The Garage Gym

Lemonade

In the fall of 2013 my doctor told me my testosterone was 300.

That’s low. Not dangerously low, but low enough that they wanted to treat it. The recommendation was a topical gel, testosterone you rub on your body. I started doing it. Then I read the warnings. Young girls in the house shouldn’t touch it. Possible cancer risk. Other side effects I didn’t love. I had four daughters and a wife. The gel made me nervous.

I also read that heavy compound lifting can raise testosterone naturally. Not a replacement for treatment, but a real, measurable effect.

So in early summer of 2014, I went to a Craigslist seller and bought a set of plates, a standard barbell, and a bench. Then I got a squat rack off Amazon for about $300. Total investment: around $600.

The program was StrongLifts 5x5. Simple. You start with the bar. Squat, bench, row one day. Squat, deadlift, overhead press the next. Alternate. Three days a week. Every time you complete all your sets, you add five pounds next session. There’s an app that tracks it. You don’t think. You just follow.

I ran it for about three months. Got noticeably stronger. When I got my testosterone tested again it had climbed to 400. A real increase from just lifting heavy things.

And then I quit.

The number went up, and the number going up is good, right? I’d had a goal, I’d hit it, and once the goal was gone the motivation went with it. The equipment sat in the garage. For eight years.

Life filled the space. 2015 was rough. Turning 40, extended family challenges, things at home that needed attention. 2016 I started therapy. Started exploring the move to CarMax. New career, new demands, new version of me under construction. The weight set collected dust. I wasn’t ready for what it actually required, which wasn’t strength. It was consistency without a finish line.

Fast forward to November 14th, 2022.

By now other parts of the story have already happened. I’d seen 240 on the scale. I’d started keto. I’d been losing weight and building the nutrition system. The foundation was in place. I decided it was time to add the next layer.

I started StrongLifts again. From the bar. Same program, same garage, same cheap equipment. But this time the goal was different. There was no number to hit. The consistency was the goal.

Rain or shine. Tired or not. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. If travel shifted the schedule, I’d do Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. The days could move. The commitment didn’t.

In 2023, I worked out 51 of 52 weeks. The only week I missed was vacation. I could get a full workout done in 45 minutes. Take the car out of the garage, do the work, put the car back. No commute, no membership, no excuses.

Then life started throwing punches.

January 2024. I’m squatting somewhere around 300 pounds. First week of the year. Mid-rep, a sharp pop in my hamstring. Not a tweak. A pop. I racked the weight immediately.

A minor tear. It knocked out squats, deadlifts, anything that loaded the posterior chain. About half my exercises, gone. I’d been on a streak for over a year. The temptation is to either push through it like an idiot or shut down entirely and wait for perfect conditions to return. I did neither. I trained around it. Upper body, exercises that didn’t stress the hamstring, whatever I could do safely.

And I made lemonade. I’d been wanting to try the carnivore diet for a while. The problem with transitioning to carnivore is about two to three weeks of your gut adjusting to the new fuel. There’s no polite way to say this: the diarrhea is real. If you’re doing heavy squats during that transition, you’re going to have a bad time. Since I couldn’t squat anyway, I figured this was the perfect window. Two problems, one timeline.

I deloaded when the hamstring healed. Brought the weights way down. Watched my form. Worked my way back up slowly. Got back on track.

I should have left it alone. But that’s not how I’m wired.

I’d been doing standard sit-ups as part of my routine. They were working fine. But I thought, why not try decline sit-ups? Make it harder. Optimize the movement. I had to make it better, had to put a spin on it.

By April 22nd I had a hernia.

Woke up the next morning, looked down, and there was a lump the size of a golf ball in my lower right abdomen. An inguinal hernia. The kind that happens right at the underwear line, uncomfortably close to everything you’d rather not have surgery near.

That Friday I went to the doctor to get it assessed. Thursday night, Erin ended up in urgent care with a kidney infection. By Friday we were both worn out. I’m dealing with a hernia, she’s recovering from the night before, and we sent Alannah, who had just gotten her license in January, to pick up Chick-fil-A.

She hit a parked car. New driver, a drink fell over, she got distracted. Called me crying. I walked down to the front of the neighborhood to deal with the police and the other driver while my wife was still recovering and I had a hernia. That’s a whole story for another time. She’s a better driver for it now.

Surgery was May 15th, 2024. The morning of the procedure, I got up early and did whatever workout I could do. Then I drove to the surgical center.

I was reading David Goggins’ second book around that time. There’s a line where he describes doing something absurd under impossible conditions and says something like, “Who does that?” And his answer is just: “I do, motherfucker.”

I thought about that standing in my garage at 4:30 in the morning, loading plates before hernia surgery. Who gets up and works out before they get cut open?

I do.

That wasn’t for anyone else. That was for me.

I told my surgeon: “I need you to tell me exactly what I can and cannot do, and I mean exactly, because I will push whatever boundary you give me.” Nothing over 5 pounds. “Can I lift 5 pounds a hundred times?” That’s the kind of thinking that got me here in the first place. Trying to optimize my sit-ups instead of just doing the sit-ups.

Four weeks in they cleared me for 25 pounds. I did arm work, anything that didn’t stress the core or lower body. Eight weeks total before I could get back to full workouts. It was the longest break I’d taken since the restart.

I had a good AI companion during all of this. I’d set up a ChatGPT project to talk to me like David Goggins, among other personalities. When I was itching to push too hard too soon, it would say things like, “You got two choices: you can take a day off, or you can ego lift like a dumb ass and hurt yourself.” I wasn’t guessing my way through recovery. I was using my tools, getting real information about what to do and what not to do. Back in 2014 I didn’t have that. Now I did, and it made a real difference.

When I came back, I switched from five sets of five to three sets of eight. A little less weight, higher quality movements, easier on the joints. I could fit more exercises into the same 45 minutes. I’ve been on that program since. I actually prefer it.

By February 2026, the adaptation was automatic. Ice storm. Walking to Erin’s office, black ice on the sidewalk. I went down hard and dislocated my right pinky at the middle knuckle, sticking out at a 45-degree angle. I grabbed the end and pulled it back into place without thinking about it. You just do it. They’re going to do the same thing at the doctor anyway. Skipped deadlifts and pull-ups for three weeks. Same pattern. Bend. Don’t break.

Over the years I’ve added a few things. Two more 45-pound plates because I ran out of weight. Dip bars. A belt with a chain for weighted dips and pull-ups. Grip strengtheners. A weight belt. Adjustable dumbbells I’ve had for a while.

That’s it. Still the same Craigslist plates. Still the same Amazon squat rack. I see other people’s home gyms with cable machines and mirrors and rubber flooring. I’ve got my $600 setup and a dog.

Ever since Cayde came along, he’s been my gym buddy. Goes in and out through the back door to the yard while I’m lifting, or just sits and waits between sets. Some days I swear he walks out to the garage to get me to come work out. The system became such a habit that even the dog internalized it.

No plan survives first contact with reality. That’s not a reason to skip the plan. It’s a reason to build one simple enough to bend when reality hits it. A hamstring tear doesn’t mean you stop training. A hernia doesn’t mean the streak is over. A dislocated pinky means you skip deadlifts for three weeks and keep going.

You don’t need much. A bar, some weight, something to rack it on, and the willingness to make lemonade when things go sideways. Complicated systems break under pressure. Simple ones bend.

Your body doesn’t care what your equipment costs. It cares that you showed up. And if you showed up enough times that your dog starts dragging you out to the garage on your off days, you’ve probably built something that’s going to last.

When life throws punches, make lemonade.

Uncomplicated systems. Uncommon results.