It’s always important to have goals in life. Set your sights on a goal and never look back until you have achieved it. Goals are important and so are rewards. Sometimes, the rewards can be better than the satisfaction of completing your goal. Weightlifting has goals, for example. Someone might have a weightlifting goal designed around weight loss. They want to lose some number of pounds within a given time. Another person might like to lift a certain amount of weight in whatever exercise, the squat for example. Where rewards are concerned, I’ve always wanted to squat 405lbs. I’ve also wanted to dead lift 405lbs and bench press 315. A common factor in all of those lifts is the 45lb plates. For a lift of 315, that requires 3 45lb plates on each side of a weightlifting bar. For the lift of 405, that requires four 45lb plates on each side. Add those amounts to the weight of the bar itself, at 45lbs, and you get your target.
For a reward, once I had hit all three of those goals, I would like to get a very realistic looking tattoo of a 45lb plate somewhere on my back. Or, if the detail was great enough, I could put it on my left shoulder. Having that plate there on my shoulder to see every time I look in the mirror would be a constant reminder that I set my sights on a goal and I achieved it.
Those 45lb plates are made of iron. Henry Rollins once said “The Iron never lies to you” and “I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.” And he is right. What better way to show my respect to my friend than having him tattooed somewhere on my body?
The downside to getting a tattoo of a 45lb plate on my body is that I would need to make sure I kept up with my workouts. If I slacked off and became a slob or someone that looked like they have never set foot in a gym, it would be embarrassing for people to see that weight on my shoulder. They would see the weight, associate it with fitness and strength, and then notice that I myself was neither fit nor strong. It would be kind of like walking around wearing a black belt without knowing any karate or martial art to back it up. Or trying to train people how to lift weights and eat correctly while I’m talking to them and eating donuts and rubbing my pot belly. In that way, the tattoo of the 45lb plate could also serve as a motivational tool. Knowing that if I let myself slack off I would be embarrassed to show my tattoo, it could help me keep going on days that I felt like sleeping in and not going for a run or to the gym. We’ll see if I can reach those goals and have enough cash to get the tattoo.
