Jonas Kaufmann is invited to my funeral.

And so is Rene Pape.  The two of them can just stand there singing Requiem aeternum and Kyrie eleison.  Of course, my family being what we are, they will be in grave danger of having mourners attempt to climb them like trees and siring a dozen new clones for the Clone Army by the end of the service, but circle of life and all that.

This week I set a few PRs and failed at one.  I really wanted that 225 deadlift, but as I was trying to break it off the ground something went POP in my sternum, so I decided that waiting was the better part of valor.  It hurt for a solid few minutes and is still uncomfortable, but there's not enough pain to make me want to go to the ER.  There was enough pain to make me cut my workout short, which sucks, but not as much as rehabbing sucks.  I'm hoping I'll feel better tomorrow.

Earlier this week, though, I set PRs on rack pulls (335), squats (145), walkouts (185), and good mornings (65 for sets of 10).  That was good, though I think I need to supplement the rack pulls for halting deadlifts since my lockouts haven't been giving me issues lately.  Or I could just, you know, do more deadlift volume.  The workouts with the PRs made me sore in a very strange way, like I'd charbroiled my entire nervous system root and branch.  Well, I'll get used to it.

In other news, my birthday is tomorrow and I bought myself a bunch of Jonas Kaufmann stuff from the Met.  Verdi's Requiem, which I'm listening to now, is amazing, and I say that as someone who thinks that Verdi (as someone once said of Wagner) has sublime moments and very tedious half-hours.  This is the La Scala version, directed by Barenboim and featuring Kaufmann, Queen Anja Harteros, Elina Garanca Who Is Just Plain Better Than You, and the magnificent Rene Pape.  Listen to Jonas and Rene belting out Requiem Aeternum with that ominous kettledrum booming out behind them and tell me they aren't invited to your funeral too.

I always think the test of any mass is its Kyrie; if you can make hay out of four words, you will probably do pretty well with the rest of the text.  Verdi's Kyrie is sublime; the Times reports that Kaufmann's first entry is "like an exploding volcano," and they're completely right.  That's what happens when you put Jonas Kaufmann in front of a choir.  His voice is the auditory equivalent of having the mills of God land on your head from a great height, grinding exceeding small but with the speed of a crazed buzz-saw - you're left stunned and unsure quite what happened except that you are pretty sure you just witnessed the Divine.

Queen Anja Harteros is flawless as usual, floating the most extensive phrases with such grace that you honestly wonder if she ever needs to breathe.  Elina Garanca hits low notes I wasn't even aware she was capable of; I'm not necessarily convinced of her emotional investment in the text, which is a handicap in this most operatic of Masses, but who cares when the sound is so gorgeous?  Rene Pape, who was the one redeeming feature of the execrable Met Faust my daughter and I saw a couple of seasons ago, here occasionally manages the superhuman feat of stealing the show from Jonas Kaufmann with his rich, glorious bass.  This is just really a collection of astonishing artists at the peak of their talents, tossing melodic themes back and forth like a team of Olympic athletes passing the ball in the end zone, and I bet there is no one whose life won't be materially better for having heard it.

Anyway, my sternum still hurts a little.  Hopefully it will be okay by tomorrow morning, but I think I'm going to wait until my next deload week to try 225 again anyway.

In which worlds collide, a little.

In the last couple of weeks, I have:

- Set a new PR on the deadlift, at 205 pounds;
- Set a new PR on the rack pull, at 275 pounds, though my grip did not love that weight;
- Pulled a muscle in my back trying to pull 200 pounds for reps after coughing and hacking with allergies all day; and
- Bought two new opera DVDs, with mixed results.

First up on the opera front was the 2013 Aix-en-Provence production of Elektra.  I spent about 50% of the time admiring the production, which was awesome, and 50% of the time coveting Evelyn Herlitzius' upper-arm definition, which was at least as awesome if not more so.  Seriously, the woman is ripped.  And also one of the best Elektras I've ever seen.  It does not seem fair that one woman should have both those advantages.

The production itself was minimalism at its best; a lot of people have criticized the set as "boring", but honestly, it's Elektra - how much distraction from the plot do you really need?  Minimalism works best for this opera, in my opinion, assuming you have excellent singers; and this one does.  Herlitzius is as good an actress as she is a singer, which is saying a great deal about the excellence of both; Waltraud Meier is her usual glorious self;  Adrianne Pieczonka as Chrysothemis is in fine voice and brings an affecting degree of humanism to an often thankless role, and Mikhail Petrenko as Orest is so compelling that it's easy to love him as much as Elektra loves the idea of him, as soon as he walks on the stage.  Buy this one if you haven't already; it's more than worth it.

