Other Coaches
Lindsay Kinard, USAW Advanced Sport Performance
Greg Smith, USAW Advanced Sport Performance
Tony Euculano, USAW Sport Performance
Mike began lifting weights at age 12, when he got a Sears DP Bench and concrete-filled weights for Christmas. Over the next several years, Mike found sports, and weight training, to be a great way to focus his energy and to improve not just his phsyical abilities, but as a means to focus his energy and desire. In 2006, while living in New Jersey, Mike began training lifters out of his garage gym. That gym evolved into today's 2400 sq ft facility in Stewartstown, PA about 45 minutes from Baltimore, MD. Mike himself is a decorated weightlifter and coach, having won the Bronze Medal at the 2003 American Open, the 2010 National Master's Championship, and many other local level meets. Further, Mike has competed in the Highland Games, Track and Field, and Strongman. In addition to earning his USAW Level 2 Coaching Certificate, Mike teaches the USAW Level 1 Weightlifting Class and his own personal seminars, is a USATF Certified Coach, and has coached several athletes to State Level honors, including a two-time NJ State Champion in the discus, a place winner at the prestigious Beast of the East Wrestling Tournament, several place winners at the Delaware State Wrestling Championships, and two Delaware All Stars in Women's Lacrosse. To date, Mike's lifters have qualified for every National Level Meet (Youth, Junior, University, Senior) and the Youth (then School Age) National Squad. Most importantly, Mike's lifters have gone on to have successful lives in which sport and fitness help to build their character and enrich their experiences.
"Ulysses"
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
--Alfred Lord Tennyson