Everyone has good and bad training days. On my best days I’m optimistic about my progress. On my good days, I at least enjoy my routine. On my bad days, firing my coach and throwing my gym bag in the Monongahela sounds cathartic. (This is what’s known in sports science literature as “daily undulating pessimism.”)

When the bad days begin to outnumber the good, I can’t help but ask why I do this to myself. Powerlifting isn't the most expensive sport, but between gym dues, coaching fees, travel expenses, and the cost of equipment, there's a fair amount of money I could save by abandoning it. Similarly, I could gain 12 or more hours a week by skipping the gym. And just think of the mental space that could be freed with reduced focus on my performance, diet, and programming.

Worse, I don’t have a lot to show for all my effort. My gym is full of men who lift hundreds of pounds more than me. In five meets, I've accumulated two medals, once as first in a class of one and once as fifth of 10. (In the latter instance I actually tied for sixth by total but placed higher thanks to a lower body weight. I don’t understand why anyone hands out a medal for fifth place when there are only 10 competitors.) At my most recent competition my squat and bench actually regressed, nearly back to where they were at my first meet, and thanks to USA Powerlifting’s revised, slightly less inclusive, slightly more reasonable qualification standards, I may not be able to compete alongside Joah at Nationals this year.

 I’d struggle to give up all sports. Ever since I was old enough to care how I looked, some piece of my brain has thought of me as a fat kid, and physical activity have been my bulwark against succumbing to that fate. I never got truly obese — with a height a little under 5'10” my weight peaked at around 230lbs as an adult, and even at peak adolescent awkwardness I was more soft than round — but the anxiety was there like a red warning light pulsing silently in the darkness where my self-esteem should have been.

I fit the “fat kid” mold socially, too. I ate too much, I said and did awkward things, and I always had my head in a book. I was mediocre or worse at ball sports. I didn't get invited to birthday parties. By the time I caught up with a fad it was dead. (Causation or correlation?) I wore off-brand hand-me-down clothes, with the exception of my pants, thanks to my oversized lower body; I had “husky” size corduroys when everyone else was in jeans. During a pick-up soccer game on my elementary school playground the other kids took a goal off the board because if I scored it, it didn't really count.

My parents saw the risk: I could easily have gotten really fat, as they once reminded each other as if I wasn't there to hear them. They weren't athletes, and they liked me clean, safe, geeky, and cloistered. (I picture pleated pants, cable-knit sweaters, duck boots, toggle coats, thick glasses, singing baritone in the glee club. Such a nice boy.) From the moment he scored a goal only seconds into his beehive soccer league, my lean, talkative, anxious brother was the family athlete. Trying to convince them that I could be a success at both sports and academics became a bit of a mission.

Convincing classmates at my weird little high school was no easier. Without a traditional physical education program, we were required to participate in sports. My lack of muscle tone encouraged me to play on the “shirts” side of soccer practice — I saw the ripped abs on the “skins” side and figured I'd never get a girlfriend — but without the option to head straight home after school to resume eating my feelings, I never acquired truly cetacean curves. Though I became the fastest kid on the track team, as well as team captain for both track and wrestling, I was never considered among the best athletes in my class, and one teammate took to calling me a “fat fuck” behind my back. (Fun fact: He took up steroids around the same time.) It didn’t help that I was playing JV soccer when, thanks to a premature growth spurt, I could have been on the varsity football team as a freshman, or that wrestling and track weren’t exactly the highest-status of sports.

My coaches were more excited about my potential, but they were primarily science and math teachers. They had limited time and resources, and I wasn't prepared to take full advantage of what was offered. By college I was more ready to get serious, but I was in the middle of the pack at an academically inclined institution whose resources were little better than what I had in high school. Everything I did out-of-season — even some of what I did in-season, including rehabilitation from frequent injuries — I had to choose on my own, and I didn't make terrific decisions. The only individual award I earned was for “character.”

But none of that mandates putting up with the frustrations of powerlifting. If what’s important is keeping the fat off and staying active — plausibly maintaining my identity as an athlete even as wrinkles crease my face and gray infiltrates what remains of my hair — I could just resume jogging. A new pair of running shoes would cost about the same as a month at the gym, and thirty minutes a day, four or five days a week would amount to the same total time as one hard gym session.

But I've tried running -- I was slightly above-average as a sprinter and pretty mediocre as a distance runner. There’s not a lot of reason to think I have a lot of untapped potential there, even if I was interested in finding it, and it injured me far more than powerlifting ever has. (There are of course other accessible sports: cycling, triathlon, softball, tennis, golf, bowling . . . which don't hold any appeal. Just hearing the word soccer makes my knees want to flee like kittens before a vacuum cleaner, and even if I was interested I fear that the inevitable injuries from Brazilian jiu-jitsu would make Joah cut someone.)

Besides, I like lifting, which is why I did it long before I ever considered entering a powerlifting meet. Few things give me the same sense of accomplishment as walking home from the gym with tired muscles and a fresh entry in my training log. A day at work usually leaves some ambiguity over whether I really got anything done, but working out leaves no doubt. (Bonus: Powerlifting meets are natural camouflage for a bald, bearded man.)

I could keep my spot in the weight room without needing to step on the platform, though. The 3D Muscle Journey folks have said, perhaps jokingly, that the natural progression is weightlifting for 20-year-olds, powerlifting for 30-year-olds, and bodybuilding for the 40-plus set. Maybe Joah doesn’t like me looking emaciated, maybe I don't care to tweeze my body hair, dye myself mahogany, and prance around on stage in a few square micrometers of neon banana hammock while strangers evaluate the symmetry of my buttocks -- I could still focus on getting big and lean. I could play around with new lifts. I could “win the beach” (masters, tested division).

Unfortunately, aesthetics are nowhere near as motivating for me as performance, and the overlap between bodybuilding and powerlifting training is too great for it to be much of an escape. It might feature some different exercises and rep ranges, but I'd still be testing my strength.

Powerlifting is my final, best attempt to realize my full potential in a sport. Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm healthy. I've never had any major injuries, and despite having spent years training sub-optimally, my lifts are reasonable. No, I’m not going to win Nationals, but with better training, better form, better nutrition, and greater willpower, I want to believe that I can improve.

Whatever the truth is, I’m determined to find out. And that means continuing to put in hours beneath the bar, with all the ups and downs that come with them.