Well this last week my girlfriend Lauren and I spent five days down in sunny Florida enjoying the weather and hanging out with our friends. The main reason for flying down was to help out Chad Walker, one of my best friends, at the Orlando Barbell meet.

We spent Wednesday through Friday mostly chilling at the beach with a few training session mixed in and lots of eating. The weather was in the upper 80s and Lauren and I both love the beach. Wednesday evening at the beach in Venice we had tiny schools of fish swimming all around us. They were literally swimming right into me and as I was standing chest deep in the water some of them were actually jumping over my arms and shoulders and once in awhile they would land on me and break dance for a second before flopping back into the water, it was cool as hell.

As we were standing in the water Chad was telling me that a lot of the local guys that do fly overs of the area won't swim in those waters because of the number of sharks they see, no lie. This of course didn't deter us from swimming at all but I did seem to always have this sneaky feeling that there was always a shark swimming behind me after he told me that.

The meet was on Saturday and held in a really nice Double Tree hotel at Universal Studios in Orlando. Brian Schwab and crew did an awesome job running the meet and Jo Jordan did a great job announcing. I thought the judging was very fair and consistent throughout the day. Brian Carroll was the big lifter of the day and nailed an impressive 1100lb squat and 800lb deadlift combined with a 760lb bench to total 2660 @ 275lbs. My boy Chad Walker had a great day as well hitting strong PRs across the board going 1000-660-805=2465 @ 326lbs. That was his first 1000lb squat and the 805 dead was the biggest of the day. A big congrats to both Brian and Chad!

Top pic is of Chad's shin after his 805lb dead. The bottom one is of Brian Carroll and I.

Great time and a great meet!,
Matt Kroczaleski