This guy just fucking GETS IT.

I’ve been trading a number of emails with my good friend James as of late.  James and I met when I was a teenager back in a high school weight training class.  James was a couple years older than me, as well as bigger and stronger than I am.  But there was one thing that we had in common – while everybody else was in the class to slack off and get an easy ‘A’ (varsity football players, I’m looking at you here), James and I used to kick ass and get shit done.  There were usually just two guys in the class that ever got stronger – that was James and I.

Fast forward damn near 20 years (holy shit, has it really been that long?  Jeez, I’m getting old!), and James and I have since reconnected via Facebook.  Thank you Al Gore for creating the interwebz.

Not much has changed – we’re both still working out, we’re both still kicking ass, we’re both still out to get better, and he’s still bigger and stronger than I am.  Jerk.  lol!

Anyway, we reconnected a number of months back, and since he’s always on the lookout for kickass new workouts, he was one of the first ones to pick up WCC 2 – FTW when it came out.  Smart man.  He’s since completed WCC2 with outstanding success, loving every minute of it.

(If you’re on my newsletter list, you might remember me telling y’all about his progress along the way a couple times.)

Well, it’s time to start something new, so both he and his girlfriend have just started MMA Blast 2.

Over the past week or so, we’ve traded a number of emails about the program – how to implement it, tweaks that should be made for his girlfriend, how to approach lower body training with a nasty knee injury he had a number of years back, etc.  Well, it wasn’t long before the conversation drifted more away from training, and more into philosophy.

Yeah…I know.  From workouts into philosophy?  How the fuck did THAT happen?

It’s simple, really – because as we’ve both gotten older, we’ve both realized that we both kick ass in the gym for the same reasons.  And it’s not for the workouts.

See, I could give a shit about being a gym rat, meat-head, muscle bunny, or whatever other funky name you wanna call somebody who’s like revolves around the gym.  Instead, I take almost a sports-based approach to my workouts.

Yeah, I like to train – and believe everybody should train – like an athlete.  (Don’t worry – getting some vanity work in there so you ‘look good nekkid’ is totally cool by me…and something you should do, IMO.)  But it’s more than that, though.  See, for an athlete, going to the gym isn’t the goal.  Getting strong isn’t the goal.  Having good cardio isn’t the goal.  A ripped set of abs isn’t the goal.

The goal is to be a better fucking athlete.  Duh.

I’m gonna let you in on a little secret – while some athletes really dig working out, most could really give two shits about their bench press 1RM or how high of a box they can jump on.  Yeah, they might like to swing their dicks around in the gym while they’re there, and they prolly wanna look good for the opposite sex when they’re out of the gym (after all, Sports Illustrated isn’t putting fatties on the cover), but when push comes to shove, all that really matters is how they perform on the field, court, diamond, mat, etc.

Because let’s be honest – if I told a running back that I could show him how to increase his squat, but it wouldn’t get him any more yards next season, think he’d really give a damn?  Or if I told the volleyball player how I could show her how to get stronger and turn that strength into explosive power, but it wouldn’t help her jump any higher at the net, would she show up to the gym and bust her ass three days/week?

Nope.  Not a chance in hell.  Workouts are there to augment and make them better at their sport.

Well, I take the same basic approach.  Now, I’m not a competitive athlete, so I’m not training for a sport.  Rather, my sport is life.  I want my workouts to augment my life as a whole.

I want to look better (being nekkid is optional – lol).

I want to feel good.

I want to be healthy and injury free.

I want to have plenty of energy.

I want to be able to do whatever activity I want, whenever I want.

I want to have that feeling of ‘badassery’ every time I walk out the door, because I know I can do shit in the gym you can’t.  (And I have the muscle to prove it.)

In short, my workouts are there to augment my life.  My life isn’t there to augment my workouts.

