I am curious as to how working out has changed your lifestyles. What were you like before you started working out? Not only looking at what you looked like, but also what kind of lifestyle you lived.
I am very skinny now, but before I started working out I was about 6 feet tall and weighed in at a scary 135-140 pounds, my bodyfat has not really changed since then either so I know the weight I added was mostly muscle. I was a bit of a nerd, I liked playing sports but I liked playing videogames more. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I played non-stop, also with a big bag of chips beside me, drinking 4 cans of coke a day and not caring at all about how I looked. Once I started working out I got this rush, kind of like being high, and I loved that feeling (what I now refer to as the pumped feeling). The few sports I would play, I did them more and was better at them as well. I had more energy, I became more positive and confident and just overall happier, now I look forward going to the gym, and feel sluggish when I miss a single workout. It’s become my main hobby, no matter how busy school or work gets, I always find time to get my workouts in.
Yeah I agree you can see my pics and see what I’m talking about when I say I started all over “from scratch”, being as I had just woken up from a month in a coma and had to learn to walk and talk and do everything again, EVEN BREATHING!
I had always been an athlete; I played soccer, but coulda very well been any other sport. Maybe not basketball, I think I am too short for that. But anyway when the idea of not walking any more and living in a wheelchair came to me I was like FUCK THAT!! I’m not living the rest of my life like this and I got out and did something about it. I started by signing up for my gym and payed the year off in full! So I couldnt amke any excuses.
I’m not done yet I still have a long way to go but I am confident I am on the right track and I know I am not a quitter.
“God don’t like no quitters, and god dont like no argue” - Tupac
Well to get to how it has changed me, I am a much happier, confidant, indepandant person now.
Started college at 5’9, and 150 lbs. Was running way too much (my cheeks looks sunken in), and even though I had a six pack and nice cuts in my arms, I looked damn scrawny (wore a Medium T-shirt).
10 years later, I hit 220 lbs, 18" arms, and have to buy XL t shirts even though they’re usually a little too long for my height (but they fit damn tight in the shoulders! -lol). AInt working out great?! You get what you put in and have no one to thank but yourself.
I was always pretty muscular, even before I started lifting I had a couple girlfriends ask me seriously if I did steroids. However I led a pretty reckless life - drank way too much, smoked cigarettes, and did recs when I was younger. I started to improve myself from the very beginning of college and now I feel that I have a lot of athletic potential that I probably squandered. I’m 21 and trying to catch up.
Regardless, I’m going to start competing in oly lifting, have scheduled meetings with a coach and all that. I know that the only direction I can go is up. Good luck.
I’ve allways been pretty lean. Started wrestling at 9 and lifited from 12 through highschool, generaly very athletic. Found crack, booze and herione, quit lifting and destroyed myself.
Quit those and started lifting again. Started lifting again at 140, currently 170, and life is good.
I was very skinny but lean. About a year to a year and a half later, I weighed about 30-35 pounds more. Before working out, I ate a lot of sweets, my all time favorite, banana pudding. But I still was very lean. I drunk soda but I was a VERY active person. I wasn’t the type to sit around watching tv eating junk. I played sports all the time. When I started working out, I didn’t really set any goals I just started lifting basic and taking protein shakes. I did that for a few months and then I heard about creatine.
I heard that it showed up on drug tests but I was thinking that it showed up as something bad. So I took that and my frame blew up quick as hell. The dude told me that creatine will do that to you. So right now I’m maintaining but after football I will go back to training harder and make my legs bigger(not that their not already big but not where I want them). The feeling I get after a good workout is really nice. I always imagine myself being this perfect figure and the envy of every average man.(notice I didn’t say t-man, lol)
Look as big as a natural bodybuilder can get without drug use. That image stays in my head and keeps me going. Guys at school were simply AMAZED at my transformation and always jokingly say I’m on steroids. They always ask me what I’m taking and they go and get some and they say it doesn’t work, but I know from the start that its not going to work for them because they aren’t dedicated and think its a quick fix.
I was a fat kid (still fat, just alot stronger now, lol). I started lifting around 14 or so. At the time I weighted about 190-200. I played sports, but was carring around way to much fat. I fell in love the first day lifting.
Now (20+ years later), I’m 300+. At my heaviest (about 395lbs), I’ve benched over 500, inclined 550x2, seatd front presses with 400+, deadlifted 740, squated 770, curled 250. 23"+ arms, 66" jacket.
Throughout middle school I was the fat kid that got picked on all the time. During the summer in eighth grade i walked everywhere and was doing 500 sit ups a day lol. Well freshman year I started working out and did wrestling, at the end of wrestling season i was 130 lbs and just plain scrawny. I started lifting religously and caught the bodybuilding bug and stopped wrestling.
