You’re young, you’ll experience this ALOT for the rest of your life if you are the kind of person who keeps learning and improving.
Every year I figure something out in the gym and say the same.thing. if only I’d done that from the start. But it’s wasted thought power, have the thought then let it go. It’s not productive at all.
I’ve gotten into it twice now.
First time, I was… 16 I think? I was always a fat kid, the I hit my growth spurt and was lanky. Started lifting random objects around the house, and saw improvement. Then I started going to the school gym after hours. Then I got into weightlifting class my senior year. Got moderately strong. Lost it all through some unfortunate events that led me to working a lot.
Then I totaled my back.
Half assed the gym for a year or two.
Then around… 2 years ago? I got fed up looking at my fat ass and started lifting again, with a lot more knowledge. Started building my home gym. Got into powerlifting styles workouts, and it was all over from there.
*edit, as a kid, I grew up old action movies and a lot of dragonball z, I know it sounds dumb, but i absolutely consider that a huge influence on my perception of men. Also my dad and grandfather owned their own turn key construction company, so they were always in ridiculous shape. I remember my dads arms being bigger than my head, even though he never lifted. I just didnt like the wave of… dainty men I guess… that was coming along with my generation and wanted to be different.
Took a part time job at a gym when I was 21 because I wanted access to the tanning bed (which claustrophobia prevented me actually using). Went full time when we all discovered I had a talent for membership sales. Wound up in management with jock friends. And they wound up with a nerd friend.
Kind of like here!
I started working out because I found myself near death in a hospital bed some years ago. I remember having a bunch of tubes and wires attached to me, and listening to that monitor beep in the midst of silence.
Training is my escape. Training Is my sincerest apology to myself for putting myself through those many years of abuse. Because I’d rather see all the calluses, sweat, and tears from training, than seeing handfuls of tubes and wires strewn across my body, and I’d rather hear those 45s clanging against each other, than ever again hearing that godforsaken monitor beeping.
Started with football and baseball. Then everyone hit their growth spirts and I stayed small. Found I had some talent in distance running, started cross country in 6th grade and track in 9th grade.
Got frustrated with running when I was 22 so I finally stopped. After being lazy for a month or so I realized I was going to get fat so I started lifting weights and ran occasionally.
Then I went all in on lifting and got fat anyway… Oops
First off I wanted to be hero of the beach. Tried Charles Atlas dynamic tension exercises.
Then a Bullworker, oh yes
I was always a relatively big chap so I never really lifted weights. I played football, hurling, all kinds of sports. I did a triathlon when I was mid 40’s and then didn’t bother much. As a fat late 40’s I was surfing the web and came across an article on training for middle aged men. In it a couple of books by Stuart McRobert were mentioned so I bought them, had a read, bought some basic kit and started trying to master form. That was four years ago and I have been training on average 160 times a year since. I like early morning training when the world is still asleep and I can load up the bar, get a podcast on and get the day going. Its great being older training as your body wont let you have any of that ego nonsense so you have to train smart otherwise its injury time, plus your goals are different.
