Gym Bashing

by Brian Pittman

For those of you that are my friend on Facebook, you probably saw that I got a little overheated with a knucklehead over his bashing someone's gym accomplishments.  If you didn't see, we aren't friends yet, or you (hopefully) just ignored it, the basic rundown is this:  some guy got on his Facebook page and made a celebratory post about how he could finally bench press 135 pounds.  The douchebucket in question proceeded to ridicule his achievement. I read it, unfriended the assclown, and went off a bit.

 

The whole issue (as is usually the case) shouldn't have really got my back up except for two small little basic facts:  1 - it's never right to bag on someone else's accomplishments and 2 - I have just gone through something similar myself.

 

A little bit of personal history is probably in order.  I've always been a big guy.  I'm 6'9" tall and for most of my adult life (25+) I've been between marginally and oh-damn overweight.  I went through a divorce on my 30th birthday and found myself on the otherside of a minor cardiac event when I weighed 380 lbs.  I joined a gym, even worked for a few, and over the next few years got myself down to 265 and in great shape.  Fast forward to this year.  Over the past year my weight had been getting out of hand due to stress eating and the only thing I would do to take care of myself was push the occasional loaded van or lift the occasional refrigerator at work for stress relief.  That job ended in January of this year and I found myself at 38 years old, unemployed, and continually stress eating.  About the time I reached 330 lbs. my buddy Brandon basically shamed me into starting back at the gym.  In retrospect, he probably saved my life.  As most BigFellas know, by the time a man reaches that 40th birthday his body changes hormonally and things start to slow down permanently.  If it's broke and you don't try to fix it by then, it either not going to get fixed or you'll have to move hell itself to do so.  Reluctantly, I drug my fat ass in and started making some changes.

 

Here's one of the reasons I got so bent out of shape over this moron's comments: when I started back to the gym in April I couldn't bench 135!  95 lbs felt like a safe on my chest.  This is coming from the guy who in college 20 years ago could toss 315 up like it won't no thing and maxed at 405.  I even forced myself to cheat just to keep some dignity and ended up hurting my shoulder, again.  Finally and after much prodding I had to relearn that the gym isn't about your ego, it's about building your body.  Six months later and thanks to muscle memory, plenty of protein, and some workout partners with clear mental issues I'm back pushing around what I consider grown up weight again but it's not been without a hellatious amount of work.  I understand exactly where the dude proud of his 135 is coming from completely and it absolutely drives me bonkers that this kid chose to mock someone for not being as "strong" as he is.  What does it fucking matter, really? 

 

A friend of mine had this to say about strength and I think it makes perfect sense.  He said that the test of strength is not how pretty you look or how big the muscles are (insert your best Arnold impression), it's whether or not it's functional and you can actually do something with it.  It's my strong suggestion for this kid that he stop flexing his pretty in the mirror and try shaking someone's hand for their achievement.  It's amazing how that tricep and forearm work together to get that accomplished numbnuts.