Posted on 21 Sep 2016
12 min read
Have you ever felt the need to take a completely pointless and utterly ridiculous quiz to ascertain what kind of lifter you are?
Well, today is your lucky day.
Come with us, reader, as we take a glimpse into the lives of four lifters, all based on no-one in particular.*
As we watch their days unfold like mini-Shakespearean plays, full of pathos, comedy, heroism and the poetry of the everyday, we invite you to see which one you have the most in common with.
For each stage in their daily journey, make a note of which answer closely matches your own (A, B, C, D), and then find out which type of lifter you are in the ‘Results’ section at the bottom.
*Almost certainly based on someone in particular.
You awake at 4am as your alarm buzzes into life with the opening guitar riff of Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’.
You leap out of bed, smash out 100 pushups, down a double shot of espresso, then head out to your local park for an hour of fasted LISS cardio, vaulting over your front gate as you bellow “rise and grind, rise and grind” into the dewy morning darkness.
After hitting snooze for the 10th time in a row, you lounge in bed a little while longer, flicking through your social media messages to see if any girls have replied to that picture of your penis you inboxed them last night while snorting cocaine and re-organising your Sean Paul Spotify playlist.
No luck, but you rub one out anyway.
It’s 1pm, probably should get out of bed now, you reason.
You blearily wake from a deep 10 hour sleep, stretch out, then continue to bask lazily between the sheets, like a bear slowly coming out of hibernation.
Rising from your bed, you head to the shower, turn the dial to as cold as it will go, and embrace the freezing water as it gushes down your torso and lathers your massive balls.
You grunt loudly with pleasure and roar through the chorus to ‘Ace of Spades’ by Motörhead.
You return to bed and proceed to make vigorous love to your wife.
Your 7am alarm kicks into life.
Urgh, time to go for that three mile run which you’ve been postponing all week.
But your bed is so warm and comfy, and is that rain you can hear tapping at the window?
Plus that’s definitely an ache you can feel in your left thigh.
Probably best to give your body some more rest, you shouldn’t overdo things, recovery is the key, you read somewhere.
And, besides, there’s always tomorrow.
Fuck it, back to sleep
With the MyFitnessPal app open on your phone and some scales to hand, you measure precise quantities of egg white, oats, skimmed milk and peeled banana.
Then you knock back 5g creatine, 5g glutamine, 5g BCAA, and a few fatburner pills.
Next you prep all of your coming week’s meals into tupperware boxes.
Checking the time, it’s still only 6:30am, so you bash out 15 minutes of ab work while watching a TED talk you bookmarked last night about fostering creativity in cats.
You snort another few lines of bugle, Snapchat a topless selfie with just a hint of ballbag to your 30 followers, then Instagram a motivational post about lions and sharks.
Then you rub another one out over your phone background, which is a picture of you striking a lat spread pose clad only in a snapback baseball cap and a half-inch thick layer of fake tan.
After tossing a few logs onto the embers of last night’s fire, and throwing in a match which you struck alight using the stubble on your neck, you warm up some leftover stew, down a few raw eggs, then pour yourself a flagon of stout.
You read another chapter of your book, “The Penguin Guide To Being A Hard Bastard”, which tells of an East London gangster who strangled his victims using their own genitalia.
You scan your cupboard shelves, taking in all the porridge, eggs, protein shakes, fruit and nuts you bought last week from that wholefoods place down the street.
Not exactly appetising, is it?
Instead, you dig out a box of Coco Pops and pour yourself a pint of orange juice.
Cereal’s healthy, right?
It’s high in vitamins or something?
You rock up to the gym at 8am, having just downed two scoops of pre-workout on the journey there.
Today’s class is spin, in which you employ a visualisation technique you learnt from a podcast entitled “Dream It, Be It, Achieve It: How To Be A Better You in 5 Simple Steps” by your favourite fitness YouTuber.
When the class ends, you are disappointed to see that you have fallen short of your calorie-burning goal, so you decide to do 30 minutes of battle ropes and bosu ball jumping squats as punishment.
You pull into the gym car park, windows down, sound system blaring, and swing into a vacant disabled parking space (it was leg day yesterday, after all).
You line up half a gram of charlie on the dashboard, snort it, then check your inbox.
Protein World still haven’t got back to you about becoming a sponsored athlete – fuck ’em.
Frustrated, you unzip your jeans and have another wank.
