Frank's Story
It's difficult to believe I started training with weights over half a century ago! I can still remember as a child seeing the "Charles Atlas" ads in all the magazines and comics showing this dynamic muscular figure. He ran ads about this ninety-seven-pound weakling who was always getting sand kicked in his face when he was at the beach. Atlas claimed if you used his system of training no one would ever kick sand in your face again. I don't ever remember being a mere ninety-seven pounds but as a child I had lots of sand kicked at my face.
At twelve years of age I was about one hundred and sixty pounds and had a waist larger than my chest. I grew up in a neighborhood that consisted mainly of Italians and Afro-Americans. It was a tough area, and I had the misfortune of being part of a family that always tried to dress well and be socially correct. In grammar school I was subjected to beatings by my less conscientious fellow students who were more street-wise than I was.
There was a problem at home as well. Like the celebrated actor and martial arts expert Chuck Norris, (and so many more children in these times), I had an abusive father with a drinking problem. When he drank too much (and sometimes not too much) he got mean and started beating on the family. His target was always my mother, but my brother, sisters and I got our share of his displeasure as well.
One day at a drugstore magazine rack I saw this incredible muscular man on the cover of a magazine called "Strength and Health" and my whole life changed. I wanted to start lifting weights immediately, and despite my parents discouraging comments and refusing to purchase any equipment for me, I decided to become a weightlifter. Dumbbells and barbells could be made from tin cans and cement. So armed with my homemade weights and an issue a month of "Strength and Health" magazine, I started my quest for that Herculean body.
A year after I started training, I had a confrontation with one of the bullies that had used me for a punching bag for a few years. I was outside in my backyard working out with my homemade weights and he started picking on me. When he took a swing at me I picked him up and threw him into the garage door. After he crawled up from the ground, he looked at me for a moment than walked away and never confronted me again.
Though I am not belligerent by nature I did have some battles in the remainder of my school years, but usually one blow was enough to discourage anyone from continuing to fight me. When I was sixteen I was bench pressing over three hundred pounds and squatting with three hundred and fifty pounds.
At seventeen, I had my final confrontation with my father. He was drunk and in a mean mood. He started for my mother and I stepped between them. I calmly said, "No more hitting." He looked at me for a moment then turned away and he never struck any of us again. If I never won a physique contest or broke any lifting records, that moment made all the years of training worth the effort. Like the old Charles Atlas ads boasted, the "Sand Kicking" days were over.
There were lots of other challenges after that. The discipline I developed training so regularly and dieting so conscientiously, helped me overcome most of the obstacles I ran into and made it possible for me to enjoy the good times even more.
I trained regularly until I was about thirty-two. Then I became involved with other activities one of which was training horses. Horses became all consuming and I became so good at it that people paid me to train their horses and before I knew it, sixteen years had slipped by.
Most people would think handling horses all day, building barns and shelters, laying pipes for drinking faucets, and shoveling tons of horse manure would have kept my body in great shape. No such luck! The body adapts to any activity done on a regular basis. In fact, my body deteriorated so badly I was having crippling back spasms a couple of times a year. My hands had developed arthritis so badly I was constantly rubbing them to relieve the pain.
Nothing seemed to help until I decided to start training with the weights again. At first, the going was really rough. I was so weak I had to use weights that once were toys for me! As a youth I regularly used three hundred pounds in the bench press. Starting over again as a middle aged man of forty-eight, I could barely get ten repetitions with one hundred pounds. I was shocked that I had become so weak!
The discipline I had developed as a youth kept me coming back to the gym. Slowly the magic of the gym fired me up again. I loved watching the big muscle guys working out, bringing back fond memories of my youth. The banging of the heavy weights was music to my ears.
To my surprise and joy in a month's time my hands were back to normal. The pain was all gone! The back responded as well. I have not experienced a crippling back spasm since I returned to working out with the weights. Within two years I was back in physique competition in the Master's class.
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