I didn’t always used to be that way.  When I was younger, I was ALL ABOUT the gym and working out.  All I wanted to do was train, train, and train some more.  I used to totally dig it when my biceps were so pumped I couldn’t lift my post-workout protein shake.  Or when my chest was so sore I could barely put my coat on.  And walking for two after a hard squat workout?  HA!  As if…

But the older I get, the more I say FUCK THAT.  Who the hell wants to bust their ass in the gym if they look like a gimpy dipshit out of it?  What if that hot chick you’ve had your eye on asked you to go on a hike with her?  You gonna tell her you would, but you’re too sore from heavy squats?

What if you have kids?  I can imagine my little girl asking me to do something with her, but having to say, “Sorry kiddo – daddy would, but he’s seriously overtrained right now.”

Fucking seriously?

I guess I was too young to know any better back when I thought like this, but damn if I ever would think this way now!

That’s the kinda conversation James and I were having.  He’s a dad, too.  Plus he works nights.  And he and his girlfriend like to go do cool shit out in nature.  (They still live in Central Oregon where I grew up – stuff like biking, running nature trails, snow shoeing, etc is all common and fun activity for them.)

Yeah, he still wants to be big and strong and look good and all that.  But what good does any of it do if he’s too tired to work all night or go out snow shoeing to take advantage of the latest Oregon snowstorm?

NONE.

And that’s my point – when you’re doing your workouts, you want to maximize your performance in the gym.  That’s no question.  There’s no point being in there if you’re just gonna pussyfoot around and not ever get any better.

But if your whole point in life is to get better at being in the gym, no matter how it affects the rest of your life, then you need some perspective.

As James put in his last email – “I quit overthinking shit, just find a good weight, lift that shit w/power and enjoy life.”

Fucking A.

If you want a workout that’s going to seriously augment your own life, I highly recommend:

==>MMA Blast 2

==>WCC 2 – FTW

==>Body Armor

Have a kickass weekend.

Train Hard, Rest Hard, Play Hard-
Matt “Wiggy” Wiggins

LOL – poor Andy.

On Tuesday, I went up to Thomasville, NC to visit my buddy Andy Hepler of Hepler Strength & Conditioning (http://www.heplerstrength.com, http://davidsoncountypersonaltrainer.com).  We hung out for the day talking training, business, and a variety of other things.

At one point in the day, we ended up at a gym/sports performance facility owned by a buddy of his.  When we first got there, the Crossfit coach (not Andy’s buddy) was there, and we were introduced.  He kinda tried to give me the typical Crossfit spiel.  I countered with a simple argument – “Crossfit has a complete and total lack of programming”.

Things just went downhill from there.  LOL.  I think the guy was a tad butt-hurt by the time I was done talking to him.  Oh well.

Soon after, Andy’s buddy showed up and we all shot the shit for a little bit.  This was my first time meeting him and he was cool as hell.  He’s a former collegiate linebacker and sorta like most of us – what I call a ‘career meathead’.

Andy’s buddy also owns another business that buys and sells training equipment (almost anything you can think of) wholesale.  We went over to his warehouse just to look around…I felt like a kid in a candy store.

While looking around, I came across a Football Bar.

Now, if you don’t know what a Football Bar is, it’s a a bar that has several sets of handles.  The handles aren’t perpendicular to the bar itself, neither are they parallel to each other.  Rather, they’re at an angle.  Football Bars are great because they allow you to put your hands at a position that is easy on the wrists and the shoulders.

(There’s a pic of a Football Bar right there.^^)

I’d never seen a Football Bar in person, so you *know* I had to try it out.  I slapped a 45 on each side and banged out a few Clean & Presses.  Then a few Rows.  Then a few Cleans.  Then a few more Cleans & Presses.

As Joey Styles might say….Oh.  My.  GAAWWWWDDDD!!!!!

I was freakin’ hooked on this bar.

I loved just how it changed the movement pattern for Cleans – put a lot more upper back into it, and allows you to snap your hips with a lot more force.  It really takes technique out of the movement.  Presses were AWESOME.  The positioning of the handles puts your wrists at ease, and even better, it forces your elbows to be pointed in front of you throughout the entire Range of Motion – which is *much* more healthy for the shoulder than having them pointed at your sides while pressing.

I could go on for a while – suffice it to say, I really liked this bar.

