Pain Is Weakness

Pain is weakness leaving the body.

I’ll never forget when I was first introduced to the words, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” I was seventeen years old, not even out of my little high school in my little one-four stop town. I was a scrawny kid back then, six feet two inches and one hundred and sixty-five pounds or so. To say that I was small would be an understatement. In high school we had to take physical education, and while I was a great runner for both sprints and long distance, I couldn’t get a bar up or a dumbbell curled to save my life. I was determined though, and it was when I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps out of Casper, Wyoming that I knew things were going to change. My recruiter told me that I was what they termed a double rat, or double rations. Basically, when they were going to send me to boot camp, I would be eating double the amount of food that other recruits would be. This was to help my body pack on the muscle that I would need while providing me with enough energy to make that transition from civilian to basically trained Marine. And that is exactly what they did.

But I’m not here to talk about my time in the Marine Corps so much though, because most of you reading this either have served, know someone that has served, is currently serving now, or at one point in time thought about joining the service. So, if you’re looking for a typical jaunt through my time in the service, then that’s not this article. I’ll touch on little things from my time in but this article is about the things I learned in all my years from the service to present and the journey that I’ve taken to get to where I am now. It’s ultimately about my personal journey through the ups and downs of fitness, and maybe you’ll pull a little inspiration from it for your own personal journey. So, saying that, if you’re still interested in what’s below, then keep reading. If not, then I appreciate you swinging through.

So, basic kicks your butt. That’s what it’s designed for. You get plenty of physical fitness and food but they don’t tell you exactly why you have to eat that much or why you are getting IT’d (Intensively Trained) on the quarter deck, or if they do, you don’t remember it because you’re tired and sore and they are jamming so much into your noggin, you can’t retain it. You don’t ask questions though, you just do as you're told and hope that sooner or later the pain will stop. It takes time, but those hours that they spend working your butt into the dirt pays off with dividends. Your pushups come easier, your crunches tick higher, and before you know it, you’re six feet two inches and one hundred and eighty-five pounds graduating. That was my case; I had gained twenty pounds and it wasn’t fat. My family didn’t recognize me on graduation day.

A Young Marine...Wait, That's Me!

After basic though, things tend to get easier and if you’re not careful, all those dividends you earned during your time there can fade away. And that’s exactly what happened to me. I let myself slack off. I was still in good shape, don’t get me wrong. I could still run with the best of them, but I had noticed that all the work that I’d made in boot was slipping away over the years and I couldn’t really understand why. I was eating healthy-ish, still running and lifting, but that seemed to be only maintaining. You’d think that I would have known better? Nope! Eight years later I leave the service and return to civilian life and the progress was gone, replaced by something else entirely.

See that guy in the image below? That's me! Sorry about the blurriness, but you can clearly see how out of shape I was getting. I'd replaced working out for cheeseburgers and pizza, beer and liquor. I’d let my fitness and health slide onto the backburner in exchange for quick fixes of food and money, so I could buy all the little things that I wanted but didn’t truly need at that time. Not ashamed to say that a fair amount of my money went towards partying while I was down in New Orleans, Louisiana. It was down there that I ended up getting mugged not once but twice in two months; after that, my family gave me little choice but to return to Wyoming.

Look at that!

When I got back, I still hadn’t started the process of bettering myself. I had gone from one hundred and eighty-five pounds to about two hundred ten pounds and not a lot of it was muscle anymore. It was Thanksgiving a few years back when the blow really came; it came from my older brother who was and is still in the service. He commented on a photo of mine that I had posted to social media, “Looking a bit chubby there, Marine.” And he was right. I looked at myself and didn’t like what I saw. Like I said, I had let myself do what so many others have done and I let myself slide.

I made a decision then and there that I wasn't going to be that guy anymore. I wasn't going to be what they termed in the military as a fat body anymore, I was going to do something about it. And if my saying fat body offends you, then you need to take a good long look at yourself in the mirror. Are you overweight? Would you consider yourself a heavy set person? Do you have extra pounds that you need or want to shed? Then you, my friend, are a fat body, and that's okay. The minute you truly recognize it and realize that you are not where you want to be, then you can do something about it. Now, don't get me wrong. If you are exactly where you want to be with your weight, and comfortable with your body, then by all means, carry on.

I wasn't where I wanted to be. I wanted to get back to where I used to be, when I was one hundred and eighty five pounds, but I knew it was going to take some serious work. And I started putting in that work. I got a gym membership and started lifting, and running, and eating right. I gave up the easy fast food, I gave up pizza, I limited my alcohol intake, and I watched as it started to work. It wasn't quick, but it was worth it. I watched the weight begin to drop away, and the entire time I thought about what my brother said about how I was chubby. I found reasons to keep pushing even when I didn't want to.

I was reading articles about fitness, exercises, and diets. I tried those different workouts and diets, and put things that worked for me into it and took things out that didn't. I educated myself through online articles, magazines and YouTube channels. Still one of my favorite channels to this day is Athlene X with Jeff Cavaliere. To say that he wasn't an inspiration would be a bold faced lie. I want you to know, it's not easy. I said it earlier and I'll keep saying it, this isn't easy. BUT if you have the heart and dedication to make it happen, then you can do it. You can turn your entire life around with just a little pain. I started to notice that my muscles were starting to grow, that my belly fat was going away, and that the weight I was pushing was going up.

And the more gains I saw, the more I loved my time in the gym.

It became and still is my sanctuary, my place where I go to get away from the hectic and stress-filled days. I found that when I walked in, plugged my headphones into my phone, and turned on my music, nothing outside of that world mattered. It was me, the weights, and the music. I don't care if I had a horrible day, I care that I can get that last repetition out with a weight that was higher than last weeks. I don't care about the petty drama that we all have in our day to day lives, I care that I make that last sprint to the end line. It's not about the crap you deal with outside of that sanctuary, it's about the betterment of yourself through moving the weights and hitting your goals.