Next up was the 2013 ROH production of Eugene Onegin, with Simon Keenlyside and Krassimira Stoyanova, in which dancers portrayed the young Onegin and Tatyana while the principals sang the vocal lines.  I think I would have been more fond of this production if the dancers had taken on the roles the whole time while Keenlyside and Stoyanova sang from the sidelines; instead, for a good chunk of the opera, we have to watch while the leading roles are sung by performers who are far, far, far and away too old for the parts - to the point of actual grotesquerie in the case of Stoynova, who is in her 50s and looks a decade older here thanks to a supremely unflattering costume and wig. I don't think I've ever seen a production more brutally unkind to its principal soprano, either intentionally or otherwise. Stoynova is a lovely woman with a beautiful voice, but in this production she bears an unfortunate resemblance to one of the leads in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

I have to admit, though, that the way the duality was performed was not entirely jarring.  Being two different stories, there are two different hearts to the opera.  The first is the Letter Scene, which is brilliant in its portrayal of the discrepancy between Tatyana's fantasies of Perfect Love and, well, any form of objective reality; the difference between the dancer's hope and (very young) optimism and the older Tatyana's regret are so resonant with anyone who's ever wished they could go back and reassure their younger selves, or advise them, or give them a good swift kick in the ass, or all of the above.

Then there's the Duel Scene, which, well done, breaks my heart every time.  The way the scene is done in this opera is devastating- Lensky and the young Onegin performing the duel, while the older Onegin drifts back and forth between them like an unquiet ghost, trying to comfort Lensky, trying to step between Lensky and his younger self, trying to change the past and knowing that he can't.  

Still and all, in my opinion the central relationships in Onegin are not Tatyana and Onegin but Tatyana and Reality on one hand, and Onegin and Lensky on the other; and I really have no complaints to make on either front.  Pavol Breslik is, as always, a treat for both the eyes and the ears; one of these days I will get hold of the Bayerische Staatsoper's Brokeback Onegin production with him and Keenlyside, and then I will never leave my apartment again.

Then there's this sort of strange polonaise where Onegin dances with all these girls, who promptly die after dancing with him - sometimes on top of the corpse of Lensky, who remains on the stage throughout the production, an inescapable reminder.  This is an odd and unnerving scene, but honestly, during my first viewing I mostly thought "You know, if I'd known that dancers were allowed to rub all over Simon Keenlyside, I'd have been a lot less bitter about the ten years of ballet lessons my mother made me take."

In short, though I would follow Simon Keenlyside and Pavol Breslik to the ends of the Earth, I thought the dancers who were supposed to represent Tatyana's and Onegin's younger selves were either underused or underfilmed, to the detriment of the production at least on a first viewing, though maybe not on subsequent ones.  I'm not sure I'd be interested in the production with lesser singers than Breslik and Keenlyside.  In the meantime, I was reduced to doing bicep curls and some light yoga, because my back hates me like Elektra hates Clytemnestra.

I am not very good at blogging.

So in the *coughmumble* months since I last updated, I have:

- Squatted 135 for a single; new squat goal is 145, which is around my current bodyweight

- Deadlifted 200 for a single; new goal is 225

- Moved up to my 35-pound kettlebell on S&S

- Worked on pull-ups and am now almost able to do a dead-hang chin-up, though working on them kills my arms in the "Danger, Will Robinson" way that seems to imply strained tendons

- Decided that it's high time I did a cut, since I have now been bulking for six months straight and am looking pretty, well, bulky.  And not in the good way.  I'm about 35% body fat, from pictures, and I'd like to cut that down to 25%.  I know I have muscles under there somewhere and I'd like to see them.

Anyway, that's two goals met.  Additional goals include being able to do dragonfly pose.  I'm not actually sure I'm built to do it, but we'll see.

Exercises I am going to have to break up with, part 1.

The lat pull-down.  There's nothing wrong with it per se, and I sort of hate to get rid of it, but it really aggravates my bad shoulder.  For purposes of building up my back, there are other exercises that do just as well that don't cause me as much pain (e.g., rows).

The barbell glute bridge.  Okay, first, I am not tall enough to put my shoulders up on a bench the way you're supposed to.  I'd have to sit on a booster seat.  Second, ow.  I can't imagine that even using the pussy pad would stop the bar from bruising my hipbones worse than anything I have ever done in the gym so far.  I need to strengthen my glutes to help ameliorate my epic hyperlordosis, but I'm thinking heavy kettlebell swings will be more useful and less damaging.

