TBT and life lessons from a skinny kid

As the majority of you know by now, I generally avoid posting selfies or a lot of pictures of myself on this site. The reason for that is that one of my biggest pet peeves is trainers and fitness athletes who think everyone wants to look like them and should do exactly what they do. This is not about me, it's about you. But today I decided to post these pictures for two reasons. First off because one of them is just fucking funny, and secondly, for what they symbolize to me.

 I can still remember back when I was competing, in the picture on the right, I was training for the Junior USA bodybuilding championships, which is a very high-level national  competition. I will never forget the day that one of the members of the gym, who later became one of my best friends, came up to me and asked me what I did for my arms. Maybe it was the low-carb diet or the fact that I was just tired of people looking for some secret, but my response to him was as follows. I said “Why don’t you tell me what you did this weekend?”  He proceeded to tell me about the clubs that he went to, how many drinks he had, etc. I told him that in the last six months I had only one drink and it was a rum and Diet Coke (which was terrible by the way.)

 My point was that there is no secret. Actually, that’s not true. There is a secret. The secret is hard freaking work and a ton of dedication and sacrifice.  In the picture on the top, I am on stage next to Craig Richardson, (I'm in the middle) who later went on to become a professional bodybuilder. The reason I mention this, is that the way I went from being the skinny dude with the mullet, high tops and jean shorts on the left to someone who was sharing the stage with a future professional bodybuilder was through a tremendous amount of personal sacrifice and commitment.

  I missed out on a lot of things that most other 26 year olds were doing. I didn’t go out. I didn’t party. Ever summer during college I worked 8-5 and then went to the gym and worked out every night for 2 hours and went home and went to bed. All summer, every year for four years. After four years of that I did my first contest. Over the next 10 years I won a lot of shows and got a lot of trophies but what I got most was an education for life, and that was this expression: “You have to be willing to sacrifice who you are today for who you want to become.”

That lesson lives with me to this day. People still ask me “How did you go from being the new guy at the gym to the busiest trainer in such a short time?” The answer is the same. Once I decided to get into training clients again, I made the decision to get up at 4 am every day in order to fit 6 clients a day in before I had to get home and work my full-time job. Just like many of you, I have two kids and a wife and a lot of responsibilities. But this was important to me so I gave up watching TV and doing other useless shit at night in order to pursue something I love and something that would benefit my family. I could have continued sleeping til 7 and just going about my easy, normal life but that wouldn’t cut if for me. I was being called to do something greater with my life, and that is helping people.

My point in this post is not to say how great I am or to impress everyone, but rather to inspire everyone out there who is also sacrificing a lot to live the life that they want. It doesn’t come easy. I see many of you on this page in the gym at 5 and 6 am, when most people are sound asleep. I know many of you spend hard earned money on training with me, gym memberships, etc. It’s a sacrifice. But that is what it takes. And guess what? All of you who are doing that are miles ahead of the rest of the world who are comfortable and lazy and not achieving what they want in life, whether that is in career, family or fitness. At the end of the day, any successful person will tell you the same thing. To achieve something you never have, you need to be willing to do something you have never done. That is the lesson I learned from bodybuilding, from the iron, and that is something that I will strive to pass on to all of the people I touch in my life and especially my children. I hope that this inspires you to go after whatever it is that you love and to also take a moment to be proud, knowing that each and every one of you is already sacrificing and making a commitment to better yourself and that is truly something to be proud of.

Iron will- “A burning determination that cannot be stopped or hindered by anything.”

-Scott
www.GetOnThePROGRAM.com

Interested in learning more about how to get stronger and join the Iron Will team? email me info@ironwillstrengthstudio.com and we'll chat.