I left high school after my sophomore year, and started attending a local college full-time. The credits I earned there counted towards high school as well, and I would have enough to graduate with my h.s. diploma after that year in college. However, our h.s. had a gym requirement.
I had thought about lifting before, even tinkered a few times with the plates my dad had in the cellar; my dad had been lifting or exercising in some form since his late teens. However since I was a teenager myself I didn’t want to be just like him and never actually tried lifting. It’s too bad because I missed out on that mid-teens T-Spike, but I digress.
I decided that the easiest way to fulfill my gym requirement would be to go a couple times per week at the college’s gym, and have a trainer sign off on it. I’ll never forget my first fitness test. The trainer put like 65 lbs. on the bar and had me try benching it. 0 reps. Thing was pinned to my chest.
I was embarrassed, but despite that, after my first workout ever I was hooked and immediately started going 5 times per week. I got credit for the gym time and graduated early. Fortunately I didn’t become a bench jockey I focused on my lower body for like the first two years of training, actually to the detriment of my upper body strength. It took several years before that imbalance actually evened out.
It’s nice that my dad had always been active, so I had someone to talk to about my workouts pretty much whenever I wanted, and still do to this day 12 years later.
Football freshman year. I was fast as shit and could catch anything you threw at me, but we ran the option. So my only chance of getting to touch the ball was as a kickoff/punt returner. And I was fearless in that respect. I literally never called for a fair catch and ran back every kickoff (only a couple actually made it into the end zone).
But I was only about 5’5" 135lbs my freshman year, and I was strong for my size, but not “weight room strong”. Our coaches forced us to workout anyways, but there were always guys who were skipping out on workouts or who used the time as a social gathering rather than an actual workout. But at my size I HAD to lift hard, so I did.
I was a really good athlete in high school and college, but I think I would have been WAY better if I understood things like lifting explosively, neural fatigue/charging, ballistic and plyometric shit, and the importance of mobility, flexibility and foam-rolling. Back then, I did 4x8 for pretty much everything. When I started to develop some elbow tendinitis while I was pitching, I just stopped lifting altogether because I didn’t really know any way to just change my approach to better suit my needs, other than some internal/external rotations with bands and forearm curls.
a 30lb set of plastic weights when i was 18. i eventually saved up enough to get some squat stands, a bench and a total of 200lbs of weights, but my parents understandably didnt like it when the whole house shook during deadlifts in my bedroom, so i joined a gym
[quote]postholedigger wrote:
We’re so hardcore, we never STARTED working out. Just like a black man doesn’t LEARN how to dance. I was doing push ups as a sperm.[/quote]
Once I challenged Prof X to a damce off and he backed down.
The first time I ever bench pressed was in high school weight training. I didn’t grasp that the bar itself weighed something, so based on my machine bench press I threw 25lbs on each side. There was a little guy, weighing less than me at the time, spotting me. I took the bar off and it immediately fell on my neck where I struggled not to die. Spotter kid took a second to get it off of me because he was laughing so hard.
But the weight training did improve my speed at kendo.
[quote]Oleena wrote:
The first time I ever bench pressed was in high school weight training. I didn’t grasp that the bar itself weighed something, so based on my machine bench press I threw 25lbs on each side. There was a little guy, weighing less than me at the time, spotting me. I took the bar off and it immediately fell on my neck where I struggled not to die. Spotter kid took a second to get it off of me because he was laughing so hard.
But the weight training did improve my speed at kendo.[/quote]
