Part #1 of my All in the family series. A huge thank you to my amazing nephew for this blog.
My name is Davis Forman and I am Sherri Regalbuto’s nephew. Home for
me is Toronto, Canada, but I am currently working on my master’s degree in
neuromuscular physiology out on the East coast. I’m 24 years old and have been
thoroughly obsessed with weight lifting/bodybuilding for more than ten years.
This addiction started out as just a hobby/something to do in my first year of
high school, but has since evolved into a lifestyle. The high school that I
went to was actually brand new the year I started, with its official grand
opening occurring seven months after classes began. It had the absolute best
facilities available, including a state of the art weight room that was used
for the ‘Weight Club.’ The Weight Club was an after school program that ran for
two hours following the final bell, and was offered to all students for just
$50 (I have yet to find a membership anywhere that can beat that price). Any
student who joined could workout for two hours after school, Monday to Friday
under the supervision and guidance of qualified coaches. Ironically, I had no intention
of ever joining. I was a scrawny kid with toothpick limbs and was as shy as shy
came; the whole ‘gym’ idea was a little intimidating. But my parents were
concerned that I wasn’t committing myself to enough school activities and so
‘gently asserted’ that I join. I can’t thank them enough for pushing me, for it
changed my life.
Almost no one in the school participated in the Weight Club in the
first year, and while I remained small, my strength quickly surpassed my peers.
In my second year, I was breaking school records and it was a trend that would
continue until I graduated. Those feats single-handedly changed my identity;
that of a tiny book nerd who the jocks could cheat off of to one of the
strongest kids in the school. My confidence exploded! I walked taller, spoke up
more often and was simply more comfortable in pretty much any situation. But as
great as those changes were, and they were
great, the most important thing I took away from the Weight Club was a new
love. Not a hobby, but a love. I absolutely loved working out. The gym wasn't
just how other’s identified me, but it was also how I identified myself. I had
discovered a new way of life that I was whole-heartedly committed to, and that
devotion has since led me to unexpected, but certainly welcomed, success. It
was because of weight lifting that I not only enrolled, but excelled in an
undergraduate program in Kinesiology, for I was driven to learn more about the
human body and how I could improve it.
To complete an exhaustive list of all the positives that the gym and
weight lifting have had upon my life would be an impossible task, but there are
several important ones that stand out to me. Of course there are the obvious
points, such as the fact that they are virtually the sole reasons for my
current career path (hopefully that of a neuromuscular physiology researcher),
and essentially limitless health benefits, such as the decreased risk of
developing chronic diseases, improvements in body composition, increases in
bone density, heightened cognitive functioning and reduced risk of injury. Many
benefits are not so clear, but I believe they are no less important than the
ones I have listed above. I have come to find that the gym is an effective
teacher; simple and at times unforgiving, but effective nonetheless. There are
lessons that I have learned in the gym that I may have never learned anywhere
else. Self-discipline is the first of these that comes to mind. We all face
obstacles in our lives, but there appears to be an increasing trend in society
for people to search for the easy way out of their problems instead of
persevering. There is no easy way out in the gym. If you want to lift 200lbs,
it is up to you and you alone. You cannot buy your way to 200lbs or get your
friends to do it for you. Excuses will get you nowhere and praying for strength
will not get you there faster. If you want to reach your goal, you have to put
in the time; you have to work for it! It must become a commitment, the likes of
which you have never committed to before. It can take months, even years of
hard, grueling, consistent effort to reach one of your goals in the gym. But
when you finally get there, it’s all worth it! The sense of achievement you get
from finally lifting a target weight is something that can’t be described; you
have to experience it to understand. And it is in that moment of success,
following a seemingly unbelievable amount of work, sweat, and time that you
begin to learn the value of self-discipline. Despite all of those challenges,
all of those setbacks, you did it! And I believe that this lesson, the idea
that success is not achieved by wishing for it, but by rolling up your sleeves
and getting your hands dirty can be applied to all aspects of your life, as I
am beginning to do with mine.
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