My Path to elitefts™

Sometimes, when you least expect it, life hits you with a reality check. I am reminded of one of my most embarrassing moments every time I see a bright green BP Gas station sign.

In my mid-twenties, I worked as the manager of World Gym in Macedonia, Ohio. It was a great time in my life. I worked 60-plus hours a week, but loved every second of it. I was making good gains in the gym, had a great crew to train with, and all seemed good. Not only was this particular World Gym the place in which most of the serious local powerlifters and bodybuilders trained, but it also had a sense of history to it. It was also the type of place where, if you took a shower there, you were lucky if someone did not steal your clothes as a prank. (For any of the guys from there that might be reading this…I kept an extra set of clothes hidden in a bag above the ceiling tiles, so that’s why you never got me).

There was a BP station right at the entrance of the industrial park in which the gym was located, so that was where I often fueled-up. This station had about 10 gas pumps lined up and kept a pretty high volume of traffic. On this particular day, I happened to pull up directly across from a very attractive girl with silky brunette hair, a sweet smile, and curves guaranteed to distract.

I was shy in high school, but lifting definitely provided me with confidence (if not game). For whatever reason though, I was channeling the spirit of James Bond on this particular afternoon. I was laying down some funny conversation, she was responding nicely, plans were made and her number was eagerly jotted down on a slip of paper. Feeling on top of the world, I’m sure I had extra confidence in my stride as I strutted in to pay for my gas. I said goodbye to my new friend with a cocky smile, hopped in my car and then it ALL went to hell.

It’s always those simple details. In this case, everything seemed fine at first. I didn’t really hear anything over the radio. There were two attendants working at the station and one of them was outside. I saw him drop the bag of trash he was carrying and yell inside to his co-worker. As I glanced at my left rear view mirror, I saw it – the gas nozzle and a small section of severed hose, still in my tank and ripped free of the pump. Humiliated, I kept driving, ducking my head and I never once glanced at the girl. I just hope there was some shut-off mechanism so that she was not splattered with 94-octane. As my chest went concave, I reached over with my right hand, crumpled the paper with the girl’s number on it, and decided it was best to just forget those five minutes ever happened.

The next morning, I went into work a bit early and the gym was busy as usual. I didn’t notice that it was a bit quiet until I walked into my office. There, displayed on my desk was the gas station nozzle. The second I froze in my tracks it began – howls of laughter. You know the kind, the same ones you heard when someone in high school gym class got their shorts yanked down in front of the cheerleading squad. If my luck wasn't bad enough, one of the guys I trained with was a few pumps down from me when I was talking to the girl. He heard me rip the nozzle clear off the pump, and followed me a few miles until he saw it fall out of my gas tank. Before there was even something called social media, this sonuvabitch spread my story faster than another Manny Ramirez steroid scandal.

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Senior Content Manager for elitefts™

So what does this humiliating story have to do with anything? Basically, to segue about how incredibly humbled I am to begin my new job as the Senior Content Manager for elitefts™. What this means is that I will play a major role in directing the print and multimedia content that you see on this site…all to assist Dave and the talented team here in the realization of their vision.

While many might feel themselves caught in the grip of fear at such a daunting task, I am thrilled by the excitement of being a part of something that is such a noble and (dare I say) SACRED endeavor. Helping people reach their training goals and working to elevate the exchange of strength training concepts is not something that should be taken lightly and elitefts™ is, without a doubt, the best source of practical info and guidance on or offline.

I am excited to learn from Dave, Traci and the staff here, and cannot wait to start my work of coordinating the articles that make up the site. Imagine being the biggest baseball fan on the planet and then hired as a scout for your favorite team. The ability to network with giants in the industry and to interact and learn from the highly-educated and insightful elitefts™ customers (the single greatest mass depository of strength training wisdom and experience on the planet) makes me feel as though I should be the one writing checks to Dave.

So yes, I feel extremely blessed. I suspect at this point many of you are asking who in the hell I am and how did I come to stumble upon this sweet job? Let’s go back a few years before our gas station intro.

The Background

I began lifting around the age of 14, not unlike most of you probably. My older brother, Phil, was big into lifting and had a few years worth of Joe Weider’s Muscle Builder magazines. Being five years older than me, his brief flirtation with lifting ended shortly after high school and I inherited his weights and magazines (although the stack of Hustlers remained in his possession).

Unlike my brother, I was scrawny in the style of Screech from “Saved by the Bell,” except without the cool hair. I graduated from high school at 5’10” and weighed 126 pounds...if I happened to have a lot of change in my pocket. Sadly, this was after a few years training.

