Joe DeSena, the founder of Spartan Race, equates training early in the morning to facing your lion. Long story short, back in the prehistoric days when the caveman rolled out of his cave in the morning, the first thing he might have to do is fight a lion before he could even take his morning piss. So, what could possibly be tougher than fighting with a lion? After that your day is gravy, baby. This is exactly what I do each day. I roll out of bed, walk into my garage and face my lion. But rather than having razor sharp claws and a bone crushing bite, my lion is made of cold iron. I try each day to make this the most difficult thing I will do. After those grueling training sessions it’s all down hill. Now I’m not saying that life is easy after training, but the training makes life much easier to deal with.

You see, under that barbell there is struggle, toil, and defeat. Yet there is also an unwavering willingness to overcome, to push past things of which we couldn’t imagine ourselves capable. There is beauty, and destruction. All things we face in our everyday life.

Today was not unlike any other training day for me in that I was up early before the sunrise. I commenced the ritual of stretches, mobility work, warming up. It was a deadlift day so the hamstrings, hips, low back and legs were of particular importance. Carefully I worked until I had convinced myself that I was ready for the brutality that comes with picking very heavy things off the ground.

One thing that was different however was a new training partner. This was a pleasant change of pace for me as I typically train alone. Today’s guest however was a strong man training for a shot at nationals, and possibly worlds. I knew he would be focused in his training, and I just wanted to keep up. As we began to pull our warmup sets I knew that I was in for a rollercoaster ride of a training session. 18" rack pulls were on the menu for his training. Having never done the exercise in this variation, I played along completely unsure if I would be able to hold my own. I decided 5 would be the rep count for each of my sets. 135, a breeze, 225.. no problem. 315… 405.. 465. Now it’s serious, and I began to wonder how high I could actually go. But I continued to pull with confidence in my form. Cory, seated on the bench looks at me with a sly grin and says “Let’s get 500 for one.” Here is where the doubt cam into play. I’ve pulled five wheels and those pesky two-and-halves twice in my life. Once from the floor conventional style, last year. More recently I pulled 520 for a triple, with reverse bands. I wasn’t sure that I could do this. So we loaded it up. I go first. One rep, wow that went surprisingly well. Two reps feel great. Third rep, I’m in the groove. Rep four got heavy really, really fast. But I’m pulling fives today.

So here is the moment, the crossroad in life. The point at which we waiver and often fail because of self doubt, or pity for ourselves, or some bullshit excuse. This rep is where the work is. This rep is that lion that wants to fight before I can even take a piss. This is the rep that is going to make or break me. Pulling this rep is the choice we make to go the extra step in our job, marriage, parenthood, in life!

I know that most coaches will tell you that if you lose your technique, quit the rep. If tightness or position is lost, quit on that one. Let me ask you this; how often in your life is everything perfect? How often does every part of your life line up exactly how you wanted or needed it to? That’s what happened to me on this rep. I lost some position as I began the pull. Sometimes you have to fight through that shit. I’m not recommending that you forget about your technique all together. You should always have solid technique on any lift you do. But sometimes when we reach that edge of our strength or capacity we lose some of that sturdiness. The same is true in life. Things get off balance, and get difficult. Often we find ourselves fighting to get back into that good position. Yet, we never quit. We push and pull and struggle to get back where we want or need to be. So, as I struggled to get back into good position the thought of dropping the weight never crossed my mind. This is where the challenge is. This is where winners win and we weed out the losers. As I finished the rep I felt strong and accomplished, just as I would if I had reached some life goal I had set for myself.

The moral of the story is that we need to learn to transcend our strength in the weight room outside of the gym walls. In the gym and with the weight we can learn to struggle and overcome. You just have to realize how strong you truly are, and learn to use that after you finish your workout. Fight your lion each day, struggle and learn about yourself. Know that your difficulty under the bar can make you strong is multiple ways.

Stay strong my friends.

This is my battle. My war, every day. I train to remember, and I train to forget. I train to be angry, and be compassionate. I train to deal with the ups and downs I face every single day. This is my therapy. Since I returned home from the desert I’ve struggled to find myself. I spent years lost, trying to find what and who I was. This is still a battle I fight today. The body was always present, but the mind was, and still is often times off in far away places fighting a war over and over again — daily.

While I was there I lost 5 people in my unit. Lamb, Cawvey, Morrison, Phipps, and Riddlen. I wasn’t necessarily close to any of them. Mostly my interaction with was in passing, as they were all in a different platoon, and I segregated myself from most people other than three very close friends. We were the fearsome foursome, as we called ourselves. We were young and dumb back then. Hell, the only reason I found myself in that place was because I needed a way to pay for a school that I wasn’t even sure that I would attend. Nevertheless, there we were cruising across the country nearly every day, and slinging lead across the desert regularly. We were based in a shitty logistics base shoved between two angry cities and two large US military bases. Five of us died that year. Five. I don’t even remember how many of us were wounded. Not me though. I was never hurt. Not even a scratch, on the outside. Honestly, wheni it was all happening I wasn’t making the connection, other than I really needed to watch my own ass and survive that shithole.

