I Am An elitefts™ Athlete

I've seen a lot of gyms or products that promote athletes implying they (or their products) got them to the high level which they are at now. In a lot of cases, the athlete was already at a very high level before ever starting with them. They may use those products now, but weren't using them from the beginning. That, in itself, isn't such a bad thing. If you take a high-level athlete and train him to achieve a higher level; that is something very impressive. If you help an athlete achieve a higher level through your products, that is also impressive. I just feel it should be asked, "Did you help create an athlete from the beginning, or did you make a great athlete better?" Both are great achievements, but very different.

Believe

I feel very fortunate that all my sponsors, people and companies that helped me, are ones that I believe in. I never took on a sponsor or promoted anything I haven't actually used or believed in. I turned down some potential sponsors because I wouldn't say I used them when I haven't ever used them before. However, I do keep in mind that I never made any huge money or was even offered any huge money to sponsor a product. I like to think the money would make no difference to me and I would never sponsor a product I thought sucked just for money. I suppose, that's a hard question to answer without the offer actually being put in front of me. I do believe our morals and code of ethics are one of the very few things in life that are truly our own that no one can take from us, we can only give them away or choose to let them go. With that being said, I'd like to show my appreciation of the people, sponsors and companies that helped me along the way. One of the biggest and most important to me that helped me achieve the things I accomplished in strength is elitefts™. They were with me from almost the very beginning and stuck by me the whole way.

My First Competition

Most people know I lifted weights in some form during my high school days and lifted ever since with probably no more than six months off here and there. My powerlifting career started in a small town on the east side of the state of Nevada. I was living and training in small gym in Elko, Nevada. I trained to pretty much just get bigger and stronger. I had no real scientific or technical approach. I liked to lift heavy and hard. I switched from program to program (ones that I read in some book or bodybuilding magazine). A couple of guys in the gym approached me about a bench press meet they were putting on in a few weeks. I thought they wanted me to go and watch, which sounded pretty cool to me. It turns out they wanted me to compete and after a few weeks of hounding, I gave in. I didn't really think of myself as strong and was one of those guys that thought, "Well if could bench X amount, then maybe I would compete." Looking back now, I have to thank them for pushing me into it and starting my journey. So, thank you Wade Jensen and Raul Lopez! With no special training and no idea or clue of a bench shirt, I showed up and benched 405 pounds raw. I took second place and had an amazing time. I hadn't competed in anything since college and that fire was raging again after the meet.

Full-Power

I wanted to compete more after that meet and knew I wanted to go for a three-lift competition. I moved back to Reno and changed jobs, which caused me to take six months off from the gym. I got back into it and had about six months to get ready for the full meet back in Elko. At this meet, I  1700 pounds. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was somewhere around a 650 squat, 415 bench, and a 635 pound deadlift. I opened my squat with 650 and blew out my single-ply Frantz poly suit and missed the lift. So, I went raw because that was my only option (it was not an option to bomb or give up) and I hit it on my third attempt. I had a bench shirt, but knew so little about them and ended up getting almost nothing out of the suit. My deadlift was also raw, I had no idea how to get down to a bar in a suit anyway. Ha ha! I was happy with the meet and looking forward to training for another competition.

elitefts™ Seminar

Well, I faced another major job change and six months of not being able to train. I missed training and wanted more and more to compete again. I thought a lot about it and knew I could be pretty good if I put my mind into it. I also knew that the gains I made were not going to get me where I wanted to be and that the training I was doing was not the best it could be. Everything I did was really old school stuff. I was training a lot of 5x5 stuff and did a couple of 12 to 16 week standard programs I read about in the magazines. I decided if I was going to go for this, then I was going full-blast and I was going to have to learn from the best people I could get a hold of. In my mind, this is the point were I really started to train and not just workout. I contacted Dave Tate of elitefts™ about a seminar just a few hours away in California. I scraped the money together and made the trip. Without a doubt, this was the best money I ever spent when it came to strength. It was better then any DVD, book, suit, bench shirt, wrap, etc. I learned so much in two days, that it was insane. I couldn't wait to get back to the gym and change everything. For me, it was a ground-up approach. I had a good base of strength, but everything else had to change and be rebuilt. I started squatting and benching with an empty bar because it was all the weight I could do correctly. My posterior chain had huge weak links in it that needed to be fixed. I went about fixing my technique and my training with serious intensity.

