About Me

Hello, my name is Jay and welcome to my website.  I am a father, working professional, and home gym athlete. I have been lifting weights, eating clean, and leading a healthy lifestyle for almost 20 years.  I was inspired to begin writing a blog after experiencing a serious medical issue in late 2015 and had to start my weight lifting and training over from scratch. In a matter of a couple weeks I went from being able to dead lift 2 1/2 times my body weight to needing assistance standing up, sitting down, or walking across a room. This blog became a way for me to document my recovery and help continue to push myself to improve.

In his best selling book Can’t Hurt Me, David Goggins often talks about what it means to be “uncommon”. The idea is to do the things that most others aren’t willing to do. And strength coach and author Dan John often recalls a quote from one of his friends that said “an elite athlete is an athlete that improves every year”, which I think this is one of the most encouraging thoughts I’ve ever read.

These two anecdotes helped me form my mantra for this website: Be Unique | Be an Athlete

From the usual societal perspective an athlete is someone who plays sports professionally or an Olympian But society is wrong, someone who is working hard to improve themselves is an outlier. That’s what this website is all about. The “average” person who is dedicating themselves to self improvement. That person is not average at all. That person is truly unique. That person is an athlete.

I am an athlete. And if you are working hard on improving yourself, then you are too. You’ll notice there’s a quote on my home page:

"But what does Socrates say? 'Just as one person delights in improving his farm, and another his horse, so I delight in attending to my own improvement day by day.'" - Epictetus

For me this isn’t just a quote but a mantra that I try to live by to improve myself everyday. So get out there with me and improve day by day, year by year and be unique. Be an athlete.

Jay