Brendan Beikmann

When I was younger, I tended to get bullied a lot. Particularly in middle school, I was really heavily bullied because I was small, about 4”9’ and less than probably 80 or 90 pounds. I hated going to school. I remember I hated going to shop class to woodwork because I knew someone would be hitting me in the back of the head or shoving me in hallways. There were always these guys who would pick on me, and that kind of carried over freshman in high school. That was the life of school for me back then — kids were brutal. 

I had also torn my ACL playing football in 8th grade, and then I really destroyed it in 9th grade because I didn’t want the surgery that early, and I kept playing on it over spring break. So, during my 9th grade year, I ended up having reconstructive surgery anyway, and once my ACL was fixed, I was out for six months. 

But they told me, if I wanted to play sports again, I had to get my legs stronger. So, I got into lifting. I did a lot of leg strength training and I managed to make it back to playing football. I don’t think I realized at the time, but I was growing. 

I noticed, especially in my junior year, that no one was picking on me anymore. It was a way to kind of stop a lot of the bullying that I had experienced because when you’re when you’re larger, you know, people tend to back off. I was able to establish myself in football, and in my sophomore year, there was a coach that had talked to me and said “hey, you know, I have this high school powerlfiting program that you should go try,” and I ended up going, and I was like, hey, this is pretty cool.  

I had a lot of fun doing it, and I spent my junior and senior years playing football and dedicating all my off time to straight training and weightlifting, which rolled over into college. As a freshman in college, I set the national record in the squat which really drove me to keep going. I was ranked top two to three depending on the year in the weight class for a while, and I really wanted a shot at Team USA, so I lifted on my own until I was really close to going to worlds. I missed it by one lift.  

In the meantime, I was also getting into education and coaching. So, I coached my old high school for a while when I was at Colorado State University — the younger kids needed someone to come back and coach them, so I came back to help. I really enjoyed working with younger kids and helping them get better. I found out I like teaching through TA’ing in college for couple of years in anatomy class, working closely with professors to help a lot of the college students pass those classes. Coaching and teaching have their differences, but you’re seeing people through competition, helping them adjust, and trying to put them in the best position so they too, can be successful.