So tired, woke up at midnight to watch the President and First Lady welcome home the hostages from North Korea. Still managed to knock out my squats and accessory work. Looking forword to a rest day tomorrow!

“Your are capable of much more than you think, push yourself like your life depended on it. It starts with you!”  ~ Al Hidalgo

Once upon a time, I was a lean mean fighting machine, serving first in the Army then in the Air Force as an aircrew survival instructor. While I was not able to leap over tall buildings in a single bound and I was never faster that a speeding bullet or more powerful than a locomotive I could move stealthy through  the jungle with full gear, jump out of airplanes and spend hours in ocean waters.

Lean and mean in 1979!

Fast forward to 2015, I was 70 pounds over my military weight with high blood pressure, bad lipids and close to being pre-diabetic. I knew that I needed a wholesale revamp of my workout routine and nutritional habits but I also realized that if I was going to be successful that I needed to re-capture the same mindset that made me elite some 30 years ago. Mindset, how can I best describe mindset? I remembered having an unstoppable mindset but I could not quite feel it. I knew that it would take an extreme change in attitude to transform my fitness level and then once I got to where I needed to be, that I could never go back and would have to train to sustain. I also knew that that this transformation would take a few years, it would be a long hall.

2015 in Rome with my daughter (all 220 pounds of me).

My workout routine had become machine based, one exercise per body part 3 times a week and lots of slow steady state cardio. Cleary this was not working, I knew that I had to get back to my roots so I ditched the machines and ventured out to the free weight area of the gym. I was weak and awkward and felt totally out of place. There were quite a few laughs at my expense as I relearned the basic compound movements but I never gave up and simply just kept going. Nutrition wise, I stopped eating out everyday and I cut down on processed food.

Slowly, the elite mindset that I used to have started to return. There’s something about doing 260 pound deadlifts and going from not be able to do a single pull up to being able to do 30 pull ups that increase your confidence. I no longer get laughed at, now I’m one of the guys, lol.

Today, I’m 10 weeks out from a natural bodybuilding contest. I plan to compete in the Classic Physique 40+ event if I can get lean enough by then. If not, I will try a fall event. I’m not really interested in being a bodybuilder, for me it’s an external event that provides internal motivation. Other motivation factors are simply that I feel great, my lipids are good, my blood pressure is 113/65 and my resting heart rate 62 and my blood sugar is normal.

Today I feel like an elite athlete and best of all, my unstoppable mindset is back! Please join me on my 10 week contest prep, I will be blogging often.