It was a huge sacrifice, but it's led to a national championship in powerlifting for Kieran Mischewski.
Kieran, who turns 40 this year, is the current New Zealand 93kg master 1 national champion and he holds the NZ deadlift record with a 245kg pull.
He trains at home, in the garage, with mostly homemade gear. Why? So he can spend time with his family.
'I started off doing cycling and marathons, then I did an Ironman. Training for these sports sucks up hours and hours of time away from the family,” says Kieran.
'So after the NZ Ironman in 2008 I decided that long-distance sports took too much of a toll on my family.
'I had to find something else. I started doing CrossFit from home. Then I progressed to moving weights around in the garage. I worked out in our garage because it's closer to home and takes up a lot less time.”
His homemade gym is a pretty basic set up, with a squat rack consisting of a couple of fence posts and some concrete buckets, a bench he made out of some old framing wood that was lying around, and a bunch of other weights he's accumulated over time.
'It works,” says the self-taught powerlifter. It sure does, because Kieran has broken two records since his first competition in 2013.
'I'm a master's lifter but at the regional champs I competed in the open class against all of the 20-year-olds and came second.
'So I thought I'd try to win the national champs in my actual class and I won the squat, the bench and the deadlift and broke the NZ deadlift record [245kg] twice along the way.”
Kieran also holds the Waikato/Bay of Plenty squat record at 192.5kg. It seems the 39-year-old has finally found his talent.
'I've always been interested in competing, I've always had that sort of drive,” says Kieran. 'It's just taken me a few years to find the one thing that I'm actually pretty good at.”
The father-of-three has picked up a bit of training along the way with online powerlifting coach Pete Rubish, but Kieran likes to be his own teacher.
'It's more convenient for me to workout at home,” says Kieran. 'I get home from work, spend some time with the kids and get them settled before I get down to the garage about 8.30pm-9pm to train.”
Kieran is currently training for the 2015 Commonwealth Championships in Vancouver on November 30-December 6. In a powerlifting competition, the athlete with the highest total squat, bench press and deadlift weight wins.
'My total from the National Championships equals the chap who won the last Commonwealth Championships, so I'm pretty confident I'm going to be competing for the podium,” says Kieran.
'It'd be pretty cool. It's not something I expected I'd be doing a few years ago.” 'The family's pretty excited about it. I think the kids like the idea of having a strong father.”
To sponsor Kieran to get to Vancouver in December, contact him via Facebook at www.facebook.com/kieranmischewskipowerlifter