Born in 1963 in Beaumont, Texas, USA, I have been active all of my life. Running and cycling were childhood favorites along with anything else to keep me occupied outside. When I was 15 years old, my friends and I constructed pull-up bars in our garages and began competing to see who could do the most repetitions. To this day it is still my favorite exercise. Thus began my lifelong love and pursuit of fitness. Those early days in the 1970's were about trying to lift the heavy barbells and following the advice written in the muscle magazines. We ate, lifted, slept and waited to grow into the Herculean bodies promised by the magazines. I grew, but not as fast as I wanted, though the love of the weights kept me going. After a brief stint at college, I joined the military in 1984 to go and see the world. I soon found myself as a firefighter on a NATO Air Base in southern Italy working every other day, not a bad situation. Still following the bodybuilding programs published in the magazines, I pressed my superiors to update the gym in the firehouse so I could train while on duty as well as off duty at the base gym. Training everyday was necessary I thought. Had I used my every other day work schedule as my rest days and trained on my days off work, I would have progressed much better allowing my body to recuperate and grow. We all live and learn.

After a minor injury to my lower back while on duty, I took up cycling for fitness and a break from the weights. I became an avid fan of European cycling, purchasing custom made racing cycles, attending major European stages races and cycling throughout the Italian hillsides every other day sometimes up to 160 kilometers. My bodyweight dropped to 153 lbs, but I was extremely lean and having fun. A career change within the military sent me to northern California as a Special Agent Investigator for the Air Force where I also took up the sport of triathlon when not working 16 hours per day. The weights returned as a supplement to my running, cycling and swimming and by necessity, I used high intensity low volume routines which were new for me. The new weight workouts were a nice change and my strength increased, but all the running and cycling kept me from gaining any size benefit the shorter high intensity routines may have provided. I soon found myself as the unofficial trainer for many of my coworkers to help keep the unit fit and I quickly learned I enjoyed the teaching experience.

Another assignment overseas to Spain during the first Gulf War was filled with hard work on security issues as well as criminal investigations, but my attention to the weights and cycling continued. Arriving back in Texas after the Gulf War, I settled in San Antonio, TX for 5 years conducting intelligence and counterespionage investigations for the Air Force and still experimenting with the combination of weight training and endurance exercise. During the last several years, I found myself conflicted between requirements for work and personal fitness desires. In 1997, I finally followed my heart and left the Air Force to pursue a career more suited to my personal needs. In 1998, I became certified as a Health Fitness Instructor™ through the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and began a career as a personal trainer. In 1999 I became a contributing editor to Health & Fitness Sports magazine and a co-owner of a personal training studio (1999 - 2004).

I continue to train clients six days a week and experiment with new techniques in my own training, always exploring the combination of weight training and aerobic exercise. I plan to continue a career in the fitness industry as a fitness trainer, teacher and writer. I enjoy not only the exercising, but the teaching, history and progression of weight training, strength sports and endurance sports. I have come to understand to be the best teacher, I need to remain student, therefore my studies and experiments continue.

I have the qualifications to provide training instruction to the majority of individuals whose lives are filled with other desires and responsibilities that make exercising difficult. I have had to balance exercise and demanding jobs my entire adult life, therefore I understand. I also understand the individual unwilling to take performance enhancing, muscle building or diet drugs to supposedly overcome such obstacles and reach their desired goal. I have never used such substances myself, nor do I condone their use. Not only do I teach exercise instruction to become stronger, more muscular and aerobically fit, I want and teach a healthy lifestyle that we can all take into our senior years. Teaching the concepts of exercise as stress, how to assess one's own typical response to exercise and how to create a desirable personal program are the foundations of my business. It is how I live my own life.

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