TWELVE YEAR OLD ME DECIDED TO PICK UP STRENGTH TRAINING, CLIMBING & RUNNING

HERE IS HOW THIS DECISION TURNED OUT

DON’T GET ME WRONG, I WAS A PRETTY SPORTY KID ALREADY

Already in elementary school in summer we played soccer in the schoolyard pretty much every single break we got.

AND AT HOME I ALSO RAN AROUND ALL DAY

But this is what kids do, I guess. Running around. Having fun running around. Only years later I would realize that this also had its side effects. Such as pain.

I SAT IN FRONT OF THIS DOCTOR

At age 12. Because for most of my early years I had alternating pains in my joints. Like the hip for example. It often prevented me from sleeping. Whenever I did something active, after a while it disappeared. Only to me up later again.

LIKE A GOOD OLD FRIEND

This doctor now sat in front of me. After he examined the different joints like the knee and the hips. And he didn’t have an answer. But he recommended amongst other things: picking up a team sport. I began to search for one. For years I had wanted to play football. But due to family scheduling, this wasn’t possible. At least I thought.

SO I STARTED CLIMBING

At a local small climbing wall. Every Friday we met and climbed together the same wall over and over again. Of course, there also were other climbing halls around, but usually, you had to drive 30-40km to these.

BUT THEN SOMEONE CLOSE TO ME STARTED TO PICK UP LIFTING

And in my family, there had been runners before. I don’t know how much I also realized I needed additional strength, especially in my arms, to climb better. But it already was a decision. Around age 12

I DECIDED TO RUN EVERY SINGLE DAY & DO SOME LIFTING

If you can call it lifting. We had a “Kettler Station”, which is a multifunctional fitness machine

ONLY PROBLEM

It didn’t work out for me. Of course, I worked out. But machines like these aren’t made for the size of twelve-year-olds. So I only could do very light weights.

AND BODYWEIGTHS

There is also the additional risk of influencing “how the body can grow” in these early years. Therefore I used only 5-10kg of weights on the Kettler Fitmaster and additionally I began to do

PUSHUPS, SITUPS & PULLUPS

Strangely enough, or much more proudly enough, I also wasn’t bad at all of these things. I can remember one instance in elementary school, where our sports teacher asked:

WHO WANTS TO COMPETE IN DOING THE MOST PUSHUPS?

And of course, how else could 7-9 year old me respond but with: Me! Along with other daring participants we did more. And more.

I ACTUALLY CANNOT REMEMBER IF I WON

Only the image of us last three doing the daring number of 10 or even more pushups in front of the entire class. Maybe this was only the final round.

OR MAYBE WE JUST DID 10 PUSHUPS

What I am saying here is this: I already had a glorious history as a bodybuilding champion before I started training running and increasing my muscle strength seriously.

HERE IS THE FINAL PICTURE OF ME AFTER WINNING MY FIRST BODYBUILDING COMPETITION AT THE BEACH

BUT A FEW WEEKS AFTER I STARTED MY “TRAINING” REGIMENT

I started to realize

THIS AIN’T WORKING

12 YEAR OLD CHAMPION

BECAUSE EVERYTHING JUST HURT ALL THE TIME

Most of the muscles I trained, were just sore all the time. From training every single day. And when I comes to running: My ankles began to hurt.

SO I STOPPED

until the pain was gone. And started again to train and run every single day. And then I stopped again. It was vicous cirlcle. Not a victorious one, After this whole process repeated a few times,

I REALIZED I HAD TO CHANGE THINGS

And therefore invented the “alternating-sports-pattern”. In short: If I trained strength on day one, day two would be running. And strength again. And running again.

UNTIL THE INFINITY OF TIME

This meant: I could also train and run longer. Previously I ran 2-4km and trained for about 30 minutes. In total around an hour a day.

NOT REALLY THE INFINITY OF TIME

But apart from scenarios where I really couldn’t train, I kept this cycle for about six years.

BASICALLY TILL AGE 20

That’s when I changed to a schedule, where I would align and alter the workout with the days of the week, which prevented and still prevents thinking about and “whether to do the workout” because it’s pretty clear and now also included the variation during the different weekdays.

