WHERE I FIT IN

Green787878 (I assume Green1-787877 were taken when he made the username) on reddit submitted a question to me the other day.

“I would be interested in hearing how your training has affected your personal life. Such as your discipline and physique - how that affects your relationship with family, friends, co-workers, etc. You've been doing this for a long time so I'm sure you'd have some interesting anecdotes to share.”

I liked the idea of exploring this topic, as it’s something I’ve addressed in round about ways before but never really dove into head on.

And head on is always the best way to do things

I’ve commented in the past about how my sense of normalcy is fundamentally flawed as a result of my training and lifestyle.  This manifests in ways such as drinking a gallon of water in under an hour at a meeting and having it cause the person leading it so much distress that they called for a bathroom break for MY sake, or how, after rupturing my ACL I didn’t understand why people were making such a big deal about it and how upset they got when I joked about it and told them I was still training.  I am fully aware that I am an outlier and that what I do is not normal, but not so fully aware of to what DEGREE what I do isn’t normal.  I’ve been living like this for so long that I can “forget” how normal humans function.

However, that’s more about how people interact with me, rather than the other way around.  Being fully honest and aware of myself, I am severely lacking in empathy amongst other humans.  Specifically, I have zero understanding or capacity to understand how or why people let adversity deter them from accomplishing their goals.  This isn’t a lack of sympathy, it’s legitimately a lack of empathy; I simply do not grasp this idea.  It ends up manifesting as a lack of sympathy, because people approach me and share their stories and, in my inability to relate, I offer them no solace.

Still a great movie

Adversity can slow you down, this is absolutely true, but unless it is death, I do not see why it stops you.  In the competition where I ruptured my ACL, tore my meniscus and fractured my patella, I was in Monterrey CA, where there was an awesome aquarium.  As part of the trip to the competition, I told my kid that we’d go to the aquarium the day after the competition.  After I blew out my knee, I went back to my hotel, took a shower, wrapped my knee up in a knee sleeve, woke up the next day and limped around the aquarium with a cane for 4 hours before driving home for another 4.  I made a promise, I had a goal, and I accomplished it.  Yeah, I had to deal with an injury, but I wasn’t dead, so why would I be stopped? 

And the same was true with training; I started Matt Kroc’s 16 week detailed bodybuiding program out of the book “Insane Training” that Monday, since I wanted to do something different while my knee healed.  Saturday was squat day, so I grabbed my squat box, set it as high as I could, and did squats with the buffalo bar for as many reps as I could.  Yeah, it wasn’t much, but it was something.  And then I also trained the whole way through surgical recovery and physical therapy.  A lot of people would just stop training entirely until they were fully healed, and I literally cannot understand WHY they do that.

Not the first time I've been baffled

I’ve got other stories too that objectively I KNOW are crazy and stupid but emotionally I cannot understand why.  I set a deadlift PR 24 hours after being discharged from the hospital for severe dehydration due to gastroenteritis, woke up at 0445 to lift after rolling over in the middle of the night and dislocating my shoulder, regularly train after only getting 2-3 hours of sleep, etc etc. I don’t think of these things as significant; it’s just getting through life.  People have to put up with way worse crap than I do just to eek out an existence.

Unfortunately, the consequence of making this a habit is that it’s warped my sense of normalcy, so I don’t understand why others find it so weird nor do I understand why THEY don’t do it.  It’ll hurt?  So what: pain is temporary.  So is discomfort, and injury.  It’s nihilistic to be sure, but everything is temporary really.  It means I tend to come across as cold and disconnected when it comes to dealing with a lot of problems and emotions, but on the other side of the coin, I tend to be sought out for objective opinions, decision making, or simply getting stuff done regardless of costs. 

Much like this; it's cool at first, but eventually people get tired of it

In regards to physique, I’ll try to be a bit more brief, but basically I spend the majority of my social interactions attempting to overcome the presupposed image people generate about me via my physical appearance.  Most people tend to assume I’m some sort of meathead and that I’m gruff and abrasive and intimidating, so in turn I try to tell a joke about every other sentence.  Lots of smiles, lots of levity, and just trying to kill people with kindness.  If I can do that well, I tend to find myself in more advantageous positions compared to my peers, because being larger and in shape does seem to automatically generate some degree of respect compared to being fat or scrawny, and if people think you possess a modicum of intelligence to go with it, it carries you far.

I DO have to contend with a lot of stupid jokes about my size/strength all the time.  Humans like things simple and categorized, and once they’ve categorized something, they like to mock it to minimize it.  People will make dumb creatine jokes or flex in front of me or feel up my arms.  It’s something I’m at terms with.  I remember Mike Tucscherer was once asked if he got tired of all the dumb jokes people made about him being so big, and he said “If I didn’t want to deal with it, I wouldn’t be 275lbs”.  That resonated with me pretty well.  But it also means it’s something I have to be aware of constantly.  If a 150lb dude shouts at someone or gets a little aggressive, people tend not to care, but if I start showing aggression it can get misinterpreted as legitimate assault pretty quickly.

This is already getting pretty long winded, but just a comical aside to mention is how much my mentality can “infect” those around me.  My wife and I have been together in some capacity for 13 years, and she’s been a big part of the process for me.  She’s seen me accomplish some pretty ridiculous things, and it’s not set HER bar for normalcy ALSO off course.  Her expectations for what men can do are pretty high, because to her, I’m just her goofball husband, not some sort of high standard or mark for my gender.  In a comical anecdote, one time, my dad sold some sort of Weider all in one home gym on craigslist, and a guy and his son came by to pick it up.  They showed up with a bunch of tools and started taking the whole thing apart to put in their truck to move.  My wife was watching and getting frustrated that it was taking so long, and she leaned in and whispered “Why don’t they just pick it up and put it on the truck: this is taking forever?”  My wife and I have moved 5 times since we’ve been together, and she’s seen me carry full bookshelves, marble topped end tables, dinning tables, etc etc, all by myself, so in her mind that’s just a thing men do.  I had to lean back and whisper to her “Because not all men are your husband.”

It made her blush.