This week, most of the world’s attention has been focused on US swimmer, Michael Phelps, who is poised to break Mark Spitz’ gold medal performance of 36 years ago and will go down as one of, if not the greatest Olympian of all time.

The United States has had very modest expectations for their prospects in Olympic weightlifting and even that took a blow a day before the opening ceremonies when Casey Burgener was disallowed to compete for the third men’s spot. Melanie Roach, one of three US women placed sixth in her weight category and set an American record in the process. Kendrick Farris notched an 8th place finish, breaking two US records in the process. Both lifters were impressive and have to be pleased with their showings.

Marty “The Purposeful Primitive” Gallagher has a new book and weekly column over at Dragondoor. The book is a must-read and his first column reads like it is too. No fluff. I like that.

“Stupid is as stupid does” according to Forrest Gump and if you are a gym regular, you see a lot of potentially dangerous and stupid things in the gym, which makes a great case for having your own garage gym. I wonder when, after “arm day” or “leg day” there will be a “brain day”. While not technically a muscle, when you use it and work it, it “grow”s as does the muscle.

I had a good week with my training with a solid kettlebell and sandbag day and the usual logging in of snatch lifts. I haven’t been too active with deadlifts and less so with squats so I did 5×5’s of each after some Oly work. But none was like MarkFu’s Big Lift. It was one for the ages. Speaking of age, I am about to move the ticker forward by a year to, <drumroll>, 53; the prime of my athletic life!

Sunday capped off my training with some barbell cleans in the gym and then went outside to do some “dinosaur training” by cleaning and pressing an 80# rock while on my knees! Great core work since I can use my hips or legs. I posted some pictures. Take a look. Fun stuff!

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