I was inspired by the blog post Are Most Blogger Liars? to dig back into my past, to a time when I wasn’t quite the strength and fitness paragon many of you think I am!
Letting the good times roll
These days I deadlift and squat three figures (and that’s front squat too, bro) and can bash out more than 10 strict pull ups.
I eat protein for breakfast and my only vice is the occasional few glasses of wine.
I’ve never lied to you, and I ‘walk the walk’ as a professional – but I know that many people assume I have always been like this.
The truth is, I wasn’t always this strong and I wasn’t always that healthy.
In fact, here are 10 things you didn’t know about me.
- I was a 20-a-day smoker. For ten years.
- My nickname at uni was Slash, after the Guns’n’Roses guitarist never seen without a fag poking out from under his crazy dark hair.
- When I first started working in the city, my default breakfast was an iced cinnamon danish from Pret.
- When I first started running, I could not run continuously for more than 2 minutes. I’ve since done half marathons.
- I used to drink a bottle of red wine a day!
- In my first gym class, I couldn’t manage a single full push up.
- I remember the day I first tried to squat an empty 20kg Olympic bar. I think I went down about half way.
- I used to think I was doing ‘cleans’ when really I was doing reverse curls.
- Video exists of me missing a 35kg snatch over and over again. It’s now my first warm up weight.
- The first time I did an outdoor bootcamp with British Military Fitness I thought I was going to die. For real!
More than a decade after I started
I really was a smoking, drinking, sugar-addicted couch potato.
But there wasn’t one day when I thought ‘hey, I’ll become a strength athlete!’
I had no idea where I was going or how far I would travel. I started off just wanting to lose a bit of weight and get fitter.
Enjoy the journey and realise that it’s your journey. And see how far it can take you.
p.s. If you’ve spent the first 2-3 decades of your life ‘abusing’ your body, know that you will spend the rest of your life ‘fixing’ it. Have patience and be kind to yourself. Don’t punish yourself by trying to break your body or push it to the limit. You missed that window.