There’s nothing wrong with that gleaming, high-tech exercise machine you got for Christmas.
Yeah, that one. The one that’s been sitting in the corner of your garage since two days after Dec. 25.
Well, you did use it once for about 10 minutes around mid-February (your New Year’s resolution-workout, it was), but “Game of Thrones” was coming on and you forgot to set the DVR.
The machine can’t help you yield physical dividends if you don’t actually use it.
Besides, you didn’t want to get “toned” or “fit,” anyway.
You wanted to get strong.
As in, “My God, I can’t believe you lifted that,” strong.
And sometimes, the only way to get strong is by getting primal, first.
Heavy lifting, with Mel
That’s what Rodney Chappell was doing Sunday afternoon at Viking Performance, a strength and conditioning center on Green Bag Road.
It was the second day of the “Viking Summer Raid Weekend 2019,” a series of strongman — and, strongwomen — heavy lifting events right out of the of Old Norse and Celtic training manuals.
Chappell had just finishing muscling a 160-pound, oblong-shaped box over his head in competition.
“You can see there’s no handles or anything,” Chappell said.
“It’s heavy, and it’s awkward on top of that. You just have to hold on. And then you have to hold on after you hold on.”
Chappell had to muscle the Continental Divide to get here.
He and his wife, Catherine, who also competed, hail from Deadwood, S.D., where she’s a biochemist and he works as a retail manager. They discovered strongman training after they joined a gym.
“This is our second year out here,” Catherine Chappell said. “We’re enjoying it.”
“Once you commit to it, that’s it,” her husband said.
With his shaved head, mutton chop sideburns, genuine kilt and perpetual smile, the 30-year-old Rodney Chappell looks like he could have played the role of Mel Gibson’s happy-go-lucky college roommate — had “Braveheart” originally been conceived as Scottish warrior-buddy movie.
Worth the weight
Jerry “Jay” Handley likes that the competition draws a cast of people from all walks, locales and body types to Morgantown.
He’s the owner of Viking Performance, and powered through a career that included a stint as a strength and conditioning coach at WVU before going into business for himself.
Handley is also an enthusiast of all things Viking (Norse, not Minnesota), which explains the Thor-looking imagery that abounds in his place.
It’s not all posturing or unschooled lifting, though, he’s quick to add.
“There’s training and discipline,” he said.
Science, too. And holistic health. Muscles work together. Synapses fire. Metabolism goes up, cholesterol goes down.
“Your entire nervous system gets a workout,” he said.
Presley Gibson isn’t in it for bulk. She’s in it for bone density, and other health benefits.
“You aren’t just straining and lifting heavy things,” said Gibson, 24, a paramedic from Waldorf, Md., making her first trip to Morgantown for the competition.
“When we’re training, were eating right and doing everything we’re supposed to do to stay healthy,” she said. “And we’re training all the time.”
She likes that her brain is a getting a workout, too.
“It’s about problem-solving,” she said.
“You got this incredibly heavy object that you just have your arms around. If you drop it, you lose. So it’s like, ‘What am I gonna do with it?’ That challenge is what’s fun for me.”
Lighter than air
And the old factory-floor edict, “Lift with your legs,” most definitely applies to strongman competitions with their heavy, unwieldy challenges, says Travis Jewett, an Iowa chiropractor who intently studies the sport.
The best way to see that in action, he wrote last year, is by watching your toddler at home trying to pick up, say, a large teddy bear or toy box.
Your kid will intuitively bend his knees and bring the object to a “deadlift” position, the chiropractor chronicled.
The Chappells, meanwhile, lightened their challenge in getting to Morgantown from their home in South Dakota this time.
They drove last year. Thirty hours. This year, they bought airplane tickets.
“That drive,” Rodney Chappell said, shaking his head. “Too much heavy lifting. Even for us.”
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