"If I was injury free, would I still compete?"

"Knowing what I know now, what would I have changed?"

I was recently asked theses two questions. Let me hit the first part of that, based upon the current situation and position I'm in.

If I was injury free now, would I still compete?

The answer is: no, I would not compete even if every joint in my body felt perfect. I would go as far to say, even if my strength was what it used to be and I knew for a fact that I could build upon it. I'll even take it a step further and say, even if my strength was strong enough to be able to rank me in the same place, in the classification that I was at my best, my answer would still be, "No."

The reason for that has nothing to do with the sport. It has nothing to do with the politics of the sport. It has to do with what I feel I personally need, or would need to do, to be the best I have to be in the sport. I'm not willing to do that at this stage of my life. Interesting enough, we just did a table-talk video on this (that will be released soon).

The reason why I say, "No," is for me personally, if I'm going to compete in a sport, powerlifting, being that it's a sport that I loved and had a passion for since I was thirteen years old, I can't just go half in. I can't just stick my toe in, I can't just go waste deep, I can't just go balls deep, I got to go all in, or nothing. To quote Clint Darden,

" Be all in or Quit"

That's my mentality and that's how I approached it for close to twenty-five years of my life. It was my number one priority above everything else.

That's not just words, I have actions to prove that. I have actions that support that, I have many regrets that surround that. I put my life on hold for a long time to chase that goal and objective. That part, I don't regret at all. I don't regret taking time off school to be able to train for Nationals. I don't regret not being able to carry a full school load so I could work and be able to support being a lifter as well as going to school. I don't regret not going out drinking with friends. Fuck that, I didn't even have friends! I don't regret not having friends.

"My best friends were barbells and if I had to stick my dick in something every plate has a hole", "I don't care how bad I tear it off or how beat down my joints get, when I get older they will have great technology and replacements for that shit", "I will have plenty of time for X when I done - but I will never be done", "They will have to pry my dead hand from the barbell", "I don't want to be buried in a piano case, just toss my caucus in the junk yard because it's not worth a fuck if I can't squat". 

I was saying these things as a teenager and... I guess... I still say some of them today.

That was my life for twenty-five years, including before I was married, while I was courting my wife, when we got married, and extending until after we got married. I'm not going to sit here and say that my marriage didn't suffer because of that, it did. It's just that, at the time, I didn't care. If you want to talk about some other things looking back, as far as regrets, that's one of the things I have many  regrets about.

My son was born and I wouldn't sleep in the same room. I slept in a different room because I had a meet in twelve weeks, I had to be able to sleep. Do I regret that? Yeah, I do. I could list example after example, regret after regret but it still comes back to  would I do it differently? No, because my greatest fear during that time was I knew someday it was going to be over. I didn't know when that day was going to be, but I knew the same way every other athlete knows someday it's going to be over.

My greatest fear was never getting hurt. It was never injuries, it wasn't the regrets, it wasn't even a fucking factor. It didn't even register on my radar.

My greatest fear was someday looking back on the sport and saying, "I should of did this," or, "I wish I would have done that." I don't have that. I don't look back and say, "I wish I would have trained this way, tried harder, or gave more."

I don't have any of that, none of that. I did everything I possibly could, within my power and financial ability, beyond my financial ability, to be able to be the best I could possibly be. Nothing can ever change that. Nothing can change that in MY mind. That was the commitment and the dedication and the discipline I felt I needed to have and I needed to do.

That's my mindset. I want to be able to look back and say, "I did everything I possible could to be the best I possibly could be." Yes, I have regrets. I would rather have regrets than have, "I wish I would haves," any day. As I sit here and write this now, that keeps going through my head. For me...

"It's so much better to have regret than to wonder IF"

Now, if everything wasn't as beat-up and I was given the opportunity to be able to compete the way I want to compete ... Don't get me wrong, that feeling never goes away. If I was given that ability to be able to have that all back again, that, "What if," is going to change.

At this point in my life that, "What if," isn't going to be how much dedication, and how much determination, and how much effort, and how much I was willing to sacrifice, and how much I was willing to give up to be able to be the best. At this stage in my life the regrets of having to put everything else second, trumps those, "What ifs," because those things  have become more important. In my brain, they need to be. My family is important, my faith is important, and my business is important. Those things are now those things that I'm earning regret for.