By this time, I was training in a gym and, let me say, it got a little annoying at times. There were other powerlifters in there, but they were all old school guys. I got questions asking if I was hurt because I wasn't lifting heavy. I got questions about what kind of training I was doing or what kind of exercises I was doing. The responses would usually be something like, “Oh yeah, I heard about that stuff. Old school is the best school.” I just kept asking myself who was stronger, Dave Tate and the guys at Westside...or the guys in my gym? I had a plan, and I was going to stick with it no matter what. I would every now and again go back over the information Dave gave me and the notes I took from the seminar. It reminded me how much sense all of the theories he taught me made. Every now and again I called Dave with questions or just to get advice. He was always willing to help me out. Within six months, I was surpassing my previous strength with a wide-open future. On a side note, I feel I should say that when you're changing your technique completely, it's still important to lift heavy. You can't just go light and only increase to where your technique fails. You still have to push your body and the strength you have in good technique. It's a bit of a balancing act.

 The Elko Meet

The next year I did the Elko meet with my new technique and training. I totaled 1,800 pounds. I wanted to keep things rolling ahead, though. I attended another elitefts™ seminar with Dave Tate that a guy in town put on. I wanted to get a new training partner on board with this style of training and I wanted to brush up on what I previously learned. Plus, it gave me a chance to pick Dave's brain a bit more. I don't really remember when I actually became a sponsored elitefts™ athlete, but as far as I'm concerned, they were with me in the very beginning. I think I was in the first wave of athletes elitefts™ started to sponsor. Ever since I started powerlifting and even as a sponsored athlete, I often got great advice through Dave, Jim, or other elitefts™ athletes personally or through their logs, and through the tons of information on the site. Then, as I kept getting better, I had more opportunities to meet and hang out with the best-of-the-best, collecting so much amazing information along the way. I took everything in and tried to be the absolute best lifter I could. Elitefts™ was always there though, and always had an impact on my training. With their help, I ended up putting an average of just over a 100 pounds a year on my total until I broke past 2700 pounds.

 Greatest Strength-Training Information

Today I still feel elitefts™ is the greatest source of strength training information on the net. It meets the needs of powerlifters, strongman, and athletes in so many different sports. There's so much bullshit out there and people trying to sell shit, but elitefts™ is the real deal. I'm big on looking at where I've been, as well as looking at where I want to go. Looking back helps from repeating mistakes, and reminds me about some good lessons I learned that I tend to forget. When I look back at my early days of powerlifting, I always think of Dave Tate and elitefts™. I leaned so many important lessons from them. They taught me training principles that are still the base of my training programs today. They taught me the basics of technique that I still hold true to. It is my feeling that without elitefts™ or Dave Tate, I would never have achieved the things in powerlifting that I have so far. In fact, I would probably be still trying to hit a 900 pound squat! Ha!

Thank You Dave

In the past, I tried to thank Dave in person for teaching me all he did and letting him know that he's a huge part of how I was able to put up some of my big totals. I can't remember his exact reply, but it was something along the lines of, “I didn't do anything, you're the one that did all the work.”

After my first seminar with Dave, I went up to thank him afterwards. I told him I wanted to thank him for putting on the seminar and for all the great information I learned, but there was one bad thing. He asked what that was. I said, “Now I know what you know about training, and I am going to beat your total!”

I just want to thank Dave Tate and all of the elitefts™ staff. I don't care what anyone says, I know no one makes it by themselves.