The Promise

My grandparents lived two houses down when I was a child. It was like I had 4 parents, 2 mothers and 2 fathers. Both mothers had very strong maternal instincts and both fathers worked in road construction. They both worked too hard as well.

My grandfather was a pretty big guy. He wasn't that tall, but he was thick with muscle. He was a cement worker and he did yard work on the side. He worked out quite a bit as well. All of this high energy hard work led to a need for a huge release, I think. Maybe he just wanted to show off his strength. Whatever the reason, my grandfather drank. When he drank I don't mean a sip or two. I mean a case or two. Then he'd pick a fight with someone. Anyone. He could punch well with either hand and from what I've heard and saw for myself, he punched like he had a sledgehammer in his hand.

I asked my dad about it one time. All he would say was, "You want to talk about someone getting knocked across a room..." but he wouldn't tell me any stories.

My grandfather did. In a way. I asked him why his nose got so much bigger from when he first entered the army to the time I was asking him. He told me it kept getting broken. I asked him about the scar that ran from the corner of his left jaw to halfway down his neck. He told me a one armed man wanted to fight him in one of the dive bars around town (my grandfather was black-balled from nearly every bar in town). My grandfather wouldn't fight him. The man broke a bottle and stuck it in my grandfather's neck. It punctured his jugular and he was rushed to the hospital. They stitched him up and told him to go home. What does he do? He goes BACK to the bar, big neck brace and all, looking for the guy. The other patrons were smart enough to hide the one armed man.

When I was little I never finished anything. Both fathers were handy with things. Need something for the house or yard? They'd make it. They'd always have me do little projects to get used to working with my hands and various materials. It never interested me though. It still really doesn't. So I'd never finish. While my father would just wave his hand and say, "This isn't for you," my grandfather would ride me a little bit about it. He pointed out he wasn't going to let me start anything else because I never finished. I remember that stinging. It still stands out in my memory.

I grew up and my grandfather got older. Even as he hit his 60's he was performing exceptionally in his jobs which were almost purely physical. We moved away to Wisconsin and I saw less and less of him. I still talked to him on the phone quite a bit. I started having my problems and in light of this he started asking my mom if I could come live with him so I could be straightened out. It never really flew with my mom.

The last time I saw him, I was 17. I was a cross country and track runner. I was 6 feet tall and weighed about 135 pounds. There was nothing really to me. My grandfather had just returned from a trip to Germany. It was Father's Day and he had brought all of us gifts. As we sat around the table, I could tell something was wrong with him. He was more serious than usual. None of the prankster antics that we had come to know him for. Somewhere during the day, he looked at me and said, "I want you to have my weight set." I asked him why. Wouldn't he be needing it? He told me to just take it, that the next time I saw him I'd look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I laughed. He told me to promise him. I laughed uncomfortably again. How could that be possible? I was nothing when it came to weight lifting. My natural strength was endurance. He repeated himself. Make the promise. I made the promise knowing full well it was impossible, but what the hey, I tried to make him happy. It was Father's Day.

He died the next Friday night. Massive heart attack. He went quick. We were all crushed of course. He was the patriarch. The glue that held all the extended families together. A minor celebrity in the hometown. His funeral was a who's-who of cement workers and well... I saw a few types that looked a little mafia-ish. It was packed. I left pretty quick.

It wasn't until some years later that the thought struck me. I don't believe in Christianity. (Let's not get into it.) I do believe in the afterlife. I knew the next time I saw him, he'd be at the door of the next world or however you want to put it. And I had promised him. He knew he was going to die. He had complained of chest pains but wouldn't go to the doctor. He knew what the deal was when he made me promise.

So I started working out. My first time through, I benched 60 pounds with difficulty. Extreme difficulty. I kept at it. My strength and knowledge of my own body grew. I slowly began to hoist more and more. I wanted to quit the whole time. Before I was lifting, while I was lifting, even after I was done for the day, I wanted to concede defeat. It was too hard, I was too small, my body and my genetics were not suited for this. The promise stuck in my head though. The thought that he said I never finished also stuck in my head. I found a love/hate relationship with the weights. I would conquer them someday. I couldn't gain weight though.

Then I went to jail. Jail was a blessing in disguise in a lot of ways. I wasn't able to move too much except for working out there. There was no weight set, but I made do with push ups. I did air squats. I used the bottom bunk to do tricep dips. For the first time in my life, because I wasn't either running every day or doing hallucinogenic drugs, I ate everything in sight. My weight skyrocketed. There were no scales at jail or at my job when I had work release, so I didn't know how much I had gained, but my sleeve literally split on my work shirt one day. Something was happening.

When I got out, I weighed myself. 190 pounds. I had gained 55 pounds in a year. Much of it was fat though. I bought a cheap weight set (it was purple I think) and started really going to work on lifting.

