My Journey in Fitness

I have been an athlete ever since I was walking. Dribbling a basketball at 2 years old was my first feat of athleticism(Well my dad says I tried to walk the day I was born, but I think that was more the words of a proud father). By age 6, I was in T-ball, soccer, and gymnastics. Throughout the years I continued my sports. By the time highschool came I stuck with Football and then fell in love with weight training. Basketball was fun hobby on the off season to stay conditioned and though football was my only "organized" sport I continued to stay active. Besides a small sabbatical at the age of 25 when I started a brief sales career, weight training has been a key aspect of my life.

I honestly think I did everything wrong from age 14 to 30. I can honestly pass some of the blame on my high school football coaches that glorified heavy lifting by 15 year olds, with no guidance on form and had everyone follow the same program year round. I have to say that the biggest benefit was the introduction to weights and a level of commitment that it ingrained in me to be consistent. I remember the frustration though as a young kid that I just wasn't getting any stronger. I failed to bench press more than 200 pound and squat more than 225 in high school. I was continually sore and trained to failure on each set. I wish I could tell you I learned my lesson after high school but it didn't. I continued to over train and spend little time resting between days of working out. If my chest wasn't sore it was a bench press day (I had to have a good max since I still cared what people though of my max bench). And of course the mentality of the more the better seemed to be my thought process.

Now, recently turning 35 I have had tons of time to reflect. I believe I have gone through numerous modalities of working out. Pseudo Body builder, Power lifting with no specific program, Crossfit, and my true passion Kettlebells. What I have realized is that so much of my workouts and training time have been wrapped up in my ego. In my earlier days I had to out bench everyone even if it meant destroying a shoulder that needed rest, which then led to nearly a year off of bench pressing due to injury. Then came the stages of Vanity. I would swear if I missed a workout I would get fat. Or if I allowed my body to rest for a week it would be a huge set back. Then came my stages of looking to be in elite conditioning focusing on high intensity anaerobic conditioning. My lesson came when my body completely broke down from over training because I had to beat everyone on how many rounds of a workout I did. That lesson came numerous times with days in bed with severe muscle spasms and fatigue. It really didn't matter what I did my mentality was, "if it's worth doing, it's worth over doing". All of the abuse lead to pretty nasty degenerative disc disease in my lower back that limited what I did athletically. I was living the definition of insanity. I kept doing the same thing(over training) and expected elite athletic status except injury after injury was the outcome.

As I keep down this path I am now able to view my workouts less like a workout and more like giving my body what it needs. And sometimes what my body needs is a day or a week of joint mobility drills and stretching even though the workouts I had planned was a day or a week heavy deadlifts and setting new PR's. This doesn't mean I don't set aggressive goals and program my workouts accordingly. I just answer to a different authority now and not my ego. Tuning in to my body is the greatest gift I have received, a gift that came from repeated breakdowns in my health and body. I encourage all that read this to tune in to your body, it is the greatest gift you can give yourself. Treat your workouts like giving your body what it needs rather than what you want it to achieve because you are a failure if you don't. I still workout like a madman and still push to the limits during training sessions at times, but it's based on what limits I have for that day. Yes I train hard, but each day doesn't have to be pushing my body past where it wants to go.