RESULTS & EXPERIENCE
Empty bar to two plates. 135 to 200 pounds.
4+ years training · Two plates on the bench for reps · 65 lb gained · Muncie area and online
I was fifteen, at the YMCA, 135 pounds, and the bar on its own was too heavy.
For the next three years I did what most people do. I'd train for a few weeks, then school or work would get busy and I'd disappear for a month. I'd come back and start over. I went months without seeing anything change — pushing a lot less than I thought I was, and not realising it. Three years of that.
What turned it around wasn't discipline. It was finally understanding programming — how to structure a block, when to add weight, and what to eat to grow on.
I still saw more progress in a few months than in the three years before it.
I could see the difference in the mirror inside three months.
Training changed the way I thought before it changed the way I looked. It works on your mind more than your muscles — you learn you can decide to do something hard and then actually go and do it, and that follows you out of the gym. That's the real value, and it's the thing I most want to hand to somebody else.
I started coaching the way most people do: friends and family asking what I was doing. Before this I worked job to job, mostly hard warehouse work. This is the first thing I've done that felt like it was worth doing properly.
I work with people who want to get bigger, stronger, or both. And I think training is simpler than the internet makes it look — mostly you need a plan that makes sense and someone to push you to be your best.