Getting in Shape

When I was 23 my mom fell mysteriously ill and I moved home to small town Canada to help support her, having been unsuccessfully pursuing a career as a songwriter and bassist in Los Angeles for some time. Acknowledging at long last that I was unlikely to ever make it in the music industry was emotionally devastating, and trying to decide who I was if I wasn't an artist seemed incredibly daunting. I had nothing to fall back on and nothing else interested me.

Adding to this turmoil was my overwhelming concern for the wellbeing of my mother. As a child I'd lost my dad to cancer a week shy of his fortieth birthday, and the resultant PTSD had left me ill-equipped to deal with adversity of any kind. What's more, I had a hard time believing that my remaining parent would be able to pull through this time. I was utterly miserable and constantly fretted about things I couldn't control. I missed California terribly.

I began overeating as a result of this distress and in less than four months had ballooned to 220 pounds, giving myself unsightly stretch marks in the process which I believe to be permanent. I felt horrible both physically and emotionally and was painfully aware of how unattractive my body had become. I was trapped in a vicious cycle where food provided comfort as it exacerbated many of the underlying problems which were depressing me.

My wakeup call came when I finally acquiesced to buying new pants, having been unable to fit into anything other than sweats for months. My waist had been 32 inches since high school but I was horrified to discover that I had skipped right over size 34 and now could only snugly fit into jeans with a 36 inch waistband. I decided to make a change.

I'd never been a gym goer aside from a few brief and uncomfortable trial periods, but I knew I had to start exercising. I began jogging in the park and forced myself to go every single day, despite experiencing crippling knee pain immediately and consistently. I also attempted to gradually alter my eating habits, but without much success. I still felt awful almost all the time but at least now there was one small area of my life which I could control and which was positive on balance.

A few months into my training the weather became too cold for my liking, so I joined a local gym and began running on a treadmill and doing some rudimentary strength training. I achieved minor results very slowly until one day bumping into a friend of mine from high school who suggested that I train with him using free weights. This would change my life forever. I began lifting weights every day, upper body one day and then lower the next, and did this consistently for about two years.

My knees continued to hurt 24/7. I was dealing with at least one minor injury at all times and occasionally had to limit my training in some way as a result. None of that mattered. I became muscular for the first time in my life. I achieved (and have maintained ever since) a 30 inch waist, and lost a total of 50 pounds. My new goals were to bench press 225 pounds and to run a marathon.

By this time my mom had almost fully recovered, having had surgery to remove her gall bladder. I, in turn, stopped experiencing depression as frequently and acutely. Good fortune had assuaged my familial concerns and I had put a ton of effort into improving my physical well being, but by most traditional metrics my life was still in the toilet. Thankfully, there were concrete ways in which I could work to improve my lot.

The first step was finding gainful employment, so I applied for a position as a personal trainer. Despite having no experience, training, or credentials, they hired me. I had always believed that taking a job unrelated to music would cause me to kill myself out of frustration, but this fear was quickly proven to be baseless. I enjoyed working with clients from all walks of life and continued to lift weights every day during my year as a PT, learning a lot about fitness and life in the process.

Once I'd saved enough money I moved back to Toronto, where I had attended university. I was unimpressed with the vibes of each gym where I applied, so I got a day job in the food service industry until I could build my own business. I began biking 10 kilometres to work each morning, doing manual labour all day, lifting weights in the gym in the back of the restaurant, and then biking home. My unwillingness to cross town on my days off forced me to reduce my weekly workouts from seven to five. Eventually I only lifted weights three or four times per week and I took transit or drove to work. I had been dead set on exercising every day because I worried about backsliding if it became less frequent than that, but ultimately every body needs breaks and I had been overdoing it. My knees still hurt most of the time.

After several promotions over the better part of two years, I got a job closer to home. Before joining a new gym I purchased a two week trial at a local yoga studio and did a 90 minute class each day. I enjoyed it immensely, depending on the instructor. A nice change of pace.

Once I got back into lifting I began to train every day, using a three day split (push, pull, legs). In early 2019 I had my best workout ever when I not only bench pressed 225 pounds for the first time but also 235. My knees no longer hurt and I had become one of the strongest people in the gym, meaning I was exponentially stronger than the average person. I had also all but completely recovered from my addiction to sugar and fast food.

On the first warm sunny day of spring I went for a run which I estimated to be about five kilometres. It didn't seem overly difficult so I booked my spot in the upcoming Toronto marathon. I altered my training so that I could run one day and then do upper body weightlifting on the next, which proved extremely effective. Despite having done no cardio for over a year and then training for a mere five weeks, I ran the marathon in 3:54.

Crossing the two biggest fitness goals off of my checklist forced me to reassess my priorities. I was tired of constantly having a voracious appetite and never seeming to be able to get enough sleep. My joints often ached and I felt I was starting to look overly bulky. I needed something to focus on other than gaining strength. I chose efficiency, as spending nearly 10 hours of each week exercising had grown tiresome.

I began to complete a 40 minute full body training session every other day. Inspired in part by legendary bodybuilder Dorian Yates, this routine was comprised of one heavy set of eight reps of each of my favourite exercises. I did this same exact workout for almost a year, with my bodyweight maxing out at 198 pounds after I overindulged during Christmas 2019. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit and fitness centres were forced to shut down from late March to early August.

By the time I was finally able to start lifting weights again, I had fairly uniformly lost about 30% of my strength (for example, my bench press 10 rep max dropped from 185 to 135). What's more, I had shrivelled to a mere 155 pounds. The only exercise I had done in about four months was running, and even that had been hampered by bad weather and a lingering foot injury. I had thrown myself into my work as a computer programmer and my mental health had never been better, but this came at the expense of my physical fitness.

In the ten weeks since the reopening I've worked diligently to progressively overload my muscles by gradually lifting heavier and heavier weights. I'm happy to report that my shoulders and back have fully recovered and my legs are stronger than ever. Chest movements have proven slightly more challenging but are almost back to where they were. I still only weigh about 175 pounds, meaning I've never been stronger pound for pound.

Yesterday I set my all-time 10 rep personal record for squats. Looking at my phone immediately after achieving this mark, my heart sank. Several friends had texted to let me know that gyms here in the GTA are shutting down again for at least the next 28 days due to concern about rising cases of covid-19.

The gym is my sanctuary and I'll miss it immensely, but there's no option here other than rolling with the punches. I've purchased a kettlebell and have a friend who's planning to get himself an olympic bar and some plates, so there's no way I'll be wasting away this time around. Depression and chronic pain couldn't stop me and neither will this.