Benching 315 pounds.
Shoulder shrugs with 125 pounders.
Rows using a 100 pound dumbbell.
My trap’s rivaled those of Tom Hardy’s in the movie Bronson.
I was a block. A block of meat and I loved it. Until one day I didn’t.
Becoming a Meathead
I loved to lift lots of weight. If it was heavy, I wanted to pick it up more times than the next gentleman. Yes, I was that guy staring at himself in the mirror at the gym.
My life didn’t always consist of such. Prior to a 5 year span of meatheadedness (yep, made that up), I was scrawny. By scrawny, I mean Shawn-Bradley-scrawny.
Then, after my junior year of high school basketball, I decided I needed to put on some muscle to actually be able to rebound. Between March 2001 and November 2001, I went to the gym quite frequently. I put on a bit of muscle and was able to have a successful senior season.
Then my basketball career ended and I needed another workout outlet. The meathead plan began.
My belief as to what a meathead was revolved around being ultra-strong, bulky and being able to turn “the ladies” heads when in a shirt that was too small.
Vain? Absolutely.
So, the plan was to hit the weights at the gym for two days then take a day off and repeat. I did this for two years and after those two years, I was at Incredible Hulk status. I went to parties to show off my “guns” and hit the lake with this frame that rivaled your average reality show guido.
It wasn’t until I started to realize my 210 pound frame, though quite muscle bound, was limiting my skills on the basketball court in intramural and pick-up games that I started to realize the pitfalls of becoming this MeatHead I had so desired to be. It became tougher to dunk and harder to keep up with the younger, leaner, and still strong kids.
It hit me hard. I was a Meat-Head who couldn’t do the vast majority of things I loved.
From Meathead to Athlete
Sitting around the garage with a few friends, a drunken argument arose regarding who was faster at running a 5k. One of the buddies ran in a local 5k and was telling me I couldn’t do it. Needless to say, I was going to prove him wrong.
While still lifting weights, I began training for a Thanksgiving Day 10k. Quickly, I realized that benching 315 pounds and running a fast 10k were not going to co-exist.
I began implementing more of an all-around-fit approach. I still wanted the capability of easily lifting more than my body weight while also being able to run a great clip for six miles. I started cutting my lifting back to 3-4 times per week at weights 80% of max lift capability and ran 5-7 days per week anywhere between 15-30 minutes.
After a few weeks of this adjusted training schedule, I ran the 10k and well, KILLED IT. My time was roughly 42 minutes which split in half still beat my buddy’s 5k time. Yes, I did brag to him the next time I saw him.
However, the great feeling of beating my buddy came second to the feeling I had from becoming a “somewhat” all-around athlete. I knew becoming this all-around athlete was what I wanted so I pursued further into a balanced fitness lifestyle.
No longer was one specific aspect to fitness what I wanted. Sure, I still wanted to achieve at specific aspects of specific sports, but only if I could achieve others in other aspects of fitness at the same time.
I wanted more. I wanted to be every man. I wanted to be an all-around athlete.
Transforming from meathead to all around athlete was difficult. For the longest time, I had committed to developing the muscle to be large and in charge. Now, I was scaling back what I knew to include aspects of endurance training and muscle strength in areas that didn’t solely focus on one muscle group goal but a complete body goal.
As mentioned earlier, I scaled the lifting back in weight and time dedication. I increased the running and started including brief swims. By no means was this a triathlon training schedule, but it comprised of many triathlon aspects to go with the muscle development training. I also implemented trail runs and participated in non-traditional running races like mud runs.
Over the next one and a half years, I became an actual athlete. It took a lot of dedication, time and effort, but was more than worth it. Honestly, I probably was fairly close to all-around athlete status after 30 days, but I felt I was “there” come the year and a half later. Either way, reaching that pinnacle of my fitness led to some of my biggest achievements in fitness to this day.
How I Did It & You Can Too
If becoming an all around athlete and leaving the meathead world behind is up your ally, check out the following general guidelines for my fitness routine and diet that I followed to achieve pinnacle fitness.
- Limited eating out or fatty-meal to once per week. Every Friday night, I would get in a brief run then – – – IT WAS ON. I would allow myself to chomp down on any unhealthy plate I could and chased it down with a few adult beverages. Throughout the week, I had this to look forward to. Tim Ferriss preaches a one-day-per-week-extravaganza in Four Hour Body which is definitely a great implementation of this approach as well.
- Built muscle while progressing towards other goals. This might appear a repeat of everything taught at Become a Beast, but it differs a bit. In my case, I had focused too much on lifting which limited progress on other physical fitness. I slowly reduced the amount of weight I was lifting as I began to see progress in the other fitness areas. Once I could consistently improve on my other fitness goals, I stayed at the lifting levels that allowed for such and continued. The clear part is finding that “sweet spot” of being able to maintain desired lifting abilities while training for other physical aspects.
- Built a balanced fitness portfolio. If you were to walk into a financial professionals office and ask for advice, more than likely, they would start by preaching the importance of diversification. Sure, you could take a huge leap of faith and put 100% of your assets on the next Apple stock, but you can be extremely successful and eliminate much of the risk by diversifying. The same applies to Beast fitness. Instead of wanting to be the best weightlifter, I wanted to be able to “compete” or, at the very least, hold my own in all aspects of fitness. My portfolio consisted of the three triathlon sports of running, swimming, and a small amount of biking, hiking, and weightlifting. At none of these was I elite, but I was at a high level at a lot of them. There is and never will be anything negative with being the best at one thing. It’s just not for me nor do I expect such of the other Beasts here.
Through these three outlooks and changes, I went from a 210 pound weightlifter who had little versatility to a 182 pound jack-of-all-fitness-trades. The 182 pound me was able to enjoy more aspects of life beyond fitness thanks to the diversification of my diet and fitness.
Haters Gonna Hate
By now, some of you have blood boiling. You think I am an idiot who thinks people who just lift weights must be meatheads. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
This article is a reflection of who I was and who I am now. I was a meathead. I was the stereotypical meathead. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of others that just lift weights and are not meatheads. Lifting weights is a-okay, better than nothing, and a great way to improve your physical fitness. I still lift weights today.
The focus of this piece is more on why I chose to leave the approach of specializing in one fitness aspect. I encourage others to do the same and do not, by any means, think you should stop solely lifting if it works for you. It comes back to the motto that never fails, do what works.
Is Your Athlete Waiting to Be Unleashed
If you think this approach might work for you as well, I’d suggest joining the Become a Beast Team. We love having new members to join in the pursuit of our personal pinnacle selves.
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