When I joined the Navy right after high school, it was the first time in my life I had a real paycheck and I spent it on an online bodybuilding course. Over the next few months I devoted myself body, mind, and soul to that program. I exercised like crazy, ate what I was told to eat, and took all of the exercise supplements I was told to take. I felt great and thought I was on top of the world. Or so I thought.

Deployment hit me like a sack of rocks. Everything I had worked for, everything, went out the porthole in the blink of an eye. I went from normal working hours to over fifteen. I went from two open gyms on base to two tiny gyms on the ship. I went from precision-timing my supplement intake to not even having enough room to store them. Everything was ruined, or so I thought.

Serendipity is a funny thing, and it just so happened that a gentleman I worked with was also into fitness. But his was a bit eccentric. Instead of worshiping muscle heads, he was into calisthenics, which if you're familiar, is the use of your body-weight to exercise. He opened a whole new world to me and it completely changed my life. I would never look at fitness the same way again.

When we got back to shore, I had a decision to make. Should I continue exercising bare-bones, calisthenics? Or should I go back to my body-building routine? The problem was, I had seen reality, and what I had been doing before could not stand up to it.

Over the course of the next few years, I devoted myself to stripping my ego. Not working out just to look better, but to be better, and to be healthier.

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