How To Find Direction When Nothing Feels Right - Chris Bumstead (4K)

You've stopped competing, and you're more tired than ever. How's retirement going?

That's a great question. (laughs) It's a very broad question to start. I don't even know where to dive into that. It's both good and bad in different ways, I would say. It's interesting because when people ask me if I miss competing, especially right now with the Olympic coming up, it's like, there's parts that I miss, but I don't wish I was doing it. Like, I trained with Ryan Terry, and like, seeing the mindset he's in, remembering the pressure I felt and everything that came with it, I was like, "I don't wish I was there right now." But there's aspects I miss. I'm happy with my decision, but there's also a lot of, like, feeling of, like, lost and direction and, "What am I doing? Where am I going right now?" And I feel like I filled that up with a lot of busy work, I feel like, in the last year. There's been business, there's been being a dad, there's been just moving on to one thing to another, and I haven't slowed down to really process, like... Life is very different now.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you had 10 years of chasing a single goal of being the best in the world at one thing, that was eat, sleep, train, and now it's gone, you know? So, it's definitely been interesting, but I feel like the fact that I'm feeling a lot now in terms of, like, a bit of stress, this tired in my body, this, like, somatic experience that I might not have had before, it, like, shows that things are coming up that might have been masked by the overwhelming pressure of competing.

Mm.

So there's, like, this side of me discovering, like, the new side of myself, like, this ego death of, like, "Bodybuilding's gone, now who are you?" And then there's this other part of my life that's, like, the most incredible aspect, which is being a father now. You know, my daughter's getting old enough to say my name. Me and my wife are getting the hang of things, we're really starting to find our groove in that, so it's, like, the most beautiful thing in my life, and I feel like they're kind of balancing each other out.

Mm.

But it's still not, like, neutral peace.

Mm-hmm.

But...

I've heard you say physically and emotionally you don't feel much until you slow down.

Yeah. Yeah. That was a big awakening for this year for me. I feel like year after year after year, it's like Olympia, hero's journey, kind of compete, come down, go through it, some type of adverse event, come through it again, win, high, back down, repeat, repeat, repeat. And I was never able to really experience things. And I feel like what I really found out about myself recently is that I, like, constantly feel like I need to improve something in myself, like I constantly need more, I need to progress at something, I need to make my health better, I need to do X more. And I was p- channeling that heavily into bodybuilding, which made me an incredible bodybuilder, but once... What once drove me started to drain me over time. So, it was... Kind of started to alter. And, and now slowing down and not having that singular goal I was working towards, I realize now I'm trying to find all these other external things to progress in, as if I need to be proving to myself that I'm getting better and better, and I can't just rest and be good enough as things are.