In his own words

We don't have forever

I generally am annoyed by inspirational posts, but here's my one for the year.
I've seen my fair share of people die through my job in the past year, whether young or old, 24 or 84. It has affected me in the way that I feel a sense of urgency with my life. We are not around for as long as we feel that we will be to justify wasting time not jumping in to something head first because we are too afraid of the unknowns involved. Don't be afraid to step away from living completely based on logic and practicality. Make some decisions based on passion and what makes you feel alive. Don't be afraid to take risks. And don't be afraid to love because there's a chance you could be hurt. We don't have forever.

Now back to shallow flex pics and heavy lifts.

18 vs 28

The one constant? My choices and discipline. Always do what you know needs to be done and don’t ever back down out of fear or laziness. In the gym or in life, don’t be afraid of taking the more difficult path. Your future self will thank you.

Maybe you weren't meant for normal

How many times have you been here? Hundreds, Thousands maybe. You always come back. You owe it to yourself. But not the you that you are now. He stands here capable, focused, in control. You owe it to the you fifteen years ago that was scared shitless and had no one. The you that would have given anything to just be a normal kid, normal routine, normal life.
But maybe you weren’t meant for normal. Maybe you never have been.

Last words

I’ve heard too many people’s last words in my life. Through all of them there was an overwhelming trend that emerged - the trend of regret. Regrets over taking the easier path because it was comfortable. Regrets over letting things go unsaid that should have been said. Burned bridges. Wasted potential. Missed opportunities. The list goes on.
More than anything else, this scares me. How terrifying must it be to look back on your life and wish SO hard that you could fix that one thing, and it’s out of reach. This might be one of the worst fears I have.
I made a decision a while ago that I didn’t want to regret a single thing in my life. No easy road. No fear of failure. Nothing left unsaid for risk of looking stupid. No wasted potential. I want all the highs, the lows, and the in betweens I can get. And don’t forget the risks - those end up being the best stories.
So far so good.

The mirror

Today I want to ask you guys something important. More important than any bullshit diet or training related question. You ready?

When you wake up and look in the mirror, what do you see?

Do you see something you are proud of? Ashamed of? Something with potential. Maybe you see abs, or traps, a gut, a need to shave. Makeup from the party last night.

Let’s take it a step further.

Maybe you see weak choices. Maybe you see regret. Maybe you see a coward. Or a liar. Unmet potential. Fake. Anger. A sell out. Maybe you can’t even look at yourself.

Here’s my advice to you today.

Live your life in a way, and make choices so that when you look in the mirror you are fucking proud of what you see. Make scary decisions in difficult situations so that you see confidence, self respect, and zero regret.

I may not have all the material things (yet). And I’m FAR from perfect. But I will tell you one thing. When I look in the mirror, I’m fucking proud of what I see. Confidence. Pride. No regret. No coward. A loyal friend. Self respect. Gratitude. Honesty. Strength.

That is something I have that can’t be bought by anyone, sold, traded, or taken away and it will go with me to my fucking grave.

I encourage you to do the same. If you agree, share for someone that needs this today.

Who he was

For those of you that don’t know, I was born and raised in Florida hunting and fishing. Before I ever touched a weight I wanted to be a marine biologist, dove the ocean, and was taught how to properly handle a gun. I used to own snakes, a monitor lizard, and other reptiles. I love science and medicine, and am fascinated with the human body and how it functions. I’m a little weird, and anyone that knows me knows I could care less what you think. This shit makes me happy.

It’s ok to chase big lifts, career goals, dreams, paychecks. It all has an important place in life at one point or another. But don’t lose sight of the big picture forgetting who you are and lose yourself in the process. At the end of the day, if you’re not happy without those things, you will never be happy and fulfilled in life WITH them.

Never been out kayak fishing before, and never caught a peacock bass before, only largemouth. But got a pro @denes_theyakker to show me the ropes and we spooked up a few. He does some pretty intense shit in a kayak, and also does some guiding on the side. If you’re in south FL going nuts during lockdown and looking for an adventure with a bit of a workout involved (we all need it) I recommend shooting him a DM. Thank you bro!

Your breathing becomes the music

FUNNY TRAINING STORY TIME 😊

Back when I was training for the @crossfitgames, after working 13 hours as a nurse in the ICU I would come home and train endurance for an hour or longer, often rowing and running a combined 10k+.

