How’s it going,

My name is Adrian and I’m sharing with y’all my my fitness experience. It’s officially been 3 years since I’ve started back working out. First let me explain how I got started.

One day I happened to be over my cousins house and we didn’t have anything to do but watch tv. So my cousin flipped the channel to the movie Rocky and they happened to be playing a marathon. Back then I was a young 12 year old boy who was fascinated by boxing and how hard they trained and the determination in their eyes was motivating. We ended up watching all 4 movies back then. That was all I needed to motivate me to start working out.

I was your average teen back then who played outside or the infamous gameboy lol. One summer transitioning from the age of 12 to 13 and from my final years of elementary to middle school, I decided to workout. After seeing the results of Rocky putting a strenuous amount of time and effort to get to his goal. Me of course being young and just winging it, I pushed myself for those 3 months out of school and didn’t even realize the results until school started back and classmates were talking about how I’ve changed appearance wise.

Back then I was chubby from eating fast food a lot. I use to find time mostly at night to do any type of workout. I would jog In place for an hour not knowing that was cardio. I would do a bunch of sit-ups until they burn so much I couldn’t even get up. I would get my mothers dumbbells and just do a lot of reps for about an hour moving up in weights from 8lbs to 12lbs. I also did jumping jacks as many as I could and push-ups as well. All that within a 3 month period put me from chubby to a lean 13 year old boy. While in middle school I had competition as I saw it. A few other guys were stronger then me and more built more so because they played sports and trained harder. I couldn’t keep up and didn’t have that push to keep the motive up so gave that up completely. I didn’t play sports at all more so due to I had asthma real bad, and the teenager life kicked in. Fast forward to point I get graduate high school and remained a lean young man at the weight of 175lbs. I’ve always wanted to be a bigger build but never attempted to really put any effort, plus I have a high metabolism so it’s difficult for me to gain weight. So from 17 years old to 26 I’ve been the same weight. Within this time period I smoked cigarettes which was like a weight manipulator for me, and I feel played a part of me staying that same weight for those years.

So I’m 26 and work for the Post Office Headquarters as a custodian, and one of the areas I’m assigned to clean was of course the gym. It’s a 24hr gym that has basically everything you need in there to do what you please. I work the night schedule, and one particular night my coworker happened to be down in the gym working out for a quick second. I was still working cleaning up in the gym but after seeing him getting it in it motivated me to get back. My specific words to him were “damn I miss that I need to get back at it”. Ever since that moment he convinced me to pursue that goal of getting fit or at least getting the look I wanted.

Since I had access to the gym and he didn’t we figured we would meet at lunch which for us is 8:30 pm to 9pm to get a good routine in. I never looked back since then, I gradually learned different techniques that helped make a big difference in the routines. We do supersets since we have a short amount of time to workout. We might do 3 different workouts within a 20-25min time frame and you’d be surprised what you can get accomplished.

Some of the routines we do still to this day are-

• Pull-ups
• Bench press
• Curls with bar or dumbbells
• Push-ups
• Lat pull
• Peck deck (chest and back)
• Squats
• Leg press
• Calf press
• Leg extensions
• Leg curls
• Triceps
• Deadlifts
• T-row bar

Up right rows

Doing these consistently for 5 days a week and resting over weekend makes a big difference along with learning how to do them properly. Within the 3 years from 26 to 29 years old I quit smoking, eating more, and went from 175lbs to 220lbs more so muscle. I would say that the motivation to keep pushing myself and seeing how far I can go got me to where I am today. Along with my coworker helping show me the proper ways to do routines and techniques. It has never been competitive with us 2, it’s always so however many you can do rep wise. For example we would do a superset of bench press starting off with 135lbs, do a set and then go to curls, right after go to doing tricep pull downs. We gradually start to go up in weight after each set and try to keep a consistent amount of reps in. So we would get at least the equivalent of 15-24 sets cramming all 3 workouts in that short amount of time 20 minutes to 25 minutes. So 5 sets of bench 5 of curls and 5 of triceps. The average person would take an whole hour to do the workout routine. You also have to factor in time, breaks, and if it’s other people doing their thing where you have to wait. To throw in with the workout routines that we do is all this is raw strength. No steroids or any of those type of supplements/enhancements most bodybuilders use that take its toll later on. For example, checkout on YouTube these bodybuilders now compared to when they were in their prime: CT Fletcher, Craig Munson, Ronnie Coleman. (list links to some of their videos).

All you need is a good partner that will help push and motivate you, a change of diet not just what you eat but mental as well. Also an understanding of the workouts and what you want to achieve. Along with changing my diet I’ve been taking natural products to help with recovery time after a workout or protein for the muscles. (List products I take with links)

One thing I’ve paid attention to that normally most give up on is losing weight and keeping it off. If you want to lose weight you can’t just do cardio and think that’s all you have to do to keep it off. I’ve seen people lose the weight just from cardio and once some time goes by they’ll gain it right back. Prime example is Oprah she’s been back and forth for years. Dieting is somewhat different, you can lose the weight like the keto diet. If you don’t imply some type of workout routine with it you’ll just have the weight loss with no strength or stamina. Also consistency played a huge factor as well. It’s to each is own what you want to do with your body.

Another thing I’ve noticed and experienced which is why I don’t do it as often now is doing a lot of cardio since it kills your energy. Doing cardio first before doing a weighted workout you’ll feel the difference in energy compared to if you did weights first then cardio. For example say you were doing leg day and decided to do squats. You regularly can build your way to squatting let’s say 315lbs 10 times without doing cardio first. With cardio done beforehand you won’t have the same energy level so you’ll probably get a good 5 in compared to 10. Cardio is a testosterone killer for males.

A lot of guys think that they need to like 40 minutes of cardio everyday and all you really need is about 15 minutes every other day. This mostly goes for people who are trying to build. If you are trying to just get your wind and stamina then by all means do your thing.

I’m still currently working out for roughly 30 mins into the 5 day week period and I must say I’m pretty satisfied with the results since then. I have a lot more people noticing the weight gain in a good way from coworkers, to random people, to even my god kids lol. So from getting “oh when did you get out of prison?” to “are you a professional trainer?” Is a good transition to me. I hope my insight from my 3 year workout experience helped to motivate someone out there reaching for their goal.

Add links to bodybuilders working out like mike rashid or ct fletcher

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton