In eigth grade, 2001, I had a good friend who was a body builder. He consitantly competed in BFL and occasionally got featured...I thought the dude was HUGE. One day at the pool I noticed he has a big bulge in his forearms, so I asked about it and he said He'd been trying to develop them. He taught me the exercise and from that day until the end of the school year I'd do forearm curl/extensions at night with 5 lb dumbbells, usually 200 + reps a night. By the end of the year, I looked pretty freaky. My long sleeve shirts didn't fit very well and at 13 years of age I could break screwdriver handles workon on cars. I quit the habit and didn't even think about it more until a year later a friend suggested MyoPlex protein shakes to replace meals when I would get my braces tightened. This re-awakened my drive to work out. I knew little of the nutrition, supplement or even exercise side of things, but I start doing curls and pushups and situps in my room at night. I overtrained badly, and ended up sore more often than not. Skip ahead to year 2006. I've weighed 145 lbs for three years straight, skimpy to say the least. I had never belonged to a gym because I was always too young to pay for or sign up at one, so when I turned 18 I jumped on the wagon with my girlfriend and her roommate. Again, I overtrained badly. Later, I married the wonderful woman I had joined the gym with and started the BFL program after our honeymoon (165 and 16% BF, AT LEAST). This got me looking into the more nutrition side of the game. At this time, BodyBuilding set itself apart from other exercise because it is all really about cosmetics, which is fine by me. After 2 months on BFL I had kept my weight, cut down some fat and put on a little muscle, but quickly lost my enthusiasm because my wife quit coming to the gym with me. My gym attendance went down to sporadic at best and I started eating bad. Skip forward to February 2007. I had been thinking again about becoming interested in fitness, but money, lack of knowledge and support (my wife supported me, but also was "happy with how I looked" as any good wife would be) kept me from going all-in. Then I stumbled across intense-workout.com, a free site brought around by someone whose mindset seemed to match mine. I started hitting the gym again, using his workout plan, and started eating more. The first weeks were great...and they've developed from there to where I am now.

Sometimes it is intimidating walking into the gym as a shrimp on a mission, but walking out knowing that you did more to fix your problems in that morning than 90% of the world does in a month is re-assuring. If I need more than that I look at pictures of myself from 1-2 years ago and my 9"-10" arms and I can't wait to get back in the gym again.