Easy Day

I cannot tell you how much I wish June 8th was just another lost and forgotten day in my busy life....but it's not. June 8th is such a bittersweet day for me and my family because 5 years ago today I was sitting at a courtroom desk with 2 of my highly paid lawyers, my family sitting behind me on the benches sniffling, clearing their throats, embracing each other, wondering if they just gave me a hug for the last time as a free man or if they will be talking to me behind a piece of glass for the rest of our lives.  The memory physically makes me ill, embarrassed......depressed.

12 people who you've never met or talked to personally are about to tell the court your fate in life.  The intimacy between the defendant and the jury is something very dark.  You wish you could read their mind, they wish they could read yours, but the fact is, for the last 2 weeks they have been studying your every move, every reaction, and listening to 2 sides of 1 story to decide one thing...'Is he telling the truth?'  I was.

I just read an article from my trial that was written the day after I was acquitted. I do this every year at this time to remind myself the pain I caused to so many people.  When I think back about being in jail while my parents lay awake at night worrying, or my friends having to take the stand for me and see the pain in their face when they are drilled by the prosecutor, I want to die.  The pain I caused others is what keeps me motivated to be a better person.  I learned from my mistakes and it's a shame some don't.  I'm writing this blog not for you to feel sorry for me, or feel sorry for anyone for that matter.  I made my mistakes and take full responsibility for them.  I just want to let everyone know that they are not alone in this world, I have a million feelings and experiences I'd love to share if someone needs help.

Most people couldn't empathize with me at the time of my trial.  To this day they say, "I can't imagine how you got through facing 60 years in prison."  I explain it like this......take the worse situation in your life and the worse you have ever felt, that is exactly how I felt.  The worse thing that has ever happened to you is the same feeling as the worse thing that has ever happened to anyone.  Some deal with it differently, better, worse, but we all deal with it.  In the end it makes us stronger no matter what way it turns out.  I like to compare life's experiences to the time I spend in the gym since it is so therapeutic for me. 

There are so many motivational phrases to psych yourself and your training partners up when you're killing it in the gym: "Light Weight!" "No Problem!" "Come on get it!" "This shit is nothing!" "Keep going, you ain't done yet!"......the list goes on and on.  I'm a simple guy so we use a simple term, "Easy Day".  That's it.  We don't scream too much, we don't act like it's light when it's not, we think for a second and just say, "Easy Day".  We choose to be at the gym, we choose to train, we choose this because it is what we love.  How much easier could your day get than doing what you love?  It is an easy day no matter how hard it seems....we have all had bad days and this ain't it.  When I would have a really bad day and didn't feel like getting out of bed or even being alive my mom would say, "Just take this situation 1 day at a time, 1 hour at a time, 1 minute at a time.  Break it down to getting through just one more minute of life without crumbling and go from there."  I still use that today.  Just get through one more minute, one more set, one more rep.....and we'll go from there.  Easy day.

BTW: it happens to be my best friend's birthday today too so happy birthday Tank.  Love you buddy.

The "F" word

While I was running around today like I was on fire I started thinking about how I never have time to just sit and reflect, think, plan, enjoy a long moment of silence.........

Then I started thinking about all my goals and how hard I am working and how much harder I'll have to work to succeed in my personal and professional life.  I really feel like nothing can stop me except for myself.  I will win and I will succeed in this life on a day to day basis as well as long term.  The only way I know how to do that is by pushing myself til failure.

How do you train?  3 sets of 10?  Get the fuck out of the gym if that's your plan.  There is no time for that here.  The only way to reach goals is to fail.  How do you know what you want to be and what you want to do when all you do is what's required?  In my mind the only way to feel like I win is when I fail.  If it's in the gym or at work, I want to see how far I can take it, how much can I do, how many can I sell?  To some, failure is the worse word in their vocabulary.  It's my favorite.

If you feel like failure is a negative way of concluding something than you probably feel some regret about the actions you took to complete your task.  How bout trying you're absolute hardest from the first step. The first rep.  The first sale.  I've always tried to train with guys in the gym who are bigger and stronger than myself.  It's the only way I feel that I'm not cheating.  Most of the time that person is myself.  My mind is way bigger than my body will ever be.  It's the reason I leave the house at 8 every morning and walk in the door at 10 every night.  It is great to give my mind a night off when I train with my mentors.  No matter who it is, Pete and D, or Big Duda. I can literally feel my mind shut off from screaming to push harder and those guys get in my head and push for me.  Who pushes you when your mind takes a break?  If you stop doing just what is required and actually work until failure you will finally feel success.  Once that failure is reached you can set a new goal.

