Bill C: Workout buddy
My second day in a treatment center the leadership in the unit I was in was turning over. As is the custom, every couple weeks one of the guys in the unit takes over as a sort-of ‘House Mother’. So, the lunatics are running the asylum. This new house mother had huge biceps and chest and looked like he’d been lifting weights since he was about three years old. He had a pretty exciting past. Born in California, Truancy. A biker. San Quentin. the whole package. And after turning his life around, getting two college degrees and working his way up to CEO of a hospital, he had crashed and relapsed. He had an inspiring story of turning his life around.
We became acquainted in treatment and ultimately became the greatest pals — still are to this day.
Bill was a big workout guy. He did these massive 3- and 4-hour workouts with elliptical and weights. He was always talking about working out, and so was I. Only difference between Bill and I was he was actually DOING workouts while I was only TALKING about workouts. It took me over fifteen years after getting sober to really get to the gym. I just kept putting it off, coming up with excuses and letting life get in the way.
In 2018 Bill invited me to his home in Naples, where he was living at the time. We completed a five-day bootcamp to lift weights. It changed everything. We lifted tons of weight. It was actually murder; I’d never done anything like it before, but it got me started and interested in weight lifting.
The single most important thing I learned in several ‘boot camp’ experiences with Bill, and since then, is how much better my workouts are when I work out with a buddy. It makes me more accountable, I show up more often, work harder, lift more weight, do more reps, use better technique, and am more accurate tracking weight and progress. That’s a lot of incentive to lift with a partner.
This is just like my life in recovery. Walking shoulder to shoulder with like-minded individuals without hierarchy; just ‘trudging the road of happy destiny’ — to the gym!
Setting a regular day and time to lift with another recovering person helps ensure that I’ll get to the gym, and get the workout done. When we workout and ‘count pounds’ we pull each other along and