Page 29 - Fire Your Personal Trainer and Kick Your Own Damn Ass

Fire Your Personal Trainer 26
And Kick Your Own Damn Ass

High school had begun. I told my father that I wanted to buy a set of
weights and start lifting. He told me I would never stick with it, and it was
a waste of money.

Great. That wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for, but his negativity
didn’t discourage me. I was resolute; I wanted my own weights. I had
the money to pay for them from my paper route and I really needed his
help.

Remember, this was the Fall of 1970 and I had just turned 14 in August.
I had zero idea what lifting weights was about, I had never seen a
magazine, or a book devoted to the subject, and I had never actually
lifted weights. There was no Internet, and I had no idea where or how to
buy weights. I can’t recall seeing them in any of the department stores,
or sporting goods stores that we shopped at like Herman’s. They were
there but I just didn’t notice. Now my eyes were opened and all I knew

was that weights were supposed to make you stronger. This is important
because many times the answers to our problem are in front of us, but
we can’t see them.

I wasn’t what you would call an athlete. I didn’t have the interest or
the drive. I liked comic books and monster magazines and dinosaurs.
I was obsessed with “KING KONG” and special effects movies by Ray
Harryhausen. I was a big fan of Charles Schultz’s “CHARLIE BROWN”

and had a collection of softcover compilations of Schultz’s comic strips.
I had to hide these things from my friends or they would have made fun
of me. I was a nerd, and back then there was nothing cool about it!

The word “nerd” morphed into “geek” over time but both words had
entirely different meanings than they have today. If you’ve ever seen the
movie “DAZED AND CONFUSED”, I was one of the nerdy guys driving
around with the character, Cynthia Dunn. I was not a stoner kid, or a