takin’ it back (and it hurts!)

in the summer of 1991 i, as my dad liked to phrase it, “failed to distinguish myself academically”…

…i.e. i flunked out of college.

too much thinking with the wrong head had my hanging out in the girl’s dorm more than the classroom which didn’t balance well. mom was pissed, and said i either needed to get a job or do volunteer work, so i did the latter at a gym owned by the police department. i was there night staff guy, voluntarily, for a few years after that. hey, as a long haired kid in my twenties, can you ever have too many cop friends?

while i dealt strictly with the weight stuff, the gym also offered karate, boxing, and the occasional (very poorly attended) aerobics class. the first one was what changed a lot for me, albeit accidentally.

my summer goal had been the same as JAB’s – trying to bench two hundred. i decided to go for it one evening while a karate class was going on and got it stuck on me. i couldn’t lift it up. the bench i was on, like all the other equipment, was old and donated. this was especially obvious in the weight area, where most of the plates, rather than being metal, were concrete filled plastic of the “i bought this to work out at home but never did” variety of the 1980’s.

pic clearly taken with a period correct camera

but the point was because it was old it didn’t have the safety catches you see in most modern ones, so when i couldn’t press it off my chest it wasn’t going anywhere. i had to roll it down to my waist and then lift it off from there. that sucked.

so the rest of the summer i worked everything BUT bench. i went at it with flies, and dumbbell press, and all the other shoulder and back and arm and leg stuff. i was hooked. still kinda am. but at the end of the summer, i was able to bench 225 cleanly. goal achieved.

and that’s kinda where i feel i am today. i’ve lost a shitload of weight, including some internal muscle tone that is wreaking havoc on my mobility and flexibility, which scares me now that i’m at the age where bone cancer took out mom after it made her walk with a cane. so i’m doing leg press again, but this time it’s added to EVERY workout (not just leg day), it’s capped at 100lbs for now, and i do sets of twenty-five. let’s see if i can rebuild myself or if this shit is permanent, which i’m not mentally prepared to face.