Van Dam Lift

Hola to all the amigos and amigas out there. Is amiga even what a chick is called? Is it a word? Who knew, who knows? It’ll work here in this Blog though for today, so don’t go nuts on me for not having the right format there. I took two years of Spanish in high school and barely remember a thing, as well as all of the other languages I took over the years (French, Italian, and Latin). Sad, but that’s how it goes out here in the mean streets.

I’ll begin today with something I’m weirdly obsessed about. For those who know me, you know I work regularly on my stretching everyday. One, just to stay flexible and it feels better. And second is mainly to improve my splits. I’ve always been able to stretch like crazy for some reason and I figured I’d keep working on that aspect. One thing that inspires me with that is a guy named Rob Van Dam. The wrestling fans definitely know who RVD is, but he’s a freak of nature when it comes to stretching and the like. He invented a move called the Van Dam Lift. What is that you ask? I’ll paste this description from a RVD site in the UK:

The Van Dam Lift originated back in Battle Creek, Michigan where a young Rob Van Dam started stretching his muscles to become more flexible. Rob was having a tough time performing a split, despite the stretching routine which he performed daily. He formed a concept to place two chairs from his kitchen a foot apart and, with no support on his butt, stretched his legs along the chairs. Eventually, Rob accomplished his goal of performing a split and proved that you don't have to be born flexible in order to do a split.

After showing off his new skill to his peers in the gym, Van Dam thought of a way to add on to his already amazing feat. RVD started to lift weights while in the split position along two benches. As his body continued to develop, Rob Van Dam started to lift more weight. Soon, the Van Dam Lift started appearing in both wrestling and karate magazines, and was showcased on ECW television. By 1998 the International All-Around Weightlifting Association recognized the Van Dam Lift as one of their organization's public weight lifting challenges. Thus far nobody in the world has been able to take Rob Van Dam to task and overcome his record for the Van Dam Lift of 166.5 POUNDS! Van Dam responds, "Any of you dumbbells want to give it a try?"

As you can see in the pic, your back is straight up and down and you’re doing a split between two chairs, or benches as he does above. I can get the split down easy, but what I’m working on now is getting my back entirely straight up and down. That’s the tough part for me at the moment, but I’ll get there eventually. The only difference is that I’m not trying it with weights. I just want to get the actual split part. Not too bad for a guy in Shinnston huh? I’m sure chicks can do it easier, but who knows.

Van Dam gives a real good story of how he came about to doing the lift, similar to the UK website post, but just in his own words. I’ll post that after this paragraph for the link. For those who don’t know Van Dam, you’d expect him to be a little dude like myself, but he’s a pretty good sized dude. He’s always been a workout freak, but goes about 5’10”/235 or so. That makes it even more impressive that he can stretch around like a gymnast.

RVD’s Website: http://robvandam.com

Van Dam Lift: http://robvandam.com/vandamlift.shtml



That took up more of the Blog than I thought it would, but oh well. It’s a topic that I like, so I’m going to vent about it. I’m now going to give a quick rundown of RAW from last night. This Diva Search deal they have going is a complete flop. What it is for those who don’t watch wrestling is WWE’s cheap way of trying to get reality TV fans converted over. They started out with ten girls who are vying for a slot in the WWE. Only one winner at the end as a chick gets voted off each week. VERY original huh? Doh! Don’t get me wrong as most of these girls look good, but I don’t want that on my wrestling show. Is it weird that I watch a wrestling show for wrestling? Imagine that one. If I wanted cheap porn, I’d find that on here instead of these girls who can’t act. Anyways, I’m just going to touch on the two main matches of the show and the others I won’t bother with. Edge took on Jericho in a mini-preview to Sunday’s match that features Edge against Jericho against Batista in a 3-Way for Edge’s Intercontinental Title. This was a pretty good match as both of these guys can go. Jericho continues to get held back a bit. Take him back to the main event. Jericho ends up winning by pinfall as he used the ropes for leverage with his feet, but the ref didn’t catch that. Afterwards, Batista runs down with roids oozing out of his body and thumps on Edge. Our main event featured Triple H and his boy Randy Orton butting heads with World Champion Chris Benoit and Eugene. Well, it was supposed to be Eugene, but he was told by his friend William Regal to stay at the hotel and not get involved with Triple H. Earlier in the day, HHH beat down Regal and sent a message to Eugene. This was a Handicap Match with Benoit there by himself. Flair jumps in and causes a disqualification. You can guess what happened next. Eugene comes to the area (shocker huh?) as Benoit is getting beat down by Evolution and makes the save. This ends the show and SummerSlam is on Sunday! I’ll run down those matches when it gets closer to the weekend, but I have more thangs to talk about in here, so I best strap my thinking cap on and get to it.

I wanted to write about my local money fantasy basketball league, but if I got started on that this far into the Blog (it’s already long, I realize that), I’d never stop. Pro basketball is my passion, so I’ll save that information for the next post. Also about that, I will talk about something new we hope to implement in our league this year that I’m very excited about.

Hey Ty, to answer your question in your comment in yesterday’s Blog, it must be the #basketball effect with the girls commenting. The running joke in IRC over the years is if you really want them, just use your name such as, “I’m TyLaw from #basketball” and you’ll have to beat them down with a stick so many will come out of the woodwork. Use that one lightly though, hah. Only the #basketball guys might’ve got that joke, but not sure. It’s a classic in there over the years though.

I’ll cut you guys a break today and begin to wrap this up. I got three more CDs added to the collection tonight. Before you bum rush me and start a riot to find out what they are, I can just tell you. Hold off on the head bussin for another day.



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