The Trio Behind the Blog....

Andrew:

As a child growing up, I always was active, running around, riding bikes, and playing sports. There was almost never an amount of time longer than a few days where I wasn’t keeping myself occupied with sports and exercise. As I grew older this developed into a passion for sports. Sports kept me engaged, socially, physically, and fostered a competitive edge. Besides that I really had fun. I did the typical youth sports, baseball, soccer and basketball and by the time I was in middle school I added wrestling, track and football to the slate of athletic activity. Now I know that the current trend is specialization but I really believe that having the different seasons, the different sports, and the different teams enriched my experience as a youth athlete. Once high school came around I narrowed the focus to three sports; football, wrestling, and track.

High school is also when I learned that in order to become a better athlete, one must devote themselves to training. I hated being a bench player, on the JV squad, or not excelling at the sport. In my sophomore year alone I discovered that with proper diet, and weight training I could go from a lanky 140lb child into a 175 lb man. I saw my game elevate to another level and became obsessed with the training process and trying to achieve the highest possible level I could with the genetics I was given. This led to scholarship offers for both football and track. I can say with certainty that if it weren't for my infatuation in training and learning how to develop my body those opportunities wouldn’t have happened.

I took the passion I developed in high school not only to the field but the the classroom as well. I chose to study exercise science as my major and health as my minor. I was very enthusiastic to use the things I have already studied on my own into what would be my purpose in college. I never had trouble studying, everything I was learning was directly correlated to what I was already interested in. Physiology was my favorite course. There is something so intriguing to me about how our bodies work. It is truly amazing. I began to believe as the years went on that I would make a career out of the exercise and fitness field.

After a successful career as a collegiate track athlete and a recent graduate of exercise science I looked towards becoming a collegiate coach. I landed and entry level assistant coaches position shortly after my graduation at Adrian College in Michigan. This was the first time I would be away from home in Oregon. The job was a wonderful and awakening opportunity. Immediately I took a mixed group of athletes and applied sound training. We saw improvement across the board. I implemented the first ever mandatory lifting program and saw the clean and squat 3 rep maxes all increase by an average of around 30lbs. I coached an all-american, and other national qualifiers. The job was something I loved but the long hours, 7 day weeks, and team dynamics at Adrian really wore me down. I chose not to renew my contract and to move back to Oregon to try new ventures.

Upon returning to Oregon, I set up a job at a Portland gym. Here I was doing group exercise classes and boot camp it was a learning experience. I found that people who come to classes on their own time paying their own money are much more motivated and pleasurable to work with than a group of kids who would rather be eating pizza and playing x-box. Shortly after this job started, I was offered a full time position as a manager and trainer in Sisters Oregon. This opportunity came just at the time where I was ready to cash it in and start another career path. I feel fortunate to have this job and do my best to excel at it and serve the small community in which I work.

There it is, it looks like a lot but my career in the field has just begun. My philosophy stems from a simplistic approach where exercise should be enjoyable, rewarding, and results driven. I look to use the methods I learned as a student, coach, and trainer for the specific populations I have worked with. I have seen results across the board and always consider the newest research and data. Whether you are a high school football player looking to add size or a middle aged marathon runner looking for a training program I can take the knowledge I have and provide you with a no-nonsense sound program that will produce results!
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Chris:
My childhood up to high school was much the same as Andy’s in the aspect that I was physically active and just liked to play and do things, played 3 sports through high school, and found a love of lifting. My love of lifting began because my doctor called me fat and my dad wouldn’t let me get a weight set until I proved, through consistent training, that I would use it; I proved it and now, eight years later, here I am: still training.

