The Changing of Fates

/ Chris DiMarco / Leave a comment

When I was a young boy, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind as to what I’d be when I grew up: an astronaut. So why am I an engineer? And what’s that have to do with you?

Early Developments

My favorite early memories involved parking around the TV with my family to watch the newest episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The exploration, the political strategy, the cool space battles, and the gorgeous starships hit all the right buttons for first grade me. We were religious Trekkies; my Dad owned the entire original series on VHS, and we had all the movies to that point in our cabinet. I thought Star Wars was “okay,” but the Trek world was the one I wanted to live in. At one point, I recall making about thirty different paper airplanes, and giving them names and registration numbers from ST. I had an obsession.

My passion for space grew as I caught other flicks from that era: The Last Starfighter, Space Camp, Dune, ET, and yes, even Buckaroo Banzai. It was reinforced in elementary school in several ways. In the 2nd grade, NASA brought vans out with transmission equipment so that we could all watch the shuttle launch. It blew my eight year old brain to smithereens, the crackling sounds, the fury, the size of the thing…incredible! (I still get a kick out of launches and watch them whenever I can.) In the 6th grade, my Gifted & Talented group participated in a project to design a the sewer system for a mission to Mars, where we competed against other schools.

BBZAI

Look at these sexy MFers. (Buckaroo Bonzai, courtesy of Gizmodo)

My parents did everything they could to keep me marching down that path. They took me to the  Franklin Institute in Philly regularly. At one point, it had an incredible ST exhibit with early voice recognition and touchscreen systems. The experience was just like being on the Enterprise, and I went bananas! They signed me up for classes there in robotics, space station construction, and holograms. I was on course for my uniform and collar pips.

Along the way, mother nature started wreaking havoc with my plans. In the fourth grade, my parents discovered I was having trouble seeing the board from the back of the classroom. Soon after, there’s a big, bulky pair of glasses on my face. Fantastic.

That wasn’t even the final nail in the coffin. I would get gassed when running around on the soccer field, and I had serious trouble breathing while sick. The doctors quickly diagnosed my symptoms: I had exercise & illness induced asthma.

I had seen The Right Stuff — to be an astronaut, you had to be in the best health — and that meant I was screwed.

The Middle Era

After that blow, my interests ran off towards music. I became a decent saxophone player, learned some guitar and piano. I got into drums and I developed the terrible habit of tapping on everything, everywhere. In high school, this pushed me towards the marching band, and later drum corps. These things became my entire life. My friends were musicians, and all my romances were in the band/corps.

As high school came to a close and I needed to choose a path, I was presented with the problem of divided talents. I had received scholarships for engineering and science, but I was also pretty darned good at drums. But marching drums isn’t exactly a lucrative field, I wasn’t very good at drum set (yay rock star), and I didn’t really care to teach music. So, I went away to be an engineer…and failed miserably.

After my initial attempt at college, I took stabs at being:

  • Mechanic
  • Surveyor
  • Civil Engineer
  • Rock ‘n Roll Drummer
  • Race Car Driver

None of these stuck. I needed a plan.

The Plan to End All Plans

In June 2010, while I was cleaning up my GPA at the local community college, I made a little timeline for my future. I don’t have the complete timeline, but I have the high level notes from my journal. At the time, it looked like this:

  1. Get my BS in Mechanical Engineering at UNCC
  2. Earn my  MS or PhD in Aero/Astro at NC State, Maryland, or UF
  3. Work at Langley/Boeing/Lockheed for Aero experience
  4. Move to a more cutting edge company, like SpaceX, TSC, or NASA
  5. Start my own company

Seems like a pretty reasonable plan for a 29-year old, eh? I thought so, too. While this isn’t how things have played out (I got my BS/MS at UNCC, and I now work in Garmin’s aviation department), it’s not too concerning. The important part is that I had a goal that I directed myself toward, and I achieved something incredibly useful and important. The fact that the course turned and twisted is simply life.

After a few months at Garmin, things started falling into place. I had felt considerable guilt about not contributing to society fully with my skills, so I immediately started feeling more comfortable in my own skin with that burden lifted. I could even afford to buy things that I desired! I nabbed some quality guitars and nicely outfitted my apartment. I bought a sporty new car. But something was missing…

A host of things were missing.

“What Do You Want For Yourself?”

