Saturday 4/4/09 - TSC

The Tactical Strength Challenge was today.

I've been training for this day for about 6 - 7 months now and I condsider achieving this goal to be one of my life's major milestones.

A brief history for those that don't really know me:

I've been very active my whole life. I wrestled one year in high school before I became anti-establishment and discovered punk rock. I skateboarded for about 20 years, mountain biked seriously for a few periods probably totaling about 12 years or so. I also played ice and roller hockey and did a bunch of bmx riding.

I suffered a number of injuries over those years but the capper was a little over 3 years ago when I crushed my hip skateboarding. I needed surgery to put some screws in there to keep the ball attached to the top of my femur and would have needed a hip replacement if the bone lost bloodflow. I have alway played video and computer games my whole life as well so I really got into it after I crushed my hip. I played competitively for about 3 years for the 6th Armored Division in an online team based game called Battlefield 2.

During those 3 years I did nothing physical. Nothing at all and I definitely got soft from it. Late nights, soda, eating a lot, etc. I found myself up around 218 pretty soft pounds. I was having problems moving furniture around and my back was starting to complain when I lifted anything.

This was pretty unacceptable to me so about 1 year ago I decided to start getting back in shape. I started just doing hindu squats in the mornings and worked up slowly until I could do 100 in a row again. I started adding pushups, pullups, ab work and some elliptical stuff into my routines. I lost a bunch of body fat and started feeling good again.

Through researching pullup and pushup routines I increasingly found myself going to military fitness and martial arts fitness website where I started reading about kettlebells. I eventually found out how effective they were supposed to be and I got myself a 16kg kettlebell and bought Pavel Tsatsouline's Enter The Kettlebell. I ended up going nuts with my new toy and completely overtrained myself along with jacking my back up.

I had also been researching trainers in my area and found out that only 5 minutes from my house was the gym that Jordan Vezina RKC trained out of. Jordan quickly straightened out my form and had me simplify my routine so that I could really concentrate on getting better at fewer things. Jordan saw that I had an interest in getting stronger at deadlifting, pullups and kettlebells and suggested I train for the Tactical Strength Challenge to be held the next April. I would say that this was somewhere around October 2008.

I focused my routine around building up the layers of strength and endurance I would need to get to that level. I did the Program Minimum from ETK and then moved on to the Rite of Passage. I was also adding deadlifts to my variety days and doing pulllups and some pistols. From that point Jordan moved me into doing Kenneth Jay's Max VO2 routine twice a week along with heavy swings and pullups.

My initial goals when Jordan first got me fired up for the TSC was a 280lb deadlift, 15 pullups and 60 24kg kettlebell snatches in 5 minutes. I can remember the first time I tried snatching the 24kg bell and how intimidating it was to me. Jordan kept my progress moving smoothly (and kept increasing the numbers he though I should be shooting for).

I ended up with a 365lb deadlift, 12 pullups and 106 24kg kettlebell snatches in 5 minutes.

Here is the video Jordan took of my snatch test.

This was after 6 - 7 months of training for it. I had never deadlifted before that period and I had only been using a 16kg kettlebell for a few months before that point as well. Great results...I'm very happy with those numbers.

Also...in the last year I lost (my best guess) 40lbs of body fat, gained 10lbs of muscle. My back is indestructible right now and my endurance is insane. I feel great physically. I weigh 188 currently.

I wish that I had kept a training log from the very beginning of this journey and also that I had taken some pictures of how soft I was to give a good sense of the before and after.

This is what I look like now:




My goals now are to improve on my numbers for the next Tactical Strength Challenge in September and earn my RKC early next year. My life has changed so much now and I find myself on a new path. I don't know where it's leading but it doesn't need to lead anywhere in particular. It IS the journey and not the destination that is important I realize now. Todays success is the result of consistently following a plan and not ever giving up. It was a test to see where I am at this point in time and in no way is a destination.

Thanks to my wife, Margaret Trujillo, who supported me the entire time and let me do whatever it took to achieve what was important to me. Doing this on my own would have been much harder and I owe her a lot.

Thanks to Jordan for giving me the guidance and encouragement progress at a faster rate than I could ever have imagined when I first started. Jordan is a fantastic trainer that never let my enthusiasm get in the way of making sure I progressed safely and correctly.

This is only the beginning!