A few hours later, Andy and I had left, gotten lunch, and were on our way to pick up his daughter from school.  We were talking marketing, and how to target specific markets, how to attract customers, whether hyped-up sales copy was ‘cool’, and other such topics of badassery.

At one point, I made the simple comment that “You know, I’m just a simple guy…”

Andy immediately retorts – fairly loudly, I might add – “I know you are – I had to listen to you talk about that damn Football Bar for 45 FUCKING MINUTES!!!”

Luckily for me, Andy is patient and never gave me the proper STFU I probably needed.  LOL.

LMAO – what can I say?  I was really impressed with the Football Bar.  In fact, I told Andy I could probably develop any program for any goal and never need more than a Football Bar, a Trap Bar, plates, a station for doing chins and dips, and a T-Handle you could load to do swings with about 10 square feet of space.  Wanna get fancy?  Add some adjustable DB handles and weight plates and maybe an adjustable bench.  Wanna really get sophisticated?  Add a Prowler.

Tell me – is there anything you couldn’t do with just that stuff?  Nope.

In fact, speaking personally, I’ve probably done 99.9% of my own personal workouts with nothing more than adjustable DBs, a medicine ball, a pair of KBs, bodyweight calisthenics, roardwork, and hill sprints for nearly 3 years.

What’s my point?

My point is this – too many people in the fitness industry are trying to over-complicate things and make them out to be more than they really are.  You don’t have to be unnecessarily complicated.  All you need to do are use basic principles and work your ass off.

Yeah…doesn’t sound real sexy, does it?  Too bad – because that’s what works.

Take my own programs – do they work because of some sort of crazy formulas or complicated algorithms or insanely tweaked exercise progression?  No way.  They work because they apply basic principles in a certain way to achieve certain results.

For example, take the Championship Edition 2.0 MMA Workout.  That takes principles of building strength and aerobic capacity, then concentrates on converting that strength to power, then adds in anaerobic conditioning, then uses a smart blend of the two (power and anaerobic conditioning) to simulate the conditioning needs of a professional MMA fight.  Nothing overly complicated or ultra-complex exercises.  Hell, you don’t even need fancy equipment – you can do the whole thing in your high school weight room.

But it works, because it’s simple.

(You can see more about the Champ Edition 2.0 MMA Workout here.)

Take Working Class Cardio.  Many of y’all know the drill here – have great cardio without ever doing cardio.  Utilize compound movements with explosive athletic exercises using relatively heavy weight, with moderate to high volume.  Circuit the exercises together to give localized areas of your body rest, while the heart and lungs work like mofos the entire time.

Use DBs, a medicine ball, and bodyweight calisthenics only to make the workouts easy to perform in any location you want, as well as do many of the movements one limb at a time, which makes you do more work overall (making your heart and lungs work more) while giving your lower body more work and conditioning.

Again – simple concepts applied with a lot of intensity.

(You can see more about Working Class Cardio here.)

Or maybe think about Body Armor.  The key to Body Armor is one simple set and rep scheme used with 4 main compound movements.  You work at a weight heavy enough to develop strength, but not so heavy you can’t move fast.  You move fast enough to develop power, but it’s not so light you won’t get stronger.  And you have just enough volume to trigger muscle building, but not so much you can’t concentrate on strength or power.  Upper body assistance is centered around strength work and getting bigger.  Lower body assistance is centered around power and conditioning.

(You can see more about Body Armor here.)

Is there anything here that’s overly complicated?

These programs all work because they’re simple.  I *routinely* get emails from people telling me that they are surprised there’s not more ‘to’ some of my programs, but when they actually do them, they can’t believe how effective they are.  They love feeling like they’ve worked their ass off, but not to the point of injury or burnout.  They love feeling like they’re hitting a new PR each time they train.

And this is all because the workouts are…well…simple.

Not easy…simple.

And that’s exactly why they’re so damn effective.

Is your training effective?  If not, maybe you should simplify.

Have a kickass weekend.