I had a skinny bald guy come up to me at the gym about 9 months ago and asked me a simple question.  "How long have you been training?"  I hate when skinny guys ask me that because I know what they are thinking (one day I can look like that and be that strong).  And that's exactly how his follow up questions were directed.  I take offense to that.  So much that I've thought about that guy every day since.  I only saw him once but I could hire a police sketch artist to draw his face by memory.  My angered and annoyed answers that followed his naive questions weren't the answers he had hoped for and I haven't seen him in the gym since.  Just the fact that that dip shit had the guts to come up to me out of all the people at the gym and ask me what he can do to get as big and as strong as me keeps me pushing myself until I fail.  I don't want people thinking they can get as big and strong as me.  I want to be out of that spectrum.  I might not be there yet but I'll fail as hard as I can until I succeed.

Lost Reps

Today was back day at the gym.  To most of us back day is just another day in the books but to me it's more than that.  I really look forward to training back, not only because I love it, but because I get to train with a couple guys most people only read about in magazines and on supplement labels.  Pete and Derik both have big shows coming up and the closer they get to show time the more focused they become.  I've really noticed it in the last few weeks, that every rep is accounted for.  Tonight while we were doing rows Pete was squeezing out one last rep and I thought to myself, 'What if he would have lost that rep?'  What if he never did that one last rep?  I probably wouldn't have noticed.  Nobody would have even known that he had it in him to do just one more but decided not to.  Like I always do I kind of lost myself in a thought....

Lost reps.  I'm sure we've all done it.  Knew we could get one more good rep but decided to save it for a later workout.  Think about if you did it once a day.  That's 260 lost reps a year which is about a whole day lost at the gym.  Most of my habits at the gym are subconsciously converted into my day to day life.  The reps I was losing when I was younger got me in a lot of trouble.  Those lost reps don't just disappear, they turn into unused time and energy which for me turns into trouble.  (Idle hands are the devils playground)  I really try every single day to not lose a rep.  If you start losing reps then you aren't living up to your potential, and not living up to your potential doesn't do anyone any good.  

Living in an area where there is an abundance of drugs and alcohol might be a distraction to some people but to me it's nothing but motivation.  I get wasted guys and girls coming into my shop every day embarrassing themselves and all it does is make me want to be better than them.  It's ok to feel better than someone else if you are truly a better person than them.  I always think, where would I be in life right now without wasting all my time, energy, and money on partying when I was young?  Where would I be in life if I didn't lose those thousands of reps? 

A couple weeks ago Derik wrote a blog about all the "Geek" stuff he's into and after Steph and I read it she said, "Derik is really talented".  I thought, well he's pretty much devoted his life to fitness and instead of wasting his down time on getting wasted, he learned to; draw, wrestle, roller skate, race bikes, Active Release Therapy, personal train, teach personal training, learn everything there is to know about supplementation and nutrition, and happened to become a IFBB pro bodybuilder to boot and I'm sure a plethora of other things.  What if everyone in the world quit losing reps and started living up to their potential?  Bettering yourself to make those around you better.   

My good friend and business partner Scott said the other day that he surrounds himself with people who are better at certain things than he is in order to learn and grow and become a better person.  Maybe people do notice you squeezing out that one last rep after all.

Strength in Pain

There are two ways you can deal with pain whether it be emotional or physical.  You can find strength in pain or you will find weakness in pain.  I learned this at an early age and I'm not talking about the pain you get from skinning you knee.  When I was 17 I watch my best friend take his final breath and I didn't know it at the time but looking back that was the first time I truly felt pain.  It has been almost exactly 10 years since Ryan passed away and I've been thinking about him a lot lately.  As we humans do, especially me, I had to learn the hard way on how to deal with the pain I was feeling.

