So I thought I’d give a bit more detail about my training history to give a better idea of where I started and how I’ve come to where I am now.
I began training for football, baseball, and swimming when I was 13-14, so much of my early training was sports-specific. I was a big fan of Defranco’s WS4SB program all throughout high school and really progressed a lot using that. I was planning on playing college football on the D1 level, but suffered a pretty serious knee injury my senior year in high school which resulted in a couple surgeries that lasted through my freshman year in college.
After that, football was out of the question, so I primarily stuck with the sports-specific training, while discovering some new methods on this site and at elitefts. My freshman and sophomore years in college I did a ton of 5/3/1 training, gave Smolov a try, and did a variety of programs by CT and others on the site. I really made a lot of good progress on 5/3/1 and these programs.
In the spring of my sophomore year, I had a short stint where I trained for strongman at a facility that was located near my school and I loved it. I competed in a strongman competition up in Maine that year and actually ended up placing second in my class. The thread with videos from that is up here on the forums somewhere if you want to check it out. After that though, I became interested in bodybuilding, and that’s when I first contacted Layne Norton.
At this point, I was weighing around 200-205 and I contacted Layne about working with him to do a lean bulk. I worked with Layne for about 6 months at that point, starting in May of 2010 and going until around December of 2010. In that span, I trained exclusively using his Power Hypertrophy Adaptvive Training protocol while slowly gaining and I made some of my best strength gains in my life on that program. In that 6 month span, my weight went from 205-230. Again, I logged all of this on the forums and you can find it somewhere.
After this, I became very interested in John Meadows’ techniques, as around that time (early January of 2011) was when he first started posting about Mountain Dog Training. I decided to incorporate a number of his techniques into my PHAT split and eventually trained with a split that resembled his. I
In May of 2011, I decided to diet down for my first contest, which was the Granite State Open in New Hampshire, an NGA show. I worked with Layne for prep and did my own training at this time. There is a contest prep thread in the BBing forum somewhere from that time where I logged all progress. This prep really helped teach me a lot about myself. I ended up taking first in the novice at that show and was very pleased with how everything went. I was also hooked on bodybuilding at that point haha!.
After this, I decided to contact John Meadows and I started working with him for training. We worked together from around March of 2012 until January of 2013, and I made some amazing gains with his programs. There was a point where I was training every day, 7 days/week at that point and recovery was still great.
I started law school in 2012, but training did not take a hit, as I was still working with JM and was making as much progress in terms of hypertrophy as I ever had in my life. While some might have thought that BBing and law school don’t mix, I actually find them to work very well together, as the intense lifting allows for a great physical release from the sedentary nature of law school. While in law school, at the beginning of my second semester in my first year, I decided to train for a powerlifting competition, which was in April of 2013.
I was helped in training by Det from the forums and I ended up putting up some pretty decent numbers in the 220 class: 550/340/665, which actually gave me an “elite” raw total. I would love to compete in powerlifting again, and very well may once I get into the swing of the offsason. After this competition, I decided I was ready to compete again in bodybuilding and hired Layne for prep. We prepped from May until October for the OCB National Championships which takes us till about now, when started this thread.
Overall, in my training career, I’ve competed in strongman, powerlifting, and bodybuilding, and could see myself doing all of them again. Right now, my major interest is in bodybuilding, and that’s where I’m placing a majority of the focus. However, I can certainly see myself pursuing all three in the future, as they all bring different things to the table and are all a ton of fun.
Hopefully this gives a good idea of my training history and progression.