Train Hard, Rest Hard, Play Hard-
Matt “Wiggy” Wiggins
Muscle Building Workouts | Cardio Workout | MMA Workout | MMA Workouts

Have you ever heard that old saying about not being able to see the forest for the trees?  (Or is it the trees for the forest?  Either way…)

Sure you have.  We all have.  But have you actually experienced it?

I have.  And when you do…if you’re smart…it changes your life.  My first one did mine.  And I’ve actually had it happen a time or two since then.

I call it my “WTF Catharsis”.

Dictionary.com defines catharsis as “the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions”.  Or in other words, it’s when you finally just let shit go.  Personally, I’ve always found it to happen most often when I’ve come to a realization of some sort.  You know – say you’re stuck trying to find the solution to a problem, and when you’re engaged in some other type of activity, a solution just ‘hits’ you, and when it does, all the pent-up frustration just goes totally away?

Or it could be the other way around – you could be otherwise engaged, and as a result, lose all the pent-up frustration, totally clearing your mind, thoughts, and emotions.  And when you do, the solution becomes readily apparent.

That’s how I see a catharsis.

And…well…we all know what WTF means.  ;-)

My own WTF Catharsis happened back in April of this year.  I was actually on a mini-break – the kids and I had hopped down to the Myrtle Beach area for the weekend.  (If you know me, you know this is literally my most favorite place in the world.)

It was a Saturday night…pretty late.  The place we were staying (the same place we almost always stay) is right on the beach.  I was sitting on the balcony, sipping on a beer.  The kids were inside doing something – I don’t remember what.  I had my favorite Myrtle Beach classic rock radio station playing in the background.  As I sit there, I traded texts with a few friends of mine.  Nothing overly important.

I actually got to talking business with one friend of mine, and we were just tossing a couple ideas back and forth.  As we did, we started a sort of stream of consciousness that led me to a certain idea that I thought I could implement into my business.  There was a part of this strategy that was dependent on some marketing info I had, so I came in off the balcony and hopped on my laptop to go through some of my courses and information.

As I did, one thing led to another to another to another to another.  I looked up various courses I had, ebooks I’d downloaded, notes I’d taken, then emails I’d traded with various people.

And then I came upon an email I’d actually written myself…some 4 months earlier.  And I was shocked at what I saw.

As I sat there and read that email, I read where I had basically outlined the same exact idea I was having then…only I’d done it 4 months earlier.  And when I say ‘the same’, I mean down to a ‘T’.

But here was the crazy thing – I didn’t remember having this idea before!  How could I have had this same line of thinking months beforehand, and not remember it?

But more importantly….WHY HAD I NOT DONE ANYTHING ABOUT IT??

I sat there in a sort of stunned daze…totally baffled.  The whole thing was totally surreal.  I mean, this coulda been a scene out of a science-fiction movie or something.  Here I am, having what I think is an original, cool, and kickass idea…only to find out I myself had already been down that thought path months before.

Weird.

I grabbed my beer and went back out to sit on the balcony.  Very somber.  Very quiet.  I was just kinda trying to understand what had happened.

As I thought back, I remembered writing that email.  I remembered all that was going on in my life at the time.  I even remember what led me to come to those conclusions.  (The same ones I was coming to now.)  The thing I couldn’t figure out, was why it seemed so new now and why I still hadn’t acted on those conclusions yet.

I started to think about everything that was going on in my life since then – business, training, the kids…lots of stuff.  It all played in my mind like a sort of montage of the past few months.

Then…it hit me.

The reason why I hadn’t done anything about these exact same conclusions yet…was I just simply let other things get in the way.  I never got off my ass and made it happen.  I never decided, “Hey – dammit – this is getting done.  I don’t give a shit what else is going on, this take priority.”

I had let myself get distracted with, what was in hindsight, a lot of small, unimportant, petty bullshit.  In this one area, I had failed to keep my eye on the prize.

And when I looked at what it was I had let myself get distracted with…what I had let myself focus on instead of something I should have been focusing on…all I could say to myself was, “WTF WIGGY!?!”

Hence, the “WTF Catharsis”.

