Articles


Never Too Late

by Jim Steel | July 22, 2024

guy with a baseball bat over his shoulder in the evening

I have a 12 year old son, Maximus, who plays travel baseball. He’s a good kid, he loves playing. This travel baseball thing is sorta crazy. You go all over the place so your kid can play a sport that generations in the past played in the schoolyard with their friends. I was against it at first with my older son, but damn it, my wife was right on this one. It turned out pretty well. And get this: There is no other place to play, so everyone is doing it. So, if you want your kid to play, pay up and get ready to go all over the place so he can't sit on his butt playing video games.

My oldest son played travel ball for many years and now the 12-year-old is playing. Each team that my sons have been a part of has always had some drama going on. Either a coach sucks and is an asshole, or you have a parent or two that doesn't fit in at all and thinks their kid hung the moon and his next step is to play at Yankees Stadium. Well, I am pleasantly surprised with the team that Max is on. No shitty parents, no shitty coaches. I get along with everyone, and that's saying something for me.

I have a tendency to go off by myself and be antisocial and sit way in the outfield all by myself. I have been around this stuff for many years and usually the best bet for me is to distance myself from anyone. Keeps me away from all of the BS. I used to bring a book and just look up when my son was batting. Who really cares, anyway? The kids should just have fun and get better and learn to play the game correctly. For one game a few years ago, I sat so far back in the woods that I was in a honeysuckle bush. With this team I actually converse and I smile and stuff. I wouldn’t mind if every parent had to stay home or very far away where the kids can just play and have fun, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

A few months ago, the team traveled to Rehoboth, Delaware for a tournament. The first night, all the parents met up for drinks and dinner and everyone began partaking of these orange crush drinks that this particular bar is famous for. You can barely taste the alcohol in the drink and before you know it you have had seven of those wonderful things and you are propositioning the crossing guard on the way back to the hotel. It was a good time. One parent wasn’t there, however – one of the boy’s fathers.

The next day, I approached the father and asked him what he did the night before. “Oh, I went to the gym,” he said. Immediately, I was curious and fired up. I had already gotten all of my training in for the week, so I didn't feel a pang of guilt that I drank 7 crushes while he trained, but I was very impressed with his dedication. I had to find out more.

Turns out, he had an awakening of sorts one day in November of 2023. At age 51, he decided to get back to the gym. He had trained with weights when he was younger, and also boxed, but as obligations piled up in life, he drifted away from the gym. He had cut out alcohol a year before and felt better, so he took the next step and cut out the junk in his diet and began lifting weights again, going to a local gym. In November of 2023, he weighed 280 pounds. On July 10, 2024, he weighed 220 pounds.

When he reentered the gym, he focused on the barbell basics – squats, benches, and deadlifts. He also threw some machines in there along with some dumbbells. I wasn’t surprised that he went right in and did the basics. Because when he was training in the gym in the old days, everyone did the basics. For one, some gyms had no machines and some gyms had a lat pulldown and maybe a leg press and leg extensions and leg curl. There simply weren't a lot of machines around back then. And machines were an afterthought, really. Everyone knew that the barbell was the way to get big and strong.

When he got back to training, right away he said that he felt the love of the iron coming back. I was envious of the “new beginning” feeling that he was going through, where every training session is better than the one before, where you can’t wait to get back into the gym for your next session. That feeling when you notice that your arms fill out your shirt a little more. You feel stronger just walking around, and it happens very fast. It’s a magical thing, and it only happens with strength training.

We discussed the phenomena we experience called the “lifting high” after a tough workout, and how you feel when you walk out of the gym like you can conquer the world. He talked about how much he loved that feeling, how it was addictive.

Each time I’d see him at games, we’d start talking about his progress. I have a tendency to get really excited when I talk about training and eating and programming, so I probably talked his ear off. He asked me some questions and I gave him a little advice, had him increase some carbs on some days and then talked about some theories on training and programming. He said he felt like a new man, that he felt amazing now that he was going to the gym and how it was changing his life. He told me what a great stress relief the gym gave him after working long hours as a union official. We all know about Iron Therapy and how problems disappear as soon as we get under the bar or feel that knurling in our hands.

A few weeks ago, the team had a tournament in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Besides the 11-hour ride from hell to get there, and the 9-hour ride back, it was fun. He and I trained together for a few days. The gym we found charged 25 bucks for the week. Think of what you’d pay in New York City for a week at a gym. He did great. He had his amino acids mixed in a shaker cup and his cutoff sleeveless shirt, and he was ready. He trained very hard and we did set after set together. He was into it, dedicated and committed. Again, I was impressed. He has a new life, really, getting stronger and better daily.

I had a professor in junior college who was always telling me that I would one day need to switch to a “lifetime sport” like tennis and golf, that weight lifting is a dead end as you get older. I remember him being quite adamant about it. That was in 1985, and I often think about what he said. At 56, I still haven’t swung a tennis racquet or a golf club. Nothing against those sports, but the iron still beckons me and as long as I use my head with the programming, I don’t see any reason why weight training can’t be an activity that can be done for a lifetime. And hell, don’t you want to stay as strong as you can for as long as you can?

I really love when someone makes a turnaround in life. It ain’t easy to get going all over again, to have the discipline to just say, “Okay, that’s enough, time for a change,” and then do it and stay with it. How inspiring is that? Those kinds of stories show that it's all about what you decide your path is going to be in life, and it also shows that it's never too late to make a drastic life change for the better.


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