10 Pound Bicep Curls

There’s this one bro that I always see at the gym. He kind of looks like me. He’s my height but the only difference is that there would have to be two of me to make him. He’s not fat, he’s just pure beef.

I usually like to watch the guys at the gym who are really strong and see what they are doing in their workouts. You know, try to pick up a few pointers from afar? A few things I’ve noticed is that it’s rare that they are on a machine, they incorporate a lot of body weight movements (pull ups and push ups), and here’s the biggest thing: don’t care what others think about what they are doing.

There are of course the strong guys who want everybody to be watching them and really care what others think of them. However, the overwhelming amount of tribal band tattoos, tapout shirts, and wrist/elbow bands plays trump to their muscular appearance and I no longer desire to look like them, thus have no pointers to pick up.

I digress.

Yesterday was a great example of this. I see this guy there all the time. I’m not sure if he lives there or not, but I definitely haven’t ruled it out. After I finished my set of, what I’m sure would only be the most impressive bench press one has ever seen, I checked to see what my friend might be doing. He was going bicep curls with 10 pound weights. He wasn’t doing the thing either where you look in the mirror and pretend like you hardly notice that you are moving weight. He was holding on to the top of the incline bench and pounding out as many bicep curls with this 10 pound dumbbell as he could, complete with sweat, groaning, and probably a little bit of resentment about how one time when he was a kid a coach told him he would never be good enough at football or something.

Most dudes wouldn’t grab the 10 pound dumbbells for anything, let alone bicep curls. Hell, I don’t like to grab less than 25. This guy was without a doubt the strongest guy in the room and he had the 10 pound weights. I’m not sure what he was trying to accomplish that day. Apparently he wanted to do something that would make him work for a long time at a light weight.

That day I understood why he was the strongest guy in the gym. It’s not necessarily because of the workouts he does. It’s because he walks in there and only cares about his goals. Not what others think of what he’s doing or what they think of his goals.

I know it’s just a gym and perhaps I’m being overly analytical. But I think that the way we exercise and treat our body has a lot to do with how we view and think of ourselves. It makes me wonder what I might be able to accomplish if my primary focus was betterment of myself for myself. Not for the approval of other men or to appear attractive to women, just for myself.