I was a really good student at the start of college, but became severely depressed, and eventually my grades got so bad that I had to withdraw at the end of a semester to save my GPA, and I decided to take a semester off to get my shit together. So during my semester off I started lifting. I started with dumbbells at home, but I quickly realized that hauling my ass to the gym and doing a barbell routine was going to be a much more efficient way to gain strength. I started going to the gym and began Starting Strength. I very quickly fell in love with lifting. I love the biomechanical elegance of the main lifts, and love that there are always more things to work on and improve. It's just a fantastic conduit for consistently setting and achieving goals in a way that directly improves my life.

Unfortunately, a couple months into Starting Strength I pulled my groin, and stupidly ignored it due to my lack of experience. I tried to come back too soon too many times, and just made it worse. On top of this when I was playing baseball as a kid I injured my rotator cuff on my throwing arm, and never got it properly rehabbed. So when I got my bench up to around 135 my shoulder wasn't having it any more, and also decided to crap out. So I've basically spent most of the last two years seeing multiple physical therapists and trying to research my own solutions to my injuries. For about a year and a half I could only deadlift and row, and couldn't squat, bench or press more than very modest weights without exacerbating my injuries.

So basically my lifting experience thus far has been an exercise in utter frustration. I'm just now figuring out what I need to do to properly rehab my lingering issues, mainly with a shitload of flexibility and mobility work, and am only now returning to squatting and pressing. But despite all the shit I've had to deal with, I love lifting so much that I never thought about quitting for a second. It's something that I want to keep doing for a very long time. The struggle is worth it.