Transformed by Fitness: How Embracing Wellness Revolutionized My Life

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Fitness has forever changed my life. This is a philosophy I have lived by for the last 10 years. I am most definitely not the most jacked or leanest person out there, but my favorite thing about this journey is that it has no end. It is a journey that revolves around continual improvement in all aspects of your life.

My journey began a little over 10 years ago. I was a freshman in college and thought I knew all about the gym. I spent my senior year of high school working out in a makeshift gym in my bedroom. It wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done. I think back and laugh about how I would get a chair and put several firm pillows on it to create an incline bench using the other half of my bed as the base. I’m not sure why it made sense to me, but at the time it did. A simple thing that could have been fixed by just sticking to the basics of regular and decline push-ups. That is honestly the beauty of fitness: you learn a bunch of principles and apply them, fail at them, learn how to properly apply them, fail again, be consistent in improving on them, and see success.

My first real gym experience was the summer after high school when I went to visit my home in Bosnia with my best friend. We joined a commercial gym and mostly used machines. I am by no means talking down on machines; in fact, I use them more frequently than I did a couple of years ago. If I were to do things differently, I would have read more on proper form and the best compound exercises for beginners. I would have tried my best to master the squat, bench, deadlift, pull-up, and military press. As generic as that sounds, I believe it to have helped me learn proper form and develop a strong mind-muscle connection. This entire summer, my best friend and I would go to the gym and half-ass a bunch of exercises thinking we were going to put on 30 pounds of muscle in a month. We even bought a mass gainer shake, which we later learned was a total mistake. We were both fairly thin guys, but by no means did we need a mass gainer shake.

After this summer of “no gains,” as I like to call it, I started college. I remember going to the weight room and seeing these massive dudes lift 2-3 plates on squats and bench like it was nothing. I had my first real benching experience that day and thought 135 was going to be a warm-up. I couldn’t even get that weight up for a single rep. I was beyond embarrassed and stuck to dumbbells for a while (at least the 45s and 50s could move). Freshman year was tough on me mentally, and I fell into a deep depression. This resulted in eating in a caloric surplus with little to no exercise, which led me to gain 50 pounds. I went from a measly 180 to 230 by the second semester of that year. It wasn’t until the second semester where my friends pushed me to join in on their football workouts. This was the first time I ever squatted, and at first, I started with 205, then even hit 225 for 3 reps! It was honestly exhilarating and was the little boost of motivation that I needed!

The summer after freshman year, I went to spend 3 months in Costa Rica with my best friend and his family. This was the summer where I really began to fall in love with working out. I remember annoying him daily to either go to the gym with me or take me to the gym. I stuck to a simple “bro split” this summer, training one muscle group per day for 5 days a week. I did see some progress, and the pounds continued to come off. I think I was around 210 by the end of the summer. My workouts were starting to feel good, but my nutrition was still absent. I would pretty much just eat what was available and what everyone else was eating. It wasn’t necessarily “unhealthy”; I just wasn’t tracking macros or calories. Costa Rica has amazing cuisine, and I highly recommend going there and trying the famous Gallo Pinto with Salsa Lizano. Thank me later!

When I returned for my sophomore year after that summer, my friends and I all began the Arnold Blueprint to Mass. We were on average spending 2 hours in the gym, 6 days a week. This is where volume, sets, and rep ranges were introduced to me in a way they had never been before. It honestly blew my mind thinking that German Volume Training was actually a thing. 10 sets of 10 for an exercise will definitely get the blood pumping. I fell in love with this program so much that I did the full thing 3 times. Before I knew it, I was a lean machine! I had felt the most confident that I ever had with my body. I would suggest anyone looking for a challenge that loves volume to at least give this a solid go.

Before I knew it, summer was here, and I was going to be spending it in Bosnia. This summer was actually THE SUMMER of a lifetime. I had all the tools to ensure muscle growth at my disposal. No, I’m not talking about steroids; I’m talking about heartbreak. When I say that I battled demons on a daily this summer, I mean it. It had taken such a toll on me that I wasn’t eating. To make matters worse, I had a cyst on my lower abdominal region removed and had to take 3 weeks of recovery time. Those 3 weeks dragged and felt like months. When I was finally cleared, I had one objective, and that was to take every little ounce of pain and frustration out in the weight room. This method not only proved to be effective but forever changed my relationship with weights. I felt amazing after every workout, even the not-so-great pump ones. I continued to follow the Arnold split of working antagonistic muscle groups. I wasn’t even tracking macros; I was simply walking 2 miles to and from the gym in the hilly region of Sarajevo. You may or may not know that the Bosnian diet is very rich in protein and carbohydrates, so there really wasn’t any need to track. I ensured I was drinking enough water and eating an adequate amount of protein daily. I even began to hate rest days. Let it be known that at the end of that summer, I returned to college looking like an absolute weapon. This confidence was Greek God tier!

