American Iron Therapy x

By: Danny Vinyard Shaver

How did my iron therapy begin? The answer lies within my childhood years. I was my minds bitch and my mind wasn’t a ray of sunshine.

Every night would consist of me lying in bed crying from fear. I would turn on the television to try to distract myself from my thoughts. Man, the amount of times I heard that stupid ass song, “low rider” the theme song to the George Lopez show. Trying to reach peaceful thoughts was a lost cause.

My family would tell me of times I would sleep walk. Nothing was ever too bad though. I would either be looking for my hamster I thought I lost or I was rambling some bullshit. But one night I remember clearer than any other, waking up to voices talking to me. I screamed and ran down my hallway running into the Christmas tree. My family loved that one. My brother said his heart has never beated so fast.

I would lay there thinking about anything and everything that scared the shit out of me. I thought about the tormenting visions until the point that they appeared in vivid detail. When I eventually did fall asleep it was time to further my torture. Dreams of me and loved ones dying was the usual. Almost every night, I would experience what I later found to be called lucid dreaming. I would realize I was dreaming but the realization would only bring more terrifying things. I found the only way to wake myself up was to die or kill myself. So, almost every night I was killed or killed myself.

I would lie there thinking “don’t think about anything bad, don’t think about anything bad” and the pop ups of all of those things proceeded. At this point, I was in 8th grade going into my freshman year. This is when I had my first real encounter with sweet old lady iron.

Now, I didn’t touch it and feel magic. I started to randomly workout doing full body workouts with no Idea of what I was doing I was just working hard. I got better and better at torturing myself with weights. I remember the early stages in my garage at night time constantly looking around me as if something was lurking. I was still very much a victim of my mind.

The more energy I gave to working out, the less energy I had to put into any thoughts. I would use my fears in my workouts. I was a little bitch and this is how I could beat the shit out of myself. The more serious my workouts got, the more I lost fear of everything else. I fell in love with working out so much that I would do it every single day for over 4 hours a session. I couldn’t get enough of it. It didn’t take long for me to experience over training, extreme headaches, and pains shooting through my entire body (not the good kind). That is when my real education began.

I started researching nutrition and training, to actually build myself instead of just self-mutilating. Before I knew it, my body was changing dramatically. The very fears that made my life a living hell led to me building something that I find to be extremely beautiful. All those fucked up thoughts that caused blinding hate for myself, filled me with fear until causing me to stagger, were helping me carve myself out of stone.

When I came across Kris Gethin and his workouts, this was when life became fantastic. He presented workouts that required the intensity of the emotionally disturbed. His workouts fed me more satisfaction than anything ever before. I followed his workouts and experienced the most painful moments of my life. This opened up a new world to me. Soon I began to take his methods and help formulate my own.

While everyone else was making workouts that would be most beneficial for growth, through Gethin’s methods, I became focused on setting up unthinkable torture to put myself through, just as Gethin would. Workouts that made me want to breakdown in the middle of, cry, and give up. Workouts that before I began I was genuinely nervous and got knots in my stomach. Workouts that made me feel as if my blood was boiling beneath my skin and my muscle is melting off the bone. Repetitions were completed in such a fashion that I felt each individual muscle fiber tearing. In these workouts I experience so much pain that my mind feels as if it must disconnect. I continue going through these motions that provide so much pain that I feel as if I can’t actually be consciously experiencing it. So I would ask myself, “how do I knowingly continue to do make my body go through the motions that are causing such unthinkable pain?” I find, the answer is a true out of body experience, but the lights are turned on and you relish in your exposure.

Before I knew it I was inviting all of those thoughts that I had tried in every way not to have, back in. I begged for a little fucked up ghost to grace me with their presence. I’ll give you a big smile and a kiss motherfucker! If I got through the hells that are my workouts, nothing could do shit to me. I found myself not having any energy to think negative bullshit. I gained complete control over all of my emotions. Nothing could cause a rise out of me. For better or for worse I didn’t give a shit about anything, and luckily in High School my teachers liked me so I made it through.

My life began to revolve around doing everything I could to be the best I could be. This allowed me to continue my evolution in bodybuilding and more importantly my mind. My sleep was at least 8 hours a night and my meals were always like clockwork. If friends wanted to hangout, when I wanted to do anything, I better have my meals packed, or I wasn’t doing it. Over the years I have become more balanced.

Bodybuilding has allowed me to act the way I want to. I no longer feel the need to spend 4 hours straight self-torturing but these times of tearing myself down and turning negatives into positives are still very much needed. When life gets more screwed up, I act accordingly with the iron. These days, I only work out 5 times a week and get my 5 meals in a day. Workouts usually last 1 1/2–2 1/2 hours. In the gym I’m a psychotic loon of a man with such crazy talent for torture, and outside of the gym I am a nice quiet person that will never flip out or get angry. One would think I don’t have a care in the world. And because of lady iron, that is the truth baby!!!!!!!!! So now I lay in bed sleeping like a baby, hanging my leg off the side hoping some monster bastard grabs it.