Brad Alan Lewis Quotes

#1. If you want to be your best, spend a lot of time exploring what is more than enough. Push yourself until the bar is lying immobile across your chest. Push yourself right off the edge of your capacity.

Brad Alan Lewis

#2. Big guys like you and me aren't allowed to whine.

Brad Alan Lewis

#3. Racing shirts should be sold on big, thick rolls like paper towels.

Brad Alan Lewis

#4. Long live the elite rower's motto:'early to bed, early to rise, never meet the regular guys.'

Brad Alan Lewis

#5. Every student of physics knows the axiom 'nature abhors a vacuum.' A little known corollary is that 'rowing coaches detest sending their crews in early.' Coaches will always find something to fill the end-of-practice vacuum.

Brad Alan Lewis

#6. I never realized how many holidays encroached on the collegiate training schedule. When I was training for the Olympics, only one holiday interested me, the Day After the Games.

Brad Alan Lewis

#7. Immediately upon entering the weighing-in zone, I sensed an oppressive tension in the air, the lightweights staring and glaring at each other, snarling like lean, frenzied dogs. Extreme hunger has a way of creating these emotions in even the most mil-mannered people.

Brad Alan Lewis

#8. Picasso spent hundereds of hours carefully planning his masterpieces. The sketchbooks were filled with ideas, bits and pieces, test runs, none of it meant to be seen by anyone. In a similar way, rowing practices are our sketchbooks, where we prepared our raceday masterpiece.

Brad Alan Lewis

#9. The ability to row in any conditions, raging crosswind, two-foot tall jet ski wakes, torrential downpour, is absolutely essential in order to be a champion sculler. It all comes under the heading of boatmanship. Some races are won on nothing more than superior boatmanship.

Brad Alan Lewis

#10. You need flawless balance on the recovery. You need white hot focus and the concentration to row square blades cleanly for seven miles. Smooth water doesn't hurt either.

Brad Alan Lewis

#11. The slow boat-I know it's the slow boat because I've been watching them for thirty-three weeks-won the first piece by a full length. Then the fast boat won the second piece. And so it went for the next four pieces, back and forth. Conclusion: I hate seat racing.

Brad Alan Lewis

#12. After hooking up the fuel line and pumping a little gasoline through the hose, I prepared for a workout on the 'coach's ergometer'.

Brad Alan Lewis

#13. MCP, maximum controled pressure. No tomorrow, no waiting, nothing beyond the moment. We seek the perfect balance-total abandon on the drive, total control on the recovery.

Brad Alan Lewis

#14. Rowing is an absurdly simple sport. I can easily guide a beginner throught the right technical motions. The difficulty arises when the beginner attempts to repeat those motions on a bumpy race course, at 40 strokes a minute, with his heart rate zooming, and an opponent charging up his stern.

Brad Alan Lewis

#15. If anyone here is secretly dreaming of making the Olympics, I can tell you exactly how to do it, two words: Sustained Obsession. The obsession isn't so hard. But keeping it sustained is a tough nut to crack. A heart-felt enemy can go a long way to sustaining your obsession. Love your enemy.

Brad Alan Lewis

#16. The time to be upset is during the race, when you can actually do something about it. Nothing could be done now. A thousand times I'd told them: the key to racing is to come off the water regretting nothing.

Brad Alan Lewis

#17. I felt okay for the first 45 seconds, and then my vision grew fussy. My lungs felt like deflated balloons. I would have sucked oxygen through my ears, if that were possible. I was experiencing oxygen debt, or perhaps better stated, oxygen death.

Brad Alan Lewis

#18. Rowing is such a fine sport. Everyone goes backward, and the leader can see his opponents as they struggle in vain.

Brad Alan Lewis

#19. As you become more proficient, fewer people can offer you advice, although in truth, that's when you need it the most because the stakes just keep getting higher and higher.

Brad Alan Lewis