Training Partners - Hammer Time

I’ve had a number of training partners over the years, so it seems fitting that I would dedicate a blog post here and there to talk about them individually. My original training partner was my buddy, Hammer, the same kid I mentioned in my first and second posts. I have two older sisters but always wanted a brother. Hammer was as close to a brother as I could get, and for that I consider myself a very lucky guy. I could write volumes about all of the hilarious memories Hammer and I have shared, but for this I’m going to try to stick mostly to our experiences training together.

When we were kids in the mid-90s, much like my own father, Hammer’s dad, Mike, always had weights in the basement. Nothing major, just some dumbbells and an EZ-curl bar with some plates, but that was enough to make us curious and at least pick them up to get a good pump on occasion. Mike also kept bodybuilding magazines around. Here in 2019, I have heard people argue that fitness magazines featuring cover models with perfect muscles and six-pack abs are bad because they make normal people standing in line at the grocery store feel bad about their own physiques, but I never saw it that way. Those jacked cover models just made my awkward, adolescent self want to lift and train and figure out how to get big and strong. For me, it was nothing but positive energy and a desire to improve.

Hammer and I both learned lifting from Mr. Madigan, a teacher/coach at our school, at the end of our 8th grade year, but we had a few other weight room mentors along the way. This local businessman, Donny, used to open the weight room in the morning. I have no idea why he had a key to the high school weight room, but as I’ve been thinking back on all of these experiences, a lot of random people with no affiliation with the school had keys to the high school weight room. I had heard that Hammer and our other buddy, Grant, were meeting Donny at the weight room in the mornings before school, and I knew I was falling behind, so I showed up one morning. Donny had me do as many reps as I could on power cleans (a lift I for sure couldn’t even do correctly at the time) with 115 pounds. After about twenty-something reps, I felt like I was going to die and was basically worthless the rest of the workout. It was embarrassing, and I felt like a turd. I never really got a good feel for what I was supposed to be doing on Donny’s program. That was my inexperience, not any fault of Donny’s. His program was working great for Grant and Hammer, but I had roamed into the gym totally unprepared and did something really stupid. It’s worth mentioning that one morning, Grant showed up late. Hammer and I were already squatting when Grant walked in wearing a hoodie with the hood up, a pair of shorts, and Nike slide sandals with no socks. Grant walked over to the corner squat rack, loaded up 405, and squatted it for a casual double like it was no big deal. We were about 14 at the time and I was amazed. Grant was always solid and strong, like he was made out of granite or something. Looking back, I definitely wish I had continued training with Donny, but I didn’t have the knowledge or sense to intelligently think about programming and suggest that maybe I shouldn’t do something like an AMRAP power clean.

After reading one of my earlier blog posts, Hammer asked if I remembered when we used to train with Joe. As usual, Hammer’s memory was way better than mine here, but once he started reminding me of Joe, it started to come back. Joe was a good guy, the dad of a kid in our school who was about five years older than us. Again, I don’t know why Joe had a key to the high school weight room, but when he offered to have us come train with him, we jumped at the chance. His program was very basic, which was good. I remember doing lots of incline bench presses and squats. Joe was a short, powerful guy who was meticulous about the way he spoke and communicated. He was good to our little group of friends. Well, like all good things, this had to come to an end. We showed up to train with Joe one day, and he wasn’t there. Joe was super reliable and had never stood us up before. We all went home bummed that we couldn’t train that day. About a week later, we found out that Joe had been absent because of a recent DUI. We never heard from Joe again, and that was that.

Here’s some small-town, obsessed with high school football shit. Hammer and I did everything together, including working the same minimum wage jobs from the time we both had paper routes in 6th grade until we were in our early 20s. All through high school, we worked as stock boys at the local IGA grocery store. Our summer lifting program at the school was held on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays over at the school, the same days large delivery trucks brought shipments to the IGA at 7:00 in the morning. Hammer and I didn’t want to miss lifting, so we worked it out with our boss, Dave, that we could help unload trucks and stock shelves from 7-9, go lift from 9-11, and then go back to work to finish our shift from 11-4. In retrospect, it was really cool of Dave to let us leave work in the middle of a shift like that. Mid-morning was always a busy time for the store, but Dave knew lifting was important to us and our performance on the football field come fall. I like to think Dave felt vindicated for his decision to be lenient with us, because I remember him literally dancing in the street after we beat our rivals during the high school football playoffs.