My father saw me working. He saw that I was really serious about it now. He asked me if it had anything to do with my grandfather. I told him it did. My father then did one of the most surprising things he's ever done for me. He took me to a sporting goods store and bought me an olympic style free weight set with a squat cage. It wasn't the most expensive one, but it was more than I could afford at the time. I was so happy I started working out like crazy.

I learned of a way of doing bench press called pyramids. You started at a low weight and did 10 reps. Then move the weight up and do 8 reps. Continue until you hit 2 reps and then travel back down the pyramid. My max bench shot through the roof. I flew by 200 pounds. I did 230 and then 240. I had to buy more weights. My shoulder began making a clicking noise when I worked out but I didn't really notice or care. I figured the pain that I was having was normal, a sacrifice I had to make to keep the promise.

That changed when my left shoulder gave out in a jolt of pain while I was lifting 250 pounds. That was actually just working up the pyramid. I had lifted 285 pounds with my father spotting me a few weeks before. I was so close to 300 pounds that I was planning out how I was going to just keep going until 400. The shoulder gave way though. I felt something pull... out and then a little down. I had the spot bars put in place so that I could let it drop down without hurting myself any more and wiggle out.

That left shoulder was screwed up for awhile. I couldn't figure out what had happened. By this time I was a manger at a Subway store. I kept working but rested from working out until my shoulder worked itself out. I've never had health insurance, so I don't go to the doctor unless something is seriously wrong and not getting better on it's own.

Then I got a hernia at work. I picked up something without bending the knees. The good old way of doing it. I had the surgery and didn't work out for another 3 months.

For my birthday that year, I worked out for the first time in months. I benched 120 pounds. The shoulder was still weak. The hernia scar pulled and hurt. I felt hopeless. I thought about selling the weight set and figured grandpa was right. I just couldn't finish.

I kept working out though. I started reading about shoulder injuries in medical texts and workout magazines. I had never worked out my back muscles before, and if I was bench pressing, there were certain muscles I had to work to avoid injury.

I began working those muscles out and started building back up though. I plateaued oddly this time though. I hit 220 or so and just couldn't push more. As much as I grunted, "cheated", swore and tried to fire myself up, I couldn't do it.

We ended up moving. The house we were buying didn't have a room that was really ideal for the olympic cage. I came to the realization I would have to buy something else. What I finally settled on was a bowflex. I was worried I was going to get ripped off, that it would be too easy. It would break too quickly. I would lose interest after making this investment. None of it was true.

Instead of being too easy, it was almost too hard. No wonder so many people use these things as drying racks for their laundry. My bench press weight dropped 80 pounds right away. I just couldn't push it the same way somehow. I got the bowflex around thanksgiving of 2005.

The best thing about it was I could do squats and leg exercises easily. I hated leg exercises with the free weights. My wife always gave me crap and called me "popsicle" or top heavy because I had no muscle in my legs. So now I did squats. The wonderful thing about squats is, it's the one exercise that actually makes your body create and release more testosterone.

I have never done steroids. I tried creatine once and it made me violently ill. I figured that was my grandfather's way of saying there would be no cheating allowed. Once I started doing squats though, everyone thought I was on the juice. My arms and legs simply inflated. Suddenly I was squatting the stack 48 times. My arm curls and tricep exercise weights doubled. My bench weight stayed the same though. Each week when I did my chest workout, I would do my 48 reps, but my strength seemed to be maxed. I remembered the pyramids.

I tried them again and did 280. The next week 290. The next week 280. Finally, 300. I had done it. I had benched 300 pounds after five years and so much pain. I had accomplished my goal. I looked around my workout room. I still had to finish my workout, do my homework, and pick my wife up after work. Nothing had really changed.

The promise still applies. If I'm alive at 65, I'll still be lifting weights. It might be 10 pound arm curls, but I'll be doing it. Now that I've done it this long, it's too large a piece to my puzzle to let it go away.

My next goal? Shave some fat off again. I let myself get a little fat for this goal just to get it out of the way. Then I'll probably go for something ridiculous again. My max squat weight is 390 lbs 48 times right now. I need to find a machine or a spotter for around 600 pounds sometime I'm thinking. I'd also like to attempt the Rich Franklin workout. You can check it out at the bottom of my page under the youtube stuff.

I still miss my grandfather. I wish he would have taught me to be more patient with people giving me shit. It was more difficult to learn at age 23 then it would have been at 3. He just told taught me to punch my way out of any problem. He did his best and he did what he thought was right, but it didn't work for me. The working out does work for me though. I'm glad he left me with this. Anytime I'm having a shitty day or I felt like choking the shit out of someone, I just put a little more weight on, let myself get angry about it, and go to town. It works wonders.