Power Athlete has been delivering online training for more than a decade, providing people worldwide the opportunity to take ownership of their health, strength, and movement. A large population of people complain of too many aches to workout; they’re not motivated to move or make healthy decisions, making poor excuses to avoid any form of fitness. People are busy with life, but spend their waking hours inactive: sitting in the car/bus/train on the way to and from work, sedentary at the desk, and then kicking back at home after the long day re. When there is finally time to decompress, they choose movement-free activities and leisures that perpetuate inactivity. Before they know it, those aches become pains! Some are aware in the back of their mind that avoiding movement now will begin a cascade of negative effects on all things health, yet they still can’t find the motivation to move.

Performance For The People

If a person is not active to begin with, getting into movement is going to hurt; sound programming becomes even more important for committing and sticking to a long term health and fitness journey. How you live is how you move, until it’s not. Once you stop moving, the wheels start to fall off.

On the positive, over the past 11 years there are hundreds of success stories emerging  from individuals and communities who’ve taken on an active lifestyle thanks to the programming and nutrition protocols offered by Power Athlete. By telling people in simple, straightforward terms what to eat, how to move, and providing sound, purposeful programming, thousands have taken ownership of their health and fitness, allowing them to push their performance to the next level and beyond.t.  The work put in on these programs becomes more than just sets and reps; they evolve into challenges that push and promote physical, emotional, and mental health perpetuating their continued improvements and promoting holistic benefits that extend beyond the confines of the gym.

How You Move Is How You Live

This blog is sharing a story submitted by an individual who turned their activity into achievement. With the motivation of showing his kids the power of movement, Bobby joined Jacked Street for the training and continued to challenge himself through the Power Athlete community. Please enjoy Bobby’s fitness journey below, and look for his house on the Jacked Street training feeds 👊.

I’ve had weight issues as far back as I can remember. From being a kid who had to play on the older team’s football squad because I was too heavy, to getting even heavier in high school because, according to the ol’ ball coach,“you’re a lineman, you’re supposed to be big” or “it’ll be too hard for you to cut the weight, just jump to ‘heavy weight’”. 

Not long after high school those poor habits kept up, and I hit my heaviest at 275 pounds in 2008.

I decided to finally make some changes and try to ‘eat better’ and workout. After a while I did eventually get down to 210 pounds, after a long time of following diets and random workouts I came across online. But soon I started yo-yoing up and down. Eventually, I landed a new job that involved commuting 2-3 hours total a day. This meant the gym fell off, fast food picked up and in 2015-2016 I was back up to 265 pounds. 

After our first child, I fell off even further. One day when playing with our son, I got out of breath just dancing and running around the living room with him. Then I took a long look at myself and realized I needed to make a change for the long-term. I wanted to be able to play with my son and future children. I wanted to be around for a long time and be someone they could look up to, instead of a cautionary tale about what not to become.

I don’t recall exactly how I came across the Primal/Paleo diet, but it was probably a combination of Instagram and Joe Rogan’s podcast. I started following the Primal and Paleo approaches, figuring I already loved meat and bacon and butter, so why not. The pounds started falling off as I was focusing on the diet, and by the end of 2017 I was down to the lightest I could remember being since beginning/pre high school, a lean 175 pounds. 

I was happy to have lost the weight, but something else didn’t feel right. I felt weak and lethargic. Then I saw pictures of myself coupled with a comment from someone at work who left the company during a thicker period of mine and returned during this new ‘skinny’ Bobby. They asked if I was sick and looking at pictures, I realized I looked and felt frail and weak.

I switched my focus to working out again, eating a bit more to put on some muscle. I still followed  a Primal/Keto diet but upped my food intake and started doing basic workouts that I again found on the internet. I put on some weight and felt stronger, but failed to level out again properly and bulked up to 225 pounds. Then I started just cherry picking WODs from a few different CrossFit gym pages, or different folks I followed on Instagram. In 2018, I got down to 205, then 195, but just constantly felt burnt out. At the end of 2019 I stumbled onto Power Athlete, oddly enough from seeing re-shares of the #BeTheHammer tags and I dove in. I read the blog posts on the website and then immediately wanted to find what training program would be best for my goals. 

I landed on Jacked Street. 

I began building my residence on Jacked Street on November 2, 2019 and it’s been an awesome time ever since. The Jacked Street community is great, people helping people all the time on the feed. I made a solid group of friends through Jacked Street and am the strongest I have ever been. Since then I’ve followed the Power Athlete Nutritional guidelines, hopping on the Leaning protocol in the beginning of 2020, and now have gotten down to 193 pounds. I backed off during Jacked Street’s Lightning Cycle, as the leaning plus some poor recovery was kicking my ass. Since then, I’m back around 205 pounds but my shape and body composition are drastically different (for the better) since the last time I was at this same weight.

I also realized that, although I’ve had success and failures with weight, I didn’t really know what I was doing, so I decided to educate myself. I emptied my cup, jumped into the Power Athlete Methodology Course, cracking the bone and sucked the marrow. I passed the online course. I know I don’t know everything about strength and conditioning and still have much to learn, but from following the Jacked Street Programming, the Power Athlete Blogs, Power Athlete Radio Podcast and the Methodology Course I am much better equipped to manage my weight, health and strength, as well as be a role model for my kids, being able to help them with sports and training as they get older. 

I can honestly say that at 33 years old, I’m in the best shape of my life, and I’m not done improving yet. I’m going  to revisit another cycle on the Leaning Protocol, this time getting my body fat percentage tested before and after, and I’m planning to take and pass the Power Athlete Block Once Coach tests coming up in 2021. 

Long story longer: Thank you Power Athlete Crew!

Bobby

Now it’s time to empower your performance. 

Here’s a fun exercise. No, not that kind. Write down a fitness goal you’d like to accomplish in the upcoming year.

Go on, we’ll wait…

If writing a goal was pretty easy for you, then head to our training questionnaire to find the best training program to follow based on the goal. If writing this was a lot harder than you thought, begin writing all the excuses of time, equipment, money, or anything else that popped into your head before an actual personal, fitness goal.

These excuses are not barriers for finding ways to move; they’re parameters selecting the right program for you to follow. If you do not have a specific fitness goal, the best thing we can get you doing is to begin moving, and moving well. Then, just like Bobby’s experience, you will find aspects of movement, training, and fitness that you enjoy, which will help gravitate you towards a community of like-minded individuals. So, take that list of barriers and fill out our training questionnaire.

Find the program that fits within your parameters and shoot your shot with a free 7-day program trial. If you can make it through the initial aches and pains of moving again, then stick to our world-class coaching and workouts delivered to your phone for less than a dollar a day, and we guarantee your health and fitness will be in a better place by this time next year. Maybe we’ll even be sharing your success story 😉.

RELATED CONTENT:

EDU: Power Athlete Academy
PODCAST: PA Radio 435 – How Important is Food Quality For Strength Gains
BLOG: John’s 6 Rules for Strength & Muscle by John Welbourn
BLOG: The Essential Equipment for Your Home Gym by Tex McQuilkin
BLOG: Nerding Out on the PA Leaning Protocol by Jeremy Weber

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