The above quote is from the film The Last Samurai. There is a scene where Tom Cruise (a prisoner) asks Ken Watanabe (his captor, a samurai), “What do you want from me?” and Watanabe replies with the heading above. This has stuck with me for a long time, as I adore that movie. There is a point in a man’s life where he must decide which pieces he will add to make up his life.

This topic became deeply frustrating for me.

There is a motivational speaker that I freakin’ love, Eric Thomas, the Hip-Hop Preacher. He gets me fired up. He’s exciting and moving, and spreads the right messages about integrity and responsibility. One place he is lacking, I believe, is in describing how to find your personal mission. His mission came somewhat built in, as he had a family and wanted to provide for them and become successful to support them the best that he could.

I don’t have a family of my own, my parents don’t need me to take care of them, and I have the frustration (poor me) of having several things that I’m talented at. I could throw myself into any of them and likely become successful. Do I continue as an engineer? Should I spin off and start something new? Should I form another rock band and become a crazy awesome guitarist?

ET

Eric Thomas, PhD is the MAN.

With no obvious external answer, I turned inward. I meditated for a long time, and thought about the moments in my life that brought me true joy. Unsurprisingly, they all revolved around family and friends, and many moments with children stood out as bright spots in the timeline of my life. I love being around kids, and I discovered that I want my own big family. Out here in Kansas, I am relatively far away from all my dearest pals from NJ and NC, I have no fulfilling relationships, and I have no children of my own. Two holes to fill. Also in this same meditation, it became obvious to me that something else was deeply lacking, and that was spirituality & accountability to a higher power.

These were enormous empty spaces in my life. They had simply been overshadowed while I caught up in the rest of my life. But in the comfort and quiet of my empty apartment, the alarms had grown loud enough that they could no longer be ignored. My mission, and the course of my life, needed to sway from education and work into something completely different. While many can find their ‘why’ through their family…my ‘why’ was that I needed a family.

I immediately set out to define the scope of the problem as best I could. I enlisted my old friends Stephen Covey, Jack Donovan, David Deangelo, Steve Pavlina, and Zig Ziglar.  I set out to fill four gaping needs:

  1. Finding a higher power to cast my desires, failings, and gratitude toward, so that I may become a great human being
  2. Finding a valued companion and forging a robust relationship, so that I may become a great husband
  3. After 2, starting a family as soon as possible, so that I may become a great father
  4. Improving my health for the future and for my future family, so that I may endure as long as necessary.

These each require planning and dedication to handle properly. I plan on going more deeply into #2 & #3 in separate posts, but #1 is described in the spirituality post above, and #4 is covered here.

Who Cares?

Why should you, random internet user, give one single crap about any of this?

There are many people out there that simply have no idea what they want or how to act. There is likely a greater number that have never asked themselves those questions. So, if you find yourself in a place where you don’t feel fulfilled and are unsure of which path to take, follow these breadcrumbs:

  1. Actually ask yourself what you want. This seems like a rather bizarre and obvious statement, no? Think about this: why is it that sometimes you don’t immediately know the answer to something, but if you ask yourself, the answer pops up? We have very complicated psyches with many layers of distraction and obfuscation. Spend the time to relax, meditate, and ask yourself what might be missing. I guarantee you that responses will rise up from the depths of your mind. Sometimes dwelling on your favorite memories can bring up those things, as they did for me with children.
  2. As a follow up to the ‘what,’ ask yourself why you want these things. What will your life be like 5 years down the road if they are part of your life? What will your life be like in 5 years if they are not?
  3. Consider balance. This is a big part of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits books, which I recommend reading of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for everyone. You may find yourself over-weighted in work, or in taking care of family. Look to the sides of education or spirituality to be more complete inside, and vice-versa. If you pray and read all day, but nothing productive is done, you may want to look that direction for rounding yourself out.
  4. Try something new. This is a bit cliche, but it is for good reason. Sometimes, simply trying something outside your comfort zone can activate circuits in your brain that have been dormant. This can be as simple as going to a place you’ve never been, or as complicated as taking up a hobby you have interest in. It is amazing what small details can awaken desires in us.

Obviously, this is nowhere near a thorough or complete guide to mission development or goal setting, as I’m no expert. But this group of experiments worked for me, when most guides for mission discovery didn’t. Maybe this is just what you need to read today?

Spite Test

/ Chris DiMarco / 1 Comment

It took me a few stabs to finally finish college. The events that pushed me to finish the job were not what I expected.