I tried to be the strong one.  I didn't know what the fuck that meant at the time and I still have trouble understanding someone when they tell you to stay strong during a traumatic situation.  I guess it's just something people say because there really aren't any words to satisfy your sadness.  I had to learn how to deal with the pain I felt from losing someone I loved and related to so well.  Ryan was one of the first people I could be completely honest with.  He totally understood me.  After he died I felt weak, I felt depressed, I felt lonely, and needed something to fill the void life leaves you.  I started drinking a lot and experimenting with drugs.  I'd black out at a party and wake up at the cemetery, my truck parked against a tree.  This went on for years and I simply couldn't get over it and thought I never would.  In some ways I haven't.

The older I get the more emotionally callused I become.  Steph tells me this sometimes because I never cry.  I don't like the idea of having no emotion so I really started thinking of the reasons why I am so emotionally detached.  The revelation hit me 5 months ago when my brother was dying in the hospital.  It was the first time in years I had felt pain.  Real pain, not the type you feel from skinning your knee.  The difference this time was I didn't deal with it by using drugs and alcohol.  I tried to deal with it in a more positive way.  I pushed myself harder and harder at the gym.  I tried to think about my brother and how strong he really is and how I don't want to be weak.  I want to be strong like my big brother.  The emotional pain had to be converted into strength or life would get the better hand and I'd become weak.  And who the hell wants to be weak?  The only way I know how to deal with pain now is to turn it into strength.  Just like at the gym, the harder you push, the more pain you feel, the stronger you become.   I realized that I'm not emotionally detached or callused at all........I'm stronger.

Maybe that's what life is all about.  The learning curve of dealing with situations and changing the way you react in times of trouble.  Funny how you go through the motions and don't understand how or why you are acting the way you are until you look back and see what path you took.

 

Everything in between

So here it goes....

Life sure has done a complete 180 degree turn around from where I was 5 years ago.  I grew up in a small town outside of Chicago and always dreamed of moving to California and chasing whiskey, women, and gold.  Needless to say I finally made it out to California but instead of chasing those things I continued on a different journey.  My better half, (Steph), always says, "Everything happens for a reason".  The more I live the more I believe that.  Instead of my selfish intentions I had when I was younger I have really tried in the last 5 years to better those around me by bettering myself.

All the negative and selfish actions I took when I was younger transformed into negative results.  I got in tons of trouble and hurt a lot of people on my way down my own personal spiral of hell.  I ended up 22 years old, sitting in a jail cell asking myself, "Is this really what I want to do with my time on earth?"  The answer I came up with was a definite "No."  From that moment forward I've tried very hard to change my life around.  What I needed was a new beginning and that's when my dream of San Diego was reborn and reevaluated.

Like any great man in history they have had a great counterpart and mine is my girlfriend Stephanie.  She has gotten me through the toughest time in my life and brought joy to the happiest times in my life.  I'm so happy and proud that she has found the bodybuilding lifestyle and really ran with it as well as anyone can.

I've been training for 12 years and have always trained hard and heavy.  I played football in high school and graduated at 155 pounds but benching close to 300 pounds.  I was bench pressing and squating more than the offensive linemen as a defensive back.  So I've always been strong for my weight and still train hard and heavy.  I had the drive and ability to grow muscle but I didn't have the discipline until about 5 years ago when I changed my lifestyle and started researching nutrition and supplementation.  I gained 20 pounds the summer of 2006 and have kept improving ever since.

Signing up for World Gym San Diego was one of the best moves Steph and I have ever made.  I thought I knew what I was doing until I met the Freaks at Worlds!  I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.  The knowledge I have obtained from our friends at the gym is first of all very appreciated and very valuable.  This blog won't always be about the gym but more about my life and the experiences life brings me. The gym is a huge part of my life but not the only thing I love.

I train because it keeps me out of trouble.  Some people train to gain what their perception of perfection is, some people train because they are too short to do anything else, some people train because it's "Time to grow" (which seems like all the time).  I train because I have a hard time staying out of trouble.  I need to occupy my time with something positive or those negative thoughts start to creep in my brain.  I can't help it, it's just the way I'm built so I struggle every day to keep my mind on the right path.  Friends ask me if I ever think about competing in bodybuilding or powerlifting, I'm sure I will some day but for right now I feel like every day is a competition between my mind and body in the gym and that is satisfying enough at this point.

Now that I got that out of the way, I hope you look forward to new blogs about the gym, training, friends, traveling, motorsports, and anything else I can get my dirty hands on.