First and foremost if you want to understand me, you have to understand I’m a family man. My wife, Emily, and my son, William, are by far the best thing that has ever happened to me. I am so thankful for them. None of what I do would be possible (or worth it) without them.
My wife and I both moved around a little bit in our younger years, but I guess you could now say we are both from Texas, but right now we live in Florida. I am one of the lucky ones because I got to marry my dream girl. We met in 2006 at Texas Tech University, we married in 2010, and we had our son in 2012.
A little more background…
I grew up all over the place because my Dad was in the military but my parents settled in Texas and that is where a majority of my life has been spent, and I went to Texas Tech University. Yeah, I guess I’m Texan. After graduating from Texas Tech, I went on to pursue my goal of being a pilot in the Air Force. It was a lot of work to get to that goal. I worked my ass off for 4 years of college and was selected to be a part of the prestigious Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training (ENJJPT, top 1% of Air Force Aviators). I was injured while pulling G’s during the training program which resulted in surgery. The surgery was supposed to be a quick fix, and bam back in the aircraft. However, the surgery didn’t go as planned and I cannot fly again until a repeat surgery can be accomplished. While recovering from surgery, I started End of Three Fitness as something fun to do and to keep me fitness focused.
I love to build and create, whether it is a fitness program, a DIY power rack or refinishing a coffee table. I figured why not combine the things I love to do and see what happens. So in 2011, End of Three Fitness was created!
How did this fitness thing start?
My fitness quest started in high school, and since then it has been research, reading and trial and error. I have learned a lot. I have studied, sweat, puked, bled, and everything else to make myself better at what I love to do. Funny thing is that if I knew what I know now, then, I could have taken myself where I am today in probably a year or two as opposed to 8 or 9.
I went on a beach trip for a family reunion when I was in the 9th grade and hadn’t really given any thought to fitness or diet. I thought people just got stronger and faster over time. Hmmidiot. Anyway, my cousin was a gym owner and amateur bodybuilder, and he took a look at me and said “You need to work out, you’re too skinnyâ€. I wasn’t even offended. I said ok, how do I do that? He said I will send you some stuff when you get home, just try it out. When we got back from the beach trip he sent me a meal plan for hard-gainers and a simple lifting routine. My obsession was born.
I made a lot of mistakes and started down the terrible path most young teens find themselves in todayObsessed with their biceps, taking any and every supplement out there and sacrificing health for vanity.
Well some of that stuff worked…I guess. I went from a tiny 139 pound kid to a 200 pound bigger kid.
Things are starting to click!
It was not until college that everything started to fall in to place. A good friend and long time training partner, Barrett, and I were working out one day when his dad came over and said “How about you try a real man’s workout†and he kind of laughed and walked away. What was a real man’s workout? We are lifting heavy things, what is more manly than that? Barrett told me his Dad does this thing called CrossFit. You just go to the website and get a workout every day. My first workout was Fran. I struggled through it and did strict pull-ups and my first time was 5:42. A new obsession was born, but this time it was different.
I was more interested in doing things correctly instead of worrying about numbers. I wanted to live a healthy life and have a clean diet. I wanted to be the most well rounded I possibly could be, not stuck in one domain of fitness. That is where I am today, and I am loving it.
Am I an expert?
No!! I have no advanced degrees in physiology stapled to my wall. I am just a guy in a garage doing it ALL himself. I build my equipment, I create my own programming, and I am responsible for my own success or failure. I am just another member of the crowd standing right next to you. I don’t preach and I am not perfect. I live a normal life and don’t have hours and hours to train each day. I am probably just like you, figuring all of this out one day at a time.
But we are all somewhere in our journey, and chances are, I’ve been there. Need to lose weight; I’ve been there (once, and never again). Want to build muscle and mass, I’ve definitely been there. Want to get better at CrossFit, I’ve been there. And I still am in a lot of these places. More importantly, do you want to live a healthy lifestyle and fit fitness into your life? Let’s do it.
I do have some experience
I acted as the speed and agility coach for court sports at Texas Tech and was the Director of Physical Training for military programs at Texas Tech as well. I trained hundreds of officer candidates at Texas Tech and helped them develop their fitness. It was a great opportunity. I had a chance to train large groups of 80+ and also train small groups of 3-4. I learned a lot about what a person needs to succeed physically and how to teach on an individual level. I try to take some of those concepts and apply them to my blog.
Favorite Quotes
“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at deathâ€
-Albert Einstein
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on†has solved and always will solve the problems of the human raceâ€
-Calvin Coolidge
“How you start is important, very important, but in the end it is how you finish that counts. It is easier to be a self-starter than a self-finisher. The victor in the race is not the one who dashes off swiftest but the one who leads at the finish. In the race for success, speed is less important than stamina. The sticker outlasts the sprinter in life’s race. In America we breed many hares but not so many tortoises.â€
– B.C. Forbes
“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If you quit, however, it lasts forever.â€
-Lance Armstrong
“Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speechâ€
Martin Fraquhar Tupper
“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to haveâ€
-Thomas Jefferson