Underachiever of the Year

When I was in early elementary school, I realized that I was a quick study compared to the others in my public school class. By second grade, they had already shuffled me into a “Gifted and Talented” course with a few other bright kids. While everyone else was learning multiplication and division, we were building structures, learning about endangered species, and learning how to program on an old TRS-80 computer the school had sitting around. In the third grade, I discovered that I could ace tests without doing any homework, an enlightenment I would suffer straight through high school. As such, I would do just enough to not have my teachers send the dreaded “One Subject Report” to my parents for signatures, an encounter I was loathe to regularly repeat. I miraculously ended up being allowed to take high school level courses in seventh and eighth grade, which I carried on with an equal lack of zeal. (Aside: around this time period I was very interested in computer programming and music, and I spent endless hours messing with my family’s PC and playing my sax. But I’ll save those topics for another day.)

TRS-80_Model_4P_Crop_Delsener

TRS-80, for the young bucks. (Source: wikipedia)

In high school, I became very active with the marching band and, like so many others my age, dating. I maintained better than average grades in A & Honors level courses, despite putting mediocre efforts into my work. My grades took a bit of a dive in my senior year as senioritis set in and I was tired of school. Still, my folks encouraged me to go to college nearby at NJIT, Stevens, or Seton Hall. I settled on NJIT because it had direct access to a train via the subway which would get me home and to my girlfriend’s college.

In Flagrante Delicto

Through the opening months of college, that high school romance waxed and waned, and I began to mess around with various other girls during intermissions. One of those girls was Kate. She was a brief flicker in my romantic history, but an encounter involving her seems to be the first instance where someone called me on my nonsense.

C-Dshades

Me and my frat bros at NJIT. I’m on the right lookin’ fly.

Kate and I liked to drink. A lot. Frat parties, in our rooms, other colleges, whatever. One night, we got hammered on Everclear w/Hawaiian Punch & shots of Jack Daniels while watching the best film ever: Stigmata. Naturally, we followed this up with messing around, until there was a knock at my dorm room door. I expected this to be my friend Alex who was with us earlier, but as I shirtlessly flung open the door I was greeted by my Resident Advisor. He looked at me, then the bottle of Jack on the floor, then Kate, then me again. He sighed and asked me to step outside. He and the other RAs grilled Kate and me for an hour trying to paint me as some kind of advantage-taking rapist-to-be, but after Kate’s cries in protest they capitulated. We were both written up for underage drinking and sentenced to put on an anti-drinking seminar and to see a psychiatrist.

The shrink sat me down and began to probe about the regularity of my drinking, why my grades were terrible (I would leave NJIT two semesters later with a 1.25 GPA), and why I didn’t seem to care about how much trouble I was in. I halfheartedly responded to his inquiries, and detecting this, he gave me his professional opinion: I was a chronic underachiever and I had a distinct problem with authority.

At the time, I blew him off.

That diagnosis still haunts my dreams.

Knocks like “Thuuupppp”

Over the course of the next ten years,  various women in my life would utter these words:

“Well, you’d have to read this graph. It’s pretty technical…I don’t expect you to be able to do that.” – Female boss, describing a linear graph I’d encountered regularly since elementary school.

“You don’t have any ambitions beyond lunch.” – Ex-girlfriend.

“I could never date you. You’re not smart enough.” – PhD girl that I was interested in up until that exact moment.

“You weren’t going anywhere.” – Ex-girlfriend, many years later, describing why she moved on.

If there ever was a case for thick skulls, mine is certainly on the list. Each woman gave me the tough love that I desperately needed to hear, but my natural response was to be angry at them. “Why were they all so mean to me?” I recoiled. “Why can’t they just like me for who I am inside?” I’d wonder, all the while knowing I wasn’t living up to that mysterious word we call potential. “I’m a drafter at an engineering firm, screw you!” echoed in my head as I tried to rationalize my existence. It didn’t work.

As the economy dwindled in 2009 & early 2010, the situation at my employer got more and more dire until I was the last employee beyond my boss and his wife. I had nowhere else to hide; it was time to decide the path for my future. Behind door #1: taking another shot at college, having failed miserably in the first attempt, and door #2: calling it a day and looking for a job elsewhere in civil engineering.

I spent months meditating on the correct course of action and all of those old comments bubbled to the surface, bringing anger and shame with them. Somehow, I was deficient. Yes, I had talents, but I wasn’t doing anything with them. The spotlight turned back and pointed at me. The choices I had made all along had these exact consequences. It was at that moment I knew I’d never have any measure of peace with that hanging over my head.