The OHP.  No, I just wish I could break up with the OHP.  It hurts my shoulder when I'm not careful with it, and also I suck at it and I hate doing things I suck at.  But it seems to be a pretty critical exercise, so I will channel the spirit of Pudgy Stockton, make sure to shrug at the top to minimize impingement, and keep putting heavy shit over my head.

My bench press is up to 75 for singles.  Heavy singles on the deadlift are at 185, and 115 on squats.  That puts me 25 pounds away from my goal for the bench press, 15 pounds for the deadlift, and 20 pounds for squats.  It's so annoying to be so close and still have to work your way up a few pounds at a time, but I tried 205 on the deadlift (stapled to the ground) and 135 on the squat (went down fine, but coming back up was not happening) and it's clear that the slow working-up is going to be how I get there.

Well, I've got time.  Probably.  And if I don't, I imagine the state of my deadlift will be the least of my concerns.

General health: okay but not great.  I've been completely exhausted lately - like, brain-fogging, swimming-through-sludge exhausted.  I think part of it is because my RA has been more active than I'd like.  To tell the truth, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to wean off methotrexate like I'd hoped.  I'm down to two pills and I'm really starting to feel it.  The last few days have been better, but I had a couple of days last week where I was hugely stiff and sore getting out of bed.  Oddly, but fortunately, my lifts don't seem to be suffering for it; but it's a little depressing anyway.

Things Kettlebells Have Taught Me, #1

When you're doing rep ladders, it is easy as balls to completely lose sight of how many reps you've done in total, and then you spend the next two or three days praying the Lord your soul to take so you don't have to try to get out of bed in the morning.

This was something I hadn't realized before because I haven't done ladders in anything else.  But man, if you want to trick yourself into ramping up volume to ridiculous extents, ladders are the way to go.  I mean, it's only five reps, right?  And then four, and that's totally not very many, right?

Right?

No, it's not.  But 90 reps sure as fuck is, and that is where you will find yourself before your body has even figured out that you're exercising.  Ouch.

Life lesson: fixing your shit hurts.

Not in the "I am about to snap something up and shouldn't continue this" way, but in the "Holy shit, I have clearly never used that muscle before in my life and now it hurts like Neo's eyes when he first left The Matrix" way.  My upper back is sorer than hell, I've offended something in my right lower back, and I may have to give in and slink back to my gym's spa for a sports massage to make it stop being pissed at me.

Last night was heavy deadlift day.  I was supposed to do 190 for a heavy single and couldn't get it off the floor.  I'm not too broken up over that, because I'd already moved almost 4,000 pounds of back-intensive kettlebell weight before I even hit the gym (because I have New!  Kettlebells!), and I was being super careful because of my right lower back, so I wasn't really in the head space required to pull a new PR.  I'll get it when deload week is over, that 190 pounds isn't going anywhere.  165 wasn't all that happy about coming up either, but I really worked the tips I got from Katie at Iron Sport on the last couple of reps and the difference was noticeable.

Today may be active recovery day with a walk on the park trails.  Or maybe I'll decide it's too cold and just go back to sleep.  Both of those options look pretty good right now.

May is Fix Your Shit Month

For purposes of fixing my shit, May actually started yesterday and will continue for the next six weeks.

Tonight I tried out the new squat form that Katie Feeley from Iron Sport Gym taught me, BLACK APOSTASY THOUGH IT SEEMED. It was sort of a trial by fire - heavy squat week, with a new PR on singles, when my quads were already killing me. Regardless, I think it's going to work out well. I hate to say it, but given my particular weaknesses, the Starting Strength squat was causing me to be in perpetual danger of falling on my face. This one feels better; I'll work with it for a couple of months and see how my progress goes.

 Another thing Katie did at the seminar was confirm all my self-diagnosed weaknesses. Not only that, she told me how to fix them. So for May I'm going to set aside my usual accessory programming and hit my weaknesses hard. My main programs will still be S&S and 5/3/1 as usual, but here are the three things I want to fix and how I'm going to work them:

1. Back strength. Rows and lat pull-downs.

2. Retaining tension. Paused squats and just really working tension in everything I do.

3.  Mobility. Ten-minute squat test and Agile 8. I also need to do yoga more often, but that's not so much a weakness correction as a lifestyle choice.

 Next week is deload week. Man, I'm looking forward to that.