This bit:
ie, I have no desire to gear up and juice myself retarded anymore
It just hit me that, at least in the popular US feds, it's become a game of adding layers to the shirt and to the squat suit.
I started lifting, and still do it, because I like lifting stuff. Yeah, I know all the rationalizations for gear use, and I don't have any problem with light single-ply stuff....but it's gotten stupid.
When half of your workout is getting into a squat suit and "learning it", to me that's a travesty. I don't like seeing guys "squat" 1200 lbs to the APF definition of parallel (ie, a high-ass squat) with a 600 lb deadlift.
Guys are putting more effort into getting good at gear than they are getting strong. Yeah, the big fookers are strong anyway you swing it, but when I see guys with no muscle and no raw strength throwing on a shirt and suit and smoking lifts that took me years of work to get, that miffs me a little. It feels dishonest, even if it's not cheating by the rules.
It's the rules of the sport and what you have to do, yes, but it's not why I got into lifting and it's not why I'm lifting now.
I don't want to feel like I have to be juiced to the gills 52 weeks a year to be good at it. And in the "untested" feds, that's what
has to happen.
And so on. In short, it's not what I got into lifting for and I'm just not willing to do what it takes to be good at the sport. I have as much interest in that as I do in bodybuilding competitively -- ie, none.
Ya. We'll see. I won't rule out doing an IPF meet at some stage, because it'd be more up my alley. In some ways that pisses me off more because IPF is drug-tested, but it's not drug-free (to quote Louie).
Who knows. I may just keep being a bitter gym-lifter.
The squat is all about eating. Fatter = better. Every
PR squat I've ever done has been while fat and bloated.
The pull is...shit, I don't know. Some days it's just strong, other days it sucks. I haven't figured it out yet, and it seems like nobody else has either.
Just keep hammering it, you'll get there. I can say the same, esp. since I've been there before. I just have to hope the old injuries decide to cooperate (and no new ones pop up). I swear my body is made of Chinese plastic.