As a fresh blog, I want to establish some credentials and also a baseline for where my fitness ability is currently at. I tried to keep this as brief as possible, but it's hard to condense a lifetime into a few paragraphs.

I am a middle-aged man hovering around 50. I'm leaving this intentionally vague because it's better to avoid giving out too many personal details on the internet, even on your own website.

Childhood

As a child, I was a couch potato and chubby dumpling until my early-to-mid teens. Sports stuck to me like oil to water. My poor parents tried pushing me into various activities. The only one that stuck was skiing, but unfortunately that's not something that you can do year-round.

They tried with basketball and I didn't even make it to the first practice session. They had better luck with swimming (water polo actually) and I went there for a while, but only because I was forced to. At least I learned how to swim, though not very well.

Like many children, I had a bike that I loved. It got stolen and then I didn't have a bike until high school when I started lobbying my dad for one, pitching the idea that he wouldn't have to drive me to and from school every day.

Well, the joke was on me. I got my bike - a sort of hybrid "mountain bike" with a 3x8 drive - that in retrospect was shitty but at the time felt like a rocketship. I rode that bike to school every day for a couple of years. I ended up regretting the bargain because, man, it was hard work! I arrived sweaty and tired, with a lungful of soot and heavy metals. But my legs became jacked!

High school and right after

During high school I slimmed up gradually. I think I was subconsciously eating less, or perhaps my hormones were burning more calories. In any event, I changed from plump to skinny fat.

Obsessed and depressed about my body, I decided that I had to lift weights to become muscular. With me, it all boils down to that - the need to look a certain way. It's a mental disease, and something that I want to talk about in more depth at some point.

I lifted weights for about 1 year around the age of 18-19. Despite not knowing what the fuck I was doing (the internet was in its infancy), I made some important gains. The young body is primed with hormones at that age, and even looking sideways at a barbell is pretty much guaranteed to put on some muscle.

College

Various life disruptions put an end to that for a few years. In college, while living alone, I decided to get more serious about weight lifting. This time, there was more literature which helped me create my own workout plans with built-in progression.

I built my own home gym, centered around a bench-press that I designed myself on the computer and my uncle cut and welded for me. It was adjustable, and I made it such that it could also be used as a squat rack. Pretty smart design and I wish I still had the plans. I matched that up with a barbell and mismatched weights from classifieds.

Throughout college, I lifted weights and ate lots of protein powder and protein-rich foods. My body morphed, and I was feeling much better about it, although body dysmorphia never really went away.

Young adulthood

With college over, life took another turn and I stopped most forms of structured exercise for the next 10 years or so, up until my early 30s.

Interestingly, my adult body weight had always fluctuated around 150-155 lbs (68-70 kg)

One day I looked at myself in the mirror and hated what I saw. The archetypal pasty skinny-fat body stared back at me. What had I become?

For the past few years I had reverted to a couch potato state. All I did after work was play games and chug a couple of light beers every night. I decided I had to do something about it.

I experimented for a couple of years with various at-home exercise programs such as P90X and its cousins. As I found out during this period, these programs are decent enough to bring you from 0 to 2-3 (out of 10) but you hit a hard ceiling fairly quickly because there's almost no progression built in. Those jacked individuals running the programs? You can bet they're pumping serious iron in a proper gym.

I wasn't satisfied with the middling results from these programs, which reminded me that what had worked in the past was bound to work in the present, even more so with the proper workout and nutrition. I needed to get my ass to a gym and start moving weights again.

Fortunately, I was now in the age of the internet and there were plenty of resources to take advantage of.

So before even stepping into a gym I did a lot of research. I found the Starting Strength linear progression program and read the book cover to cover. Armed with that knowledge, I signed up to a neighborhood gym on a long fitness journey that continues uninterrupted to this day.

I spent many years in the weightlifting gym, almost religiously. I was there 3-6 times a week, rain or shine.

I preferred strength and powerlifting programs such as Starting Strength, Strong Lifts 5x5, Greyskull LP, Texas Method, Smolov Jr, and a few others that I don't even remember. In between, I experimented with various bodybuilding or powerbuilding schedules.

I became a nutrition expert, and I was able to control my body weight and composition (read body fat percentage) at will.

My weight fluctuated from 155 lbs (70 kg) to 186 lbs (84 kg) to 139 lbs (63 kg) and back to somewhere in between. My strength increased to intermediate levels (as measured in the powerlifting community).

More importantly for my mental health and sense of wellbeing, I was able to shape my body to the ideals that I had dreamed of. It required a lot of nutrition planning and discipline, but it's definitely not impossible.

Middle age

Covid-19 fucked everything up. Gyms closed or had severe restrictions in place that made it difficult to lift weights as before. I decided it wasn't worth the hassle.

Thankfully, there weren't many outdoors restrictions in the US compared to places like Europe. I still had my carbon road bike from years before that I barely rode. So I morphed into a cyclist.

With cycling as my new identity, I invested all my free time in the ecosystem. Around that time I bought my first mountain bike and got serious about learning proper technique.

My body transformed to that of a cyclist. The upper body muscle melted and, while my legs never were as big as in the powerlifting days, my calves started to look a lot better (especially after taking up running later on).

Fast-forward a few more years. I became an avid runner, quiet unexpectedly (but that's a story for another time). During the same period, I decided to re-learn how to swim properly, so I became a pretty decent swimmer as well.

The present

Over the last few years I've considered myself primarily a runner, with cycling falling slightly out of favor.

Today, I'm reunited with the weight room. I'm following the Greyskull Linear Progression program with accessories for the upper body. I'm also cycling more and also running in between. I feel better than I have felt in many years, and probably fitter than ever. I've regained some upper-body muscle and my cardio capacity is through the roof.

Currently I'm in the gym 3 times a week, running about 90-100 miles a month (145-160 km), and cycling 300-350 miles a month (480-560 km). I exercise between 3000-4200 minutes (50-70 hours) a month. I wish I had time for more.

It's hard to balance all 3 activities, especially since I like them all equally. At the same time, cross-training has a lot of positive benefits, but that's a whole article of its own.

What comes next? It's impossible to know. With age, it's easier to get injured and recovery takes longer. My primary goal is to avoid injury so as to continue doing all the activities I like.

One important thing that I've learned is to stay active and adapt my activities to whatever is handy and practical in the moment. These days I hesitate to call myself a runner or cyclist. I am those things and more. I'm a multi-discipline athlete and I hope to continue indefinitely.