It wasn’t until a couple of years after I crawled out of the hole that I had dug myself into through booze, some recreational drug use, and women that I realized the gravity of what I had been through and began to truly deal with it. Don’t get me wrong, I was dealing with all of the pain from the minute I got back home, but in all the wrong ways. Typical combat veteran right? You know how the story goes. Veteran gets back home and drinks himself into oblivion trying to use any means necessary to forget about all those things that he had done, seen, and been through. Mission accomplished. I stayed so drunk for so long that I actually forgot years of my life. It wasn’t all for nothing though, there were many fun times. I made some friends, lost a few, and lessons grew from those times. In fact, if it wasn’t for those days I would’ve never met my wife. It wasn’t until I met her that I started to get my shit together. God had a plan for me after all. Lindsey and I fell head over heels for one another. It wasn’t before long that one day she told me she was pregnant. I remember it very clearly. I was scared completely shitless. I had been a total mess, even while we were just dating and I’m not sure that she really knew how bad things had gotten for me.

I had a choice I suppose, to continue down the path I was walking and probably wind up dead either by accident, or on purpose. The other option was to pull myself together and man the f*ck up, marry this woman and take care of this innocent baby. So that’s what I did. It took some time, but I laid off the booze and the fog began to clear up. I made a weekly paycheck and did all the things I was supposed to do. I love her and that sweet baby girl of ours. The problem was that after all the smoke cleared from the years of abuse, the pain of my service came crashing like those mortars that landed on Log Base Seitz day after day. There was no alcohol to dull my memory. No drinking until I passed out to sleep. It was all there and it was real. Still, I managed to keep it hidden from her because I had a responsibility to be the rock of the family. We were young and venturing into a world we knew nothing about. Family. We were both scared but I felt like I needed to be tough and steady, for her.

Occasionally, the pain and stress of those memories would boil over and reveal itself from in the form of arguments or hurtful words. But I managed to keep it buried. I was tore up inside, still an angry person, and I can’t imagine how it must have felt to deal with my bullshit. She’s a much stronger woman than I ever gave her credit for. I felt weak, angry, scared, and upset. Mostly I felt guilty. All those people were hurt during my tour, people died and I was totally unaffected. After all those years the guilt began to sink in, and I began to question why it wasn’t me. Why wasn’t I killed in action? At any given moment it could have been me and I felt terrible for that. Those people were great people, with husbands, wives, and children. Why in the world did I deserve to live and they should die? What did I have to offer the world that they didn’t? I just couldn’t make sense of it and it ate me alive.

The guilt of surviving began to work its way into every fiber of me, and I felt myself slipping into a very dark place again. I decided that it was time once again to sack up and do something about it. I began to run often. Like anyone else I started out slow and built my stamina over time. During those long runs I could think and begin to process what I’d been through. I’m not even so sure that it was stamina that I had built for those long runs. I just needed more time to process , so I ran longer. Thinking wasn’t enough though, I still needed something more. I needed something that would help me deal with all those emotions that were internally making me crazy. Then one day a great friend of mine, James, introduced me to The barbell in the for of CrossFit.

It had been a long time since I had done anything that challenging, and I was hooked. Now, I had a chance to be aggressive with something physically. It became an external release of the internal battle that I fought against myself. I could stack weight on that bar and fight it until it broke me. The barbell gave me a place to outwardly express the rage I was dealing with without taking a toll on the people I loved so dearly. I had to learn how to deal with physical pain and discomfort, push forward, and continue to fight. This all transitioned to my years long battle. It taught me how to face whatever problem I was dealing with and work to get through it until it was solved. I was broken. Training began to teach me to be tough again.

Though I no longer participate in CrossFit, I have continued to lift heavy. It keeps me balanced, it keeps me on a path forward, and allows me to struggle outside of my marriage, and family, and day to day life. I train early in my day, first thing because when I wake up I see their faces. Every single day. I train early because I want it to be the most difficult part of my day. I want to get it all out there, lay it on the line and move past it. Slowly, I’ve gotten better at dealing with it all. I feel better most days. We all have our own insecurities, me especially. I see and work with incredible people every day, and I think to myself, “how can I ever live up to that.” Im not the smartest, the most articulate, or the strongest guy I know. I don’t always feel like the best person, but when I have a barbell in my hands, I am at my best. I feel confident again. It’s helped me to face the world. Not just put on a strong face, but to be strong in life.

Sometimes I feel like my mind is weak, but when I’m the gym I can think my way through things. Often times I can settle my outside the gym problems while I’m connected to a barbell. I can be the best and worst versions of myself all at once, and the weight on the bar doesn’t care. In the gym I can be helpful and encouraging. Through training I’ve learned who I am and what I stand for. When I train I can push myself to the limit, right up to the edge and learn how to balance. Because I train, I know that my children will have a better father, and my wife will have a better husband. The iron is my therapy. This is my reason for training.