When Hammer and I used to go train at the high school, we would always lift together. Starting out, neither one of us knew what we were doing, but we had all the desire in the world. We followed our Bigger, Faster, Stronger template on the main lifts (squats, benches, cleans, trap bar deadlifts), then worked on lat pulldowns, dumbbell incline bench, curls, and abs. As we both grew up, Hammer started to get noticeably stronger than me at bench and pretty much any upper body movement. He was putting on muscle while I couldn’t gain weight to save my life. Of course, I now know that my diet was trash and totally insufficient for my goals of getting bigger and stronger, especially when combined with a teenager’s metabolism and at least two hours of some kind of sport practice every day. As freshmen, Hammer and I would watch the upperclassmen lift. I remember several of them squatting 405, at least one kid cleaning (read: reverse curl jumping) 275, and this one guy doing chins first to the front and then to the back, one after another. In my eyes, these guys, and eat least two girls who could for sure out-lift me, were like superheroes. They seemed so old, mature, and strong. Of course that’s funny to think about now in my mid-30s, but as a kid in 1998 with no internet or perspective on the world, it was absolutely true. Mr. Madigan oversaw this whole scene, walking around the room with a weight belt on yelling, “NEW RECCCOOORRRRRRRRRRD!” when someone was going for a personal best. The one CD we had in the old boombox in the corner was AC/DC Live. Everyone in the weight room knew that song number six on that CD was “The Jack.” because Mr. Madigan would play it on a loop and randomly go up to people and say, “Hey, hey, hey…she’s got the jack.” Sometimes Mr. Madigan could be found on this old stair stepper, and one time he looked down at Hammer and me and, in perfect tune with the song on the radio, said, “How bizarre?” It was so weird and funny that Hammer and I still laugh about it to this day.

Once Hammer and I got out of high school in 2002 and didn’t have to dedicate so much time and energy to organized sports, we both really got into lifting. The summer after high school graduation, we worked on the school custodial staff with a few other friends, Adam and Jake. Our football line coach, Chuck, was our boss, and we absolutely loved that guy. Chuck was a big strong dude who had spent five years as a guard in the NFL. The first time I ever met Chuck, I walked into the weight room and there was this guy on one of the benches repping 365 like it was an empty bar. Chuck stood up and I couldn’t believe how powerful he looked with jacked traps and a huge chest. Chuck turned out to be the nicest, coolest guy, but he could also be scary as shit when he would get pissed during practice and games. We’d be sitting there on a Sunday night watching film and he’d be yelling, “Look at yourselves o-line. I am getting physically sick to my stomach watching this.” When we worked for him at school that summer, he would occasionally give us money to get get Gatorade or take advantage of Big ‘n Tasty Tuesdays at McDonald’s. One time, there was a section of sidewalk that we needed to demolish with sledgehammers because it was going to be replaced. Hammer, Adam, and I worked on it for a little bit, but we were, let’s say, less than effective. Chuck rolled up to the job site, got out of his truck, took the sledgehammer, and, with about three swings, had chunks of concrete laying all over the place. My friends and I had all gotten thoroughly owned by Chuck’s grown man strength.

Now, even though Hammer and I worked for the school, that didn’t mean we had a key to the building or the weight room, so we had to be creative because we were desperate to lift. We grew up in the middle of nowhere and there were exactly zero gyms in our little town, so the high school weight room was like an oasis in the freaking desert. Before leaving the school for the day, we would find a way to prop open a door so we could go home, change, and then go back to school to sneak in and lift. One time we were in the weight room training and Chuck came back to get something he had forgotten. We were all kind of shitting our pants when he walked in, but he was cool about it and never really brought it up. In retrospect, we put him in a bad situation, but we just weren’t thinking that way at the time.

Hammer and I went to different colleges, but we were always home together on holidays and summer breaks. We both continued lifting during the school year, and then we’d spend the summers together, working on the grounds crew at a nearby golf course and training at Bianco’s Fitness Center in the next town over. This is where I really started to realize how desperately I needed lifting in my life. My day just was not complete until I got in a good lift. Sure, I loved lifting in high school, but I only did it consistently for about two and a half months over the summer. The rest of the year was jammed with football, basketball, track, and baseball seasons. I’m sure I could have found a way to lift in the mornings or something, but it was all I could do to survive all of the different practices without adding more on top of it. Maybe that’s just an excuse and the real reason is I wasn’t disciplined enough and had my head too far up my ass to figure it out. Our coaches never let us lift during the season. The first week of football practice our senior year, our coaches said we were going to lift twice per week all season long. The first Tuesday, we cut practice short and went in the weight room to lift. My friends and I were all excited because we loved lifting and knew our rivals lifted in-season and were stronger for it. Well, that Tuesday was the only time all season we stepped foot in the weight room. I guess our coaches figured doing endless nutcracker and Oklahoma drills was more productive than getting stronger.

