My 6 Year Transformation From 128 Pounds to West Point National Powerlifter

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Disclaimer: I am being real here. I was going to leave out some parts, but I figured somebody out there might benefit from everything I have to say. Please keep any negativity out of this thread and take it somewhere else. I finally feel comfortable enough to post this and don’t want others to be discouraged if they see me getting put down and think they will too.

I have been waiting to write this post for a long time. What I am going to detail is my complete transformation: everything that lifting has given me. Before I started lifting I was a very meek person with very little confidence. Now, I can say that I am comfortable in my skin. I am proud of the hard work that I put in and glad to be where I am at. I am writing this to hopefully motivate someone to believe that they can do whatever they set their eyes on. It is never too late to make a change and never too late to go after what you want in life.

I started my bodybuilding journey a few months before turning 16. I was 128 pounds. I remember that number; it has stuck with me.

Here is a picture of what I looked like:



I was walking outside in my neighborhood when I was jumped by one of my friends and a couple of other guys. They scraped me up pretty good, but I was able to fight them off and get away. However, it was a very crummy situation overall and I was determined to never let it happen again. That was my starting point.

That was the fire that ignited everything. For a lot of people, the opposite sex is a strong motivation. However, that was never my motivation for starting. I just wanted to become strong enough so that no one could ever do that to me again. I wanted to become a peace keeper and someone that others could look to for protection.

When I first started, like a lot of people, I had absolutely no clue what I was doing. I remember having a pair of 10 pound dumbbells and doing random exercises with them. One thing in particular that sticks out in my mind is that when I first started, I could only do 30 reps with 10lb dumbbells on flat DB bench before reaching failure. It’s crazy to think about, but if you think you are starting low, it doesn’t get much weaker than being able to reach failure with 10 pound dumbbells.

After a few months passed I realized I was going to need to make it to the gym to keep progressing. My home workouts got me pretty far and I was seeing good progress, but I really wanted to start squatting, deadlifting, and benching because that’s what I had ready about online as being the best.

My first gym was a YMCA across town that I would only be able to go to on rare occasions when I could get a ride, as I didn’t personally have a car. But, whenever I did have the chance to go, I ate up the opportunity. I loved stepping into the gym. It didn’t matter that I was the weakest and smallest guy there. I just wanted to get better. In reality, bigger guys with a lot of experience are extremely understanding and want to help as much as they can. You don’t see that when you are just starting out and intimidated, but it’s real thing. If you are just starting out and you think others are going to put you down, I can promise you that’s false. Anyone you approach at the gym that looks like they know what’s going on will more than likely go out of their way to help you out. Besides, for the most part people are too focused at looking at themselves in the mirror anyways.

I was liking the progress I was getting, but the lack being able to go to the gym consistently wasn’t helping me out. Luckily, my parents decided to move to a small town where my high school had a decent weight football weight room that I could use whenever. By this time it was my senior year of high school and I decided that I might as well try to play football for my final year. I started working out with the team and it was really the first time I started doing a lot of volume. I remember throwing up the first few workouts because I just wasn’t used to doing 3 or 4 compound lifts with such intensity and volume.
I started to see some good results though. Here is a picture around the middle of the football season (sorry for the bad quality):



By this point I had put on about 20 pounds of decently lean body mass. I was starting to see the results of my hard work. One thing to note here is this is after VERY consistent lifting and eating habits. My classmates always thought it was odd when I was carrying around my red lunchbox stuffed with any food I could find at my parent’s house. I was doing anything I could to put on mass. I would make several bologna sandwiches and try to down them with water throughout the day when certain teachers didn’t care that I eat in their class.

My parents and I finally moved out of the motel I was living in for the first half of my senior year (this really sucked. Imagine 3 people and a small child in a small room for several months). We moved to a house in the country that had an awesome shop with plenty of room for a weight set. Luckily, my dad found one really cheap at a garage sale in town and paid about $70 for a bench, stand (not a rack), and 300 pounds of plate weights. It wasn’t glorious by any means or very high quality, but it was mine. I finally had the equipment I needed at home to train effectively.

