My Journey of Fitness

Recently, over the last year or so (especially over the last 6 months), I've had quite a few people comment on my physical appearance.

"You've lost weight." Is a common one.
"Have you been going to the gym?" Is another.
"You look in great shape." An oft heard third.

I wanted to highlight this not for the sake of my own vanity (although, clearly I'm not opposed to getting these sorts of comments), but for a rather different reason. It would seem, then, that I have arrived at the destination of being "fit", as nebulous a term as it is.

Certainly, my own self three or four years prior would have thought so. He would have looked in the mirror at my physique now and would have been consumed with jealousy and longing. A goal to attain, something to "get", an achievement to tick off on the list of things to do in life; "get fit". Concerned only with the external, the image, the representation. Knowing perhaps, but ignoring, that the really the important things to get right were the things on the inside - the substance.

Looking back now from where I stand today, with the knowledge attained from consistent effort applied over the years, I realise how hopelessly naive I was back then. There is no end goal here, there is no summit to the mountain. We are not even climbing a mountain in the first place. The journey of fitness is not so much a physical progression as a spiritual one and being fit is not an achievement, it is a state of being. The real benefits are not the hard abs and defined pecs, it is the hardening of discipline and the definition of character.

Of course, the visual progression is the easiest to see. So let's lay that out below and get it out of the way.

2006 me.

2011 me.

2014 me.

I am of course pleased with the physical transformation from a skinny-fat kid to a fairly "fit" guy. And, I won't lie that of course aesthetics was part of the reason I hopped on the fitness bandwagon all those years ago, and it is part of the reason why I continue to train regularly today. But I want to put it to one side for now, because I really want to talk about the other things - the change of the internal me, which as a progression has mirrored the external changes (but has probably been even more drastic).

I used to hold some very strict beliefs about myself - some of them very negative. One of those beliefs was that no matter what I tried, I would always be quite chubby. Because, back then, I was playing Badminton for Devon County. I was playing 2-3 hours four or more times a week. How could I be doing that much exercise and yet still be chubby? Along with this was also the belief that I was unattractive, and I don't mean on a physical level, I mean that on a deep fundamental level, I believed I was somehow flawed as a person and different (in an inferior way). The worst belief though by far I held was that these things were innate - they were an inextricable part of my being, unchangeable, immutable. It was who I was.

It's interesting thinking back now to the person I was then, and seeing how trapped I was by my these beliefs. And, even through a fair portion of University, I was never really fully secure in myself. I was the guy in the group who laughed along with the jokes, who pandered to everyone's wishes, the serial pleaser who was too scared to stand out and show his own personality - but not just because I was scared, but also because partly I didn't even know what that personality really was because I was too busy spending most of my energy trying just to fit in.

The one area I was consistently good at though was academics. And again it's funny now thinking back. I wonder how much of that success was due to my actual intelligence and how much of it was due to my own self-held belief that I was intelligent, which therefore engendered behaviours that led me to become what I believed I was. After a certain point, should we even try to distinguish them? Fake it till you make it, right?

It's odd though that I never made the connection at that time that I could apply that to the rest of my life.

So, I muddled through Uni, until I arrived in my final year, preparing for Badminton Varsity.

I was the Captain of the team, and I had long ago decided I was going to give it my all to try and bring the trophy home for Cambridge. I even started going to the gym, doing a whole bunch of random exercises with really little idea of what I was about. But, I had a big motivation, which kept me consistent, and I began to notice slight changes.

I was then lucky to be introduced to www.stronglifts.com, and decided to give it a shot. And it changed my life.

I stepped into the gym (Selwyn College's gym - a bare-bones garage with old school solid iron plates and equipment that the paint was peeling off of) on those first workouts, squatting about 40 kg, bench pressing 30 kg and I forget my other stats. The program seemed a little bit crazy to me at the time - add 2.5 kg each workout and keep going, but, I followed it, placing my faith in the testimonials on the internet and also the glimmer of hope in my heart that I could emulate some of the success stories there.

It is difficult to describe the feeling of those first few months. 

Every workout I went in and I added 2.5kg to the bar. Soon, weights that were previously unmanageable became liftable, and then after not much more time, comfortable.

After two weeks, I could already feel a change in myself. After a month, that change was obvious in the mirror. It was like I had discovered a new source of power in my body, and with each workout I was opening the taps. It was addictive, a completely heady feeling. I felt at that point so in control of my own destiny. 

And that was when it hit me - that the limiting belief I had held all my life as fact - that I could never get fit - was in fact nothing but a belief. It forced me to re-examine everything, because if I was proving to myself week after week that I could surpass my previous limit, that I could change this previously immutable aspect of myself, then what else could I change, given the right motivation and approach?

The answer, over the next few years, turned out to be a lot.

I now go to the gym about four times a week in the mornings before work. It's become my panacea, a keystone habit that helps me define myself, keep perspective and de-stress.

I firmly believe we are not a species meant for sitting in office chairs for 8-10 hours a day. Not so long ago we were nomadic hunters on the great plains of Africa, where our preferred method of hunting was to exhaust our prey to death. Society has come a long way since then, but evolutionarily speaking nothing much has changed.

Back then, mother nature was the personal trainer - you hunted, you ran, you exerted yourself - because if you didn't, you didn't eat. Now though, there is no natural pressure, and so in this society of over-abundance we grow fat and lazy and develop bad posture and even worse vices. I firmly believe that this is not a sustainable way to live.

So we should be the mother nature to ourselves, and use our rational thinking to set our animal self the challenges it needs. To reconnect with the glorious physicality that has now been lost from so much of our lives, to restore the balance.

Fitness is not an end goal. It is a journey, a state of being, and for me, it was the cornerstone upon which I changed my life for the better. It led me to understand who I really was, tested the limits of my discipline, my willpower and my character and helped me understand where I was in relation to the man that I wanted to be. It showed me (and continues to show me) that every reward has to be earned, that every achievement comes as the result of consistent hard work. There are no cutting corners in this arena. No shortcuts. If I don't achieve a goal, there is no one else to blame but me. You can make excuse after excuse, but at the end of the day if you can't lift that barbell then you can't lift it.

I used to feel that I was owed certain things by the world - a satisfying career, a loving girlfriend, a comfortable life, just by merely existing. Writing this out makes me cringe. The world doesn't owe me anything, only existence. Nobody else is going to make me into the man I want to be. Everything is up to me. Of course, everybody "knows" this. Just as everybody "knows" how terrible it must feel to lose a family member. But there's knowing - the hazy, slightly abstracted theory. And there's knowing - the concrete, irrevocable knowledge that sits in your bones. They are not the same.

If you're out there, and you feel like how I felt all those years ago. Maybe what you need isn't alcohol, or cigarettes, or porn or whatever else you use to numb the pain and hide from the doubt. Maybe what you need is the iron.