So now after 2 1/2 years of working out(1 1/2 seriously) I’m 200 lbs at 5’9 and 9%BF
I’ve played sports all my life. I started in a pee wee soccer league for pre-school age children with a nerf soccer ball at three. I played soccer for a few more years and then spent my time with baseball, football, track, basketball, wrestling and a little mma in the wrestling off season to stay in shape.
My pops bought me my first weight bench during christmas of fifth grade (at my mothers behest) and i’ve been lifting ever since as well as cross training for the various sports and even now as I enjoy running, biking etc.
I may not be qualified to post in this thread but life before training is really pretty difficult to remember.
I don’t play sports any more for the most part but will occassionally buy a few months of membership at an mma gym when I miss it. and i like to jump in on pickup basketball games.
As far as body building goes, I have gotten a little bigger now that most of my concentration goes to lifting rather than lifting for a sporting event.
[quote]chasing2400 wrote:
I was a fat kid (still fat, just alot stronger now, lol). I started lifting around 14 or so. At the time I weighted about 190-200. I played sports, but was carring around way to much fat. I fell in love the first day lifting.
Now (20+ years later), I’m 300+. At my heaviest (about 395lbs), I’ve benched over 500, inclined 550x2, seatd front presses with 400+, deadlifted 740, squated 770, curled 250. 23"+ arms, 66" jacket.
Weight training has served me well.[/quote]
Damn man, that’s some impressive numbers there, nice videos as well I’ve never seen dumbbells that can rack like that. How much are those dumbbells anyways?
[quote]sed26 wrote:
Look as big as a natural bodybuilder can get without drug use. That image stays in my head and keeps me going. Guys at school were simply AMAZED at my transformation and always jokingly say I’m on steroids. They always ask me what I’m taking and they go and get some and they say it doesn’t work, but I know from the start that its not going to work for them because they aren’t dedicated and think its a quick fix.[/quote]
I feel you man lol, I’m in highschool and the guys call my “Austin Steriods” lol. Im all natural but I take it as a compliment and makes me even feel better knowing Im not on roids.
I was the fat ass kid all through school. After high school I got a wake up call by doing something I can’t really remember at the moment. I was over 300 pounds. Now I’m at 205 around 17% bf still a long ways to go.
[quote]Outrage247 wrote:
I was the fat ass kid all through school. After high school I got a wake up call by doing something I can’t really remember at the moment. [/quote]
Is it me or are all the stories about people being once fat or extremely skinny, then totally changing their lives through weight training. Thats cool.
I bet when you see people you used to go to school with, they think wow, he looks hyoooooj, ‘I used to pick on him(insert whatever was bad from being bigger/smaller)’.
I think the best thing I gained was confidence. I walked into the gym shitting my pants, not uderstanding what to do, thinking, OMG, hes big, but I found T-Nation, and my confidence around people in general has increased. I started to ‘shut up and lift’, and my confidence around other people than my friends increased, as I did not care anymore what they thought of my lifts.
I’ve also gone from 14in arms to 16 3/4 arms. Thats awsome for me as I feel better about myself (I was 190lb, 6,2, but never fat, I just looked skinny, now I have some slabs of muscle at just over 200lb).
Well, I’m an idiot, I can’t remember how to unquote something, lol.
Shit, I was never really into sports. As a matter of fact, I joined the track and field team with some friends just to be able to gain access to my high school gym back in the day. Before that, my mom had a 10lb dumbbell and I always loved lifting that thing, always imagining I would someday have huge arms.
I always loved curling and doing db military presses. All I had were interchangable db’s back then. I was still 13-15 years old. By the time I got into track and field for shotput, my bench was so weak at around 115lbs. I started learning the powerlifts and was hooked.
I too played games way too often when I was young, usually with a bag of chips. I remmeber I was 5’1 150lbs at 13 and 28% BF. When I entered in College I was around 145lbs and fairly lean. I was pretty nerdy and had a lack of self confidence. Hell, bigger kids were fucking scary in middle school. When I had 2 50lb db’s I started lifting and getting bigger without even giving a shit about my nutrition.
Then by college freshman year, I really dedicated myself to eating a lot with proper timing. Now I’m a sophomore and I’m hoping to set some records in powerlifting in the future or at least deadlift 3x my weight Squat 2.5x my weight and bench 2x my weight someday. It’s the best natural high I’ve ever had getting bigger and feeling the “pump.” It’s just something that can’t be explained through words. It feels amazing and I love eating right to get bigger. I went from 145lbs to 190lbs in about a year and a half at 5’8 almost 19yo.
I love everything about it. The struggle and pain at times only makes the reward much more worthwhile.
The confidence gained and the fact that it’s a crazy hobby no one will really understand makes working out all worthwhile. Girls in my dorm always ask me why I’m always cooking food on my Foreman Grill in the kitchen, wondering how I’m able to eat 6 meals a day. Stuff like that drives me too, but for the most part I just love everything with lifting with nutrition.