“Sports helped me change my life” | Relief

Jose Juan Vaquero is well known in the comedy world, but he says he “a comedian by profession and powerlifterpassions”There are several aspects of Valladolid that are known, although perhaps this one is less well known, and that is a sport that he has practiced for many years at different stages of his life. So much so that he even claims that he would not mind being a powerlifter by profession and a comedian by passion. “I would play that life too, but I don’t think I’m on par with a powerlifter. As a comedian, maybe not either, but people haven’t found out yet.”– he jokes.

“When I was a kid, Carlos Asensio was the strongest guy around. We were 16 or 17 years old and we all wanted to be like him, so we went to his gym,” he recalls. At the time, 1991 yearpowerlifting was done at Asensio’s gym, a sport much less well known than it is now. “I tried it and I liked it,” Vaquero says. “I did that for seven years, then quit, did some bodybuilding and left the gym for over 20 years.”he tells us. Now 50, he has been competing for three years, since the pandemic ended. “I’ve been competing for 11 years in total, but with a gap of 23 years, everything is lost. You have nothing left of what you had,” he admits.

“I went back to the gym to finish the evening.”

Sport, in addition to its many benefits, has always been a source of discipline. Vaquero has never hidden his love for a night’s rest, but he tells us how important exercise is for changing direction. “I’m going back to the gym to finish work for the night because I had a really hard time getting through the night.”he admits. “When I worked as a waiter, on my days off I would go out and have really wild parties with alcohol, drugs… I didn’t say no to anything. When I became a comedian, I continued to act in the same dynamic, the only difference being that it happened almost every day, and it was a continuous dynamic,” says the man from Valladolid.

“Because I know I need something to hold on to to have a little bit of discipline, and deadlifting and powerlifting are things I really enjoy, I knew that if I went back to the gym or tried it, there was a chance I’d be like, ‘No, I’m not going to the party tonight, I have to train tomorrow.’” I wanted to party less, spend less time at night, have less contact with alcohol and drugs, and I achieved it.“He helped me get my life back on track,” Vaquero says. “Even now, when I have to throw a party, because I have to from time to time, I say, ‘Let’s see if this works out.’ I don’t take two or three days off from training, ’cause now, of course, I drink six beers and the next day I’m not human…,” he laughs.

Five to six workouts a week

Although Vaquero moves around the country in search of work, he lives in his hometown of Valladolid. At Asensio’s gym exercise five or six days a week to achieve my fitness goals. “I try to go there almost every day because my problem is what I do in my downtime. “I work in the morning, go to the gym in the afternoon, and when I don’t show up in the afternoon, there’s a beer can-shaped devil knocking on my door.”he admits.

However, Jose Juan does not consider himself a strong man. “I see people like me in the gym and they lift much more weight than me,” he says. However, he is especially good at deadlifts. “I looked into it and realized that the first girl I liked when I was 14 was because I was told she liked me.And from that moment on, for some reason, call it selfishness, call it practicality, I started to really like her. And the same thing can happen to me with deadlifts.“That I like it so much because he likes me. And I don’t like squats or bench presses or curls, but there is a connection with the deadlift, which, because I’m good at it, I like,” he says.

The comedian also talks about the evolution of the sport over time. “When I was a kid, powerlifting was a very unknown sport. Nobody knew what a deadlift was.. Nobody knew what a squat was. People who went to the gym, of course, but when you said you did powerlifting, they always asked you what it was,” he recalls. However, in recent years, “luckily, someone did it with a magic wand or with a lot of work.” and made powerlifting fashionable and known to many people. And that’s great,” he admits. The sport, in addition to being something he enjoys, has also been passed down from generation to generation: “I have recommended this to my two daughters. I really like them and I want them to try it.”. And one likes it very much, and the other doesn’t like it at all.”

Spanish record for lifting 273 kg.

Now, At 50 years old, JJ Vaquero competes in the Master II category.and does so in the 93 to 105 kg weight category. Last July 13 He managed to break the national deadlift record in this category, lifting 273 kg.. Despite the satisfaction of achieving his goal, the Valladolid native is demanding and self-critical: “This is not Mr. Wonderful’s cup. The truth is that To be honest, this is an adjustment to a goal that I didn’t achieve. When I returned to training, I aimed to lift 300 kg before I turned 50.what I have not achieved and what I think I will never achieve.”

But despite this, the comedian makes an important point: “At the end of the day, it’s a thing for yourself. You realize that the people who love you are proud of you, just like when you lift 220 pounds, and the people who hate you think it’s a setup, that you’re plastic discs, that you’ve been doping…”. Also, JJ Vaquero left us with a nice conclusion: “I watched the movie Inside Out 2 and I was told that in this movie we are all the sum of the good and bad that happens to us.”remember. “Some things work out, some don’t. This one worked out, it will bring me very good things in life, just like what doesn’t work out, which will also bring me good things,” he concludes.

Now, after the record, Pucelano wants to take on a new challenge. “I can’t live without goals and soon got distracted“You’ll see me on the catwalk doing go-go dancing, with my belly hanging out, looking 50 and flabby,” he jokes (at least I think so). “One goal might be to break this record, another might be to try to lift these 300 kg from the block.which is less than from the ground. I don’t know… everything hurts now, the plate was just recently, it cost me a lot and left incredible pain. The only thing I want is to lose six or seven kilograms so that I can use the rest of my clothes. Usually I weigh 96 kg, at competitions I weigh 105″, – he clarifies.

But goals aside, JJ Vaquero is clear about the true essence of the sport: “These are the goals I set before training, and that’s what I love. Come every week, be with the people here, they are very nice, and have a good time.”.