Lemme ask you this – are you:

• as strong as you wanna be?
• as muscular as you should be?
• dropped the bodyfat you should have?
• dedicated as you should be?
• working as hard as you should?
• doing the cardio you know you need to do?
• implementing prehab and rehab to be healthy like you should be?

(This list could go on for a while…)

If the answer to any of them is ‘no’…then maybe it’s time for your own ‘WTF Catharsis’.  Maybe it’s time for you to take a hard look in the mirror, and admit to yourself you’re not where you want to be…where you know you should be.

And then maybe you need to admit to yourself what you’re letting yourself get distracted by…and is it really that important?  (HINT – the answer is ‘probably not’.)  If you’re anything other than the physical badass you know you can be…maybe it’s time you took a step back, and figured out why.

Then when you’re done with that, maybe it’s time you had yourself a ‘WTF Catharsis’ in every area of your life…

Train Hard, Rest Hard, Play Hard-
Matt “Wiggy” Wiggins
Muscle Building Workouts | Cardio Workout | MMA Workout | MMA Workouts

Ok, so it’s been a little while since I’ve done a blog post…actually just came back from a kickass week-long family vacation to the beach at the Outer Banks.

We didn’t do much – just kinda hung around and unwound.  The kids were in the pool all the time.  My boy and I went cruising once.  Oh, and we did go rent Jet Skis.  Holy cow, that’s more fun any one person should be allowed to have.

But there was one thing that I *did* make a conscious effort to do while I was there:

Keep getting workouts in.

See, I knew we were gonna be there for a week, and I knew we were gonna be having some good, big family meals, going out to eat, and that kinda thing.  While I wanted to have fun, I also didn’t wanna totally drop out off the earth as far as workouts go, nor did I wanna spend a week going backwards.

The question was how was I going to get my workouts in, and what was I going to do?

I knew I could get some swimming in since I was gonna be in the pool so much with the kids.  But since I was gonna be in the pool so much with the kids, I knew I wasn’t gonna be doing a whole lot of actual swimming.  (However, ‘Extreme Marco Polo’ was a helluva workout.  It’s kinda like Marco Polo meets Dodge Ball.  BEST.  GAME.  EVER!)

I knew the area we were staying in had a little gym at the clubhouse (where all the tennis courts and such were), but many times those things aren’t that great, so I didn’t wanna rely on that.  (Good thing, the weight room kinda left something to be desired…it did have a C2 rower though.  Love those things.)

So, I just planned ahead and brought my kettlebells.  And since I wasn’t sure exactly how many workouts I was gonna do, I just decided to pick a program that if I only did a few workouts from it, it’d still work well.

The “4-Week Minimalistic Blast” was the perfect fit.

We stayed at a pretty big house – 3 stories.  In the very front, there was a sort of concrete-tiled slab under the porch that led up to the main entrance.

PERFECT for my workouts.

On Monday, I did Day 1 of the Minimalistic Blast.  I went and used the C2 rower on Tuesday, took Wednesday off, then hit Days 2 and 3 on Thursday and Friday.

The awesome thing about this workout was literally, all I needed was a couple kettlebells.  (For those of you that didn’t know, the “4-Week Minimalistic Blast” has 4 different templates – you can do workouts using:

• Barbells
• Dumbbells
• Kettlebells
• Sandbags

This was perfect for me.  I didn’t have to worry about not having a place to train.  I didn’t have skip my workouts.  And it was super-easy to just toss a couple KBs in the back of the vehicle and go on.

(Of course, some of the fam did think I was a little crazy – “Dude, you’re working out?  We’re on VACATION!”)

But that’s what’s so awesome about the “4-Week Minimalistic Blast”.  You can literally do it almost anywhere, using almost anything.  Each workout is only 3 exercises, and is a total, full-body workout.  You’re getting strength work *AND* intense conditioning, not to mention you’re rotating it all each workout (what you did for strength work before, you’re doing for conditioning now, and vice versa).

If you’re super-hardcore, you can add a simple – but not easy – fourth exercise to the mix as your ‘finisher’.  I did this…and it smoked me.