Junior year, I wouldn’t say that I completely fell off; I just had a lot of things change. I got into a relationship, and I did still work out consistently. I was probably working out 4-5 days a week following what is known as a bro-split (every muscle group getting its own day). I didn’t lose a ton of my progress; I just remained pretty stagnant with it. This led on into the summer where I worked as a lifeguard with my friends, but my diet just was not at its best. I wasn’t my leanest or sharpest, but I still felt healthy.

My senior year is really when I began to fall off. I had started bartending a few nights a week and had two of the busiest semesters of my life. This led to poor diet choices and excessive drinking. While I don’t regret any of it, I still could have done a better job of balancing it all. I was a 22-year-old kid, and looking back at it now, I wouldn’t change any of it. In retrospect, all of these events helped mold the individual I am today. By the end of senior year, I was a whopping 230 pounds again with a lot of excess body weight. I didn’t feel comfortable taking my shirt off in public.

It didn’t get much better when I entered the working world. I tried to improve my diet, but still had the sweet tooth of a toddler. I could go an entire day of clean eating but binged on sugary snacks every evening. It was probably when I left my first job working at a bank where I first began to get my fitness back in order. I followed a workout split I’ve shared with many people over the years. It was a push-pull-legs split with a rest day after every 3rd day of lifting. It focused on heavy compounds at the beginning of each workout and later transitioned to accessory work towards the end. I fell in love with the process once again and, to make things better, worked at a restaurant for some time so, needless to say, I was most definitely getting my steps in.

I followed this workout plan for years until COVID-19 showed its ugly face and my gym was closed for months. After a couple of weeks of not doing any exercise, I began to go stir-crazy. I had just started a new role and had left my serving job behind, so I wasn’t exactly getting much movement in, especially while working from home. I decided to try a 30-day Murph challenge. The Murph is a challenge where you run 2 miles, do 300 air squats, 200 push-ups, and 100 pull-ups, all while wearing a 20lb weighted vest. I will admit that I didn’t use the 20lbs of resistance at first, but needless to say, this challenge definitely filled the void that was missing from no gym in my life. I even ordered some resistance bands online, which at the time were flipping $50 (they’re about $16 today). Supply and demand at its finest, am I right? I also ordered a weighted vest and tried out the actual Murph. It was brutal. I ended up doing a Murph every other day and began incorporating resistance bands for all of the accessory movements. I was basically doing a full-body workout every other day, and I had probably gotten the leanest I’ve ever been in my entire life.

Gyms finally began to open back up, and back to lifting I went. The Murph will always have a special place in my heart as it truly helped me challenge myself (and my joints). I went back to my push-pull-legs workouts and stuck with them until recently I would say. I played around and tried a push-pull-legs + Arnold split. I did enjoy that for a while, but I felt super one-dimensional, meaning I felt like I was only focused on one fitness outlet, which was weightlifting.

In February 2024, I began attending the Men’s Group at Omen Coffee Company in St. Louis, Missouri. After the first meeting, I ended up registering for a half marathon. That tells you just how motivating and inspiring this group of guys is. I find it to be a great way to center myself every other Wednesday and really focus on my goals. This half marathon prep has been interesting to say the least. I hadn’t seriously run in several years, so week one was pretty rough for me. I tried to lift 5 days as well as do 2 easy runs and a long run. Currently, I am lifting 3 days a week and doing the 2 easy runs and long run on the other 3 days. I give myself each Sunday to fully rest and relax from all physical activity. It may be a slow start, but I am falling in love with running again, and I no longer feel like my workouts are boring or “one-dimensional” as a person.

My favorite thing about fitness is that it will affect your life in ways you would not imagine. The more you do it, the more addicted you get to the progress and dopamine that is released from it. It is such a great way to decompress after a long day or even a great way to start your day. It has undoubtedly helped me become more confident, courageous, and addicted to overcoming obstacles.