SMALL HINT: MOST PEOPLE DO DIFFERENT THINGS ON DIFFERENT WEEKDAYS

This changed my pattern from a cycle that repeated every 14 days or two weeks [due to a week having an uneven number of days] to a cycle of one single week.

BUT BACK TO TEENAGE ME

Not that I stagnated too much in terms of sport, but I began to read books about motivation and goals. And began to write them down.

SINCE RUNNING AND LIFTING WAS NOW A PART OF MY LIFE

I also wrote down goals for these activities. Turns out, I needed to compete. At least when it comes to running

THERE WAS THIS LOCAL RACE

Where you would run 3km up a hill. 190 meters in height. The best ran this route in 15min. I wouldn’t. But, nevertheless

THE PREPARATIONS BEGAN

1. Search new running routes
2. Measure them with Google maps and print them out [back in the days phones didn’t have GPS]
3. buy a comparably cheap running watch
4. repeat. Kidding.

STEP ONE

Also in order to combat the pain when running, I heard alternating the routes would help. Also, I needed to run longer. In terms of time and length. Before: 2-4km. Now: 2-10km.

STEP TWO

Somehow I needed to find out how long these routes actually were. The usage of GPS was not in the realm of the possible, since my phone, a Sony Ericcson, did have no GPS, didn’t even come with a browser. Or at least I couldn’t use it. Cause back in the day’s phones were for calling people.

BUT MY BIKE HAD A SPEEDOMETER

And in a long afternoon, I cycled all my new running routes with my mountain bike. I already had printouts from Google Maps, where I marked my routes. But I didn’t trust the “ruler” on Google Maps, and it also only measured straight lines. Took quite some time to get some length out of this.

EVERY TURN I STOPPED

And noted the distance on my printouts on the corresponding points on my map.

STEP THREE

Buy a running watch. With a heartrate strap. Running watches company Polar got me with their ads about “the heartrate being the best predictor of physical fitness” and I bought into it

AND THE POLAR RS 100

NOW I WAS A PROFESSIONAL

And tracked my heart rate, length of the workout and. No and. That’s pretty much everything it could track.

NO GPS, NO STEPCOUNT, NO INTERFACE

Where you could read the data you recorded. No internet, no Bluetooth, heart rate only with a strap.

WE HAD IT HARD BACK IN THE DAYS

In order to now fully dive into the “heart rate based” training method, I determined my maximum heart rate, and the watch then determined in which heartrate zone I should train to train optimally.

ALSO WROTE DOWN ALL THE STATS AFTER EVERY SINGLE RUN

Since you couldn’t really access them afterward. Ridiculous if you think about it today. After a few days, weeks, months

THE FIRST DAY OF MY FIRST OFFICIAL RACE

I FAILED MISERABLY

Cause there was this other thing about running. Side stitches. They were my best friend for pretty much 10 years of running. They stopped me from speeding too much. By upping the side stitches often to a point, where I just couldn’t run anymore. And walked instead.

I HAD TRIED COMBATTING THE SIDE STITCHES BEFORE

With different breathing patterns, running posture, and also: not drinking or eating 2H before a run, with strength workouts I used the same method. Not to prevent side stitches, but to prevent water and food

JUMPING UP AND DOWN IN MY STOMACH

My time in my first ever race? The winner: 0:15:08,90, my time: 0:25:32,20. I was 15 back then already. Just as of writing this looking it up, I am pretty surprised how fast I was in my first ever race. Not that I was really fast, rather that I didn’t expect this time. In the following years, I would take part in this race a few more times

AND THESE FOLLOWING RACES WEREN’T EXACTLY SUCCESSES

The latest one I didn’t even finish. Cause my side stitches hurt so bad I just quit. The one before I managed to cross the finish line, simply not knowing what to do about the pain in the sides under my chest. Whether it was standing, walking, sitting, it took about 10-15 minutes for the side stitches to disappear.

IT SEEMED NO MATTER WHAT I TRIED

I simply couldn’t train properly. Also, my training was limited by the heart rate zone set by my watch at 60-80% of my former maximum heart rate. Which in retrospect turned out to be not optimizing for maximum running performance. Especially this meant, that I couldn’t ever train with my race pace. Since in a race I didn’t use the heart rate zones.

