Iron does not lie

Monday, January 15th, 2018

Oxford asked Sam Fussell to continue and do a doctorate in American Literature, but he felt he had not done well enough on his exams to warrant their offer, so he ended up at a dead-end job in publishing — and then stumbled into bodybuilding, which oddly suited his nature, until it didn’t:

In the gym, I found a world where I would be rewarded for doing 3x amount of work. And it was liberating. I’d found, in the gym, a meritocracy. Where labor had visible, tangible results.

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Specifically, as to bodybuilding, because bodybuilding/powerlifting is so numbers-oriented, among other things, part of that reality is remember how it first felt to bench press 315 (three wheels!), to bench press 405 (four wheels!), to squat 500 (five wheels!), to deadlift 500 (five wheels!). Every single one of those lifts took years (for me) to build up to. They were a kind of concrete sanctification of what I was doing (that pleasure comes from pain, that dreams come true through sheer industry and endless repetition with some minor variation).

[...]

I’m not sure it’s possible to keep your perspective and engage in this kind of physical pursuit. In the same way, I don’t think it’s possible to climb mountain or race bicycles at the highest level and not sacrifice everything to get where you want to go. If, by perspective, one means a kind of balance, I can’t think of anyone who truly excels in their field (and that doesn’t have to be a physical field, it could be writing novels) who is in any way balanced.

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Once I competed, I knew I was on my way out. Because the idea of culminating those years of training by ending up in a bathing suit the size of a child’s watchstrap and flexing on-stage seemed so absurd. It always bothered me that bodybuilders don’t do anything. Okay, if you show us your muscles, let’s see you actually use them and see two things: 1. who has the best body (admittedly, even that’s tough, as Lisa Lyon once wrote: “How can you judge a lily from a rose?)), and 2. who is the strongest and at what lift?

So when I went to bodybuilding shows and saw grown men cavorting on stage without actually testing those muscles for strength, it seemed absurd.

Also, by the time I moved to California and began to run into some of the best bodybuilders in the world, I noticed a gigantic gulf between what the muscle magazines portrayed about their lives and what their lives were actually life. Reality is a bitch – if you’ve been spoon-fed (or injected) fantasy.

The myth sells, not the man. So my education began in distinguishing fact from fantasy. And the facts, once I was out in California, were staring me in the face. The bodybuilder listed at six two, was, in fact, five foot ten. His arms, listed at 22 inches, were, in fact, 20, etc, etc. The rabid heterosexual was, in fact, gay for pay. The ‘all-natural’ bodybuilder, in fact, was a walking advertisement for the pharmaceutical industry.

Eye-openers, all.

And infinitely depressing, because it meant, eventually, all you could believe in was iron — because iron does not lie.

You can either lift it or you can’t.

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So after I competed, I completely stopped for about nine months (which was the time it took me to write the first draft of Muscle).

In that time, I continued to train clients as a personal trainer, but, without lifting, I no longer looked like a personal trainer (one of my clients once said, “When I hired you, you looked like Sam. Now, you look like Santa”).

After that nine month gap, I then started lifting again, without drugs and, sadly, without much passion.

I’d seen enough.

It’s said that if you’ve run a sub-four mile, you probably aren’t going to really enjoy running the mile in five minutes ‘for fun.’

So while I rewrote Muscle two more times, I continued to lift, but no longer with the same drive.

I’d go to the gym a couple of times per week, instead of twice per day, three days on, one day off.

The gym, like any subculture, is a hierarchy. It had taken me years to rise in that hierarchy. When I lost my muscles, I lost rank and privilege within that hierarchy. So going to the gym was painful in that sense. I was no longer who I was. “When will you be you again?” was the standard question I received.

For me to write that book, I very much had to disconnect myself from that world. I couldn’t do it as an insider looking out. Only as an outsider looking in.

I also very much knew the price: success would mean exile.

If I were to be honest, I wouldn’t be welcomed into any hardcore gym for decades.

The book was very much an attempt at self-exile.

He comes across as the Holden Caulfield of lifting.

Comments

  1. Ted says:

    The myth in bodybuilding should die. In fact, drugs are so rampant that many are starting to be honest about it (but now omit telling the extremes taken). So they soften the details. But it’s sad. As Joe Rogan once said: when it comes to bodybuilding, you’re building sand castles. It eventually all gets swept away by the life’s waves.

  2. Isegoria says:

    I recently watched Eddie: Strongman on Netflix, and the documentary had one cringeworthy section of strongman competitors and promoters denying any knowledge of steroids, in a sport full of 400-lb men pulling trucks, flipping tractor tires, and deadlifting half-ton barbells. Riiiight.

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