WHY WE TRAIN?  A QUESTION ASKED AND AN ANSWER GIVEN.

Most people that weight train know that the best time to build muscle is between 18 to 35, after that you still can but it gets harder and you’re more prone to injury and trust me I know how that feels.

The other Sunday I had what can only be described as a monster training session, at the end of which my muscles were rippling and the vein’s popping down my arm, by the end of the workout I felt like THOR after a combined total lifts of over 8oolbs! (I use the combined weights as they sound more impressive than the weights per exercise, and I also use lbs instead of kgs for the same reason!)  However only a few hours after watching Chelsea and Man U play one of the most dismal games of the season I found myself seizing up as if I was IRON MAN in a rusty suit.  The only word to adequately describe the pain I was in is “OW!”

And at the end of all this I asked myself the question, knowing what I know about the best years to train and how much more at risk of injury I am these days, why do it?  Why do I train still, especially as I’m never gonna be huge; my muscle insertion points and tendons prevent that to some degree and also the fact that I have work and a family and other minor distractions to contend with from becoming a full-time weight-lifter.  So why train?

I guess when I asked that I had to face some pretty awkward answers, the first reason that sprang to mind certainly was one I didn’t really want to look at “Vanity”.  I have to admit there is a definite massive enjoyment out of what I would class as “THE LOOK” immediately after training, combined with the endorphins and testosterone buzzing around yourself it is a kick that’s hard to beat.

To some degree I’d also say “Fear”.  I remember how it felt to look in the mirror at some skinny bloke when I stopped training and that feeling constantly not of what could have been but what already was.  I remember how awful that felt and I do not want to live with that again.

But there is one thing that keeps me going more than those things, a driving force that motivates me more than anything else to whether the storm of pain that greets me after a particularly hard session in the gym and that’s the viewpoints of two of the most important people in my life.

You see when my youngest boy says to me that I’m strong, I know he’s not saying it to swell my head, he’s saying it because he knows it’s true, and likewise when my eldest asks me to train him it’s not because he thinks I’m crap (although he might say that) it’s because deep down he knows that what I have built is pretty decent and he’d like to have the same if not better (when he becomes 18 I will bestow upon him the training secrets that built my frame!)  

I don’t know how many more good training years I have left in me and how long I can keep pounding the gym and straining my body without doing some terrible damage, but as long as they think highly of me I will keep moving those weights until my tendons pop and muscles seize up.  

“Ow!”

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