Remember the first time you went into a gym? The first stupid thing you done in the gym?
I think I was 15 and I remember the door had a glass window in it. I had played around with the weights at school and had read hand me down copies of M&F from a couple of the bigger kids at school. I was ready to join the mainstream bodybuilding culture I knew what I had to do and say, well at least I tried to convince myself I did.
I remember asking the women behind the counter if I could go in and only many years later did I realise that she did not sneeze when I said I wanted to be a bodybuilder she was sniggering behind her hand. Un-deterred I gazed through that window watching the guys lifting weights. I had never seen weights that big before. I was a pretty strong kid and weighed around 128lbs and was 5 6” I was a prime beefcake, all right, I was also boxing at the time and was pretty good –I always came second :-)
It took me 3 weeks to get through that door and when I did the smell made my nose sting. A mixture of sweat old leather and rust hit you as you walked through the door no-one looked up no one spoke they just carried on training. I warmed up and proceeded to the Latpull down Machine. I had never used this before or anything like it but I had just watched a guy use it and felt confident I could do it. He was probably 30lbs heavier than I. I knelt down and pulled this bar all the way down behind my neck with the same weight he had used. So far so good. Then I hit trouble. I had the bar there but it was pulling me off the floor and the room was quiet I didn’t want to make a noise and let the weights fall. It felt like I spent hours there just hanging onto this damn weight.
A guy came over in the end and took the weight off me. Funny I became good friends with him and I always used to train hard but he used to say train smart not hard. I continued to train and applied for the Royal Marines and passed all their fitness stuff and their trial training and got offered a place to train as a marine. Parents and g/friend talked me out of it. I stopped training and pissed it up every night instead. Glad I’ve found it again though.
Billy
Reply With Quote