Then you head into the changing rooms, stopping en route for some flirty banter with the Slovakian receptionist, and proceed to put on your Gymshark stringer and Beats by Dre headphones – but not before taking a few topless selfies.
Today’s workout is another massive arm session: curls, hammer curls, seated curls, reverse curls, tricep kickbacks, tricep pushdowns.
Mid-workout, you film a set of curls and post it on Instagram with the caption “You can’t have a million dollar dream with a minimum wage work ethic”.
Your gym is on the outskirts of town, located in an abandoned warehouse which was rumoured to be built on the site of an ancient druid burial ground.
Before you enter through the huge cast iron door, you deadlift your truck in the car park for a few reps to get the blood flowing and prepare your CNS for the workout to come.
After greeting some of your lifting buddies (Tony, Magnus and Bjorn) with a customary headbutt and a hearty “fuck you”, you move from deadlifts, to squats, to caber tossing, to Atlas stones, all the time while chugging from a huge flask of lager mixed with honey and coffee.
Isotonic drinks are for girls.
As you missed out on your run this morning, you’re definitely going to be hitting the gym this afternoon instead.
But then your gym buddy rings you – they can’t make it, they’ve injured their toe in the shower.
Suddenly your enthusiasm wanes and before you know it you’re stretched out on your sofa watching Come Dine With Me while shovelling chocolate hobnobs down your neck.
A few biscuits won’t make a difference to your diet.
Or a whole pack…
Sod it, you’ll begin your diet properly tomorrow.
You unpack a tupperware box from your dedicated fitness holdall marked “Monday 200kcal Lunch: Protein 50g, Carbs 20g, Fat 20g”.
Before tucking in to your chicken, rice and salad, you put your headphones in and load up a live Facebook feed from another of your favourite vloggers who is demonstrating the best way to peel an avocado.
You eat on the move, in order to burn a few more calories.
Back at home, you knock back a sachet of whey protein that some new supplement company has sent you for posting about them on Twitter (with your top off, naturally, while siting on the bonnet of your sports car).
You then line up another half gram of Chuck Norris, fire up some Eastern European pornography (your favourite), and senselessly toss yourself off again.
After waking from an hour’s nap, you toss a few hunks of mutton and goat meat onto the hearth (ripped from the corpses of animals you’ve killed using only your bare hands) and pour yourself a few litres of mead.
You then head outside to fell a few trees for this evening’s fire, headbutt a cow for no reason, then retire back to bed for another nap.
You should probably cook something healthy – there’s plenty of fresh food in the fridge.
But there’s also that leftover pizza from last night, and it’d be a shame to throw that away, what with all the millions of people starving in the world.
Plus pizza is basically just bread, cheese and tomatoes – what’s unhealthy about that?
Back in the gym, hustling again.
You’ve done your LISS and HIIT for today, so now it’s time for some weight training.
A blogger who you subscribe to recently wrote a post about functional training being superior to regular weight training, so you have programmed six weeks of this resistance work, basing the routine on a suggested schedule which you paid £200 to download.
This evening’s workout comprises rope climbing, handstands, star jumps, and hitting a tyre with a hammer.
As you head to the showers afterwards, you grin smugly at all the unenlightened sheep with their squats and bench presses.
Idiots, they’ll believe anything.
You turn up at the local Wetherspoons where you’ve arranged to meet a girl who’s been tweeting you photos of her vagina.
You wait for an hour for her to show, killing time by drinking a few VK blues and emailing some more supplement companies to enquire about their ambassador programmes.
However the pub is completely empty, save for a balding middle-aged man in a large anorak who keeps glancing over at you.
Frustrated at her no show and by your continued failure to land that prized sponsorship deal (this could be your first step to fitness stardom), you head to a toilet, snort another line of flake, then beat one out again.
Tony, Magnus and Bjorn are coming round tonight for a few beers and some card games, which you are really looking forward to.
You chug down six pints of Guinness while you wait, and, before you know it, are fairly non compos mentis.
When they arrive, you spear tackle Tony, and begin to engage him in a fierce no-holds-barred wrestling match, with limbs and spittle flying all over the place.
You can’t quite remember how it happens, but before long, you and Tony are both naked, and Magnus and Bjorn have also stripped off.
What’s going on?
You have no idea, but decide to go with it.
You’ve made it to the gym, but your left thigh is still a little achy, so you decide to take it easy.
