Barbell Shrugged - Why Strength Training is so Important - Diesel Dad Ep 20

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

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Welcome to the Diesel Dad. I'm happy to say that I'm back. I made it. If you're wondering where I've been for the last three weeks, well, I had a beautiful baby boy three weeks ago, 10 days early, and needless to say, I was a little unprepared.

I was planning on shooting a bunch of videos, but 10 days early, that's a huge 10 days when you talk about the radical life change that goes into having a baby. Guess what? I was unprepared. Mom, baby, everyone's healthy. Baby's put on two pounds. It's amazing what milk

will do. Turns out it's loaded with protein, loaded with fat, loaded with all the good things that you need to grow. That's why the GoMad Diet existed. If you've ever done the 20-Hour Back Squat program of ours, that is likely a big piece of it because in our nutrition protocol, we talk about the GoMad Diet gallon of milk a day. Helps you grow, helps you get strong. That's what the little man is doing right now. But everyone's home, everyone's healthy, everyone's happy. We're sleeping decently well.

Mom's a complete savage. The reason that I wanted to actually put this together more than just to update you on my life and what's going on in the land of the original diesel dad here. Man, this could get crazy, but when I was in the hospital, we had the baby at 1.45 in the morning, 1.41 a.m. And I've always wondered what happens if you have a baby in the middle of the night, because you're only supposed to be there for like 48 hours but they're not going to discharge you at 2 a.m so you end up spending like a full three days at the hospital

and the more you kick around the hospital the more you actually run into people you see people multiple times and you just kind of experience what goes on at hospitals and i've never really been injured too more much more than like a separated shoulder. I've never had to spend an extended amount of time. I don't really have any family members that have been in a hospital. So I don't really understand the hospital system and what goes on eating at the cafeteria. It's all like a different world to me. Having a baby, being in the birthing unit, being around all the moms, it's also a very interesting thing. But I had two experiences that radically shaped my life. And this message is more than about me having a kid because I'm the lucky

one in this situation. But what radically shifted my mindset and I had this like gut punch moment. There was two of them. The very first one, I was coming home from eating a dinner. There was a little spot like in walking distance that I was able to get out of the hospital and come back. And as I was getting in the elevator, I got in with another man. And of course you have that awkward like elevator conversation. And it it's typically about the weather or some craziness, but we're in the birthing unit and all these things. And I was getting ready to leave. I had our baby car seat. And he looked at me and asked

if I was getting ready to get out of there. And of course I was like, yeah, we leave sometime in a couple hours or tomorrow morning. I can't remember exactly what I said, but I was within 10 to 12 hours of getting out of the hospital. And I returned the question in my small talk manner and said, when are you guys getting out of here?

And he said, oh, I have no idea. To which I realized that he then told me that he had a baby that was two months premature, which is something that without having kids, I don't think you can fully understand how devastating that must feel as a parent. I have two babies that were both born healthy. And then he let me in on the fact that for literally the last two months, he had been in the hospital every single night waiting for closing hours in order to be told to leave. And it absolutely crushed me because I'm in the middle of my, like this amazing experience with a healthy baby, with a healthy mom, where we're having these big mom,

like family moments together, the initial moments of life. And he's having like a very different experience. In fact, his experience is probably one of the most trying experiences you could ever imagine. Like you have this baby and you're so excited for it to enter the world and to watch it go through life and be able to lead it along the way. And then it comes two months early and it's now in a NICU and now it's fighting for its life. And you're watching a baby that may weigh like five pounds,

four pounds, three pounds. I don't even know the exact number, but it's this tiny little thing that's a part of you. And you created it with your wife and she went through a full labor. And all you want is that little thing to live this prosperous, amazing life. And it's not that the baby won't come out of it,

but its initial entry into the world is a fight for its life. And it's hooked up to the tubes and all these things. And I was just super confronted by the fact that all of our life experiences are so different. And it actually, like I came back and it radically shifted my night. And then I sat down and I talked to my wife and just talked about how lucky I felt that she was healthy, that the baby was healthy, that we as a family unit were healthy and we were happy. And I never really feel lucky about things. I always feel like I'm in control of so much of my situation. But being in the elevator with that guy, I realized I'm very lucky.

I'm very lucky that my wife was able to get through labor. We were able to get to the hospital. Everything went smooth. I'm lucky that the baby came out with all of its fingers and toes, breathing, crying, doing what babies do. It just, it crushed me to think about that guy is in the exact same position I am. We're in the same elevator. The universe aligned us to be in a specific place

at the specific time to have the specific conversation. And for me to be confronted with the reality that some people's lives are hard. The second experience was as we were leaving. So this is about 10 hours later and we parked the car, we put the car seat in the baby's in the car. And then we just got stuck behind this cop car. And I've never thought about what would happen if you were a, an inmate, a female inmate at a jail and pregnant.