For the next few months I was working out very hard twice a day. I had no clue what recovery was. I know a lot of people don’t think overtraining exists. I’m still working on developing my final stance, but I will definitely say that when I finally forced myself to cut it down to one workout a day, I started seeing much better results again. Maybe I wasn’t eating enough (I was already force feeding by this point). Who knows.
My senior year came to a conclusion and I graduated. I was now faced with the decision on whether I would attend a local university with my friends, join the marines, or attempt to make it into West Point again (I didn’t get in when I applied as a high school senior). I decided to go with the last option and moved to a different state where I had a better chance to gain admission (The admission process involves a lot of steps. One of those steps is getting a nomination from a state official. Some states are much easier than others).

So I packed up the beater car I had saved up enough money to buy while I was working throughout high school (I worked my ass off in high school and was damn proud when I bought that car for myself. I tried to find a good picture of it but couldn’t). I left for another state the morning I turned 18. This is because I had to be 18 to sign my own lease for an apartment.

I drove around on the first day and applied to maybe 20 different restaurants until I got accepted to a few places. I ended up deciding on being an IHOP server, as believe it or not I made the most money doing that as opposed to any other serving job I had the shot at.

So now I was kicking it in a new city by myself just trying to work and go to a local community college at night. That didn’t stop me from working out though. My love for lifting didn’t go anywhere that summer. One of the first things I did was find a gym. I remember asking the lady ast the front desk of the apartment office for gym ideas. She told me there was a Gold’s Gym right down the street. I got super excited until I rolled up and realized it was a Gold’s gym express (lame compared to the venice-style powerhouse I had pictured in my mind).

I decided to sign up for a different gym instead. I loved it. It was the biggest gym I had ever been in with some of the nicest equipment I have ever seen. It is still one of my favorites to this day. I kind of miss that thing.

Here’s a picture I could find of the gym:



Anyways, by this point in time all I cared about was getting big. A buddy and I had the idea for some reason that as long as the scale was moving up, we were doing the right thing. We would literally drink a gallon of chocolate milk a day along with multiple meals and 1,000 calorie shakes we would make in the morning. Looking back, we were way off course. We were eating about 5,000 calories a day. I finally broke the magical 200 pound mark (my top weight was 205) and thought I was the best thing since sliced bread. In reality I was just insanely fat. Here is a shot of one of our weekly milk runs. We did this about twice a week and it was drunk only by us. Absolutely terrible idea by the way if you are thinking of doing this.



Here is a picture right before I joined the military (I was lucky and fortunate to have the opportunity to attend USMA after I applied again).



Looking at the pictures, I definitely don’t think I look good, but to me for some reason I really thought I did back then. Crazy. The biggest lesson for me here is that the scale doesn’t matter. How you look and feel is what really matters.

Over the course of my first year at the academy I started to get more and more interested in powerlifting. I ran some strength programs a couple of times and started to see some decent strength gains. I decided that I really wanted to make it onto the powerlifting team, so I dedicated my life to getting stronger and as lean as I possibly could. In raw powerlifting the name of the game is to be as strong as possible and as lean as possible (this isn’t necessarily the case in equipped powerlifting where having some additional fat can help you fill out your equipment better).

I tried out the first year and didn’t make it. I think by this point my lifts looked something like 350 Squat, 245 Bench, 405 Deadlift. By no means was I strong compared to the powerlifters at my school. However, it was a long way from where I had come and the injury that I had suffered.

The injury. God. I remember it almost every single day. I had a sports hernia that happened from my lack of taking care of myself. If you don’t know what a sports hernia is, look it up sometime. It is nothing like a normal hernia. It is basically a posterior deficiency in your hip compartment. I had two tears: one in my adductor (inner thigh) and one in my rectus abdominis (lower abs). The pain sucked. It was a sharp pain in my pubic area that I was reminded of literally every day as soon as I woke up. Walking around was probably a 3/10 pain. That might not be very high, but when you deal with it for over a year, and it is every single step you take, it really starts to wear on you mentally.

