Post by BigBruvOfEnglandUK on Feb 19, 2022 0:48:26 GMT
I know that several people here have been anticipating what happened. Bruce aka Shen as many of us know him had been posting very often up until some time last year. When he started posting less I just knew that he wasn't feeling so well. I didn't ask him about it as I didn't really know how to do it tactfully. I felt that if he wanted to tell me about it he probably would.
When I read his post above last Saturday I had not been home from work very long and was very tired. I was dumb struck. I had always assumed that one day a relative of his would turn up here and inform us of his passing. It never crossed my mind that he would announce his forthcoming departure from this world. ~
On Saturday I knew that the news was going to hit me much harder on Sunday and sure enough it did when I was talking to my wife about him again the next morning. I ended up crying and crying is something very rare for me.
I never actually met Shen but I've known him online for about 20 years or so. I'm not saying that I know him any better than anybody here that has known him a lesser amount of time. It doesn't take over 20 years to know that he was a funny guy and if you did any business with him that he was also trustworthy. Many people figured this out very quickly.
I wanted to say something about my history with Shen and his forum. I noticed this guy "Shenandoah 1" as he was known on the EZBoards back then posting on Portalguy's Bodyweight and Miscellaneous Strength forum, the Animal Ability forum and Henry Thinman's fitness forums (Henry had 3 or 4 all at once!) etc about 20 or more years ago. He along with Texas Ranger, Henry Thinman and a bunch of others were already well established on those forums before I turned up. In fact I had only just discovered what the internet actually was.
Anyway, "Shen" as we later nicknamed him was joining in the conversations with his training experiences just like everybody else but also making hilarious comments which made him one of those that stood out from the crowd. He certainly wasn't taking it all as seriously as some people there and I liked that. I had a few jokes with him and we would sometimes get told off by other members that seemed to think they were deciding what could and couldn't be said on the forums that they didn't actually own. That wasn't going to stop him and I think it only encouraged him to joke about even more.
Shen became interested in self-resistance exercise. We referred to it as "SR" back then. He even started his own forum on EZBoard dedicated to it. It was originally called "The Office Bodybuilding Workout". It was a little different to the other fitness forums. In the early days the threads would often go completely and hilariously off topic as most of the early members were the guys that liked to joke around on Portalguy's and that was ok. If people didn't like it they didn't hang around long. As the membership grew it quickly became exactly what it is now, a place to discuss any kind of exercise.
EZBoard became Yuku and Yuku became Tapatalk. The Office Bodybuilding Workout was renamed Sierra Exercise forum some time after Shen started up his exercise equipment business and the Sierra Exercise forum was moved here to Proboards.
I bought one of the very first sets of the Sierra Hook handles that he sold and I still use them daily. The early sets were slightly different. They did not have the black sleeve and cap over the part that you hook the bands onto and the distance between hook and handle was shorter.
When Shen started selling the handles with the sleeves he insisted that he send me some of the sleeves for free even though I told him not to bother. He later sent me the last version of the handles even though I told him that I was perfectly happy with what I had. He said it was a thank you for the work I had done on the forum. My "Work" was just helping out with HTML codes and other stuff to get the forum looking right and working well for the members. That's why he made me an admin. It wasn't because he thought that I was some sort of authority on fitness. Obviously I'm not. He just wanted some help from a fellow forum owner on setting the place up and I was happy to oblige as I saw him as a real m8.
R.I.P. Shen m8.
When I read his post above last Saturday I had not been home from work very long and was very tired. I was dumb struck. I had always assumed that one day a relative of his would turn up here and inform us of his passing. It never crossed my mind that he would announce his forthcoming departure from this world. ~
On Saturday I knew that the news was going to hit me much harder on Sunday and sure enough it did when I was talking to my wife about him again the next morning. I ended up crying and crying is something very rare for me.
I never actually met Shen but I've known him online for about 20 years or so. I'm not saying that I know him any better than anybody here that has known him a lesser amount of time. It doesn't take over 20 years to know that he was a funny guy and if you did any business with him that he was also trustworthy. Many people figured this out very quickly.
I wanted to say something about my history with Shen and his forum. I noticed this guy "Shenandoah 1" as he was known on the EZBoards back then posting on Portalguy's Bodyweight and Miscellaneous Strength forum, the Animal Ability forum and Henry Thinman's fitness forums (Henry had 3 or 4 all at once!) etc about 20 or more years ago. He along with Texas Ranger, Henry Thinman and a bunch of others were already well established on those forums before I turned up. In fact I had only just discovered what the internet actually was.
Anyway, "Shen" as we later nicknamed him was joining in the conversations with his training experiences just like everybody else but also making hilarious comments which made him one of those that stood out from the crowd. He certainly wasn't taking it all as seriously as some people there and I liked that. I had a few jokes with him and we would sometimes get told off by other members that seemed to think they were deciding what could and couldn't be said on the forums that they didn't actually own. That wasn't going to stop him and I think it only encouraged him to joke about even more.
Shen became interested in self-resistance exercise. We referred to it as "SR" back then. He even started his own forum on EZBoard dedicated to it. It was originally called "The Office Bodybuilding Workout". It was a little different to the other fitness forums. In the early days the threads would often go completely and hilariously off topic as most of the early members were the guys that liked to joke around on Portalguy's and that was ok. If people didn't like it they didn't hang around long. As the membership grew it quickly became exactly what it is now, a place to discuss any kind of exercise.
EZBoard became Yuku and Yuku became Tapatalk. The Office Bodybuilding Workout was renamed Sierra Exercise forum some time after Shen started up his exercise equipment business and the Sierra Exercise forum was moved here to Proboards.
I bought one of the very first sets of the Sierra Hook handles that he sold and I still use them daily. The early sets were slightly different. They did not have the black sleeve and cap over the part that you hook the bands onto and the distance between hook and handle was shorter.
When Shen started selling the handles with the sleeves he insisted that he send me some of the sleeves for free even though I told him not to bother. He later sent me the last version of the handles even though I told him that I was perfectly happy with what I had. He said it was a thank you for the work I had done on the forum. My "Work" was just helping out with HTML codes and other stuff to get the forum looking right and working well for the members. That's why he made me an admin. It wasn't because he thought that I was some sort of authority on fitness. Obviously I'm not. He just wanted some help from a fellow forum owner on setting the place up and I was happy to oblige as I saw him as a real m8.
R.I.P. Shen m8.