Anyways, Hammer and I would carpool to work at the golf course. I’d pick him up at 4:30 AM so we could be up to the shop by 5, loading up our greens mowers and getting on the course to trim things up before the players arrived. Hammer and I proudly walk-mowed six to seven greens each and then about six tee boxes. The rest of the day was spent walking the course with a weed whacker (or string trimmer as our boss, Rich, liked to call them) or push mower, cleaning up any trees and rough areas that were too rocky or full of tree roots for the riding mowers. It’s safe to say this all added up to about 10 miles of walking every day of the summer, and that’s a conservative estimate. It was rare to get a compliment from Rich, but on one particularly hot day, Hammer and I ventured back to the shop at quitting time to put our equipment away and sign our time cards. We were all kind of standing outside the shop bullshitting when Rich looked at Hammer and me and said, “You guys gotta be tired. Jesus Christ, look at ya. There’s not an ounce of fat on ya.” It kind of came out of left field, but Hammer and I were proud that Rich knew we were working hard.

From the golf course, Hammer and I would head to Bianco’s to lift. Bianco’s was a small gym owned by a local couple who had both competed in bodybuilding, and it was awesome. It had everything a person could want, including a guy named Bruce, the owner’s dad, who was in his 70s and still completely jacked. Bruce had worked at a local foundry for 30+ years, and he looked like a total badass. Sporting a blond flat top, tight sweats, and a stringer tank, Bruce was without question the alpha in the room. He’d be in there pumping iron, flirting with the older ladies who came in for aerobics classes, and yelling across the gym busting balls. By this point, Hammer and I were starting to get serious about training, meaning we were armed with all kinds of bro science about how to do a proper body part split and the exact timing of a post-workout protein shake. I’m kidding about that stuff, but we did push each other as best we could. I was always competing with Hammer, and he was definitely stronger than me by this point. We would run through a typical body part split, adding in exercises we had seen in Muscle and Fitness or got from some random guy at the gym. Sadly, our program, if you could even call it that, was lacking squats and deadlifts. In other words, we were training like a couple of pussies. We always used the leg press and other machines, and we were both proud that we never skipped “leg day. ” Just admitting that makes me want to go back in time and kick my own ass. It wasn’t until years later that I finally figured out the true value of squatting and deadlifting. I’ll get into that another time.

Bianco’s Fitness Center at about 0530 on a Sunday morning. The back room has a squat rack, benches, and deadlift platform.

Those days training at Bianco’s with Hammer were amazing. At the time, I took for granted that I had a training partner who never wanted to miss a day and always took it seriously when it was time to train. As I mentioned earlier, Hammer was the brother I never had. He always pushed me to get stronger because I hated it when he beat me at a lift (which was often).

A few times a month, on the way home from Bianco’s, Hammer and I would stop at the local GNC to load up on “groundbreaking” supplements that gave us the shits. It was like a contest to see who could spend more money on protein powders and bars, and anything Hammer bought I felt like I had to have too because I didn’t want him to get stronger than me than he already was. One time Hammer had heard about this certain type of protein bar and said he was going to buy a whole box of them. Well, that meant I was going to buy a whole box too. The problem was, Hammer found them on the shelf first and got the last box of cookie dough or whatever. The only other flavor they had was chocolate banana. It didn’t sound great, but I bought them anyway. They were freaking disgusting in taste and texture, but I wasn’t going to admit I had spent hard earned grass mowing money on these nasty-ass bars. Over the next two weeks, I ate the whole box and pretended like they were delicious.

Another time we had decided to get this new creatine powder that was supposed to be awesome. It was loaded with sugar and had something in it that burned your throat on the way down. It even said on the label it would do that. Great! I’ll take two! During the first five days of taking this creatine, the user had to “load,” which meant taking five servings per day for the first five days. Surely this was necessary and not just a strategy to get someone to use the powder faster and buy more. By 6:30 AM, I was halfway through my second creatine drink of the day and driving to my next green to mow at the golf course. All of a sudden, it felt like lightning struck me and I knew if I didn’t find a bathroom in about 90 seconds I was going to shit myself. Fortunately, the bathroom by #4 green wasn’t too far away and I made it. Don’t worry, I still finished my loading phase and used that crap the whole rest of the summer. By the end of August I had two whole pounds of water weight to show for my efforts, so the stuff clearly worked.

After college, Hammer and I ended up living very far away from each other, but we’ve both kept up our love for lifting and training. He had a video up the other day of him working out with his newborn baby sitting in a stroller watching him. It was freaking amazing. Imagine the example he’s setting for his kid by keeping fitness in their lives. Hammer was a huge part of my lifting obsession. There are a million reasons why I love the guy, and the fact he was my original training partner is certainly one of them.