“In heavy lifting, we have a thing we call Push to Failure.”
“How it works is simple.”
“You progressively load the bar with more and more weight, pushing rep after rep until you can no longer lift the bar off of your chest. Until the feeling of failure sets in as the metal presses down on your lungs and you beg to be able to breathe!”
“Most people in this situation have a spotter, someone to help them carry the load, to remove the weight and keep them safe.”
“But what if you don’t?”
“For those who try and push through this ordeal alone they will quickly realize that they are simply too weak to move the bar.”
“The weight will crush down upon their ribs, the air pushed from their lungs, and the life draining from their eyes as they kick their legs fruitlessly to try and push through. But the sad reality is that they were doomed as soon as they lifted the bar.”
“And as each second passes, their failure mounts, and they slowly slip away.”
“A depressing end to many an ambitious man who believed he could bite off more than he could chew.”
“Harold, I would call you quite ambitious. You’ve climbed out of the depths of Deathrow, went out of your way to defy Zeus, and found yourself broken in two upon his lapdog’s concrete cross. With every day that passes you seem to try to take on more and more, adding plates to your bar at an astonishing rate!”
“So much weight in fact that you finally buckled beneath it.”
“In your quest to push yourself further, to bear the weight of your sins, you abandoned any and all help along the way.”
“George and Zeus have turned on you.”
“Cade has abandoned you.”
“And now you lay on this bench staring down the plates on either side while squirming like your life depends on it.”
“Alas, it is too late, my friend.”
“As soon as you lifted it from the rack your fate was sealed. Now no one is around to help you and you still believe you can fight for emancipation from certain doom.”
“You made the grave mistake of trying to impede Klaus and our family.”
“Now we must make sure that you never leave the bench.”
“For every last one of us is another plate placed in your hands. With every passing rep as you try and push through us I can see your body failing. You’ve been broken before, you’ve defied the odds, and yet you’re doomed to death by your hubris.”
“We are going to crush you beneath us, Harold. Be it the first plate, be it the last plate, you will not survive this fight.”
“And with your last breath you shall know you were too weak to lift the bar.”
“Too weak to succeed.”
“Too weak to defy the odds.”
“I say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
“But what doesn’t make you stronger just might kill you.”