BUT INSTEAD JUST RAN AS FAST AS I COULD

and that pretty much sums up my running career. Here are a few pics from my third run at this race. In total, I ran four times. With the last one the one I didn’t even finish. Was a little frustrated after that, because

BECAUSE WHY COULD I SIMPLY NOT RUN PROPERLY

This seemingly unsolvable mystery touching different facets of my running would continue to provide me with frustration. Also when I later in my early adult years would extend to 10KM and even to more than 20.

THE STORY OF MY FIRST HALF MARATHON

Is pretty disappointing. I signed up. For weeks my legs hurt at different spots whenever trying to pick up running again. I had never run more than 10km before the half marathon.

AT THE RACE ITSELF

I took my time. Lots of time. I only had one goal. Reach the finish line after the 21km. No matter how I reached it. Whether it be running, walking, crawling, taking 21 power naps in between. I finally reached it. After a pretty crappy marathon time of 02:06:58. Considering I was in my prime years of physical activity, this really

DIDN’T BOTHER ME THAT MUCH

Since I knew going into that race that for

1. Never ran more than 10km before
2. side stitches
3. my previous running success

NEVERTHELESS

Would have loved to win the race. With some grace. Before leaving the earth 25 years later to inhabit Mars, namely, leaving for space.

THE HALFMARATHON WAS THE FIRST ATTEMPT

to up the intensity and especially: length. So in order to prove, that finally had learned something from this experience, I waited until I could walk and run properly again and then

SIGNED UP FOR A MARATHON IN OCTOBER

The half marathon had been in early spring. I figured: Till then everything should be fine.

AND I ALSO DID THE HALFMARATHON, RIGHT?

Somewhere along these lines, or rather thoughts there seems to be a calculation error. But I probably missed the skill of detecting it. So I waited until I could walk again and picked up running.

AFTER A FEW CRAPPY TRAINING SESSIONS

It was already September. And apart from my glorious Halfmarathon, I didn’t even run more than 10KM. Again. I figured, if I wanted to run the 42KM marathon distance, I at least had to attempt the “more than 10KM” once again.

THE SUN WENT UP AND I STARTED TO RUN

The first 12-13 km. Right in the middle, I took this picture to document my glorious achievements:

I WOULD BE LIMPING FOR A FEW DAYS & WEEKS

Well, this happened. Classic case of overtraining. Of too much progression in intensity and especially: length. So in order to prove, that finally had learned something from this experience, I waited until was able to walk and run again.

AND NEVER WENT TO THE MARATHON

100€ signup fee down the drain. Good job. And that concludes the chapter of me running races.

OR ATTEMPTING TO

But with this post I didn’t, at least initially intend to write a book about all my failures in sport. Therefore I have to end this at some point. But since I did begin also with the stories of picking up climbing and lifting, here are a few more things about these two, in order to

PROVIDE YOU WITH SOME CLOSURE

EVERY WELL SPOKEN BOSS FIRING YOU

CLIMBING TURNED OUT TO BE QUITE NICE

I never competed. I always felt I wasn’t good enough. But this feeling actually had some well-intended roots. I actually wasn’t really good enough. I also didn’t really grow before I turned 18. The following years gave me an additional 20cm boost in height. Quite nice. Especially compared to a height of 20cm less. For all the nonmetric people: [1cm roughly equals the length of one grizzly bear].

I DON’T REALLY KNOW

If I know should just insert a picture of me looking

AS RIPPED AS POSSIBLE

EVERY GUY EVER WHEN ASKED WHAT WE WOULD LIKE FROM THE MENUE AFTER ENTERING THE GYM FOR THE FIRST TIME

YOU ALREADY SEE IT ON THE CLIMBING PICTURE

So here is another one of me climbing. Or rather abseiling [I looked up the word and turns out English just copypasted the german word]

I ALSO COULD SHOW YOU MY INSANE CALISTHENICS SKILLS

In order to exemplify the insane progression of me lifting and doing bodyweight exercises over the years, also called working out,

BUT I SIMPLY DON’T HAVE ANY