Because of the nature of the injury, I failed to get it diagnosed properly. This is a very common theme with sports hernias. The few people on this board who have had a true sports hernia know exactly what I am talking about. Most doctors don’t understand the phenomenon as they are relatively new to the medical community (the first scientific documents for sports hernias came out in the 1980s).

I battled the injury and for a while decided to stop all lower body exercises and to take it easy in general. This obviously didn’t work to heal tears in my groin. Again, anyone with a sports hernia will understand exactly what I am talking about. For 99.99% of people, surgery is the only option to getting well again.

The end of my first year was approaching and I was about to go into my summer military training. Instead of putting that off for surgery I decided to have my surgery as soon as I got back from field training. This was a smart call, as my injury didn’t get any worse.

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I had my surgery and everything went perfect. To this day, I am extremely grateful and sympathetic to ANYONE who has a sports injury. I have been there and know just how terrible it can be to not have the ability to work out effectively. For most of this, this is a big part of our lives and having to put it off for even a week is a big deal, let alone months or years. My heart truly goes out to you if you have a sports injury. THE BIGGEST ADVICE I CAN GIVE TO ANY NEWER PESON READING THIS: please take care of your body. My injury was a result of never stretching, never doing mobility work, never warming up properly, incorrect form, failure to cool down, and failing to have a holistic approach to training. Please don’t do what I did. I’m serious. If you are going to work out hard you need to do an equal amount of prehabilitation (aka before you get injured) and stretching!

Anyways, I had the surgery.

The following days would be extremely painful, but nothing too major. The worst part was that I had to start from the very bottom again. At this point my lifts were way down after not being able to workout due to military training and the surgery. My first time in the gym after surgery (3 weeks after I had to operation) I benched 115 for 9 repetitions to failure I believe. Squatting and deadlifiting wasn’t even an option to consider.

But I still had that goal in my mind. I still wanted to join the Army powerlifting team and prove to myself that I could do it. I never played sports growing up. As I already said in the article, I was nothing but skin and bones when I started. That season of football that I played was all I ever did for sports except for a couple seasons of tennis.

I did everything I could do every single day to try to get just a little better. At first I couldn’t even do bodyweight squats or bodyweight single-legged deadlifts. I had to do odd hip strengthening stuff that my physical therapist prescribed for me. Those workout were probably some of the hardest that I have had surprisingly enough.

Overall, it was an extremely humbling experience. It taught me a lot about respect and never judging others in the gym. I remember how much it sucked going to the gym and doing light weights and wondering if other people were thinking little of me. In my mind, they had no clue I was doing twice the weight only 3 months before. Bottom line, please treat everyone with respect in the gym and be as polite as possible. We are all there to learn and grow not only our physiques, but as people as well.

Tryouts were in 6 weeks. I had six weeks to go from walking status (by this point I could do bodyweight squats with only slight discomfort; no pain though) to making the team. I didn’t stop to think about whether it was realistic or not. I didn’t let anyone else invade my mental space. This was something that I wanted to do, so I was going to make it happen.

Here is a picture of my second or third time back squatting. I think I did 3 sets of 5 with 225:



A new year was coming up at USMA and I wouldn’t have to deal with a lot of the nonsense they throw at first-year cadets, so that was going to help me out a lot. I did the best I could with my limited free time to prepare as much as possible for tryouts. I carefully planned my carbohydrates and did some other things with my diet to try to set myself up for success as much as possible for tryouts day.

Well, that day came soon. By the second week of school (I believe, can’t remember quite exactly) tryouts were held. I believe my numbers at tryouts were 285 Bench, 365 Squat, and 455 deadlift at 180 pounds. I was pretty much right on the edge of making the team, and even if I made it I was going to be a developmental member of the team and wouldn’t be expected to do much for the team in the way of scoring.

I waited around upstairs after I had completed my attempts. I was waiting for the coach to leave for the day. I was going to catch him and make my case. He came out and I approached him and walked with him through Arvin gym to the front door and outside. I told him that I was willing to do whatever it took and that I would work my ass off to be a member of the team. He smiled and told me that the results would come out next week. Somehow, I made the team.

