Landon Johnson

Male

30

Personal trainer

Jul, 2004

My name is Landon Johnson and I am a 30 year old fitness/bodybuilding enthusiast. Bodybuilding has completely changed my life. I won't be a bore with details but up until the last 5 years my whole life was consumed with a the lifestyle of drugs and dealing drugs. There wasn't much of a teenage life to speak of. I quit school in 9th grade and went to selling and making drugs my full time “hustle”. As anyone who has been mixed up in the drug scene knows, you don't play the game without both teams scoring. This means that I've been to prison a few times, but my story really doesn't start till my last time in jail. I had already been in the local county jail for a year when my time came for trial. My trial lasted 2 days and resulted in me getting a 20 year sentence. My dad , who was 78 at the time, was at my trial and he came to see me at the jail the next day. He told me that he loved me and he was to old and unhealthy to be driving all over the state of Texas to visit me. He also told me that all he ever wanted was for me to get clean and live a life I dreamed of as a kid. That night my Dad died while watching Wheel of Fortune at home. I weighed about 270 lbs at that time. I had gained 100 lbs of fat from the time of my arrest a year before. Feeling pretty much hopeless I didn't know what my future held for me. I knew that I was going to be in prison for awhile so I just got in the grove of things as best as I could. I ate anything that I saw and before long I was over 280 lbs. One day in July 2004 I went to tie my shoes and I actually lost my breath. I decided that day I had to do something. Coming from a family of overweight people I knew that I didn't want to stay that way and live with the same difficulties as the other members of my family. I started doing push-ups in my cell the next day. I was able to do 10 sets of 10, and on the 11th set I was able to do 4. Thats where it all started. It gradually turned into a complete workout that I did every day for over an entire year. During that year I got into reading fitness and bodybuilding magazines. I learned some stuff and found some heroes in the pages of those books. Ronnie Coleman, Jay Cutler, The Arnold, just to name a few. After I got a job change by the prison administration, I was able to go to the rec yard and start using the weight machine. I wasn't real sure what I was doing but after more reading and trial and error I turned into the person that the people on the rec yard wanted to work out with and the guy everyone asked for workout tips . This was how I learned what my passion in life is. The void that I had been using drugs all those years to try to fill was finally full. I had finally found my place in life. I found something that I was good at and not by my own accord, but by the opinion of others. I got out of prison on parole on Mar 22, 2007. Since that time I have become a certified personal trainer, and I will begin competitive bodybuilding in 2008.

Bodybuilding and training are the exact oppisite of the life I use to live. I know that if I had not started working out that I would of ended up in more throuble once I got out of prison. God made everyone for a reason and this is mine. To be the best bodybuilder that I can be and watch what he can do with me as a bodybuilder as long as I remember that the credit is his!

I don't train because I'm motivated to work-out. I do it because I've diciplined myself to go and do what I feel like I was created to do. I let God do the motivating!

I competed in my first show on April 19th 2008. The Ronnie Coleman Classic in Mesquite, Texas.

Whatever it takes!