To me, HARDCORE was always a cool word and one I use to describe myself. I always saw it as being hard on the outside and through to the very core, as well as being intense and going full-force for the things you want. I noticed over the years, though, that my own definition of the word was modified and that other people seem to have a different definition than I do. This sparked my attention to look up the word on my handy Dictionary.com application, and I got three definitions which I found very interesting.

  1. Unswervingly committed; uncompromising; dedicated: a hard-core segregationist
  2. Pruriently explicit; graphically depicted: hard-core porn
  3. Being so without apparent change or remedy; chronic: hard-core inflation; hard-core unemployment

The first definition is very similar to the idea I always had and how a lot of people use the word. Definition two is a whole different discussion for another time! Ha ha! Definition three is the one that I find the most interesting, and it's actually why I decided to change my own definition of the word over the years. Now, I may be stretching the stated definition a bit, but this is my twist on it. I used to think of hardcore as full-force with blinders on going for your goal. I never gave much thought about right, wrong, safety, feeling, or any of that. It didn’t even matter how I went about getting there, just that I was going full blast as hard as I could all of the time. If you put definitions one and three together, I think it is similar to my own definition. Therefore, being unswervingly committed without compromise or any change in direction toward your goal; going full blast after what you want without any thought to the repercussion or even the best way to get there. I believe I did a lot of this in my younger years and thought I was being hardcore!

I have a couple favorite memories of me being this type of hardcore, or as I look back now – stupid. One time, I was out riding dirt bikes with friends because I was young, they were pedal bikes, not motorcycles yet (there are other stupid stories to go with that). I was looking up this one dirt mound with my friends, and I stated that I could ride down it. It was only 15 or 20 feet high, but almost straight down. My friends immediately said that there was no way I could do it. I said I could, so I dragged my bike up the back side of it. While standing at the top and looking down, I realized there was no f-ing way I could ride down this thing. I did say I would, though, so I got on my bike and proceeded to eat shit big time. I ended up having to untangle myself from my bike and make sure nothing was broken, all to the great laughter of my friends. Never-the-less I stood up with great pride. Even with them laughing and saying they knew I wouldn’t make it, my whole body was filled with pride. I kept my word, I said I would do it, and I did it even though I knew I couldn’t make it. In my mind I was one hardcore S.O.B. Yes, I was talking like a sailor even when I was little!

I have another memory of a very cold winter day in Missouri when I was out playing football with my brother and friends. It was one of those days when the football feels like a brick, the ground feels like concrete, and every time you hit someone, it rattles your teeth. After playing ball for hours, we were all sitting around bullshitting. I got the great idea that I could stand up and fall flat on my face without bending or guarding myself. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking right now, why the hell would he want to do that? Good question...and one none of my friends would ask; they simply bet me I wouldn’t! Well, I said I would do it and I did it. Once I hit the ground, I had a little bit of time to contemplate what my life was going to be like now that I couldn’t move any part of my body, that was if I could start breathing again. I finally was able take a deep breath, but still couldn’t move. I'm sure this was just for a short period of time, but it seemed like forever to me. It's kind of hard to keep track of time when your mind is racing and all you hear is incessant laughter! I finally got up again with great pride even with all that laughter! I was actually proud of myself for being able to mentally push past my body’s natural reaction to not let me fall flat on my face. In my mind, I was again a HARDCORE S.O.B., even with my stupidity!

I carried this same attitude into my lifting. I tried to read and educate myself about lifting, but my brain always seemed to get stuck on the most hardcore parts. I could read a whole article about Arnold, but my brain only remembered the paragraph about a crazy leg training day, so I made all of my leg training like that. I read about strongman training and what they put themselves through, so I wanted every session to be like that. I trained even if I was sick. If by some chance it was one of those puking and shitting sickness, when I physically could not lift, then I trained twice the next day. I even remember getting into a fight with my father because he got tickets to a Cardinals baseball game and I didn’t want to go because I hadn’t trained yet that day. That was one of my favorite things to do, but I didn’t want to miss even one training session. Of course my dad won that argument and I had to go, but I didn’t enjoy it because all I could think about was the training I missed. It was all about training and being hardcore...about being focused and never losing site of my goal so I thought that meant never missing a training session.

