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ForumHealth & Fitness: Fitness & Recoverytomas told me he's done competing

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tomas told me he's done competing

#1 · June 2, 2026, 4:40 pm

Quote from HappierFit Editorial Team on June 2, 2026, 4:40 pm
— Daniel Reyes (strength + recovery coach, contributor)

This is not a coaching post. I'm writing because I'm still sitting with it.

Tomas — guy I've trained for years, hit 315 deadlift at 6:42pm on a Tuesday, you've heard me tell that story three times — sat down on a bench last Tuesday after his last set and said he wanted to talk. We don't really do that. Tomas talks while he's loading a bar or while he's drinking coffee. He doesn't sit down and say "hey can we talk" because that's not how he is.

He told me he's stopping competition. Not training. Just the competing. Said he's been thinking about it for three months and he'd been waiting for a Tuesday where he didn't have anyone after him so he could just say it once and not have to say it again.

Forty-seven years old. Been competing since he was twenty-eight. His wife's father died in March — that part I knew. He's missed two of the last three Saturday meets and the third one he showed up to and bombed his second attempt and walked it back. I didn't know that one. I'd seen the bomb. I'd assumed it was a coaching cue I'd given him that didn't land. He told me it wasn't. He'd just lost the want, mid-attempt. Went out to his truck. Drove home.

Used the word retire.

I sat with that. Didn't try to talk him out of it. Didn't pull up the "you've still got 5-10 years of meets in you" pep talk that I had absolutely loaded in the chamber, because I've used that one before with other guys and it has a 50/50 record at best. I asked him what training looks like for him next. He said the same. He just doesn't want a meet on the calendar anymore.

We talked for fourteen minutes. Felt longer.

Here's what I'm chewing on. I have spent eight years in this gym pitching the gospel of "the meet is what makes the training real." I believe it. I still believe it for most guys. But Tomas is not most guys. Tomas is a guy whose wife is grieving, whose own grief comes out sideways, who has already proven what he came to prove. The meet stopped being the thing that made the work real for him at some point and I had not noticed because I was too busy being his coach.

What I should have noticed was that the last two times he hit a real PR he didn't celebrate the way he used to. He'd put the bar down and walk out for water and come back and start packing up. I read that as composed. It was something else.

I've been replaying the conversation in my head and the part I keep replaying is the silence. He sat down. He told me. I said "yeah, I get it." Then we just both sat there for about twenty seconds and he nodded and got up and put the plates away. That was the conversation.

I don't have a coaching takeaway. I'm putting this here because I think about half the guys who read this forum are coaches or are adjacent to one and the other half are guys-around-Tomas's-age and somebody might recognize something in it.

— Daniel Reyes (strength + recovery coach, contributor)

This is not a coaching post. I'm writing because I'm still sitting with it.

Tomas — guy I've trained for years, hit 315 deadlift at 6:42pm on a Tuesday, you've heard me tell that story three times — sat down on a bench last Tuesday after his last set and said he wanted to talk. We don't really do that. Tomas talks while he's loading a bar or while he's drinking coffee. He doesn't sit down and say "hey can we talk" because that's not how he is.

He told me he's stopping competition. Not training. Just the competing. Said he's been thinking about it for three months and he'd been waiting for a Tuesday where he didn't have anyone after him so he could just say it once and not have to say it again.

Forty-seven years old. Been competing since he was twenty-eight. His wife's father died in March — that part I knew. He's missed two of the last three Saturday meets and the third one he showed up to and bombed his second attempt and walked it back. I didn't know that one. I'd seen the bomb. I'd assumed it was a coaching cue I'd given him that didn't land. He told me it wasn't. He'd just lost the want, mid-attempt. Went out to his truck. Drove home.

Used the word retire.

I sat with that. Didn't try to talk him out of it. Didn't pull up the "you've still got 5-10 years of meets in you" pep talk that I had absolutely loaded in the chamber, because I've used that one before with other guys and it has a 50/50 record at best. I asked him what training looks like for him next. He said the same. He just doesn't want a meet on the calendar anymore.

We talked for fourteen minutes. Felt longer.

Here's what I'm chewing on. I have spent eight years in this gym pitching the gospel of "the meet is what makes the training real." I believe it. I still believe it for most guys. But Tomas is not most guys. Tomas is a guy whose wife is grieving, whose own grief comes out sideways, who has already proven what he came to prove. The meet stopped being the thing that made the work real for him at some point and I had not noticed because I was too busy being his coach.

What I should have noticed was that the last two times he hit a real PR he didn't celebrate the way he used to. He'd put the bar down and walk out for water and come back and start packing up. I read that as composed. It was something else.

I've been replaying the conversation in my head and the part I keep replaying is the silence. He sat down. He told me. I said "yeah, I get it." Then we just both sat there for about twenty seconds and he nodded and got up and put the plates away. That was the conversation.

I don't have a coaching takeaway. I'm putting this here because I think about half the guys who read this forum are coaches or are adjacent to one and the other half are guys-around-Tomas's-age and somebody might recognize something in it.

#2 · June 7, 2026, 11:10 am

— James Redmond (counseling + single dads, contributor)

The fourteen minutes that felt longer is the part I keep thinking about. I have had — different shape, same kind — a few of those conversations. They run real-time at a different rate than the rest of life. You'd think the heavy ones would feel short because they're charged. They feel long becuase they're load-bearing.

What I'd push back on, gently — you said you don't have a coaching takeaway. The takeaway might be the not-pulling-the-pep-talk move. You sat with him. You didn't manage him. That's a thing not every coach does and it's worth naming as the thing you did right.