Another Nerd Joining the movement

[RobertMW]

Hello fellow Nerds

 

I ran into Nerd Fitness about a year ago for the first time. For a while I simply browsed Steves posts, not really soaking it in. I was still finishing up the last couple months of my engineering degree, and I wanted to start to get into a bit of shape again. I had grown up through high school playing competetive soccer, baseball, and track (Throwing specifically). I was always in OK shape, nothing spectacular, because I never seemed to have great drive to be AMAZING at anything. I am a fairly big guy at 6' 1" about 220 lb right now at 25, and I think it was mostly size that got me up in ranks during high school and JC sports.

 

Finally, some drive really started to kick in at 19. I had at that point met the love of my life, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. And I had kept throwing into my two years at my JC where I started to be able to do Hammer and Javelin. My throwing coach pushed me to do a 3 day a week gym class with the football team, and for once I started gaining REAL strength.

 

Unfortunately that was cut short by going to my university and getting so bogged down by schoolwork that I let fitness really drag into the gutters. I was mildly depressed, I only had a few good friends (I am a real nerd, slightly socially inept, I make better freinds popping heads in Battlefield and TF2 than I can in person sometimes) and My Love was off finishing her degree about 6 hours away, so it was hard to see the people I really wanted to be around very often.

 

At the end of my second to last year at college, I had finally started to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I was starting to feel better about everything, and decisions were finally able to be made! September 2011 came around, I asked Jennifer to marry me! My senior project was starting up, I had a strong promise of a career after graduation, basically, everything was looking up. I decided that I was going to push myself to be an all around better person, starting with getting back into shape. Thats where I first discovered Nerd Fitness.

 

Reading through Steves posts started to get me on the right track. I was utilizing the FREE gym at school (I miss that now ;-P) eating better, feeling better, and really cranking through work. I went from 218 down to 203 lbs. And was starting to actually look a little in shape. Then my last semester of crunch really hit me hard. I had EVERYTHING going on, senior project, graduating, wedding planning (wedding was September 29th 2012) moving (complete crazyness! We made a balzy move and pushed everything we had and got enough help to get into a house while the market and intrest rates were still at their lowest - Felt like PSYCOS for doing it but we pulled it off) LONG STORY SHORT: I QUICKLY FELL BACK OUTTA SHAPE

 

NEW YEARS DAY 2013

 

Life is GREAT! Just work, friends, and FINALLY all the time I can dream of with my wife. So we figured, hey, lets be cliche, New Years Resolution, get in shape. For real, For LIFE! We wrote down our goals, when we were going to acomplish them by, and what we were going to do to reach them (Yep, read the New Years Article). We signed up at the gym that is very close to where we both work (she is an engineer as well, yes, we are truly made for each other. And yes, this is where I came to the sad realization that I now have to PAY for the gym membership.)

 

I've been following the mantra of LIFT BIG. I almost exclusivly work out in the free weight areas now, where as before I for some reason tried to always get in shape by doing more cardio/plyometrics stuff, it worked, but wasn't quite what I wanted, just couldn't take the plunge till now. I started at 219, and 7 weeks later I officially weigh in at (drum roll.....) 218....... HAHAHA I don't CARE! I have made MASSIVE improvements in my lifts. Squats are up from 160 to 245 with solid sets of 7-8. Deadlifts about the same. Anything I was doing with dumbells I have improved 30-50% as well, and I can do REAL pullups (being my size, they are hard to do if you're only in OK shape). And I am starting to look noticably better, faster and better than I ever did with months of trying to watch how much I ate and cardio/plyos back at school.

 

Long story short, today I read the 20 seconds of berzerk article, and I figured "Hey, I know what I have been putting off for some stupid reason" and here I am, finally joined up on the forums. I look forward to being part of the community for real, starting to get in on the challenges, and really look forward to where I can end up being in about 6 months from now!

 

TL;DR;

 

I found NF, finally started kicking it into gear, getting stronger by the day, and am glad to finally be a real part of the community.

 

Robert

 

 

[Laureleye]

Glad you finally decided to join in.  A challenge just started on Monday, and you can still join.  Click on the CHALLENGE tab, and go to the FAQ for all the info.

[AKLulu]

Welcome!