I had no idea. I've literally never thought about this in my entire life. And we couldn't get around this car. We were literally stuck in the car waiting for the cop car to move. And we had no idea like why they were actually there until about three or four minutes later. Two cops wheeled a mom out in handcuffs put her in the back of the cop car with the steel bars on the windows the works closed the door they drove off and they went back to jail now that in and of itself is just an unbelievable sight, like an unbelievable sight to think that a mom went into the hospital, went from jail into a hospital, birthed a child, and then went back to jail without her child.

That's, that's a reality that I, I had not only not been confronted with, but I had never even thought about in the slightest amount. I never, ever, ever would have even imagined that that was a reality to some people. And then I had the immediate reflection of, oh man, not only is there a mom going back to jail immediately after having a child, but now there's a kid in the hospital that is born into a system. That kid's going to foster care immediately. That kid's going to some sort of child service that is government-funded immediately. And their life is going to be very, very different than many people.

And with both of these things, all I could think about was that dad really had no control over that situation. The mom had no control over that situation, yet they are there every single night fighting with their kid to get it to gain weight, to get it out of the hospital, to get on with life, to get past this moment. And this baby is born into this world with a mom that's in jail. And it's nearly impossible to think about how incredibly important like the first day for that that child

to recognize who its mom is that first month of of being with your mom all the time it's being skin on skin and having that physical connection the first six months of breastfeeding like a kid's going to get none of that and the kid had absolutely zero responsibility in any of that for that portion of its life and it's really strange because i think about so many things in terms of weight lifting in that we've all had like really hard things that have happened to us whether they were within our control whether they were out of our control but one thing that's always just been a constant in my life is that i'm going to fight for the ability to go out and train and i'm going to go lift weights no matter what and i'm not saying that lifting weights is going to go and solve all your problems but

the reason it's so important and the reason that you have this place that you can go is because when you're able to physically exert yourself, you have the ability to eliminate a lot of the stress that comes at you at life. It gives you a place in which you are allowed to be in control, to use your body physically, to eliminate aggression, to actually use aggression so that you're eliminating that stress you're you're eliminating all of that stuff that builds up inside of you all of that mental emotional stress and if you've made it to this part of the video i think the most important thing i I wanna just get at is like, man, if you're going through crap and you're fighting for your kid,

or you're a kid that's been fighting for your own life for the past 16, 18 years, and you were just dealt a deck of cards that sucks, and for some reason, somehow you find this video, for some reason, somehow you find Barbell Shrugged, for some reason, just if you find a video for some reason, somehow you find Barbell Shrugged for some reason. Just if you find a barbell in your life and you're drawn to that thing, just keep going.

And it's really radically shifted my perception of just what some people's reality is. And some people are going through crap, but if you can find a place that can, you can call home like a gym, like a weight room, like a barbell. If you can find a thing that, that loves you back like a barbell will, and you're able to immerse yourself into that culture and into that learning process. And you're able to immerse yourself into that culture and into that learning process and you're able to find a place that you can fight through some of the hardest things

because you know that if you can just get to the gym and work through all this stuff that things are gonna be okay. I don't know what happened to that dad that I met in the elevator. I don't know what happened to the mom going back to jail and I have no idea what happened to that dad that I met in the elevator. I don't know what happened to the mom going back to jail. And I have no idea what happened to that kid that woke up one day without a mom because it was in jail.

She was in jail. I have no idea what happened. But for anybody that's out there right now, for anybody that's just going through just crap, for anybody that's dealing with some crap, just the shit of the shit. And you're stuck in it. I wish I had like real advice, but I think that the bigger thing is, is like, is finding a thing that you can always go back to. And Henry Rollins talks about the fact

that a 45 pound plate is always a 45-pound plate. No matter where you go, if you can find a barbell, you can sit down and squat and get your head right and put some weight on the bar and challenge yourself physically. In my life, that's always been the place that I've been able to go in order to deal with things. And I hope that the barbell loves you in the same way that it's loved me. I hope that you love the barbell in the same manner that I've loved it.

And I hope that the gym provides some level of stability in your life so that when things go crazy and when things just get nuts, that you just have a place that you can go work through stuff. Because you can't go work through stuff when you're in the hospital helping your kid fight for its life. You can't do it when you're that kid that doesn't have a mom there. You don't understand the world.

You don't understand that people make mistakes. You don't understand that you were just dealt a shitty deck of cards. There has to be a place where you can go to work through stuff. And I've never dealt with anything that heavy. I've never had to do any of that. But I do have a place that I get to go and work through things. And I really hope that if you're going through shit right now, that you have a place that you can go to work through things. And if you don't, get your ass to a gym and learn how to lift weights.

Because that place will love you, and the people in it will love you and I'm just grateful that I found it this is the diesel dad I'm Anders Varner and I appreciate all of you guys for paying attention to this