Sylvester Stallone: Actor

            Sylvester Stallone was born on July sixth, 1946, in New York City, in a household with two parents who fought until divorce finally won. Stallone had a difficult time in school as a child and as an adolescent until he went to college for drama, which he eventually dropped out of to pursue acting. According to the Biography.com writing staff Sylvester had his script for the first Rocky film written but refused to sell it until he was permitted the lead role in the movie. So he was stuck doing mediocre work such as cleaning out Central Park Zoo cages and ushering movie theaters until he got the job through persistence. Which is one thing I find that most successful and inspiring extreme fitness athletes to have is persistence to work towards a goal others don’t believe they can achieve until they get it. Sylvester eventually won the role and grossed millions of dollars. He is not inspirational solely for his fitness but also his character. Not strongly educated, he became an actor, writer, producer, and director and has made a name for himself.

Sylvester Stallone has a rather different inspirational story to me than any other figure on a more personal level. I first saw Sylvester as Rocky in the Rocky Balboa series the summer before my sophomore year of High School. This time period was around when I had first started my fitness journey, and also when it had a period of no progress. 

That summer I was at a party for one of my lacrosse teammates who was moving away, he had a big house with quite a bit of acreage as well as a large area of woods. Long story told relatively short, my friends all wanted to go into the woods and once there I got jumped. I broke my hand in the fight and ended up being depressed since friends betrayed me, I couldn’t work out, and stayed inside most of every day. Then I saw the first Rocky movie on television. Maybe because he was actually a good boxer or because he worked out in his movies I aspired to be like him, rather than the depressing lazy kid on the couch. In his movies he was always at an extreme state of physical fitness and being unable to workout seeing him showed me how much I valued weight lifting and how big of a part in my life it plays to natural stress relief and confidence. Sylvester Stallone is essentially one of the biggest reasons I love working out.