While the iron was hot, I rushed to sign up at the local community college. I took two maximum-load semesters of classes to finish my Associate’s degree with a 3.6 GPA. Then I went to UNC-Charlotte for my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in mechanical engineering.

Suck it, bitches.

“Message!”

In hindsight, I half-jokingly blame this whole part of my life on movies and television. In most film, the hero of the story is reluctantly cast into some expansive adventure where he must learn to become strong. He struggles but eventually overcomes the villain and is rewarded.

I was waiting for the beginnings of my own Joseph Campbell “Hero’s Journey,” but no evil pirates showed up at my door to kidnap my brother. No aliens came to whisk me away to a far-off system where I’d need to fight off invaders to save the galaxy.

centauri

“A game! Well, you may thought it was a game, but it was also a test. Aha, a test. Sent out across the universe to find those with the gift to be Starfighters. And here you are, my boy! Here you are!” (Source: thelaststarfighter.wikia.com)

It was only me and my normal life, and the story wasn’t going to write itself. What goes down in the great book will be my responsibility, alone. This is why I’ve made plans for every aspect of my life from the physical to the spiritual and I wake up every morning excited to take the next step in adventures of my own design.

So, if you find yourself in a position where Every Day is Exactly the Same and you are not living the life you’d hoped, spend some time examining your part in it. Chances are, even if you’re a hard worker, having no direction means that you’re working hard at someone else’s goals. If you’re a slacker like me, definitely spend the time to figure out what you need to get moving….even if it is a whole load of spite and anger.

In future posts, I will discuss my journeys through the process of goal setting and achievement. That’s all for now.

Oh, one last thing: I was kidding about Stigmata. It’s friggin’ terrible.

 

Something to Believe In

/ Chris DiMarco / 1 Comment

I have a rather complicated relationship with religion, as I suppose many people my age do. It has been on my mind a lot lately, and I hope writing about it here will help coalesce some of my thoughts.

God and Family

I was a child of the 1980’s, and at that time, suburban life was at a bit of a religious crossroads. My grandparents were all from Italy (Calabria and Abruzzo) and immigrated to the US in the early 1900’s. I do not know either of my grandfathers, as both died before I was a year old, but I grew up spending lots of time with my grandmothers. They were deeply intertwined in Christian life, my mother’s mother specifically. She studied the bible every day, kept volumes of notes on it, rarely missed Sunday mass, was a member of the Church’s prayer chain, and was the Church seamstress (as was her profession). Whenever she came to visit my house, Benny Hinn would be found playing on the TV, and she would instruct my younger brother and I to place our hands on the screen and pray with him. Being a child, I thought nothing of it and followed her direction, attempting to “feel the love of the Lord.”

helen&mario

Mario & Helen, my mother’s parents

My parents were the first generation of what I’ve heard referred to as “Christmas Eve Christians,” or folks who only attend mass on the major holidays. God was never a major player in my day-to-day life, though a plaque with the “Our Father” prayer was hung above our kitchen doorway. It is a bit surprising, given that both my mother and father went to Catholic primary and high schools. I recall that as a pre-teen, my mother said to me that she “wasn’t going to force religion on you [my brother and I], and I want you to make up your own minds.” I think that was the day that I started to distance myself from God.

Throughout my teens and early twenties, I would vacillate between humoring those clinging to a faith, and outright criticizing them as “non-thinking sheep.” This affected my relationship with my parents and my mother’s mother deeply, and only added to the rebellious teenage stage that I went through. Slowly, religion became a non-entity in my life. Almost all of my friends were atheist or agnostic, and my worldview became distinctly leftist and progressive.

Changing Winds

Several changes would turn me around over the following years of my mid-to-late twenties and early thirties. After the 2008 economic downturn, the civil engineering firm that I worked for slowly ran out of work, and two years later, I was on unemployment. I took this time to work on myself physically, spiritually, and mentally. I would run or bike every day, and in six months I had lost over thirty pounds and decreased my mile time to under seven minutes. In the spiritual realm, I meditated frequently, and began to read (and re-read) books like The Tao of Pooh, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and Karen Strong’s Buddha. A dear friend had lent me Jihad vs. McWorld, and another gave me several of Sam Harris’s books. It was around this time that I began to find something valuable in the works describing religious virtue, but I could not quite put my finger on it.

I returned to college to finally finish a degree I had started 10 years prior, first at community college to repair the damage from my first nonchalant attempt, then to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where I completed my Master’s degree in mechanical engineering. I believe this was a crucial component, as graduate school hones your critical thinking ability, or as Michael Ruppert put it, “the ability to tell the bullshit from the ice cream.”

