Ben Smith

Amelia’s Dad! Strength and Conditioning Coach / MS Human Performance BS Exercise and Movement Science / NSCA-CSCS

[Ben Smith @coachbsmithcscs]

CLIENT APPRECIATION POST:

I am not one for long tweet threads but this story needs to be told. Over the past 6 months I’ve had the opportunity to train my client, Lewis. Lewis is 38, a married father, who wanted to make a change and hire a trainer to help him lose weight.

[Ben Smith @coachbsmithcscs]

@TeejDat Marshall Faulk. As a Rams fan in the late 90s, this guy was Football Jesus.

[Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives @dom_lucre]

🔥🚨DEVELOPING: This song titled “Mace Fell Out of a Windu” has been going viral and created a discussion among entertainment fans on how ‘good AI’ is starting to become accepted after Star Wars fans instantly started sharing the track.

[Ben Smith @coachbsmithcscs]

@HawkEmDownChris BenJarvis Green-Ellis (aka the Law Firm)

[Jon Gruden @BarstoolGruden]

We got an awesome box here from LINDENWOOD!!

Their head coach has one of the coolest backstories I have ever heard... stay tuned til the end to find out!

Thank you Coach Stugart and @LindenwoodFB for this, congrats on starting 1-0!!

[Tony Stark @tony__stark10]

You cannot even describe the turn this video takes. His best work

[Chris Beardsley @SandCResearch]

Heavy (3-5RM) strength training is just as effective as light (20-25RM) strength training when doing the same number of sets to failure and the same rests between sets, despite massive differences in volume load. The idea that volume load has anything to do with hypertrophy needs to be retired.

[Cleveland Browns @Browns]

we ought to be crazy.

[Ben Smith @coachbsmithcscs]

@ChuckFBass Terry, but I consider them in the same tier of receiver. Would be happy with either of them as my 2 if I stacked up RB early.

[Ben Smith @coachbsmithcscs]

@colincowherd Where Colin was WRONG! 😂

[Scott Hanson @ScottHanson]

See you in 7 Sundays.

[Scott Hanson @ScottHanson]

50 days from right now…

[Ben Smith @coachbsmithcscs]

GOD this guy rocked!!!

[Sean Malone @SMalone27]

Breaking: The original artist behind the iconic Trompe L’Oeil ‘world’s fair’ mural that wraps around the Edison building will be returning to St. Louis later this month to help restore the mural to its original glory. @kmoxnews

[Alex @ameier6775]

Went down a rabbit hole on this girl from STL. Genuinely might be the GOAT athlete to come out of this city.

Numbers are absurd. 3x state champ. 2x Gatorade National POY. Consensus #1 recruit. Skipping her senior year to go to college early.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In America, a warehouse store. A fully roasted chicken costs five dollars, the raw chicken beside it costs seven, and I stood between them like a man between two truths.

Golden. Hot. Seasoned. Spinning in glory under the lights, in a line of its brothers. Four dollars and ninety-nine cents.

I checked the raw birds. Seven dollars. Pale. Cold. You must do everything yourself.

This is not commerce. Commerce does not move backward. Somewhere in this building, mathematics lies defeated.

I asked the man at the counter. "How is the cooked bird cheaper than the raw bird?"

"Been five bucks forever. They keep it that way."

"But the store loses."

"Yep. On purpose."

On purpose. I held my receipt with both hands.

In my land, a lord who lowered the price of rice in a hard winter was remembered for generations. They built him a small shrine. This store does it every day, with chicken, and tells no one.

A woman behind me grew tired of my reverence. "It's just a chicken, sir."

It is not just a chicken. It is a wound the merchant takes on purpose, so that anyone, on any day, with five dollars, eats like a lord. The bird is the message. The price is the vow.

I will confess: I bought two. I did not need two. The second was not hunger. It was gratitude, and it was delicious.

Some prices are not prices. They are promises.

I return every week now. I take one bird. I bow toward the deli, briefly, so as not to alarm the staff. They have begun nodding back.

The vow holds. The bird turns. Five dollars.

Long may it spin.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A breakfast counter. The waitress recommended the biscuits and gravy, and when the plate arrived, I thought something had gone wrong in the kitchen.

I say this with shame. The dish looked like a construction site after rain. Pale mounds. Gray ladle-fall. Speckles I could not identify.

In my land, the eye eats first. A meal is arranged like a garden. This meal was arranged like weather.

"Is it… finished?" I asked, carefully.

"Honey, that's what it looks like."

The man beside me was already eating his. He did not look up. "Just try it."

I am a man who has charged hillsides at dawn. I raised the fork. I tried it.

I must now formally apologize to the biscuits, the gravy, the waitress, the kitchen, and the entire breakfast tradition of the American South.

It was magnificent. Warm. Peppered. The biscuit drank the gravy the way a field drinks rain — THAT is why it is shaped like that, you fool — and every mound I had insulted was a soft fold of comfort that my homeland, in eight hundred years, never once thought to invent.

"Well?" the waitress asked.

"I judged it," I confessed. "By its appearance. I am ashamed."

"Everybody does, hon."

Everybody does. A national dish that forgives you for doubting it. It expects the doubt. It waits for you on the other side of it.

Do not judge the gravy by its face. Judge yourself, for hesitating.

I order it every Saturday now. I no longer see the construction site. I see only the garden.

It was a garden the whole time. The eye must be trained.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.

Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.

I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."

"They just come with the table, man."

They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.

This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.

I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.

"Did we…?"

"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."

Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.

My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."

Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.

I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.

Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.

I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.

Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.

[Cleveland Browns @Browns]

"this is gonna be the best version of me"

@JaredVerse1 | #DawgPound

[The Timeless Traveler 🇺🇸 @TimelessTrvlr]

There was a 40 year period in history when samurai, pirates, and cowboys all technically existed at the same time.

[MLB @MLB]

The @Cardinals have won 13 of their last 18 games!