I remember at one point, after months of training, I wondered if there was something unique in my body that just did not respond to weights. I thought long and hard and finally realized that it didn’t matter. I LOVED to train. It didn’t matter to me that my shoddy genetics did not reward with huge increases in bodyweight and training poundage. I loved the way the knurling cut into my palm, the bar dug into my traps, and the soreness that went bone-deep two days after a workout. I loved to train for its own sake, and everything else was secondary.

It turns out (as is so often the case in our early years of lifting) that my genetics were not as lame as I guessed; I just didn’t put all the pieces together. In my case, I didn’t reach the extreme level of calories required by my metabolism. (I wrote a three-part series of articles on weight gain that will run in IronMan beginning in about a month). Over a period of about five years, I trained and ate my way to an 84-pound increase. My less-than scientific dietary program consisted of:

  • One gallon of whole milk
  • A huge thermos of weight gain protein sipped throughout the day
  • Half of a pan of lasagna or a family-sized Tuna Helper with an extra can of tuna added
  • Bowl of oatmeal with a scoop of protein and some blueberries mixed in
  • 3 sandwiches (PB&J or lunchmeat)
  • 6-8 yogurts or a quart of kefir
  • An apple and an orange
  • 16 eggs (six-egg omelet at breakfast, six-egg omelet at night and four boiled eggs throughout the day)
  • A bunch of amino and desiccated liver tablets, eaten throughout the day
  • A half-gallon of chocolate ice cream

I ate this EVERY day for years and it was what I needed to fill out my frame to normal standards. If I fell asleep before eating that half-gallon of ice cream, I would be three pounds lighter the next morning. Once a week, I would eat a serving of veggies in order to remain “health-conscious.” Many of you know what it is like to force-feed yourself over an extended period of time. It quickly gets old, but it is effective.

One of the things I did prior to starting this weight gain journey was to send letters to about a dozen different experts in the industry. These were guys like Fred Hatfield, Jerry Brainum, Dan Duchaine and Jim Wright that wrote about the science behind training. I sent the same half-dozen questions to each of them. Most replied within a few weeks (this was pre-internet) with pretty detailed responses.

Michael Zumpano (founder of Champion Nutrition and co-author of the Underground Steroid Handbook) was one of the people that took the time to reply to me. In addition to answering my questions, he commented that he was impressed by my letter. He thought that I was a talented writer, and also felt I was asking all the right questions. He told me that he was planning to launch a newsletter and invited me to be a contributor. I remember panicking a bit, thinking “He doesn’t even know that I’m just a kid!” but his encouraging letter definitely lead me to where I am now.

The Highlights

I don’t want to bore you with excessive background info, so I’ll give you some of the highlights. I had a personal training business for quite awhile, sold exercise equipment for a few years, and wrote over a hundred published articles (for all the newsstand "musclehead" mags). For a couple of years (’98-01), I published my own magazine called Peak Training Journal, which garnered a strong cult following. We covered both bodybuilding and powerlifting, had some heavy-hitting science writers, and maintained a very high level of journalistic integrity in an industry that never saw anything so absurd. Many referred to us as a Consumer Reports for the sports nutrition industry because we tested products and really dug into the efficacy behind things that were being hyped as if they were the be-all, end-all of sports nutrition. I was given the nickname “The Guerrilla Journalist” by Jerry Kindela, the Editor of Flex at the time, which seems to have stuck.

As you can imagine, it was a great time for me. I traveled to gyms, meets and expos across the country. I slept in the back of my SUV or on one of the local strength athlete’s couches, to cover events or how different athletes train, and shared info over meals and in the gym. It is the type of networking that is my absolute favorite part of being involved in this business.

One of those huge, 350-million a year grossing, California-based companies tried to take over Peak Training Journal since they saw the level of influence we were developing. They had a rep for driving smaller competitors out of business by running up frivolous legal bills if they refused to sell. After spending $30,000 on a lawyer that wasn’t going to put much effort into things for me since he knew we were against opponents with much deeper pockets, I closed the magazine rather than let them tarnish what I had built there.

I made some good friend in the sports nutrition industry and went on to work as a consultant for a handful of sports nutrition companies. I later helped build two popular websites in our industry and co-authored a book with Shelby Starnes that is available here on elitefts™.

Now, I'm given the opportunity to work at elitefts™, a company in which I intend to devote my future. To say I went into this optimistically is an understatement. I had this article and a second one already written before my interview with Dave. I felt that I fit the company and role perfectly…but you never know who your competition might be. I was prepared to tell Dave that if there was a second candidate he was considering and we were closely-matched, I was willing to be strapped together by the wrists and battle to death-or-surrender with rusty knives for the job. But once our interview hit the five-hour mark, I saw that a death match was not going to be necessary.

I'm sure you all heard more than enough about me. I look forward to getting to know each and every one of you and helping you in any way I can.