if you just trust it. I took two full weeks off before this years Arnold. I weighed in lighter then expect and was easily able to put all my gear on myself. I then retore my hamstring on the first attempt and ended with a 1173lbs squat. After something like that, it is pretty easy to take two weeks off the next time. Now i do not recommend this for beginner or even novice lifters. This is something you have to work into. I do think Billy is somewhat right in the fact that i may have a god given gift in this area. Although my father had me reading books on PMA when i was young and he taught me about visualization, i alway took to this very easily. I am able to transform myself into something else when i am on the platform. Something superhuman were i have no fear and think i can do anything. I am Chad and i can not be stopped. I truely believe this attitude is were most of my strength comes from.

One of the response talked about not lifting if we are injured. Don’t kid yourself, i am always injured. There are times when i feel i have to lay off because of an injury, but most of the time i train through them. If i did not train do to injury i would never train (that might not be much diffent than now i guess). I messed up my hip on my first official 800lbs attempt. I did come back and get it on the third attemp though. This injury has never gone away and has completely killed my deadlift. In the last 4 years or so i have not been able to get though a meet without aggravating it and i have not got the oppertunity to pull with out it already hurting. Injuries are just part of the sport and you better learn to deal with them.

Tommy Fannon had a comment on how he is much better a training people than following his own advice. You are not alone in that one Tommy. I am notorious for that and i am sure my partners will back that. I have plenty of stories were my partners yell at me or unload the weight and take away the bar. It’s not that hard to know what is right, but is very hard to follow sometimes. I guess this all goes back to testing myself and that is why i do it.

Billy mentions Mark Bartley’s new article about common sense. It is up on the elitefts.com home page right now. I recommend everyone reads it. Mark is a very smart guy and this is a awesome article.

I still have the urge to train the “hardcore” way, but i have not reached the all time total yet. I really want that total wether it be for a hour, a day, a month, or year. Once i have achieved it and no one can ever take that away. I do think about going full time strongman or highland athlete and then i can do harder lifting because i need more stamina. This will work the hell out of my muscles, but not be as hard as my CNS. The CNS overtraining is what give me the most trouble.

Well this has been fun and i hope i have explained myself. I hope this article makes people think about there training and what they want. I would also like to buy Billy a beer someday so we can sit down and talk about this shit. Who knows what kind of crazy training shit we can come up with and i am sure we could share some great stories. I would also like to thank the people that posted the very nice comments on the forums.

Chad out