Hulk Hogan
An excerpt from My Life Outside the Ring
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In the November 2009 issue of Men's Fitness, we feature exclusive excerpts from Hulk Hogan's new autobiography My Life Outside The Ring. In this exclusive, web-only selection, the kid classmates used to call "Fat Head" describes the revelation he experienced during his first ever visit to the gym.
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One day during junior year, this friend of mine asked me if I could give him a ride to the gym. I had nothing better to do, so I said, "Sure."
I drove him to Hector's Gym, downtown on Platt Street, and as he got out of the car said, "Why don't you come in?"
Now, I don't know why I went into that place. I had no interest in lifting weights whatsoever. The last thing I wanted to do was hang around a bunch of muscle-heads. But as soon as I walked in that door, something real cool happened. Instead of all those weightlifter guys going, "Hey, what's that fat-head doing in here?" or giving me that kind of outsider treatment that I was used to getting everywhere I went, they welcomed me with open arms.
I don't know what their deal was, but every guy in that place seemed to want to help me. They put me on the bench press and put up a bar with two 45-pound plates on it, which is 135 pounds, and they stayed right there to spot me and said, "Just try it out." I didn't know how to bench-press. I didn't know anything. But I did it like five or six times, and they said, "That's pretty good. You look like you could be good at this!" Brother, that's all I needed.
With that little bit of encouragement, I knew that I could walk in that gym and feel safe. Hector's wasn't full of jocks or P.E.-Coach type guys going, "Hey, you fat piece of shit, what are you doin' here?" like I expected.
If any of that negative shit happened, I'd have never gone back. But because they were nice to me, I said, "Okay. I'm gonna start workin' out!" And that summer right through the whole last year of high school I found myself hitting Hector's Gym at least twice a week.
It was a little disappointing at first. I expected results right away and I'd look in the mirror and not much would change from week to week. Of course later I would realize that big changes don't happen to your body until you change everything and you're real consistent - your diet, your attitude, everything. But I did notice that I was getting stronger. My grip felt better, and instead of doing a few reps of 135 I got to the point where I could put up 225 pounds, and take it off the bar without any help.
Since I wasn't obsessed with going every day, it took about a year, I guess, before I noticed that I'd put some muscle on where the fat used to be. It may not seem like much, but that little physical change filled a void in me. I started to feel better about myself. I'd take my shirt off at the beach. I still had that big head, and I was starting to go bald at 18 or 19, but going to that gym was like a buffer. It helped give me the confidence to forget all that and actually talk to an attractive girl now and then.
Looking back on it now, that confidence, that buffer, that little extra-icing layer of safety did a lot more than help me talk to girls. It gave me the extra push that would help me accomplish everything I wanted in life.
Excerpted from My Life Outside the Ring by Hulk Hogan and Mark Dagostino.
©2009 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Press, LLC.
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