Happy New Year 2023

 LA Fitness Scottsdale, AZ USA Late December 2:30pm

     It's the last bench press workout of 2022, always an exciting day and something I look forward to. It's many times been where I have hit a new one rep max, and the feeling leaving the gym with that is a timeless euphoria that never fades. But this time is different. I have 275lbs on the bar over my head. I have a great song playing, and my mind playing the year that just passed, and what a year it has been. I put my hands in the same exact spot on the bar I've been placing them for now more than 25 years. It goes up easily on the first, and pretty easy on the 2nd. A third? No. No need, and no purpose. 275 is by no means a new one rep max. In fact it's over 50lbs lighter than my best one rep max of 345 several years back. But I'm not sad, I still have the euphoria.... The gym high as Arnold calls it, and it's not because the 275. It's because I know there was a bigger purpose this year. In years passed I've done bulking, egg white loading, pretty much every supplement in the books, and a great deal of it worked a great deal to bring the bench press to over 300lbs easily, many, many times. But this season, it was of the utmost importance, not to lift heavy, and not to bulk. And it wasn't because of injury. It was because of the other thing I have wrote about many times here, the Human Flag.

Early Human Flag training

Port of Ushuaia, Argentina December 23rd 2:30pm

     The gym brought me here, I have no doubt in my mind about that. The gym changed my life when I started lifting with my Dad's old weight set in Brooklyn in 1997, and that same year on a cold winter's night, while walking down 3rd avenue in Bay Ridge Brooklyn I saw a place called Empire Fitness. The rest was history. The gym not only got me in shape, it brought me confidence, self-esteem, motivation, it brought me my career. After 9/11 I dropped out of college and left a career in a big advertising company. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. It was the friends, or really I should call them family of Empire Fitness that pushed me into becoming a firefighter. I would have never done it without them. Not a day goes by I'm not grateful for it.

     And then the Human Flag.... I don't know exactly where or how I learned about it, but I know I wanted to master it, which arguably I would say I never have. My record is maybe 10 seconds, while the world record is over 60. But it's not a failure, I still know I've achieved it, and it too has become a big part of my life. Somewhere along the way in my travels I started doing the flag for travel pics. Sometimes to maybe impress a girl, or a group, other times to mark the spot with something different than a normal travel photo. But somewhere along the way, I realized my Human Flag passport had grown. I had hung the flag in North and South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Then one fateful New Year's eve in front of the world famous Opera House in Sydney Australia. 2019. It was then I accomplished a big life goal to hang the flag on 6 of the 7 continents.... But I wasn't done.

     So here we are, the port of Ushuaia, I'm about to embark on a ship to Antarctica. The 7th continent. Can this be done? Can I hang the flag on all 7 continents? I mean, there's not really any poles down there unless we visit a science base? Maybe do it hanging off part of the ship in a safe area of course? Or maybe on the ice. The added challenge of weighted boots has been taken into account as I've been hanging the flag with my fire boots which should be around the same weight. So here goes nothing... From a cold winters night in front of Empire Fitness when I was a college drop out, broke and lost... To God willing, and everything else willing, I will hang the Human Flag on all 7 continents.

      One of my friends once asked me why I don't do an American Human flag on the 4th of July or similar.... I was happy to explain. The Human Flag, is just that, human. it doesn't represent a state or a nation, it represents something more powerful, the power of the human mind, the human body, and the human heart. That's more powerful, and more important than anything else. So... we set sail today. 2 days at sea, 8 or 9 days on the ice. And hopefully, with all the hope I have, a proper place to hang the flag on the 7th continent.

From "The End Of The World" Ushuaia, Argentina.... Happy New Year