For twenty-five years I spent earning regret for the sport of powerlifting. For the rest of my life I want to spend that time earning regret from my family, faith, and my business. It doesn't mean I don't love the sport, I do. I support the sport heavily. I support lifters heavily. I changed and so did my perspective and priorities. Did the injuries change it? Possibly. Many times I thought the injuries are a blessing, because the road I was going down was getting destructive, VERY destructive.  Had I kept going down that road in pursuit of that same objective as hard as I was, I probably wouldn't be married. I probably wouldn't have a business, and I probably wouldn't be seeing my kids as often as I see my kids. In my mind their is absolutely no doubt about this but my story is not yours.

---

As you mature as an athlete and the better you become, the more advance you become, the more time needs to be spent on the things you really suck at. I think everyone agrees with this when it comes to training but when the sport becomes your identity and your life it really should be looked at like a small business so the list of things you suck at expands the better you become. I didn't work on many of the social things I sucked at and just ignored them. I call this sport maturity.  This is around the same time your ego drops because you know for every PR you set the next lift could be the one that puts you out for 2 months. You discover you will have more bad sessions than good ones and that very few if any training sessions go as you plan.  Training is a constant process or growing and adjusting but as you become more seen in the public eye so does your need for social and family skills. This is too long already so I will stop this topic here for now.

---

Those are the regrets that I earned, and they hurt. That's the thing about regrets, they hurt and should because it's validation that you pushed your hardest and beyond your comfort zone. I think when you give everything that you have to try to accomplish something ... Let me rephrase that: when you give everything you have, plus more, and you don't even understand the consequences of how much you're giving and what that's going to mean in the future ... When you give that much in that pursuit of your own personal excellence, you don't understand the consequences or the regrets until years later when you look back. If you're that single-minded and you're that driven to be able to accomplish that, they're probably going to be there.

I wanted to make sure, if they were going to be there, that there was something to balance the scales when I look back. To be able to say, "Okay, that's all right because I did everything I fucking possibly could." Now, I'm going to take that same pursuit, discipline, and passion, and put it in those other things to be able to move forward. For that reason, no, I wouldn't. I don't think, given those circumstances, or any other circumstance for that matter, I would be able to step on the platform and not give everything I have to earn my way to that platform.

This endeavor, this powerlifting endeavor, was never a hobby for me, It was a sport. It was such an ingrained sport it became a huge part of my identity, that I can't replace and don't want to. If I was to go back and step on the platform  being even half the lifter that I was, and just try to do it as a hobby and for fun, it would ruin, in my mind, everything I did before. For me, somethings are better left in the past. That chapter's better left closed, and my time is better left spent try to develop newer lifters, better lifters, and the sport and I am in a better position to do so.

The second part of this question, "What would I have done differently?" I did cover that in a past table-talk, so I won't expand on this very much. What I would have tried to do differently is I would have tried to train my supplemental exercises, I would of tried to cycle them a little bit better. I would of changed the accessory exercises to use lighter weight and more tension to build more muscle, since that's what they were intended to do. I would of listened when Louie told me to back down, instead of ignoring what one of the best coaches in the world was trying to tell me to do. I would of dropped the ego a little bit, listened a little bit more, and that's really it. There's really not a lot.

Even saying that, if I was to offer that as advice, to say, "Hey look, do everything that I did but just change these variables," I don't think that's any guarantee that you're going to end up in any different position than what I ended up in. Wear and tear, is wear and tear. While I can sit here and say, "I think that might of reduced the wear and tear a little bit," it may of only just postponed the wear and tear by another year or two, or it may have just lead to wear and tear someplace else. I am where I am because of many reasons: wear and tear, body weight, the time in the sport, and the weights that I was training with, but also because I strongly believe this is where I'm supposed to be.

This is where I was meant to be. I can't change that. I can't go back and say, "If I would of done this, this would of been different," because first off, we can't change the past. Secondly, maybe this is where I'm supposed to be.

No matter what path I would of taken, I feel I still would of ended up in this same spot because this is where I was destined to be.

What I'm doing now is what I strongly feel is what I was destined to do. There's many roads to get to many places, but many of those roads all go to the same one. I think all the roads that I took, or roads I would of took, all would of lead to the same place, and that's where I am now. 

READ MORE OF MY BLOG POSTS AND ARTICLES HERE