The Second Strongest Man in the Gym (and Other Lies I Tell Myself)
- nick Brickell
- May 10
- 2 min read
“Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
— Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
I was midway through a set of half-hearted squats when I noticed him again. Shirtless. Glorious. The kind of man who looks like he flosses with resistance bands and eats chicken breast in his sleep. He wiped nothing down. He counted reps like a poet — free-form, interpretive, impossible to follow. And I hated him.
Not out loud, of course. I smiled. Maybe even nodded. But inside? A full-blown civil war was underway. I knew this wasn’t about him. It was about me. It was about the part of me that needed him to be wrong so I could feel a little more right. I was tired, sore, second strongest in the gym (by my own sketchy metric), and spiraling into a silent rage I couldn’t justify or explain. Except maybe I could.
The truth is, I’ve spent years mistaking competitiveness for motivation and criticism for self-awareness. I’ve also spent years pretending to be fine while quietly abandoning all the good habits I swore I’d keep: early mornings, meditation, prepping my gym gear the night before. But life has a way of reminding you who you are, especially when you’re tired and travelling and your new hotel room smells vaguely of broken promises and industrial-strength carpet cleaner.
Still, somewhere between judging strangers and forgetting to stretch, I’ve discovered this strange, clumsy charm in trying anyway. There’s a weird dignity in being the guy who fails, reflects, and shows up again — sweaty, broken, and probably still judging someone for not wiping down the rower. Maybe that’s growth.
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