What’s great about Mount St. Mary’s University is the opportunity for students to meet and make friends in clubs. The campus offers over 70 student societies, clubs, and student organizations for every interest of every person. I’ve had the pleasure of joining a few different clubs, Notes of Kindness, Entrepreneur, and others but my absolute favorite has been weightlifting.
I’ve talked about growing up a fan of professional wrestling and wanting to become a wrestler one day. Those dreams aren't made overnight and to reach the highest level in professional wrestling you have to be “ring ready”. This means you need to be in shape and look like a superstar. All of the great professional wrestlers appeared larger than life from John Cena, Ultimate Warrior, and Bobby Lashley. These men have previous history in sports and are frequent gym-goers.
Some wrestlers are former football players, bodybuilders, basketball players, or in my case powerlifters. There have been many wrestling stars that come from the world of powerlifting (f.e. Mark Henry, Big E, & Tony Atlas). Powerlifting is a strength-based sport that tests your maximum single repetition strength in the bench press, squat, and deadlift.
I’ve been competing in powerlifting since I was 15 years old and now have world records in every event earning at one point a world ranking of 6 in my age and weight class. It's grown to become one of my biggest activities every day. I spend on average in a week 5-6 days in the gym looking to become larger and stronger.
It’s always ideal to surround yourself with like-minded people and joining the weightlifting club was a perfect blend of socialization and working out. The club consists of 30+ students who are all obsessed with going to the gym and becoming the strongest version of themselves. The club has certain lifting times and twice a year has competitions between members.
In this environment, I’ve developed friendships and have continued to grow stronger and faster in the gym. Some of the members are fans of wrestling like myself and joined for similar reasons of becoming a wrestler after school.
The goal of this story for anyone reading is to set an example for getting out of your comfort zone. It's important especially in college to take that leap of faith because you never know who you may meet. For a lot of us, this is our last academic path before entering the adult world. If this is the case or if graduate, medical, law school, or any other form of continued education is next during your undergraduate years, it’s important to start building friendships with people who have the same interests as you. Inside or outside the classroom, meeting like-minded individuals will only drive you to aspire for your dreams and work harder than you thought was possible!
