@Panopticum You asked for it! Haha.
Alright, so starting from Genesis: I was a fat kid growing up, but it was the 90s, so I was “90s fat kid” fat and not current “gelatinous cube fat kid” that is in the modern era. I related a lot to Bobby Hill.
When I turned 14, I “turned the ship around” and lost a little over 20lbs of the course of the summer. I went from 5’9 and 176lbs to 5’9 and hanging around 152-158lbs. This was also the age I started weight training, as I grew up with the myth that lifting weights prior to turning 13 would stunt your growth.
Despite being a fat kid, I was still active growing up. My parents insisted that my brother and I always be involved in SOME sport, which was awesome of them. So prior to this point I had played t-ball, soccer, swam (“competitively”, in the sense I at least tried to race against others in meets), ice hockey, American football, and had started training Tae Kwon Do at age 8. I would go on to join the wrestling team in the fall and do that for 3 years, which was AMAZING for my physical shape.
The only real issue was that, since it was a weight class based sport, it meant I stayed at 152-158lbs for the next 3 years. Which, given I was a fat kid, I’m sure I woulda been too afraid to eat to gain anyway, but still. Here I am at my 17th Birthday at around 155lbs.
I genuinely don’t remember many of my starting numbers. I know I started with the bar on bench at 14, and I didn’t squat or deadlift until I got to college. Most lower body work was athletics and some leg pressing/curls/extensions. My high school coach taught me that squats and deadlifts were dangerous…yay. But I still lived training, and was always doing physical stuff. Really, martial arts were my passion and lifting was a thing I did to get better at it.
The weekend that wrestling ended, I put on 10lbs and it never went away. It was a bingefest of cookies, sweets, junkfood, etc. All the things I had been denying myself for those 3 years to make weight.
When I got to college at age 17 (I turned 18 that Oct), I had access to a much bigger weightroom AND a dinning hall that was buffet style, so I put on another 10lbs rapidly. I went for a bench max before turning 18 and managed 275. To this day, 275lbs is STILL significant to me whenever I bench it, because it was my first ever max.
The summer after my freshman year, I came home to my crappy standard bench and my dad challenged me to be able to bench 300lbs before the summer was over. So I did just that, on a standard bench rated to hold 300lbs INCLUDING the lifter, haha. So I had a 300lb bench at 18/almost 19 at a height of 5’9 and the mid 180s with around 5 years of training.
I also still had no squat or deadlift. I eventually decided I wanted to “be a powerlifter” because we only knew powerlifter and bodybuilding back then and of COURSE powerlifting made you strong for martial arts, so I stumbled into “Westside Barbell for Skinny Bastards” off of t-nation (version 1)
And just as an aside, the first time I saw the photo of Joe Defranco I thought “Holy f**k I wanna be THAT!”
I, of course, butchered the program, but while running that I was given a copy of “Beyond Bodybuilding” by Pavel Tsastouline, and would alternate between a few months of WS4SB and a few months of Pavel’s 3-5, using periodization completely unbeknownst to me. Somewhere in the middle of all that I did my first run of Super Squats, achieving a 20x310 Denver squat (mile high) and hitting a 325lb bench at a bodyweight of 202lbs, first time I was ever over 200lbs.
Before graduating college, I hit my first ever 405 deadlift and had like a 365 squat.
Upon graduation, I hung up my gloves (was training MMA all through college) and bought full into lifting. It was 2007/2008 at that point, so I completely drank the Dave Tate Elitefts Koolaid and was eating everything in my path to get as big and strong as possible. I topped out at 217lbs, with a 365lb touch and go bench that I have NEVER replicated, a 540lb belteless terrible form deadlift and a 420 squat
I was 22 at that point, so 8 years of training.
Started a new job, moved to a new place, blew out my back in a new gym, couldn’t deadlift for 3 years, dealt with a lot of ennui, contemplated quitting lifting, then a powerlifting meet showed up in my area and I gave it “one last shot”, and at age 25/26 posted a 474-342 (highiest ever in competition)-525 showing at 198lbs
Did 2 more meets, got skinnier, competed in my final powerlifting meet at the age of 27 as a 181 and got a 502 squat that had eluded me FOREVER, a 336 bench and a 601 deadlift: first ever 600lb pull in comp
Moved again, more stuff happened, new gyms, new lives, started competing in strongman, found a new passion in that, and accomplished probably the greatest feat of deadlifting in my life with this set of 7x585+chains at a bodyweight of 195lbs at the age of 29, so 15 years of training.
I went on to rupture my hamstring, tear my ACL and fracture my patella in a strongman competition later that year.
And funny enough (a weird sort of funny), I’ve documented that entire journey since here on t-nation
And ACTUALLY had a log slightly before that too
Soooo…that! Haha. Hope that helps!