What Inspired You to Lift Weights in the First Place?

He’s obviously never seen the 2003 film, Hulk.

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In fairness, Bob has just been collecting a paycheck from losing fights for like the last decade. Mariusz is a little more relevant of an example (who was one of those people that beat Bob Sapp in a fight). Consequently, despite being the 5x World’s Strongest Man, he STILL has lost his fair share of fights, so your point is even more solid.

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I’m a few years younger and wrestled in the school district next to his, and him and his brothers were like legends even then. Mt Lebanon and Keystone Oaks have always been rivals, but they settled it pretty damn handily.

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Off topic: my wife are looking at houses in those 2 districts + Upper St. Clair this weekend. USC is actually the favorite right now (if we get our mortgage pre-approval, we might be throwing an offer down soon). Is there a way for us to connect off-board? I’m admittedly a little less knowledgeable than I’d like to be about handy-dandy things and might appreciate the opportunity to ask you a question here and there about manly stuff, like what to do if I need to level a garage floor, for example.

Sports initially, but what got me to take a real hard look in the mirror was that I had dickie-doo syndrome…my stomach stuck out further than my dickie do! Figured it was time to get serious when I lost that sight line haha

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Martial arts. A local karate guy took us for a class as part of our duke of Edinburgh’s award. Then I started hanging out with martial artists online and in the flesh and they all lifted weights. I’d been working out for quite some time, doing the workout I got from the recruiting lieutenant (I never actually got into the forces- psychosis pretty much disqualifies you). But hanging around these guys persuaded me to buy a barbell and some weights.

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Very fair point about Mr. Sapp, I’d be hard pressed to not do the same to pay the bills. But I don’t think anyone would pay 5-6 figures for me to fight in tights.

I’ll buy you a beer if you just pose in them, though.

Sure. I’ll set up a an e-mail and post it up a little later. I have some running to do for a few hours, but I’ll tag you when I put it up.

I started lifting when I was a teenager mostly because I no longer wanted to look like a slightly beefier version of footballer Peter Crouch! I now lift mostly for catharsis/stress reduction & also coz I think it’s rather cool to be big & strong etc.

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I’ve always wanted to open doors quickly.

Started as an addition to getting stronger for Wrestling when I was younger. Ended up falling more in love with beating the log book and getting stronger than I did with wrestling.

Also who doesn’t want to walk around looking like a silverback gorilla

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In high school, at 6’2" and a skinny-fat 170, there was a two week period where three different people all called me “lanky.” That got my attention towards wanting to put on size.

I was also in karate at the time, but didn’t specifically look to carryover gym stuff.

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Rocky Balboa

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I was a runner. In august 2014 I began suffering of IT tendonitis. I could not run anymore, so I bought dumbbells…

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After a lifetime of waiting for some magic to happen to keep my gut from getting any larger, I finally got off my ass and get into the gym at the tender age of 30-something. This was after trying some of the at-home stuff like P90x to lose weight. Also, I wanted to help inspire my wife to get more exercise and healthier.

I forced myself to get on a strength training plan… I picked something out of Men’s Health… Then came the revelation that barbell training is the way to go. I jumped onto Stronglifts 5x5, then over to Starting Strength… Then over to 531.

Generally, I want to get as strong and as healthy as I can, for as long as I can.

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@cjacks

I’m curious… How did P90X work for you? What kind of results did you get?

If you didn’t get ripped, did you at least improve on your performance? Or was it absolute shit?

I grew up skinny and watched a lot of WWF along with movies with muscular dudes (Predator, Rocky, etc) and saw them around in real life and wanted to look strong like they did.

Took a circuit weight training class as a sophomore in college at 19, continued lifting a lot afterward, and had gained about 50 pounds by the time I was 22.

I think Mariusz does a fair bit to prove the counterpoint, actually. A guy whose main accomplishment and training up to that point was lifting weights came into MMA and was basically instantly competitive on the B-circuit of MMA. He’s not dominant and won’t move to the A-circuit, but being strong easily puts him into the top fraction of a percent of fighters in the world.

Obviously world class fighters are going to be world class fighters and they will beat world class strongmen/powerlifters/weightlifters/bodybuilders in a fight. That’s why they are champions. That doesn’t make strength and size irrelevant in a fight. And building size and strength to a high level is a longer term pursuit than building basic fighting skills.

Spend 5 years to get really strong and a small amount to learn fighting basics is going to go a lot further than getting really good at fighting techniques but not having the strength to execute them against someone with a good strength background and enough knowledge to know how to now get completely thrown around.

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I would say more C-circuit. He beat a guy that was also debuting for his debut, had a pretty unglorious finish for the second, and lost to a fat, long since out of his prime Tim Sylvia. Don’t get me wrong; size and strength go a long way, but if this is how the 5x Worlds Strongest Man faired, it gives less hope to a dude who just lifts weights.

Once Mariusz really dialed in the training, the performance took off.

I say most of this as a guy that got into strongman after years of being bad at fighting. I could always tool noobs by out muscling them, but going against someone that knew what they were doing was a different world.