hey yall,alright theres an assignment in speech class where we have to write a story about our selves, something major that weve had to go through in our lives, and read it in front of the class in speech format. everything i will be typing will be from the heart, is true, so if you have time, plase just help me out and tell me whut you think. i will be showing videos and passing around pic's durring the speech. i am usually the joker of the class but, i wanna show my serious side for once.
He enters a cold weight room, empty. it was his schools weight room, he's 17 years old and he's still in high school. while everyone else was messing around with girls on a nightly basis, he would be in the gym. while everyone else was going out and getting drunk, he would be in the gym. while he was even sitting in class with the rest of the students, he would be in the gym. practicing, waiting for that 1 moment of fame. his life began at the age of 13, when he finally saw the barbell in a different view. everyone used to call him fat, "cone titty's". everyone used to poke him in the stomach, or grab his titty's and ask, "when are you gonna start workin out chunky?". he joked about it, but in the back of his mind he had that mentality of a killer. he hated any time everyone ever joked about his weight or strength, "my mom can bench more than you while shes taking a dump" they say. neither of them knowing, that later he would become a gladiator, a creator of lifelong images, an idol to some you might say, that some people who made fun of him would later strive to be like.
it took me 4 years to achieve my status in weightlifting. 4 long, painful, frustrating, aggravating, years of nothing but ridicule and mischief from 45 pound plates and lots of chalk. Iron weights don’t give you problems or yell at you when you come home late at night from the movies. Iron weights don’t yell at you if they catch you looking at another woman in the mall. Iron weights simply don’t care. This is the exact reason I turn to iron to vent all of his problems. This is the exact reason I dedicate myself so much.........I see it as a lifelong profit. Like a 401k for example. In a 401k, you put money in, wait years and you get more money back in return. in power lifting you put heart, dedication, and lots of time and effort in, and you get strength, honor and discipline in return. nothing a magazine can teach you, and certainly nothing money can buy quickly.
so there I am, standing in a cold dark weight room. I am the only one there, because its a Friday night. I have a power lifting meet on Saturday, but I need some place to think. some place to just concentrate on where my life is going. then I think to myself, "why is no one in here". I know the answer to this question before I’m finished asking. people simply don’t want it bad enough. they look at someone like me and automatically say "steroids", but if you think about it. if you want to achieve any sort of success in anything you do in life, you will have to sacrifice a lot of things, such as being in the weight room on a Friday night, sacrificing time without friends or family doing non profitable things.
I focuse my eyes on the record holders chart.
SANDERS 119 weight class-bench 235-
GORBEYA 139 weight class- 255 bench-
HAMILTON 154 weight class-285 bench-
GREY 169 weight class- 315 bench-
HORRIS 183 weight class, 335 bench-
I could go on to the heavier weight classes, but after I read my own weight class everything is just a blur. my max bench was 315 in competition, but 2 days ago I had repped 315 for 2 ½, so I felt confident. I wants Horris` name off the wall. Whatever it takes, I’m willing to do it. I leave the weight room with only 1 thing in my head, 1 thing I always think of before I compete, “just pushâ€. Those words mean more to Me than anything else I’ve ever heard in my life.
So let’s fast forward to meet day. Everyone meets at a charter bus at school, 6 AM, to drive 68 miles to a different county, to compete against only 1 different school. This school has been known throughout Florida to cause major damage in this sport. They’ve won state 11 times in a row. Most of them can bench at least double they’re bodyweight, which is a scary thing to think of. I am confident. But the reality of losing kicks in, and that would be too much for me to bare. As the bus pulls up, I takes a good long stare at the coliseum like gymnasium. This school was a lot richer than his, and judging by the cars parked out front and the sheer size of the gym, he knows that there will be problems with not only different weight classes, but different races and lifestyles clashing.
So everyone now has to go weigh in. weigh in’s are crucial, because here is where you will get to see your competition, here is where you can stare him down from head to toe at what your dealing with. I was dealing with a 182.8 pound black male, about 5 foot 6, with a decent build. Its my turn to weigh in, 181.9. I have the weight advantage, this is good because if a tie comes, I will win because of weight advantage. Things are looking good so far.
After weigh in’s everyone moves to the actual gym where most ate a small meal’s and talked amongst themselves about the weekend. The last thing that’s going through my mind is what happened on the weekend. I watch every step of my competition, while putting in a burnt cd of compilated hip hop and influential speech’s. hah, the first skit I comes to, it’s the ‘piece with inches speech’ from Any Given Sunday. This speech can hype a retarded Ethiopian kid up after waking up from a 13 hour sleep.
The speaker yells “Warm ups begin in 10 minutesâ€. So some kids start stretching, some start jumping rope to help with explosiveness on clean and jerk, some do this some do that…………… I don’t move. I understand the art of energy conservation. my buddy’s on the team acknowledge my different techniques, and don’t bother me. They all know I’m shooting for a record today, and if someone comes up and ruins my meditation I will end up In the wrong state of mind.
So the judges take they’re seats. This is the sign that warm-ups are almost over and the real deal will begin any moment. So I still stay seated. I stay seated because; since there are a total of 8 lifters at his station (4 from 183 weight class, 4 from 160 weight class). It will be half an hour before the lifters come near his first attempt weight, and if I happened to warm up early, it would cost me the meet. I notice the black male from the opposing school seated as well.