Coming out of high school I chose to go to Oregon State University for school. I studied Exercise and Sport Science with my focus being Exercise Science. I had a much different experience than most because I found more and more that what I was learning applied little to what I wanted to do –which was be a strength and conditioning coach. I know that this may sound like an error, but it is not; there were very few classes throughout my undergraduate degree that I felt applied very well, if at all, to being a strength and conditioning coach. I had a unique experience as an undergraduate because I was a strength and conditioning intern for four of the five years that I was at Oregon State; this experience allowed me to learn from coaches within the field that were, and are, very good at what they do and also allowed me to see the huge gaps in the teaching that I was getting in the classroom and the application that I was learning in the weight room… Needless to say, I will be the guy in this blog that says things more from an experience standpoint than from a scientific one. After college was over, I moved on to be a graduate assistant at a college in Illinois; I am now the assistant strength and conditioning coach and work with or interact with nearly 300 athletes on a weekly basis as well as personally coach a national level weightlifter. I am brand new to the field, but am always looking to learn and become better at what I do.

As far as what I like to do goes I like to get stronger –and I’m still working on it– and I enjoy reading about Paleo nutrition, other things related to well-being, and books by Michael Pollan. Coming out of high school I didn’t know what to do; I wanted to play football, but that wasn’t working out very well. I knew that I loved lifting weights, so I entered a powerlifting meet; I set the world record squat for that age/weight category. I didn’t compete in lifting for a while and then, in 2009 I began competing in strongman. I competed twice and qualified for nationals before tearing my bicep off. After having it reattached and rehabilitated I competed twice more, qualifying for nationals once again, but then chose to direct my attention towards Olympic weightlifting; that went alright, but was lacking something. After competing in that for a little bit I decided that, while I enjoyed doing the Olympic lifts, what I really wanted to do was strongman. I now compete in all three disciplines with strongman being my main focus; last year I only competed in strongman, did so four times, and one of them was (finally!) nationals. In 2013, so far, I will be competing in a weightlifting meet in two weeks, a strongman competition four weeks later, and a powerlifting meet five weeks after that; I plan on much more. I also enjoy hunting, reading, trying my hand at archery, and fishing as hobbies and am very happily married (she works out a lot, don’t worry).
If you ever have a question about what I say/do/train/eat, or about training and programming in general, feel free to ask me, or any of us; it is hard to get me and the other two to shut up when it comes to any of that stuff!.

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Jeff:

All three contributors to this blog had similar experiences throughout childhood and high school. All of us playing multiple sports with the primary reasoning being “it is fun.” Andy's post can give you a more in depth knowledge of my younger years – not exact in the actions, but very similar in the mentality.

I went to college knowing I wouldn't play any collegiate sports. This didn't mean I stopped staying active and let my nutrition go. It was quite the opposite. Now that I wasn't playing any sports, I had a couple hours a day to devote to my own personal training. Whether this was at a gym, a track, a playing field, a garage, or the trails it didn't matter. I was happy with the freedom of experimenting with my own physical characteristics. A lot of time was also spent reading books and surfing the web about different theories and experiences of training and nutrition. I attempted everything I read and found out it ALL worked if I put in necessary effort and was smart about what I was doing.

During one year of training only, my itch to compete kept building. Yeah, I had fun training, but the rewards of being fit weren't as great as being fit and crossing a finish line. I had to compete and entered in a handful of open track meets. After a couple years of track only, I added a second sport known as Strongman.

The best part about training/competing in college was my peers. I was an engineering student, in the university choir for a few years, and interned at a local farm as an engineer. Due to being surrounded by many different social groups, I was able to connect with a diverse array of people interested in improving their health and overall well being. After a little coaching and developing a program tailored to the individual, it is satisfying knowing I helped a peer obtain goals and they had fun during the process.

After graduating with a BS in Environmental Engineering and a MS in Chemical Engineering, I accepted a job in Portland as a Civil Engineer. I'm currently competing (or registered to compete in) the greatest number of sports I ever have – Track, Strongman, a Trail Running Series, Powerlifting, Obstacle Course Races (Warrior Dash for example), the Highland Games, Team Triathlons, and other random competitions. And it's not just me, alone, competing. In each of these competitions, I have a group of people, a community, an environment that I feel connected to and are all trying to achieve the same primary goals – having fun and health improvements.

If you are looking for a program to improve physical performance you should contact Andy or Chris. Those two are schooled, trained, and have been training others for quite some time. I will be here to provide input where needed and a majority of my blogs will be on improvement for your overall well being.