Up until the age of 14 I had never done any training. Never lifted a weight.
That was all about to change when I went to Yugoslavia with my family and my great aunt.
We didn’t have much money in those days, so my parents had to take the cheaper option and go there by coach. Yes, that’s right – we got on a coach and spent the next 28 hours making our merry way to Yugoslavia.
Our destination? An off-season skiing village that was very beautiful, but first we had to get there.
I have a great photo somewhere of me in Yugoslavia, but I can’t find it for the life of me. Here’s one of me in Yugoslavia with my sister – for some reason I’m prancing about in it.
Mind you, not much has changed:
When you travel abroad by coach, going through places like France and Spain can be pretty boring looking out of the window. Just loads of open space and land for much of the time. It’s not very exciting when you’re a kid, but I was enthralled with Austria, which is a beautiful country to go through. A woman from Austria lived in the same road as me and I thought of her as I took in the scenery.
My dad had been given a bunch of Muscle & Fitness magazines by a guy at work. He had no interest in the magazines so he gave them to me. During this coach journey to Yugoslavia all I had to do kill time was read these magazines; somehow it captured my imagination.
The athletes/bodybuilders in these magazines looked other-worldly. I know a lot of people are grossed out by overly muscular bodybuilders, but all I could see was the aesthetic side of it. Of course, I’d never want to ACTUALLY look like them, but I liked the idea that I could do something to get stronger and fitter.
I was always skinny as a kid, mainly because I was such a fussy eater, but I was inspired by the idea of training with weights after reading hours of these magazines. On the coach home from Yugoslavia the coach broke down on the motorway, which meant the journey took an extra 10 hours. There and back I was reading magazines on a coach for a total of 66 hours (minus sleeping and watching films).
It took me a while but I found the other Yugoslavia photo (unedited):
So when I got back I went into Birmingham by train on my own and bought a set of Weider 20kg dumbbells from Argos. I carried them all the way back and walked home from the train station, by which point by biceps were already pumped. I bumped into my next door neighbour, Kate and proudly told her what was inside my heavy box of delights.
The weights were made of stainless steel and cast iron. Inside the box there was a big black and white pull-out instruction manual with loads of pictures of exercises I could do with dumbbells and barbells. This was before the internet existed, so I studied them in detail. I even used to buy this horrible Weider protein drink that never blended with water properly, so you had to drink this lumpy concoction in the belief it was making you bigger and stronger (lol).
At first I used to just do basic exercises with these dumbbells. My favourite was being stood upright against the wall doing curls, but I quickly realised I needed a bench to do more, so I saved up my paper round money and bought one. It was a DP Fit for Life bench and my dad let me train in the garage.
It had a sit-up accessory on it as well, so all of a sudden I could do bench press for my chest, leg extensions, reverse curls and even do sit-ups like I was in a Rocky film or something. I used to put loud dance music on the stereo and train with a paraffin heater on in the Winter.
One night I came back down the garden and told my Grandfather what I’d been doing. He just looked at me very concerned and said, “You be careful.”
“Be careful? I’m fine”, I thought to myself.
I carried on this way until I was 17, at which point I used to go to a gym called Curves in town. The regular members hated people as young as me going to the gym. It was different times back then. I used to put gel in my hair and it would run in my eyes over the course of a workout. I must have gone there about 6 or 7 times on my own. I used to get a bus back from the rag market and this is where it all went a bit shit.
I got heckled by people passing by a few times. None of that really bothered me although I did feel a bit unsafe as it was usually about 10pm by the time I got out of that gym. One night though, someone came over to me in an animated fashion and asked me if I wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes.
“No thanks”, I replied, hoping that would be the end of it.
That night this particular guy stopped and stared at me for a few seconds, then he got out a gun and held it to my head. I was not expecting that to happen and a wave of fear quickly washed over me in a millisecond. I still said no, which is quite ridiculous in those circumstances. I don’t know how long he had it held to my head or even if it was real, but it certainly looked it and I was relieved when he pulled it back away from my head and walked off.
This was probably the most frightening thing that has ever happened to me. I never returned to that gym again because of this experience, so I carried on training at home.
Well, that is until I forgot to turn off the paraffin heater one night after training. Even worse, I went to laser quest in town and when I got back my dad went ape shit. Smoke had been bellowing out of the garage and not long after that he threw all my weights out of there to teach me a lesson. Nice.
When I was 18, I went with a friend of mine to a spit and sawdust gym in Solihull. At first we were a bit apprehensive about going in there because it had a reputation for having massive blokes in there on steroids. After driving past it a few times, we built up the courage to go in. A trainer there showed us around.
Downstairs it was a lot of mirrors and exercise equipment. Upstairs all the walls had posters of busty women in there as well as bodybuilders like Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was a very politically incorrect place with what was on the wall, but it felt like a proper gym equipment wise, so I started training there.
I carried on training there until 2004 when it was closed down because the lease run out. After that I joined a commercial gym which was more hygienic and less drug fuelled, but also full of more corporate types that were winding down after work. It was a way of mixing socialising in with training, although the training sessions would last a long time, it began to feel like a home from home to me.
I went years without missing a week of training, right up until COVID. It all went a bit tits up during this period even though I carried on during lockdown, it threw off my routine. I have spent quite a while getting back to where I was, which wasn’t easy but I’m there now. I have also focused more on the cardiovascular side, because I think you need that more as you get older.
Balancing physical fitness with strength and endurance is no mean feat, but I am up for the challenge now and always will be as long as I’m still breathing. None of this would have been my reality though if I hadn’t read those Muscle & Fitness mags on the way to Yugoslavia when I was only 14 years old.
Thanks for reading. See ya in the next one.