My free time at college was filled with some interesting explorations into psychology. I was interested in becoming a stronger, better man, so I found a seminar by David DeAngelo called Man Transformation. The focus was somewhat on success with women, but the more important things I took from it regarded personal responsibility and the biological forces at play between men and women. I tested out a few things from this seminar and found success in relationships both in the sexual and professional world. The empiricist in me was overjoyed; I had found things that made “sense.”

All Monkey no Banana

I finished my Master’s degree in May 2016, and found a job out in Kansas at Garmin. It was around this time that everything went crazy.

Shortly after, Donald Trump won the Republican primary, went on to win the Presidential election, and the political left lost their collective minds. Women’s rights activists, BLM, and mainstream news all began to shout loudly at any opposition to their ideology. All of a sudden, being a moderate or right-wing was no longer valid thinking according to these people, and should be exorcised. They became, in effect, the new incarnation of stifling conservative movement they opposed in the 1960’s. In response, the number of advocates of the extreme right exploded, leading to the KKK being discussed on national news again after decades of irrelevance.

Amidst all this chaos, a new batch of strong thinkers appeared, mostly from alternate news media on Youtube and VidMe. I had come across these folks (and still recommend them):

  • Ben Shapiro
  • Dave Rubin
  • Razorfist
  • Sargon of Akkad
  • Styxhexenhammer666
  • Steven Crowder

…who have all been strident supporters of free speech, clear thinking, and were decidedly anti-SJW (social justice warrior). I found myself nodding in agreement with many of the things they espoused, and I found it interesting that Shapiro and Crowder were extremely religious, and not the “non-thinking sheep” I had made them out to be.

And then….along came a spider.

Jordan B. Peterson

I could easily write volumes on my experience with Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, but I will keep this brief. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto who became embroiled in a controversy over his refusal to bow to the compelled use of pronouns by Canadian law. I became aware of him through social media, and my life has not been the same since.

jordan-smaller-size-bw-1024x683

Kermit the Frog, a.k.a. Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

Dr. Peterson has hundreds of hours of lectures loaded on Youtube. His three large contributions are his lectures titled Maps of Meaning, Portraits of Personality, and the Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories. It was this last series on the Bible that had particular impact on me, as Peterson clearly details connections between biology, psychology, history, and religious literature over time using his deep understanding of psychometrics. As I watched more of his lectures, the pieces began to fall together and for the first time in my life, I realized not only the cause of religiosity (specifically Judeo-Christian values), but its necessity, and the reason why so many people work their hardest to undermine it.

Then, as fate would have it, the lights went on in my head.

Thunderstruck

At this point, these ideas are swimming around in my head:

  1. Biological imperatives. Why men and women do what they do.
  2. The need for both structure and chaos.
  3. Why we tell stories; a.k.a. Jesus as the first widespread superhero, showing how we should live our lives.
  4. The sameness of prayer and “Law of Attraction” with meditation.
  5. The failings of post-modern, neo-Marxist belief systems; a.k.a. “how to value nothing and everything simultaneously.”
  6. How those beliefs can lead to dystopia.

I had been getting battered at work on all sides, and thankfully had a planned vacation to St. Louis with the same dear friend that lent me Jihad vs. McWorld. She is a profoundly religious person, and that comes across in all her interactions with the world. She is the first to grab a child’s dropped toy, first to take a group photo for a family at the park, first to talk you up in a time of doubt, and first to offer her resources to those in need. During the four days we spent together, it was impossible not to notice these things, all virtues and proper action.

As part of our trip, we visited the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. A small voice inside of me said, “this is silly, it’s a church, why are you going, you’re not religious?” Sitting here at this very moment, I’m glad I ignored that voice. Immediately after stepping inside, I had an epiphany.

basilicacathedralstl

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis.

I was struck with awe, gobsmacked. I felt part of something bigger than myself. I followed down history to the beginnings of time. I understood why I need religion in my own life.

It is all these things:

  • The recognition of a higher power.
  • The need for personal responsibility.
  • The need for family and community.
  • Passing down of the knowledge of virtuous action
  • The value of asking the universe for a goal, working toward it, and being grateful if it is received.
  • The value in “confessing” your “sins.” I liken this to taking accountability for missing the mark of acting properly in the world.

These bullets do not rationalize the belief in the Christian god, I am fully aware of that. But they do help justify it for me, and they align with the things I’ve known my entire life.