That was easily the highlight of my entire time at USMA. That team meant, and still does mean, a great deal to me. Needless to say, I got my chance and I wasn’t going to blow it. I became absolutely meticulous in every single thing that I did. I would time my meals and supplements perfectly throughout the day. I had random sticky notes posted in my backpack and around my room that would remind me to take certain stuff and certain times. I would make sure to drink literally 20 oz of water an hour. I had an hour long stretching and mobility routine that I would go through at the end of every day.

I was extremely meticulous in my workouts as well, though I was totally new to the scene and had no clue what was going on compared to all of the veterans on the team. They were very old-school westside type workouts that I had never done before.

But, I kept my word and I worked my tail off. The end of the first semester of my second year at the academy ended unexpectedly though, as the coach was asked to resign. We got a new coach who is extremely knowledgeable and had a lot of passion. He had a PHD in strength and conditioning and had conducted countless research studies on maximizing human performance. Having him as a resource was probably the single best thing that happened to my training. Never before did I carefully structure my workout programs around scientific principles of bodily adaption to stress. The stuff he gave me was insane and I still use some of it today.

The second semester was where I really hit my stride. Our team moved away from using equipment (which I absolutely hated; as a side note, I know before I said I thought the team was raw. As much as I knew about equipment then, I didn’t know this distinguishing factor was a big deal. I thought anyone could do raw and anyone could do equipped. I thought if you were good at one you were good at the other. Any powerlifters in here know that couldn’t be further from the truth). My first powerlifting competition came up, but our team’s strategy was to train through it. Basically, we weren’t going to focus on peaking or preparation for the competition. The reason for this is that we just wanted to qualify for nationals. Qualifying numbers for nationals are very low relatively speaking so none of us had to worry about making the cut.

I was able to ink out a win over the guy right below me. If was an absolutely amazing experience. It was the first time in my life I had put forth a lot of effort towards a sports endeavor and won. If you haven’t ever done a powerlifting competition, definitely don’t rule it out as an option for something to do later down the road.

Here is a picture of that day:



That was a very proud moment for me, but I had something bigger on my mind. I was gunning to be a contender at USAPL Raw Collegiate Nationals in road island. I kept my head down and kept working towards that goal. I started to hit some impressive numbers and was feeling good about my chances.

The fateful day came on April 14. I left the hotel with my boys and I was ready to get after it. My heat was in the afternoon and I would be lifting with group B. Everything was going perfectly. I was feeling amazing, as I had never before taken a break to peak until now. This was it.

I’m just going to cut the story short here and say that I bombed out on bench. As you can imagine, that was an extremely emotional day for me as I had been working my ass off literally every single day to make that happen. However, I had set a goal after my surgery to hit a 500 pound squat. While I didn’t quite hit that, I was able to pull off 474 pounds at 181 pounds and moved it at a decent speed.

Here is a photo:



I have since then left the academy to pursue other dreams and passions. As of now I am still working out but have taken more of a general fitness approach for the time being. Anyone who has done powerlifting for any amount of time knows that it is pretty tough on your body. For now I am just trying to take care of myself and rest up. I plan to hit it hard in the future and continue to powerlift, but throughout my journey I have learned that this is a marathon, not a sprint.

I hope my story can help to give you some context of what is possible. Don’t ever let someone tell you that you can’t achieve something. If you would have told the 15 year old me that I would squat 474 pounds on a national stage before the age of 21, there is no way I would have believed you. Even more than that, don’t ever let your own beliefs and thoughts hinder you. Always strive for greatness in every single thing that you do. Be proud of who you are and work to be the very best that you can be every single day.

I truly hope that my story will motivate and inspire you to do great things. Know one thing. I believe in you and know that you can do it. You have an amazing opportunity to chase your dreams and make them a reality. Whatever it is that you want in life, let this be an example that with hard work you can achieve more than you ever thought.

Thanks a lot for reading and sharing in my life story.

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nice bro

Thanks brother. Appreciate it!