What 5 Years of Bodybuilding Taught Me About Tackling Mondays

That's not what it is in the world of work, that's for sure. It is not the day when everyone pulls their feet to the office, bags under their eyes. This is not the day when people sit in front of their computers and begin to complain about the long week it will be. And certainly not the day when people are afraid.

In fact, it is just the opposite.
In the world of fitness, most notably the bodybuilding world, Monday is Chest Day. Monday is a national celebration. Monday is the day when the gym is firmer, where every seat is taken, and everyone is ready to workout passionate about working in their favorite part of the body.

I'm actually not joking.

Chest day is a real thing, every Monday, every week, 52 weeks a year.
For 5 years, I lived like a bodybuilder.

When I was 18, I graduated from high school barely weighing more than 100 pounds, and acute malnutrition from years of not knowing I had celiac disease. When I was 23, I weighed 170 pounds, I had almost no body fat, and I was a fitness model.

In fact, I told the story in one of my early answers to Quora, and I went viral. The first page of Reddit and more than 1M views.

I can tell you from first hand experience that the gym community likes both. Monday is actually the best day of the week, because no part of the body is as pleasant as lifting the chest (well, maybe the biceps). You can walk in any gym on Monday and you will see all the seats. Spend enough time in the gym itself, and you will hear the lifters talks on Monday: "Man, I was looking forward to this weekend." There is no complain that it is Monday.

Do you know why? Because the weekend was maintenance, calves, forearms, and all the little things that you can't reach during the week. Weekends are actually less fun than the two.

When I started my first real job outside college, and decided I didn't really want to make bodybuilding my life, I was upset by the difference in mentality between the gym and the world of work. Monday, for all, was the national complaint day. Instead of hearing the screams and screams of hundreds of pounds being pushed towards the sky, there were supporters for the weekend and wished it would be Friday already.

I have learned many lessons from my years as a bodybuilder.


Lifted for 2-3 hours a night. I slept eight full hours, to maximize muscle recovery. I wandered with a gallon of water filled with strawberry BCAAs. I sat in creative writing classes in my kidney as I showed my calves in the hope of building muscle while we talked about Hemingway. I carried rice cakes with me in my bag, so I would never go into a catabolic state. I didn't party. Did not drink alcohol. I seriously tracked the number of protein fines, carbohydrates and fats I used every day.