Ten rounds of run 500, row 500.

Sometimes just 5k row into a 5k run for simplicity.

I would turn the lights off and do it in the dark. No music, no headphones. Musty garage.

No encouragement from anyone.

Just the sound of my breathing, the doubts, and a voice in my head telling me to quit because I was tired, and that I deserved sleep.

Stare doubt in the face enough times, stare at your fear DIRECTLY in the face...and eventually there’s nothing left to be afraid of.

Eventually, your breathing becomes the music itself...

What will your eulogy say?

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about significance and purpose.

What is significant, what isn’t, and why. 🤷‍♂️

And I honestly don’t think most people have any clue as to what is truly meaningful or significant.

Maybe the think they do - car, house, shoes...

But I believe one of the biggest mistakes people make with regards to living a life of significance is that they get too caught up in the minutia of life.

They are so zoomed in on the insignificant things right in front of their face that they lose sight of the bigger picture. Time passes and they’re left with more things that they haven’t done, than things they have.

Remember, our lives are finite and there are no do-overs.

What will your eulogy say?

“John punched in and out everyday and watched a ton of Netflix.”

Sounds terrifying to me.

At the end of the day, I don’t think it’s the things we did do that we will regret.

It’s the things we didn’t do. 👊

Be good humans

Everyone seems to be depressed and unhappy these days.

But why. We carry $1000 phones, we have more food than we could ever need, live in air conditioned homes, the list goes on.

What are we missing.

If you ask me…I think we as humans, at least people my age and younger, have forgotten how to treat people.

We live in an age of ghosting, passive aggressive, social climbing, egotistical “I’m better than you because of my XYZ” attitude.

People have literally forgotten the concept of how to respect other people they don’t immediately need something from.

The capacity to connect with people is lost because there is an inability to trust anyone.

Famous actor Jim Carey once said that depression is your body’s way of saying that it’s sick and tired of playing the character in the world that you force it to be.

We are a generation of disrespectful depressed people with trust issues because we lack the capacity to understand basic human decency and due to this we can’t form meaningful human connection.

What if what you ACTUALLY needed was to let go of whatever insecurities you have and quit being a dick to people. Maybe adjust your character to start acting with more respect and kindness, cut the passive aggressive childish behavior, and check your ego?

Tough love Monday for you guys.

Learn some vulnerability, communicate with honesty, and overall be good humans this week.

Respect. 🦏

Temporarily here

I never wanted a boring life.

Or an average life.

Or a shallow life.

The one where you follow the “recipe” - go to college, work, get promoted, make more money to buy things, get married, have kids, work more, retire.

God damn, just typing that makes me anxious.

Personally, I’ve always wanted to exist on the fringes of normalcy, on the far end of the bell curve.

I’ve always wanted experience, action, adventure, responsibility, meaning, knowledge, love, wisdom.

A few days ago I did CPR for quite a while on a man who had a bad heart attack and ended up dying in that moment. Watched his soul leave his eyes then and there.

If he were a novel, the last sentence of his story was punctuated with my halted compressions stopping blood flow to his brain - his entire story coming to a close, shows over, pull the curtains.

That’s real. 🙏

I wish there was some way to convey how “temporarily here” we are to people who don’t understand it, thinking they have all the time in the world..

I think people would live a lot differently, treat people differently, if they had done compressions on that man.

Five measures of a meaningful life

MY THOUGHTS ON MONEY & FIVE WORTHY METRICS TO GAUGE SUCCESS, PART TWO 💵

(See previous post for part one.)

Acquiring money and the intelligent management of it should be an important priority in modern civilization, but with the finitude of time working against us, we must actively press to fit as much meaning and experience into our relatively unknown lifespan as we can.

Five lost metrics I would use to gauge a meaningful life that are just as, if not more important than financial wealth, are:

1. How many quality relationships do you have that are older than 5 years? 10 years? 15-20 years?

2. How many personal interests have you been able to explore and develop to a high level outside of what provides you income?

3. Do you have the freedom to up and go somewhere without consequence or negative fallback?

4. If you took a broad sample size of people who have met you, say 50-100, what would the general consensus be on the type of person you are?

5. If tomorrow was your last day on earth, would you be content? How many loose ends would you have?

Answer those questions honestly, and aside from the number in your bank account you will start to have an idea as to how successful you are, and you may start to develop an understanding as to why you feel unfulfilled if that is the case.

