Hundo!

I started strength training to repair my spine, which felt like it was starting to fall apart about five years ago. A scan revealed that parts of it were, in fact, fusing together, trapping nerves between the discs in my lower back.

I remember the first time I realized there was no escaping it; I was in Sydney at a writers convention—probably a genre one because everyone there was writing either sci-fi or fantasy. We were standing around in the grounds of this old sandstone pile in Balmain, having afternoon drinks and gearing up for dinner later.

That’s when the tingling—this pins-and-needles sensation I’d been feeling in my leg for a couple of weeks—suddenly turned into something much worse. It was like this excruciating white fire blazing up one side of my body.

Weirdly enough, the only thing that helped was moving. Standing still was agony, but walking made it bearable. So, I ended up walking for about an hour and a half to get to the pub where we were having dinner. Step after step, it hurt a lot less than just standing around.

Anyway, long story short, I ended up talking to my mate Darren, one of the black belts at our dojo, who works as a PT. He said I needed to build a girdle of muscle around my lower back, so we set to it. That was five years ago and I’ve been pain free for at least four and a half of them.

Once I got my back repaired, I discovered that I actually enjoyed picking up heavy things and putting them down as exercise. It turned out to be far more effective for weight control than cardio—and a hell of a lot less boring and odious, too.

I found a particular fondness for the two big compound lifts: the barbell back squat and the deadlift. There’s something almost meditative about them. My overhead press is still garbage, and I’m working on that. As for my bench press, it’s not great either— because I find it dull and kind of pointless, to be honest. But it’s one of the big compound lifts, so you’re supposed to do it.

A while ago, I set myself a goal to at least bench 100 kilos. Yesterday afternoon, I finally managed it. Darren is heading in for knee surgery later this week, and I’m getting some skin cancers removed from my chest next week, so we gave ourselves a deadline to hit the century mark before all that happened.

In the end, we got there pretty easily. I started at 70 kilos, which is my usual warm-up weight, and we worked through the 80s and 90s before breaking the 100-kilo barrier on the first attempt. To be clear, these are not world championship numbers. 100 kg is a warmup weight for a lot of serious lifters. But for me, a guy who was facing the prospect of being all but crippled by back pain a couple of years ago, it’s a big win and I’ll take it.

I’m not sure what’s next. I still find the bench press kind of boring and pointless, although it’s good for ground fighting and jiu-jitsu. I’ll probably go back to doing a 5x5 around 80 or 85 kilos once a week.

I just wanted to note somewhere that I did it.