My workouts were short (none of them took total over 45 mins if I remember correctly), and I did them in the morning before it got too hot out.  That way, I had my work done for the day and I could concentrate the rest of the day on having fun.

But the important part was that I still found a way to get the workouts in and still keep getting better – even when I was focusing on having fun.

Listen – the “4-Week Minimalistic Blast” just let me get massively kick-ass workouts in while I was on VACATION at the beach.  And with the four different templates, you can do those workouts pretty much anywhere you want.  Each is only 3 exercises (4 if you do the ‘finisher’).  And unlike other programs that are just ‘thrown together’ to make them ‘really hard’, these workouts have a logical order and progression to them.  It’s not haphazard by any means.

So that’s why I chose to do them while out, and will finish out the 4-weeks on the program.

My buddy Matt Bonafede (I’ve talked about him and his brother Aaron before) sent me an email not long ago after he and his brother Aaron had finally dove into the “4-Week Minimalistic Blast”:

“So Aaron and I just finished the first week of the Minimalistic Blast, that is one hard workout. The conditioning section has to be one of the worst things we have done in a long while. We both used 115 and it is pretty much non stop for the whole 20 min. Gotta love testing yourself.”

Since I had such an awesome time with the workouts while on vacation, I have decided to put the “4-Week Minimalistic Blast” back on sale for this week, and this week only.  You can get it now, but only until Friday night at midnight.  After that…well…bye bye for a while.

Remember, you get the 4 different templates names above, printable workout logs, a video FAQ, and other cool stuff as well.  You can even mix and match the programs, there are additional extra days you can add in that I show you how to use…I mean, this is really one kickass set of workouts.

You really should go get yours while you can.

=>CLICK HERE NOW to get the “4-Week Minimalistic Blast”

Train Hard, Rest Hard, Play Hard-
Matt “Wiggy” Wiggins
Muscle Building Workouts | Cardio Workout | MMA Workout | MMA Workouts

It may sound cliche, but it’s amazing what you hear when you stop to listen.

Let me explain.

A few weeks ago, after an entirely too long hiatus, I re-introduced night runs back into my workouts.  I’ve always loved night runs – be it roadwork (which is what has comprised most of my night runs over the years) or hill sprints.  I’ve caught a lot of crap about it and how ‘dangerous’ it is running at night.  I’ve had buddies, family, ex-girlfriends (they were the worst) all tell me how crazy I am for running at night.

Personally, I totally dig it.  In fact, I think it’s much safer than running during the day.  I like music when I run (more on that in a minute), so if I run during the day, I have to be on a constant lookout for cars and such.  Your head has to be on a swivel at all times.

At night, though, all you have to do is watch out for headlights.  You see them way up ahead and you see them coming behind you.  When you see them, you GTFO the way.  The car passes, and there you go.  And if you run in low-traffic neighborhoods or areas like I do, there isn’t that much to deal with.  I can plug into my .mp3 player and get lost in my running.

In fact, I think I’ve put more miles on Creed’s ‘Torn’ than I did the last pair of front tires I put on my Mustang…lol.

Oh, my precious .mp3 player.  If you know me, you know how big of a part of my life music is.  I listen to anything and everything, and music is playing at almost all times in my vicinity.  You could tell me that I could never watch TV again, and it might suck, but would be no big deal.  Tell me I couldn’t ever listen to music again, and my world would crash.

So you can imagine the heartache and pain I felt when my .mp3 player died 3 days ago.  Dead.  Done.  Not Working.  Kaput.  Gone and never to return.

It was tough – I’ve had that thing for going on 5-6 years.  It’s been to Iraq with me several times, on several road trips, the motivation behind countless workouts and more.  We had a good run together.

(For those that are in the local North Carolina area, I will be holding a small memorial service this weekend as I bury my beloved .mp3 in the backyard.)

Couple that with my external hard-drive dying 2 weeks ago, and I have effectively lost almost all my music.  I have not been a pleasant man to deal with lately.  Luckily for me, there is yahoo radio, youtube, and my favorite classic rock station out of Myrtle Beach streams online.

