The Atlantic

The Life of a Jacked Guy in 2019

Getting ripped comes with cultural baggage.
Source: Gabriel Bouys / Getty

Bro, I definitely lift. A decade ago, after years of amateur wrestling, I got into competitive powerlifting. As my form improved, the lean, strapping muscle of my youth thickened into the carapace of a latter-day Farnese Hercules. Now, at 37, I’m 6 feet tall, I weigh 240 pounds, and my entire basement serves as a well-appointed gym. Depending on where I am in my training cycle, I can usually find time to flip 1,000-pound tires and crush small apples in my hands.

Outside of competitions, that strength is a source of relief. It feels like there’s no physical task I can’t perform with ease. I can carry dozens of bags of groceries up many flights of stairs, haul buckets of gravel to and from cement trenches, and easily help people remove their overstuffed carry-on bags from the overhead compartments of airplanes (). Socially, that hard, muscular shell has helped me

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