Monkey Blog

Up through high school I had a huge hangup about my height. I hate, hate, H-A-T-E-D how short I was. My buddies that I hung out with were almost all at least six feet tall. They all just towered over me and it drove me nuts. As I got older I found that life has a way of teaching you what is and isn’t important and being tall isn’t one of them. Now I could care less about my height, which is great.

I was looking at the front page of BodySpace and I noticed something interesting. Four of the top six guys are around my height. That kind of blows my mind a little even though it shouldn’t. What other athletic endeavor is there where being "shorter" is actually helpful? I never would have guessed it when I first started. It never ceases to amuse me at how many misconceptions I had about lifting before I started.

• I’m the most unathletic person in the world.  I’m not sure I’ll be able to do this.  WRONG
• I’m concerned that I might be too old to make any real progress. WRONG (I actually did think this BUT I was never let it going to stop me from trying. I just took a “screw it, I’m going to try anyway” attitude!)
• I’ll stick out like a sore thumb and be uncomfortable in a gym full of fit people.  WRONG
• I don’t like to eat much and I’ve never been over 145 pounds.  I doubt I could get any bigger than that.  WRONG

I could go on all day.  I’m just thankful that none of them kept me from starting!

I know this is common sense, but it still surprised me. Last night I did four sets of weighted dips at the end of International Chest Day and I was just completely wiped out. I started thinking how it had been a long time since I had done dips without a weight belt. Usually they have to kick me out the door because the gym is closing but this night I was a little ahead of my normal schedule so I thought "What the heck?" and dropped the weight belt and just did one last set of dips. Even thought I was exhausted I was amazed at how light I felt. I remember when I first started thinking dips were really hard, and I was almost 20 pounds lighter!