You set up on the sit-down bike, program 10 minutes of “low intensity fat burning” into the machine, then open up a magazine and begin reading an article entitled “Help! Giant Spiders Have Kidnapped My Baby”.
After all, everyone knows that more than 10 minutes of cardio will start burning muscle tissue, so best not to overdo it.
Once you finish with the bike, you head into the weights room, but all the equipment is in use, so you decide to just go home instead, picking up an eggnog late from Starbucks on the way back as a reward for all of your hard work.
You unpack another tupperware box of chicken and rice and flick through Nextflix looking for a film to suitably round off your day.
You opt for ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’, starring Will Smith.
Inspired by the film, you see in it a lot of parallels to your own fitness journey, so decide to write a lengthy Facebook post on the subject, along with a gym selfie that you took during your functional training session, and a complete list of all the exercises, sets and reps you performed.
Pleased with another day of hard work and hustle, you retire to bed at 9pm, once again setting your alarm for 4am.
But not before having some casein, as you read somewhere that this is the best protein to take before bed, although you can’t remember why.
You drunkenly stumble back home, picking up a chicken kebab on the way.
While you wait for service, you line up another half gram of chang on the counter and snort it.
You’ve been texting some girls to see if anyone fancies joining you for ‘Netflix and Chill’, but as you squint through glazed eyes at the incoming message alerts, all you can see are replies saying “Fuck off you sad bastard” and “No thanks, I’d rather get eaten out by a crocodile”.
As you roll into bed and begin masturbating, a solitary tear runs down your cheek as you try to recall the warmth of human affection, and you fall into an uneasy dream in which your mum draws you close and tells you that she’s never loved you.
You come to in your bed, with a throbbing headache and a blurred and fragmented memory of this evening’s events.
What the hell happened?
Tony, Magnus and Bjorn are nowhere to be seen.
Did you imagine it?
You head to the kitchen for some more stew, which you shovel down with a loaf of bread and another glass of mead, then return to bed.
Your wife slips in beside you sometime after and you make love to her once more.
But all you can picture during intercourse and as you drift off to sleep is Tony and his repeated chants of “hup, hup, hup” as you pull an aircraft along a runway.
Full from your eggnog latte, you just pick at a few biscuits for dinner, wary that you’ve probably had too many calories today already.
As you slump in front of the TV, you browse the internet, and end up buying some new trainers, a yoga mat and a GPS heart rate monitor (recommended by Davina McCall) for that 10k you plan on doing one day.
Before rolling into bed, you set your alarm for 7am again.
Tomorrow, you will definitely start your new training and diet regime in earnest…
Congratulations, you are fitness personified, an all-round exercise guru.
Your superior knowledge and work ethic is a thing to behold.
Keep at it and soon you may be eligible to compete at a Crossfit tournament, have your own fitness channel, or even qualify for a mud run in Kettering.
You are everything that’s wrong with the fitness industry.
If you haven’t already appeared on some barrel-scraping reality TV show, maybe it’s time to consider applying.
A lifetime of peddling crappy fitness products on social media while you watch your integrity circle the toilet bowl awaits.
You are an alpha male, the love child of Sean Connery and John Wayne, oozing testosterone from every pore.
You live for lifting heavy shit, eating red meat and drinking beer.
But you’re also, deep down, although you’ll never admit it, a bit of a homo too.
Your heart’s not in this, is it?
If you’ve made it this far, well done, you’ve literally just wasted 15 minutes of your life on utter gibberish, all written while I was high on caffeine and scaling new heights of procrastination.
What lifter did you end up being matched to?
Let us know via social media or in the comments section below!
LOL… B, but very funny indeed!
Cheers Lee!
Probably far more D than I’d like to admit, want to be A or C, though who needs a woman when Tony, Magnus, and Bjorn are around to wrestle/deadlift/fuck?
They do sound like members of an 80s hair metal band.
Hello Henry,
I am sill practicing, I think I lie under C Category, want to improve.
Getting much help from your articles.
Thanks for this interacting article 🙂
Thanks Anish
“… you fall into an uneasy dream in which your mum draws you close and tells you that she’s never loved you”
Brutal
Haha, too far?
Mostly A.
I’m happy to see that my mindset is correct in order to reach my goals and to train my students.
Great little quiz!
You haven’t read this at all, have you?
Mostly C.
Thanks for sharing I am learning a lot from your articles.
I am happy to say I am A but I also a little bit ashamed because I realize I have no life… and I am also up passed my bedtime.