That’s all for now, as I need to explore the meaning of this more.

 

Yes, But Will Iron Sharpen Butter?

/ Chris DiMarco / 2 Comments

“Have you been working out?” she asked.

I thought about it for a few milliseconds, pondering the precise amount of truth required for my response. Yes, I had been to the gym in the months since we previously hung out, so in a sense I had been “working out.” But of those sixty or so days, at most ten of them were spent worshiping the iron.

She is a dear friend, moreso than I am worthy of, and she deserved the truth.

“Sorta, I don’t want to talk about it,” is what I recall blurting out. A veracious statement, but there was certainly no meat in that sandwich. I was grateful that she did not press the matter further.

“But what is my….motivation?”

I hear actors and directors alike groaning in unison at this heading, which amuses me to no end.

Establishing any sort of lifelong routine requires planning and a motivation that can withstand the ebbs and flows of existence. Some people can get by on what I will call “vague but useful rationalizations.” These are the usual things you hear thrown around any time fitness is discussed: “I wanna look good at the beach,” “I wanna run marathons,” “I wanna impress the babes,” or “I feel fat.” For those that can use these low-level aspirations to enable lasting change, I congratulate. Seriously, I wish I was so lucky.

Unfortunately, I have an overly analytical mind which knows fair well that these rationalizations end at the moment of their achievement. For example, looking good at the beach ceases to be a motivating factor through the tail-end of summer and into winter. It has taken me a long time to develop what I believe is a full-spectrum reason for healthy living.

While my life hasn’t exactly panned out in a “timely” instance of the American DreamTM, I have managed to accomplish a few things along the way that are out of the ordinary and I am thankful for the chance. As I get older, I find myself increasingly ready to start my own family and shoulder the responsibilities that go along with that. With that, as the head of a household I should be able to protect and enjoy my family to the fullest, for as long as I can. Prior to establishing my family, becoming the best me that I can (at least from a physical perspective) will help me find the best person to spend my life with.

That is a long-term rationale even my annoyingly analytical brain can get on board with.

Circuit Carousel

I have found a second catching point for myself to be determining exactly which trainer’s lifting plan to go forward with. I have tried quite a few over the years:

  • The “Bro Split” – 3 days/wk: Back/Bi’s, Chest/Tri’s, Legs
  • Starting Strength – 3 days/wk: Squats/Deads/Bench
  • Circuit Training – 5 days/wk: Full body, machines only
  • Free-for-all – Show up and workout whatever
  • Random internet guru (RIG) workouts

Each had its own set of issues for me. For instance, the “Bro Split” tends to be heavy on days one and two, and Leg Day tends to be very short. I found I would often simply skip it, telling myself that I would just add it to the next day….which I’d forget to do. Starting Strength was great for me. It was very focused on complex lifts (lifts which engage many muscle groups) and I saw quick improvements in the amount I was able to lift. Sadly, it is only a beginner’s program and leaves out a lot of excellent complimentary lifts. Circuit training is immensely boring, and the machines isolate muscles way too much, meaning support muscles are rarely engaged. I’d notice this later on bench presses, where improvement would take forever because my smaller support muscles would fail before the big muscles (pecs). The free-for-alls died out naturally from a lack of focus and planning, and RIG workouts rarely had any balance.

Given that last statement, it is somewhat amusing that I have found the workout for me from exactly that: a random internet guru. Listed on the bodybuilding.com forums is a workout called “AllPro,” which has everything that I need. It is a 3 day/week schema with both compound and accessory lifts, meticulously determined muscle balance, decent weight increments and a long timetable.

After 2 weeks on the plan, I’ve already noticed that I am sore in places that I am never ever sore in, and that I’m excited to come in and work out. There is nothing worse than going to the gym for an hour and feeling like you haven’t actually worked any of your muscles out.

Putting it Together

I’m a firm believer in Zig Ziglar’s methods for setting goals:

  • Describe your goal specifically
  • Put a date on it
  • Identify the obstacles
  • Identify the people that can assist you
  • List the benefits of achieving the goal
  • List the required skills to achieve the goal
  • Develop a plan

I believe that between developing a strong motivation and adopting the plan above, that I have crossed off these bullet points. All that’s left is to put in the effort.

I’ll report back at the end of the first cycle in a month.

Praise be to Brodin, the All-spotter! May your lifts be heavy and your form infallible. I will meet you at the gates of Swolehalla! Wheymen.