Actually training was just as hardcore. I trained in my basement and after every squat/leg session, if I could walk up the stairs, I went directly back down and squatted until I physically couldn’t make it back up the stairs. I imagined having quads like Tom Platz and kept going until I buried myself. I ended up sitting at the bottom of the stairs for 20-30 minutes with a big grin on my face. When I got my first squat rack in high school, I knew the first thing a hardcore lifter would do is test out the safety tiers. I beat the shit out of them and if had to guess the number of times I had to weasel myself out from under a bar, I would say it must be in the thousands. Before I got a cage to bench in, I just had a bench, which I got myself stuck on thousands of times, too. You name a way to get out from under a bar, and I have done it. My favorite, of course, was rolling the bar down my abs until I could stand up with it. That might be part of why my abs are so strong today! I used to beat the crap out of myself in that basement. Every time I came upstairs after a training session, mom asked me if I was ok because I was completely pale. If I wasn’t totally exhausted, I kept going no matter how long it took. I often passed out on the floor next to my equipment. I wanted to be hardcore and I was going to be hardcore.

I still look back on all of those things and many others like them with great pride. It was all a mental challenge to me and I loved every minute of it. Every training session was about seeing how far I could push myself and how much I could take. That was what I thought hardcore was and what I thought I had to do to achieve my goals. But, even when I look back on them with great pride, I still see it was stupid. It wasn’t hardcore, it was just stupid. Don’t get me wrong here, I learned a lot and it was definitely something I had to go through in order for my stubborn ass to learn, but if I knew then what I know now, then I would have been way ahead of the game and achieved my goals much sooner. On the same note, I also know that if I kept that same idea of "hardcore" I would have stayed on the same path and never reached my potential what I eventually achieved.  I had to change that idea of hardcore.

When I finally found powerlifting and decided I wanted to see just how good I could be, I was about 27 years old. I started training specifically for powerlifting and quickly realized I wasn't making the gains I wanted. I stepped back and reevaluated how I looked at my goals and training. I knew I needed to learn from better lifters and this was something that was hard for me. I was just about training hard, not about getting people to teach me or researching shit – that wasn't hardcore. It was about mental strength and busting my ass until I got what I wanted. This wasn’t the case and for the first time, I realized that. There were things I loved to do that I needed to stop doing and other things I needed to change. So, I put myself on a track to actually learn what it was like to suffer and really be hardcore. This meant no partying, hanging with friends, or going to ballgames...but that was easy compared to some of the stuff I was going to have to do. Still, to this day, the hardest thing for me to do is to not train full-blast all the time and listen to my body. I was used to killing it every training session and telling my body to shut the f*%$ up because I was the boss. Now, I had to listen to my body; learn what it was saying, and pay attention to it. I had days off, deload days, speed days with light weight, and a whole bunch of other craziness. It was seriously hardcore, damn hard for me to do and made me see what hardcore really is and what it really takes to achieve my goals.

I had to accept the real definition of hardcore and that for many years I was wrong. I agree with the definition saying it is unswervingly committed; uncompromising; dedication, but I think that there also needs to be intelligence and thought behind that unswerving commitment and dedication. In terms of lifting, lots of lifters say they're hardcore and dedicated to getting stronger. They feel they're doing what it takes to get stronger and are dedicated and committed based on their knowledge. The problem is (like in definition three) that they're stuck with no remedy or change. They aren't continually reevaluating their goals and how they go about achieving them. They aren't learning and continuing to get stronger at the rate they could. I think the same goes for the non-lifter as well. In life if you want to be hardcore, you can’t just think you’re dedicated and go at a goal blindly just trusting in hard work. You have to use your brain and be smart about it, too. You must continue to re-evaluate your goals and the progress you're making, always looking for the smartest and most efficient ways to get there.

So, in the end it doesn’t really matter to me what your goal you have in mind, it only matters that you have goals and that you’re truly hardcore in going after them. This means willing to put all you have physically, mentally, and emotionally into that goal. It also means being willing to pull back physically, mentally, and emotionally when you have to, in order to achieve that goal. It means being smart and doing whatever it takes to achieve your goal. Going physically full-blast when you have to and backing off physically when you have to. It means always thinking and using your brain just as much as your brawn. If you want to achieve your goals, then be smart and be HARDCORE!!!!!!!!!