The Beginning

My parents divorced when I was very young and my brothers and I got thrown into the all to familiar cycle of only seeing dad on the weekends. My Pop moved into a small townhouse up the road from us with a few bedrooms for my brothers and I to crash but admittedly I can’t see that house in my mind. Now, I remember dancing to my dad playing folk songs in the living room and for some strange reason running full tilt, head first into the back of an arm chair that sat in the middle of the room every time a song would end. Thinking back now that sounds EXACTLY like me, but the thing is, I can’t picture it. I remember that there was a bedroom for my brothers and I to sleep in and that one of us would always make their way into dads queen size bed every night to be close to the big guy, but I can’t see it. For the life of me I can’t see it.

Except for one thing. I see the basement.

I see it like it was yesterday. I see the tube T.V. I see the couch and the coffee table that would eventually be my first 2 pieces of furniture 12 years later in my one bedroom on the other side of town. And clearer then all of that, I see the red, York bench with light brown, cement filled 10lbs York weights on the end of an old piece of iron, 2 dumbbells in the same style, and my brothers and I bench pressing and curling, watching Magnus Ver Magnusson win the Worlds Strongest Man on TSN. I can feel the dumbbells in my hands and hear the weight rattle when you racked the bar. This was my introduction to weightlifting. My first memories of what would become my life’s work and the yard stick to which I measure just about everything else. 

I could look back on it with stars in my eyes about how I knew then what I wanted to do with my life but I’d be talking out of my ass. The truth is that it was fun. Lifting weights just feels good man! It wasn’t about some needlessly imposed benchmark or checklist of exercises to tic off that day. It was for its own sake.

To me it has always had an unparalleled ability to take you out of the world and into your body, to centre your focus, to calm your mind, to execute. It was the beginning of a life long, hard won realization; that the pursuit of strength in and of itself is a worthwhile endeavour and that the process of growth and discovery are constant and ever changing. 

But like all things, it is the dosage, not the medicine. 

Putting thousands of hours into the grind, reaching at just a few more pounds or a few less seconds has left me both far more capable than I ever thought possible, and at times battered and bloodied and broken. And in that way the barbell has become one of my greatest teachers, not only of progress, but of balance, humility, patience, respect and truth. If you pursue it long enough you will come to realize that while your ego has control of the wheel, you don’t. And as necessary as that is to build your confidence at times, it will rob you of just how beautiful the journey can be.

So after all the years of both triumph and heartbreak I can’t help but realize that I had figured it out all those years ago in my dad’s basement. That the benchmarks, the numbers, the aesthetic, the competition, the success and the failures are temporary. The pursuit of strength in and of itself is a worthwhile endeavour and as the process of growth and discovery take me to ever deeper valleys and ever higher peeks I will keep that lesson close to my heart.