But back to night runs…

Some of you that are long-time readers and friends of mine will remember that a number of years ago, I wrote an article for MMA Weekly called “Poor Guys Run”.  The article wasn’t about wealth, social status, how much money you had in your pocket, or what equipment you had available to you.  Rather, it was about an attitude – a frame of mind.

If you’ve never read the original “Poor Guys Run”, you can read it by CLICKING HERE.

Little did I know that same frame of mind would come back as a sort of aura of hard work tonight.

I set out for tonight’s night run, given the recent demise of my .mp3 player and lack of music, in silence.  As I my feet pounded the pavement, all there was to really hear was my own heavy breathing, the sounds of cars up and down a near highway, birds squawking their night-time noises in the trees, and the neighborhood dogs barking.

(Evidently, they don’t like it when Wiggy runs at night, either.  ;-))

As I run through my neighborhood, I make it around the first gentle sloping curve – just a few houses down from mine.  There are 5 kids (3 boys, 2 girls) in the driveway.  They all look to be in their early 20s as I trot on by.  They’re piling into a convertible – I didn’t pay attention to what it was.  Something old – like a late ’80s or early ’90s Chrysler LeBaron or something.

Obviously, tonight is ‘party night’.

I truck on past, not paying them much attention.  As I do, they all get kinda quiet.  Just as I pass them, they resume their laughing and joking.  As I trot out of earshot, I hear one of the guys say “Why is that asshole running?  Doesn’t he know it’s dollar night at…” and mentions a local bar.

I shrug it off and keep on going.

About a half a mile or so later, I hit an intersection and hang a left.  As I do, I hear and old lady on her front porch.  I make a quick glance off to the left as I didn’t know anybody was there – it was dark under the cover of no real streetlights in the area, nor porch-lights on.  All I see is the glowing ember out of the corner of my eye as she takes a drag on her cigarette.

“Doesn’t he know it’s too HOT out here tonight to be doing that running mess?”

I hear somebody with her, full of just as much attitude – “MMMMM HMMMM!”

When did this turn into “Talk shit about Wiggy” night?  No matter – I keep running.

After about another 1.5 miles or so, I’m getting somewhat close to my house.  Our neighborhood is really just a giant loop that stretches roughly 2.2 miles or so.  Add in several off-shooting cul de sacs, crossroads, and re-tracing the way you came, and you have a pretty fair amount of running you can do.

I’m approaching an intersection that’s roughly a quarter mile from my house – a corner with a stop sign and a big streetlight.  And in the distance, what do I see?  It’s the kids in their convertible, stalled in the middle of the road.  Evidently, that LeBaron had other ideas about going out tonight.

It being fairly quiet, and them being fairly loud and obnoxious, I can hear them all arguing from quite a distance off.  The girls are pissed because the car has gone out on them and ruined their evening, saying something about “you’d better get this car going” or something like that.

As I get closer, I can see that the 3 guys (they probably weigh an average of 140 lbs each) are trying to push the car out of the intersection, and given that the direction they’re going is slightly uphill, they’re having no luck.  I actually start to laugh to myself as I run up behind them, seeing these three guys having trouble pushing this car out of the road, their girlfriends (or whatever they were) watching them and talking shit the whole time.

Now, I should have just run past them, but I’ve had car trouble and been lucky enough to had people to stop to help me, so I figure it was my turn to ‘give back’.

As I run up behind them, the three dudes all turn to look at me (one is at the driver’s door, manning the steering wheel, the other two behind the car), only to look away as I run up to the car as they push…the car not moving.

I put both hands on the trunk, dig in with both feet, and start pushing.  The car not only starts moving, but starts going so quickly toward the side of the road that the guy at the steering wheel had to jump in and hit the brakes so the car wouldn’t go down into a ditch.

As he does, everybody is quiet (especially the girls) and sort of looks stunned.

I peel away, and get back to my run.  As I do, I turn, trotting backward, and yell to them:

“THAT IS WHY I RUN!!”

Have a kickass weekend.

Train Hard, Rest Hard, Play Hard-
Matt “Wiggy” Wiggins
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