The joy of iron, anger issues, and making dumb decisions

A few years ago, life for me was very different to what it is now. My career was in the toilet, my wife and I had a child on the way and we were living with her parents. We’d just moved back from interstate after I’d left the military and we were getting established back in our home town. I’d finally finished my army contract and left the things I didn’t like about being in the military behind, not realising that I’d also left many good things behind as well: my (awesome) judo club, my network of friends, and, oh yeah, my identity.

I’d fucked up my career transition from military to civilian royally. I’ve written plenty about it before, so I won’t talk about it any further here. After working casual retail for a couple of months, I finally managed to land a full time job – which paid half of what I’d been offered immediately upon leaving the military, before that went to shit. Soon after the novelty and relief of having a full time job again wore off and the reality of where I was set in, my unhappiness grew. The truth was, I wasn’t just unhappy, I was angry. The sort of angry that you carry around with you in the pit of your stomach, that gives you this incredible sense of drive and determination, but also a massive amount of impatience to pull yourself out of it. There was only one place that I could go to let that anger out: my local gym.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but the local gym that I joined was a rare find. It was small and located in an industrial estate, you wouldn’t even know it was there unless you’d looked it up online (which I had done) and driven to check it out. It didn’t have showers or lockers or anything that a typical gym has. I think it might have had a rowing machine and maybe a treadmill or two. The only females that ever came went to a class upstairs.

You know what it did have though? It had plenty of iron, the good stuff. It had an atmosphere. It had culture. It had a group of guys who clearly did physical labour in their day jobs, and came to the gym to do a bit more. There was a good camaraderie there — sure, some guys didn’t like each other, but there was always a healthy respect and any dust ups were extremely rare. Some guys there took steroids, some didn’t. No one cared, because as long as you worked hard, you were respected. There were Lebanese guys, Anglo guys, Pacific Islanders, Greeks. The melting pot of cultures in the gym echoed the surrounding suburbs. There was no pretentiousness. There was no strutting around, no ridiculous fashion. It wasn’t a place to be seen — it was a place to work.

I worked off a lot of anger there.

I was angry at my shitty job and my shitty pay. I was angry at the fact I’d fucked up my career. I was angry that I’d burned through a whole heap of my savings while I tried to find decent work. Most of all, I was angry that I felt so powerless. It’s funny that you can feel more powerless as a civilian, where you can dress how you like and be an individual, than when you’re at the bottom of the food chain in the military.

I remember the first time I squatted 200kg in that gym. The most I’d done previously was 180kg. One day, I was so angry at something that had happened at work that I drove to the gym afterwards fuming. As I downed my large can of V with my music blaring, I said to myself “fuck it, I’m lifting 200 tonight”. A 20kg jump like that is absurd — most people go for 5 or 10kg personal records, not 20kg. That night, I squatted it. The weight felt like it was going to crush me as I walked it back. As I went down into the hole, I felt myself stall as I was coming back up. I was so angry I let out a roar and pushed straight through it. Even after finishing my workout, I drove home angry.

But it was ok to be angry in that gym. There was a lot of testosterone in there. Everyone there was unhappy with something in their lives, and this was our church. Walking through these doors, no one cared if you were a stock broker or a street sweeper. No one cared if you had a million dollars, or ten. You were judged by how you hard you trained, and nothing else. Some people need to pray to God, some people need confession. Our prayer was getting under a bar. Our confession was asking for a spot. Our sermon was the supporting yells of the guys when pushing the bar up on those final reps. When you walked out, you felt cleansed.

Then things changed. I got a really amazing job with a huge payrise, I felt like I was on the way up. I’d mentally turned a corner by working through my anger a few months before and learned to be happy. I foolishly quit my gym for a 24 hour chain because I was travelling a lot. Besides, it was a bit too expensive anyway, and this 24 hour chain was cheaper, with a tonne of locations. They had most of the equipment I needed, but unfortunately, they lacked something that I had never realised was so important:

Soul.

At the time I was so focused on my new job and career, and it was so full on that I didn’t worry so much about the gym. I lost a bunch of weight because I was skipping meals and walking around so much. Sure, I still lifted a couple of times a week, but it wasn’t so much of a priority, and it was a case of get in, do a quick workout, then get out. I don’t think it’s any accident that so many of the people involved in powerlifting have so much intensity, so much anger. If you want to be a powerlifter, you have to have intensity and drive — it’s not something you can half ass. At the time that intensity and drive went to my job.

Fast forward a couple of years, things are still going well with my career and we just bought our first house. I’ve been getting seriously back into the lifting, but checking out the local franchise of my gym, I knew I’d reached a fork in the road. While the franchises I’d been attending were ok enough to keep going to, the first time I went to my new local I was almost stunned by how soulless it felt. The layout was awful, equipment was lacking, and there wasn’t anyone there that seemed to really be into it. My will to lift struggled with my will to go to this place, and thankfully the former would win out, but I needed to find a new gym and fast.

After going around to many gyms in the area, I stumbled across a powerlifting and strongman gym only 15 minutes drive from my house. The moment I walked in, I knew I was home. There wasn’t even anyone training, but I felt the atmosphere just being in there. It was like going to a new dojo during my judo days — if you walked in and could smell sweat, you knew you were in the right place. Other people would call it disgusting, but anyone worth their salt knew it was the smell of hard work and victory. I had the same feeling here. There were heavy duty squat cages, real competition spec benches, atlas stones, tyres, log presses, yokes, farmer’s walks, chalk dust all over the place and a huge, growling mural on the wall.

Yep, this is me.

It’s been a few weeks now, and I feel like I’ve rediscovered something that was lost to me while I worked out in those other gyms. The energy I have in this place is something I haven’t had since I first walked into that local gym three years ago. It’s like the energy of my old gym, without the anger. When you’re training in there, the heavy metal is pumping, the whole gym shakes from atlas stones hitting the ground, you hear the large clank of a yoke being dropped, the growl of someone trying to push the weight up that last few inches. Everyone is there with intensity, because they want to be stronger. There are no mirrors, no selfies, people aren’t walking in shaking hands with everyone as though it’s a social hour. Everyone’s there to work hard, to test themselves, to shape their bodies in the crucible.

Why? Well why the hell not? One of the things that most attracted me to powerlifting was that it made me feel powerful. When your life feels like it’s in the shitter, when you feel powerless, lifting heavy is empowering, because you’re making your body powerful. When you let out that primal anger and rip the bar off the floor on a deadlift, you’re saying a big “fuck you” not just to gravity, but to everything else that you feel is holding you down. It’s much better than slumping on the couch to watch Netflix or scroll Buzzfeed, while lamenting the fact that your life isn’t what you think it should be.

I made the decision to leave that first, amazing gym because it was a few hundred bucks more expensive per year than the chain gym. That was a stupid reason to leave. A gym, like many other things, is about so much more than price. Hell, the price difference wasn’t even that big anyway. At my new gym, I pay double what I paid at that original gym, and I didn’t even flinch when they told me how much it was. You can’t put a price on culture, on being in a place with a bunch of people that makes you feel like you can lift the whole world, and that you want to try.

It’s not just that though. Lifting heavy stuff is one of those primal things. It’s not meant to be done in such a sanitary, perfectly lit, air conditioned environment. It turns the activity from something that makes you feel alive and full of adrenalin to something that is now a chore, just more work to be done on top of your day job. Commercial gyms make me want to get in and get out. A real gym though, that’s a place you don’t want to leave. Where you lament the fact that you can’t get another yoke walk in, because you’ve done more than you planned on already.

I’m never giving up that feeling for such a stupid reason as price ever again.