I like extremes

I can genuinely make this post and say RIP to a fitness icon that inspired me and drastically impacted my ability to reach my potential as an athlete.

Thanks Louie for your genius, wisdom, bluntness, and experience when it came to training, it’s likely the only way I was able to train through injury to reach levels I never thought possible, and has probably had the single greatest influence over my exercise selection to date.

Back, hip, glute, and posterior chain training is still the main volume of my training and I still drag sleds daily because of this man, and do torturous belt squat work when I can.

Fortunate to have been able to have met and learned from him in person.

Many people are not aware of how short and finite life is; On the other hand I am too aware of this.

Appreciate those around you and don’t leave words unsaid, be truthful and honest - don’t sugarcoat things. 👊

Strive to be the absolute best at what you do.

You’re only here for a short while.

Make it count for something.

A day full of possibilities

Remember when you were a kid and you woke up every day super pumped because the day was full of possibilities?

Anything could happen.

And then somewhere along the way your life became day after day of predictable, monotonous routine.

I don’t know about you but If there’s one thing that scares me, it’s a predictable, mundane life.

I don’t want to know exactly what the next ten plus years of my life are going to look like, and I never wanted a cookie cutter existence.

So far, so good. 🦏⛰

Shout out to my mom who came up for Mother’s Day; I stay on her pretty hard about integrating a high protein diet and strength training into her lifestyle - she’s 64 and still able to hang on a 6 mile hike through difficult terrain because she maintains a respectable baseline of physical ability. Be more like her.

A lifetime crammed into half the span

I’ve lived an incredibly unique and rich life, that has simultaneously had me wanting to check out at times.

I’ve existed in the pinnacle of human performance with strangers asking for photos, and I’ve been a cripple struggling to carry my own groceries.

I’ve traveled around the world to 30+ different countries and simultaneously been imprisoned for over a year looking through a window & fence at freedom.

I’ve seen babies born, and others take their last breath in front of me.

I know real life superheroes that you wouldn’t have a clue you’ve encountered, and watched my very best of friends become the most painful life lessons.

I’m 33, and I feel 63 a lot of the time.

But occasionally, I’ll still find things to learn.

And I’ll encounter people like the ones shown here, and the weight of a lifetime of experience crammed into half that span doesn’t feel all that heavy for a little bit.

Gratitude and respect.

🙏🦏

Trading the desert for a tropical island

And just like that Arizona is a wrap ✅

I cannot brag enough on the unmatched natural beauty of this place.

Stayed longer than planned, and in that time I:
- Acquired NODs and my dream rifle
- Finally shot one mile
- Did numerous training courses including night vision, close contact, Comms, sustainment, DMR, etc
- Visited a number of iconic spots, and learned of too many more I need to see
- Consolidated investments/finances into a complete retirement portfolio and significantly increased my net worth
- Started my masters degree
- Got back on the jiu jitsu mats
- Met a number of high value people
- Had way too many awesome adventures for just ten photos

However, the world is big. And it is full of too many opportunities to not seize them.

Time to get back to my roots and trade the desert 🏜 for a tropical island 🏝.

To all the dope folks I’ve met in the southwest, it’s been real and I’ll be back around in short order 🤙

Gotta jet!

🦏🙏🛫

Guam, Maine, and now Montana

I’m pretty active on my stories, but it has been a while since I’ve actually posted. From Guam, to Maine, and now Montana… I have been busy.

Halfway through grad school already with clinical rotations starting shortly, working full time in healthcare, managing my select stable of coaching clients, cooking, keeping a high level of fitness, and still pursuing extra practical skills plus staying current with domestic and geopolitical events isn’t for the faint of heart.

I try to make practicing skills simultaneously ways to decompress and had a great afternoon yesterday continuing to dial in some brand new technology on my precision set up.

Once the software was trued a bit more I was averaging about 75-80% hits on a ~10” by ~16” target at 930 yards using 6.5 creedmoor (training caliber). Shifting tailwind was tricky.

Then on the way home I decided to stop by the track and retest my 5k at 24:52, which is a 48 second PR from testing ten weeks ago.

Pretty happy with that at 226 pounds, 550~ squat, and 675 deadlift, but there is much room for improvement.