When I was 16 my mum was diagnosed with cancer

and given very little time to live. It was one of the worst times of my young life and I was filled with a deep sense of frustration and injustice at the

world. Being 16, I didnt know what to do with this anger and ended up getting into all sorts of trouble as my hormones and inability to make sense of the

world, raged inside of me. My mum, being the wise woman that she was, asked my cousin to take me to the gym to train, perhaps realizing that all this frustration. I was holding inside of me, needed released.

When I stepped into the gym, it was like entering another world. Over twenty years ago,                
gyms were not filled with pretty boys brandishing smart phones. They were filled with guys and gals that were there to work and train, and by fuck train they did.  I used to sit in the reception area/cafe pouring over the Muscle and Fitness and Flex magazines that lived there, staring in admiration at the mega physiques of Dorian Yates and Ronnie Coleman and wondering how on earth they got so big and muscular. I knew then that I wanted to look like that, and even though there were some excellent physiques in the gym where I trained in my little hometown of Draperstown, there was no one who even came close to these guys.