The Mountains Where Discipline is Born

Outline

Like every hero’s journey, mine started in the ordinary. As a kid, life was simple—school, video games, and not a care in the world. But adolescence introduces chaos, and adulthood throws you into the fire. The turning point? When life hits so hard, you’re forced to adapt or disappear. That’s where discipline begins.

My Story

I believe my story, so far, follows this structure. I’m not saying I’m a hero, because I’m not; but I think everyone’s life can follow this style of story.

Childhood

I was just like any other kid. The usual video games (Minecraft was the best), rec. baseball, but not super into it, and basically just eating whatever I saw. I didn’t think much about a future, or reality, because why should I have as an 8 year old? But things would hit pretty quickly for me. When my parents divorced in third grade, I had to find ways to cope. Without getting too far into it, my household situation was rough. Everyone’s mental health was struggling, including mine. But me, not knowing mental health was even a thing, found a way to hide from the noise in my head. I was able to escape the chaos and go to a deep place in my head, where the only thing I could hear was the echo of my thoughts. As I had mentioned in my first post, being able to escape the noise and be by myself was the best feeling in the world. This is where I started to recognize the power of solitude.

Two setbacks, back to back

Tendonitis

Fast forward past the spring of the pandemic, in eigth grade, I started competitively mountain biking with my local team. We went all across the state racing. At the time I joined, I didn’t know that this would be my introduction to working so hard towards something that people would think I’m insane.

I quickly learned about training physically and how it makes not only the body stronger, but the mind as well. I was dead-set on winning. But I went about it poorly, and ended up overtraining. I gave myself patellar tendonitis, which put me out of biking for nearly four months. After 20 physical therapy sessions and several follow-up visits with my orthopedist, nothing seemed to be working. Losing hope, I realized I was stuck in a constant cycle of having it feel terrible, then better, then trying to ride on it because it felt better, and then it feeling worse all over again because I tried riding. Once again, I was forced to adapt.

I was forced to take far more time off than I wanted to, but I spent the latter half of that time solely focusing on PT and rest, which was the last thing I wanted to do, but as Abraham Lincoln once said, “discipline is choosing between what you want now, and what you want most.” And what I wanted to do most was get back on the bike, which was only possible through doing what I didn’t want to do; PT and rest. This exact same situation has repeated itself several times over my story so far.

Misdiagnosed Concussion

The next racing season, shortly after I had recovered from the tendonitis, I crashed four minutes into the start of an hour long race, which made me place terribly. Stars around my head, feeling like I had drunk goggles on, I toughed it out and crossed the finish line. I was screened at the med tent afterwards for a concussion. They said I didn’t have one, and they sent me on my way home.

I was still having headaches a couple days later, so I scheduled an appointment with my doctor. Long story short, she said she was going to treat me like I had a mild concussion. Which, after countless follow-ups, sitting in dark rooms all day for two and a half months, treating for a concussion that I found out wasn’t there in the first place, I was living a lie. I got fat, wasted all my time, physically and mentally deteriorating as I gradually developed an unscratchable itch for revenge. I saw a neurologist, who showed me a simple neck stretch, instantly relieving my pain, and giving me the ability to scratch that itch. He said my doctor lied to me. I never had a concussion all along. It was simply tightness in my neck. Two and a half months of my life, gone.

Gradual Redemption

There I sat in that moment, with a blank canvas placed right in front of me. An opportunity to get on the grind. I had no idea where to start, but I knew all I had to do was start somewhere. Despite my yearning for wanting to get better, I didn’t know just how far off I was until I stepped foot in the gym for the first time. That first lift, I expected to pump iron like Arnold Schwarzenegger himself, but found myself with muscle strains all over at the end of my first session. I had broken down my body so much in that first lift after being sedentary for all that time that I had already put myself out of training for another two weeks. As I mentioned earlier in this post, discipline is acquired through trial-and-error.

I came back to the gym for my next session after I wasn’t sore and strained with a new mindset. As much as I wanted to go all-out with the weights and give them hell, I had to start off easy. As I had done with my tendonitis earlier. Self control doesn’t just build discipline; it is discipline. I stuck to it, going back in the gym stronger and stronger every time. I was 16, and this was my first venture into the new frontier of the gym. Even though I knew how to pick up weight and spin my legs on a bike, I didn’t have every aspect of losing weight down quite yet. It took time to find a training style that worked for me. Even now, at 18, I’m still learning and refining my approach to fitness. I used to read and watch videos online about weight loss, which set me in the right direction, but it took a while to start applying that knowledge.

The superpower of discipline

The best learning experience is living it. Everyone has to find their way of what works for them, which is what I aim to guide people to.

It wasn’t until I started seeing physical progress that I really started becoming addicted to it. I would bike for four hours, covering 62 miles, two days in a row. With every pedal stroke, and every rep, I saw more and more weight shedding right off. I could lift heavier and heavier, and bike farther and farther.

It’s fun seeing progress and using that as motivation, but that is only temporary. In the end, when momentum hits a brick wall, discipline prevails. I had to go back to that dark corner in my head in order to actually be consistent with my training. At the time, when I was 17, I wasn’t always consistent. I would sleep in, but that was a tough lesson that I would teach myself over and over again, and still occasioanlly do, which teaches me that the pain of missing that 4AM workout is far worse than the feeling of actually doing it. Because once you get it done, you feel on top of the world.

Prevailing

There is nobody stronger than a broken man who has rebuilt himself. After being broken down, beaten, and scarred repeatedly by the course of life, I have only profited from the low points. When I’m faced with a challenge, my number one priority is to overcome it. This is because I understand that putting that problem on the back burner, pretending it isn’t there, drags me down. Just because its on the back burner doesn’t mean it isn’t burning gas.

I now wake up at 4AM every morning, go for my run, then hit the gym, all before breakfast. Nutrition is yet another frontier that discipline has introduced me to. It’s another part of the grind that is often overlooked. I stay on my nutrition and workout plan day in and day out, and I feel the best I ever had, all through choosing what I want most over what I want in the moment. I want to be an absolute beast of a human being.

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