“How did you ever get to where you are at anyway?? Where did you find the time and the resources to make it actually happen?”
-Ricky
This is a great question. For those that have ears to listen this should be quite instructive…
I consider my strength training journey to really begin when I was 18. Currently, I am 33, so that means 15 years ago. And that’s one of the big points. I have CONSISTENTLY been working at getting stronger for 15 years. That’s why I can do the things I can do today! That time has been used effectively towards my aims.
Still, there are others that have been training longer, but without the same accomplishments. Also, consistency being a problem for so many people, what was it about me that was different.
Consistency is more the effect than the cause. So let’s look elsewhere.
I enjoy training…now. I didn’t always. I didn’t enjoy it back when I went to a conventional gym and did a bodybuilding routine. I didn’t much enjoy the strength training we did in high school football either. There were times when I hated it. Times when I had to drag myself to the gym. Or many times when I FAILED to drag myself to the gym.
It wasn’t til later when I found bodyweight training that I began to enjoy it.
When I look closer it’s not that there is something special about bodyweight training. Instead, it’s that I began to take responsibility for myself, something I wasn’t doing previously.
Perhaps crucial to this, I started to see real progress.
I went from not being able to do things to being able to do them. Soon enough I was doing things that other people couldn’t.
You could say that I was ego-driven and I’d agree. But that’s not really a bad thing, especially in this case, as I would say I had a really weak ego, to begin with!
Mine needed strengthening…and the gym was primarily where that forging occurred. My utter and complete lack of confidence began to become a shred of confidence and continued to build over time. And not just in the gym either.
Strength training became a “laboratory for life” for me. When I got serious about training I started to get serious about turning my life around in every area…and boy did I have my work cut out for me!
I found that the skills of goal setting, consistent work, various mental methods, coming up with a plan, etc. that I used and perfected in the gym were applicable outside of the gym too.
Even though I’ve been doing this for 15 years now, this is all still true. Essentially, the stronger I get in the gym, the better my life is.
I consider myself the strongest I’ve ever been (though not of course at everything all at once)…and my life is grand.
Strength training has become a metaphor for my life. I really do see it as the crucible where you can gain not only strength but so many other abilities that translate to other areas.
From that point on, finding time has never been an issue. Because it is something I enjoy. I’d spend even more time training if it weren’t for that pesky having-to-recover-thing.
Strength training has been a means of self-actualization for me, to talk in terms of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. And really it’s not just that. It has hit EVERY level on the hierarchy.
Lastly, as would be natural for a love of strength that became strong, I turned it into my career so it became even MORE important.
It wasn’t so much that I needed a career so I chose strength. Instead, strength chose me. It was natural to leverage that into what I spent more time studying, experimenting, training, etc. so that I could spend even more time studying, experimenting, training, etc. and become better at it. Through capitalism it becomes self-reinforcing.
(Putting it another way, when I had a day job I wasn’t able to spend the same amount of time as I can now in paving a new path forward in strength.)
People ask how I got into the whole strongman thing. I most often say it was reading The Mighty Atom’s biography. For whatever reason, when I read that book it gripped me and wouldn’t let go. I wanted to become a strongman and so I have.
I don’t know, maybe I was a strongman in a past life. Maybe my destiny was sealed from the beginning.
Or maybe I just made a series of choices that, thus far, have worked out quite well for me.
Mine isn’t the path for everyone.
But I do consider “fitness” a path for everyone.
It’s one of those things you’ll suffer for if you don’t take care of it. You’re in your body and your body needs to move.
It’s like if you neglect your relationships your life will suffer for it. Now I would say relationships are more important than fitness, but that doesn’t mean both aren’t “mission critical” areas of life.
The time will pass. What will you do with it?
If you want to come on this path with me, the best way to do so is the Strength Health Mind Power Inner Circle.