A dumb sophomore loaded up the bar to test his max squat without warming up, he wanted to just see how the weight felt.  Soon he was pinned under the weight.  The old dude that was in the gym with him came over and lifted it off his back.  The old dude scolded the protagonist of our story.  He told him he needed to learn how to warm up and how to do the exercises correctly.  The old Yoda-like dude then offered to show our young protagonist how to do these things, how to lift correctly.  In a moment or rare humility the sophomore accepted.  Soon he was learning much from his mentor about the weight room and the iron.  I was that dumb sophomore, and I am grateful for all my friend Shane has taught me in the gym.

I was being a gym idiot that day and needed to be rescued from my own stupidity.  Luckily Shane was a cool enough dude to help me out.  I know this early intervention helped me learn a lot of things about lifting that helped me stay safer in the gym.  His lessons also helped me make a little faster progress.  Shane was in his 30s and had no real incentive to help other than being a good guy.  I think that was another lesson that every 16 year old needs to get too.  At that age you can never have too many lessons in being a good guy and how to act properly.

This whole incident was a whole lesson in gym culture as well.  At least it is the kind of lesson in how gym culture should be.  In the gym we should all help each other out.  There can be a brotherhood of iron and a lot of us meatheads love and crave this brotherhood.  Every gym has its lone wolfs that don’t want anything to do with anyone, but that’s not what a gym should be.  The culture that makes everyone better is one of helping, teaching, and training each other.  This makes our journey in the gym more productive and more enjoyable as well.  I got this early lesson from Shane in addition to the lessons on lifting.  It has stuck with me and informed much of what I do in other areas of my life.

I think in my life I have tried to use this lesson other places and it has been beneficial.  Anywhere I am with other people I feel like if we’re not competitors than we’re on the same team.  Part of being on a team is helping lift each other up.  A city, a startup community, a Meetup group is no different than a gym in this regard.  There is the cliché that we can all achieve more this way.  Some clichés do hold true and this is one.  Sometimes we are forced to work together and sometimes we choose too. 

A town is forced to work together to some degree to function as a community.  In the gym it’s often a necessity to work together as well.  You need people to spot you and assist with other tasks in the gym, and in the gym all we got is each other.  This forces some community fast.  We can also be proactive about building this up.  We can workout together and really create partnerships in our pursuit of all the fruits of the iron.  I’ve tried to do this with other pursuits in my life as well.  It can work with career pursuits, family relationships and more.  I see so much opportunity for growth with this way of thinking too.  I have seen communities where no one buys each other’s products, or reads each other’s books.  I can’t help but think there is a better way, and I learned that way in the gym.  The gym is where I have learned almost everything I know about life.

Was this cold morning where I got a weight room mentor a turning point in my life?  It very might have been, it did help push me the right direction.  I got a few lessons and a good example of how to act in the gym.  Shane helped me a lot when he didn’t need to.  We can’t have too much this kind of thing in our life.  So wherever you are and whatever you’re doing Shane, thanks!

Gyms are kind of a weird place right now from where I sit.  COVID has made going to a gym with other people a very questionable practice right now.  I have chosen not to go to gyms for a while longer during all this.  The gym is supposed to be about health and catching a virus isn’t all that healthy.  Despite avoiding gyms my mind and body still want to work out.  I have had to resort to park workouts on playground equipment and garage workouts using an assortment of light weights and bands.  I am grateful that even without having many tools to workout with, I can get so much exercise still.

Having some tools means I can workout.  I have all the tools needed to train my whole body.  I choose to be grateful to have these tools.  The opposite choice is also available to me.  I could be angry I cannot workout in gyms in the manner I prefer.  There is little benefit to this approach, therefor I choose gratitude for the equipment I do have.  I have some of the stuff I want access to, and there is gratitude to be found in having some even if we want all of something.

I am really grateful I had a couple good exercise bands laying around.  These are becoming the base of my workouts.  With them I can exercise things I just can’t easily do with my dumbbells.  A clever person could train the whole body with just exercise bands and bodyweight.  That is one thing about a pandemic is that it can force us to be clever.  I am grateful to have these simple tools, they have been a lifesaver. 

I think being grateful and maximizing limited tools is something we can all try to do.  These tools might be a slow laptop, or a few exercise bands instead of a full gym.  It is all the same.  With gratitude for the tools I have, I have gotten more fit and gotten better.  Without gratitude I would have stayed weaker, and that is never good.

Several weeks ago I got the idea in my head to look online and see if there were any chess sites I liked playing on.   It didn’t take very long for me to find one that was simple and gave me all the chess fun I could handle.  I started playing for a good while that first night.  The next few days I found myself coming back more and more.  I had gotten sucked into being a chess player, and was having a lot of good fun.  Weeks later I am playing nearly every night and still having a lot of fun doing so.  In chess I have found a hobby that is perfectly suited for me.

Chess can be both a social or antisocial game.  Playing with friends in person has always been something I have enjoyed.  With all the online chess platforms, it can also be done at 3am by myself from the comfort of my garage office fort.  I like this flexibility, if I want to play, I can.  Chess is really a game that is whatever I choose to make of it.

I can choose to be serious about winning, or just play for laughs.  I do really enjoy playing random openings or weird strategies just for fun.  This serves no purpose other than my own amusement.  If I am in a mood to win, I can take things seriously and think long and hard about my moves.  I can do whatever I want with the game, and it really doesn’t matter to anyone else.  That is one of the things about chess I like so much, is that it can be so many things.

A game of chess can take a few minutes or a few hours depending on what time constraints you choose.

You can study to get better, or just make it up as you go.

A game of chess can be so many things.  Mostly I am grateful that chess is fun and it’s a good mental playground.  I can use that playground to sharpen my mind.  I can also use it to forget about the world for a little bit.  I’m just grateful that I enjoy this game, and get to use it for all sorts of fun.