About halfway through college too much partying had led to too much weight. I think the heaviest I ever got was about 225 at 5'10" without a single muscle on my body. I smoked a pack a day and drank pretty much every night. I remember running up the steps to my 2nd floor apartment, and as I was out of breath sitting on the couch I thought, man I need a cigarette. I realized it had got bad. I quit smoking and scaled back the drinking (which I eventually quit altogether) It's super depressing to lose the seat belt under your gut when you buckle in. I started running like crazy at the campus gym and started lifting weights whenever I saw the results one of my college buddies was getting. He passed along some knowledge but I never did put all the pieces together around then. I ended up losing 50 pounds just from sheer effort and was happily thin. Yet I was spinning my tires building muscle. Between training in martial arts and lifting too heavy before my joints were ready I picked up some pretty un-motivating injuries. For about 3 years I yo-yoed in and out of a gym. A year here, a 6 month break there. After college and a couple career changes, reading lots of muscle magazines, following the Mr. Olympia bodybuilders, and then finally finding bodybuilding.com... I got things right. I, like many others, have my ups and downs at the gym that coincide with life but in the end you always come back to the weights. In 2011 I grew to be more passionate about running and spent the year dedicated to the 5k. In 2012 I spent the year doing the bigger beyond belief program. In 2013 I gave 6 months to the get swole program and packed on 20 pounds. I've been up and down since then but I keep fighting the good fight!

There was this epiphany I had a couple years ago; I had just ran a 5k on the treadmill in about 20:00 solid. I followed up doing my back day, which is my favorite, and I killed it. I broke my deadlift personal record and then rowed my way to the end of the workout. I remember walking down the stairs out the gym front doors and it was a beautiful day. Full blue sky, 70 degree weather with a gentle breeze and I felt like I was literally walking on air, breathing white fire. It was pure euphoria. Mentally and physically I felt like I could do anything and I realized at that moment that this was what I was meant to do. Not as a way to put food on the table or a roof over my head, but as a lifestyle. I really dug into my diet, my lifting schedule, my routine. I wanted that feeling every day. I wanted to apply that extreme success to everything in life. I've learned that it really isn't about being perfect but the pursuit of being great. All of those failures along the way are lessons you've got to learn from. And all the success you get in the gym reminds you that you can do anything. I love this one quote, if you knew you could do something in life, and know for a fact you wouldn't fail...what would you do? The first time I read that I thought about the gym. It taught me the real truth behind that question; we all have the potential to not fail at everything, and when you learn that the whole world opens up.