Mental Fortress, Part 1

“I want to blow s**t up with my mind.” has to be one of the most memorable quotes from the movie Accepted. The main characters in the cast didn’t get into any colleges after high school, so they decided to make their own. Having no idea what they were doing, they let other students write up what they wanted to study/major in. One of the students responded, saying he wanted to be able to blow things up just by thinking about it. Throughout the movie, you saw him trying to practice this phenomenon. Just as the movie ends, he blows up a rival college dean’s car. He looks over at his friend and says, “I told ya.”

The mind is a powerful thing. In medicine, doctors needed to develop placebo groups to account for the mental effects of believing something will happen, so they are able to have objective evidence to prove or disprove their hypothesis. That is not to say that if you think hard enough, you will recreate the ending scene of the movie, but that you can accomplish much more than you think you are capable of, especially in terms of training and athletics. 

When I got stationed on my ship in 2018, I didn’t know anyone on board. All of my friends I had made through training and schooling got stationed on other ships and submarines. A couple of buddies I knew did show up a few months after I did, but until then, I made a friend doing what I know best: hitting the gym and working out. We were in the same department and started a conversation about training and workouts while I was standing at a pointless phone watch on the quarterdeck. 

We agreed to hit a couple of workouts together, but one will always stand out to me. Don wanted to hit deadlifts; it had been a long time since I trained heavy deadlifts, but I agreed nonetheless. The most weight I remember doing at the time was 365 pounds for working sets. I had this mental blockade at that weight. I could get multiple reps and sets with that weight, but even five pounds more, the barbell was stapled to the ground.

We got to the gym, and Don knew where they kept all the cool strength equipment. There were calibrated plates there for use. I had never seen these multi-colored weights before, and on top of that, they were in kilograms. As fluent as I was in barbell math, that was only in the standard increments using 2.5, 5, 10, 25, 35, and 45-pound weights. We started warming up, and I asked what his workout looked like for the day. “Training up to a heavy triple man,” he told me nonchalantly, “just going to keep throwing weight on until it’s heavy.” 

To paint the picture, he was over six feet tall and just built like a brick wall, roughly 250 pounds at this time. The gym had six deadlift platforms, all grouped together, and squat racks off to the other side. Not much room to move at all, the space was tight and full of training equipment. There was no air conditioning, just the two doors cracked open with a box fan in one door to move some air. 

I had no idea what the weight on the bar was. Don just kept adding more red plates to the bar. He would pull the barbell effortlessly, and then I would go. In between our sets, we would talk with the trainer on duty at the time, who knew Don and knew he was far from his heaviest set. “I am telling you, you need to compete. You are insanely strong, Don.” He laughed it off and went up to the barbell and deadlifted it with ease. Just a single this time, he told me he’ll go up a little bit more for his top set. I knew I couldn’t go up much more. I barely survived the last mystery weight I deadlifted. I told him I wasn’t sure if I had this weight, that the last weight was heavy for me, and that 365 was my max at the time. “We aren’t dropping the weight, Vinny. You’re thinking too much,” he told me. 

I nervously chalked up my hands and made my way over to the deadlift platform. Donnie came up to me just before I stepped onto the platform. He brought me in close, I thought this is where the movie scene happens, the coach tells a nervous player the perfect words of encouragement the player needs to hear. “Pull that s**t for a triple, don’t be a p***y,” he says loudly, then slaps me across the shoulders three times. 

I get to the barbell, reach down, grip the bar, close my eyes, and just have Coach Donnie’s words of encouragement playing on repeat in my head. I pull the first rep; it was tough, but I lock it out. I drop the weight back on the ground and think I maybe have one more. I start pulling, and it feels like the barbell is glued to the ground. It feels like I was pulling on this thing for 10 minutes, and it didn’t budge. “LET'S GO, DON’T QUIT!” Donnie screams at me. All of a sudden, the shackles broke off the weight, and it is finally moving. The second rep was easier than the first. I return the bar down and get set for the final rep. I can’t miss this rep now. I can’t let Donnie down. “ONE MORE BABY,” he yells. I brace hard and rip this weight off the ground, the easiest rep of them all. I drop it and turn. Donnie runs and picks me up off the ground. He was beyond excited for me. He started mocking what I said my max deadlift was at that time, “That was 440 pounds, man, and you smoked it.” 

What I realized after that training session wasn’t just that I got stronger that day, it was that I had been stronger for a long time. I just never allowed myself to prove it. That “365 max” wasn’t a physical limit. It was a mental agreement I made with myself. And like most self-imposed limits, I never questioned it; I just operated inside it. The second I didn’t know the number on the bar, that limit disappeared. No overthinking. No hesitation. No, “this is too heavy for me.” Just effort.

That’s the part most people miss when it comes to training, and honestly, life in general. You don’t need a new program. You don’t need perfect conditions. You don’t need some secret technique. You need to stop negotiating with the voice in your head that tells you what you can’t do.

Because most of the time, it’s wrong. You’re capable of more reps than you think. More weight than you think. More discipline than you think. But you’ll never find out if you keep reinforcing the same limits. Only your mind can limit your true potential.

That day, I didn’t just hit a PR, I broke a belief. And once that belief is gone, everything changes. So the next time you step into the gym and something feels “too heavy,” ask yourself: Is it actually too heavy…or have you just decided that it is? Then grab the bar, don’t quit, and find out.