With my freshman year in high school lingering, I started lifting with a pair of dumbbells to get stronger for shot put. However, I needed more exercises than curls and floor flys, so I started vigorously searching over the internet for different exercises. Sooner or later, I was learning about reps, sets, and various dumbbell exercises, yet still came up with the most inane workouts ever known to man. I instantly fell in love with working out and never did try out for shot put. During the summer of the next year, I reached an old-school bodybuilding website where I learned and blindly utilized advanced lifting techniques such as drop sets, super sets, rest-pause, etc. These methods alone transformed my body over the summer into a lean, vein-ridden, slightly muscular body with complements coming left and right. I still yearn for those days where I can look into the mirror and see the slight striations from my inner chest and the veins running crazily through my forearms and biceps. That Christmas, I received my first weight bench and barbell set, which is when things really started shifting to bodybuilding. Ah yes, those were the days where only leanness mattered yet little did that old-school bodybuilding website teach me, I never took into account the most important aspect of any lifting routine: DIET! So after a year of worrying about my leanness and with no virtual muscle gain, I started browsing for more exercises over the internet until I found this site; I was ecstatic to see the humongous selection of articles and exercises. However, my life literally turned around when I saw that little "FORUM" icon in the left-hand column of the bodybuilding.com main page. It was during the summer of 2006 when I first set eyes on the forums. I was a little confused so I started asking questions...LOTS AND LOTS OF QUESTIONS. About what? Pretty much everything (just look at all the threads I started). Every single day, I learned something new about diet, lifting, and supplementation but the information that I harnessed started becoming an addiction - I NEEDED TO KNOW MORE EVERY SINGLE DAY. Ever since that day I started an account on these forums, a new lifestyle took a hold of me and I never looked back. Never.

- The attention people give me - Knowing that I'm not going to be forever remembered as an "average joe" - Poses a never-ending challenge - Simply working out! - Introduces a much healthier lifestyle into my life - I look better in clothes than most people