“ALL LIFTERS MUST GO TO THEY’RE STATIONS TO RECORD THEY’RE FIRST ATTEMPTâ€
this is where you have to go down to your station, and the judge writes down what weight you want to start with. I let my opponent go before me. 2 minutes after he’s done recording, I go to the bathroom and start taking my ECA stack. 500 milligrams caffeine, 200 milligrams aspirin, and 25 mg’s ephedra. So I take a look at the chart, it reads “Taylor-Bench 1- 295. This startles me because, my own start weight was also 295. How strong could this kid be? In defense, I put down 300 for good measure.
So around 10 minutes before they reach my weight, I start to warm up. The feeling is real good. I am as ready as I’ll ever be. I chalk up and put back on my cd player. Now its lil john and the eastside boys- throw it up. This song gets you going like no other. When 295 comes, its my opponents time to go. He lays down, claps a few times and says “1 , 2 , unrack……..†to his partner. He comes down, holds it until the judges say “press†and he presses quickly. The kid looks confident. Now its my turn. i gets my favorite spotter, named “fishâ€. His name was fish because his face was as ugly as one, and he smelled all the time, regardless, fish was his most trusted spotter and knew how to handle the weight like I wanted him to. So when I chalk up I like to clap, to get the chalk in the cracks of my hands providing more grip. “1 2 3……….†I come down with it, feeling great, get the signal to press and I do it no problem.
So here comes lift #2, since he went first last time, he has to go first next time. He confidently yells to the judge “310â€. So I think, 310? That’s cake.
He does 310 pretty decent, slows down but he gets it. I do the same but I go 5 pounds heavier, at this time, my caffeine isn’t working too well, so without hesitation I go to the fountain and load up on more, 600 more milligrams to be exact. So now I have 1.1 grams of caffeine in my system, which is a very dumb thing to do, but I didn’t know any better.
Now comes the final lift. I am 5 lbs ahead of him. If I were to go to tie the record I would need a 335 bench. 340 would break the record. His opponent yells to the judge “330â€. I knew he wasn’t gonna get it. At this time, there are about 40 or 50 kids around our bench because were neck and neck. My school cheering for me, his school cheering for his. His parents cheering for him, my parents were at home regretting the day that they let me start working out. At that time, parental support meant a lot to me. Almost everyones parents were there except mine. That saddened me a little. At this time im feeling 99% confident. The other 1% would cause major problems. At the time I knew if you weren’t totally dedicated to the lift, you **** well might as not try. So I yell to the judge also “335â€. Everyone on my team starts saying “he’s going for the recordâ€. So this brought my teammates to cheer for me hardcore when my time came.
So as my opponent hits his lift. He gets it, Barely. I was nervous now, what if I don’t get it? Regardless, I know I will get it, so I stopped thinking negatively.
I walk over to the chalk. Now EVERYONE is cheering for me, around 60/70 people. My friends who traveled who aren’t even on the team, parents who I don’t even know, and my teammates all yelling “CMON SAMMY LIGHT WEIGHTâ€, or “CMON SAMMY JUST PUSHâ€.
When some1 said those words “just push†it turned me on like a robot. I told the judge “1 minuteâ€, so I could listen to my cd player to regain a good mindset before I hit the lift. I played the first 30 seconds of stabbing westwards “what do I have to doâ€, which made me feel like a robot, a machine, with only 1 thing in mind, To move iron.
I walk over to the chalk again and now the yelling is so loud I cant hear anything else. All I hear is yelling. I chalk my hands up and as I walk over to the bench, everyone is slapping me on the back trying to get me crunked up. So now I’m feeling it, I’m so ready, you could shoot me with a 12 gauge and I will get right back up like a freight train.
“1, 2 THREE!!†I come down with it……………DEAD SILENCE. I push as hard as I can and yell my brains out as hard as I can. The weight goes up about 5/8’s of the way and comes to a dead halt. The 1% of not feeling confident had came back, oh no. I’m starting to get flash backs now of all my past experiences of me failing, oh no. after 5 seconds of the weight not moving, the judge says “rack itâ€. So fish picks the weight off me and racks it.
I am still lying on the bench. When I get up I walk straight outside and throw a rage at myself. I throw a few trash cans and start punching anything I can that wasn’t made out of solid brick. I still do have an aggression problem
So now the meet is over. Our team won, but I lost. I start to think about those words over and over. I lost. I lost I lost I lost. The whole way home. The depression aftereffects of 1.1 grams of caffeine are starting to kick in. on the way home I speak to no one. No one spoke to me a single word. I kept getting the “its ok Sammy, next time……….â€.
I phased everything and everyone out.
I get to my truck and its about 4 in the afternoon. Everyone leaves but I stay, leaning on my truck bed. After everyone is gone I just busted out crying. I havnt cried in 3 years. And I wasn’t expecting to let myself cry now, but the feeling of loneliness and despair I was feeling was un bearable. I cried for almost 10 minutes straight. I cried because no one supported me in anything I ever did in life, I cried because I worked so hard to become first place but I failed, I cried because I lost. I would rather die than take 2nd place is what I was thinking at the time………………………………………⠀¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦
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Originally Posted by aXe
