cause when you do, you’ll never know where you’ll end up. Needless to say, I jumped into the


awesome sport of weightlifting. A whole new adventure, but still dovetailed nice- ly with many of the parts I loved of my former sport. Some aspects of weightlifting I picked


up rather quickly — how to move your body quickly and accurately, being able to perform really hard sessions again and again, day after day, etc. I look forward to really challenging train- ing programs for a competition that is months and months away. Most excit- ing for me is the new mental challenge. The weightlifters think I’m brave for not flinching when someone kicks near my face in a fight. There’s still something about getting under that much weight that may never be second nature for me, though! Other parts I’ll never quite get.


I’m 5’9”, and even at my new ‘huge’ weight of 150, Takano constantly re- minds me that I’m the skinniest lifter he’s ever had lift on a national platform. By a lot. Pulling off the ground isn’t so bad, but I’m super imbalanced when the weight gets overhead. But that’s also part of the fun right


now. Last year I won the California State Weightlifting Championships.


I can’t


remember the last time I was excited about winning a state championship, but I was! I qualified for the American Open at 69kg with a Snatch of 100kg and Clean & Jerk of 116kg, which my buddy, Jared, reminds me I’m basically almost as strong as his wife, Danica Rue, and he’s right! One of the coolest things was I got to train at the Olympic Training Center again, but this time with the Res- ident Weightlifting Team. It was ironi- cally exciting to the be new guy in the corner of the gym. At the same time, it also reminds me of just how special my time in taekwondo was, how amazing my teammates were and what we were able to accomplish. Weightlifting has also become a


great sport for me for my ‘twilight years’ because year after year, the progres- sion of my lifts is objective. In taekwon- do, improvement is relative — how do


WEIGHTLIFTING.TEAMUSA.ORG << 3


you know you got better or everyone else got worse? What’s that saying, ‘The iron doesn’t lie’? Yeah, I just quoted Henry Rollins.


What’s Next? Rhythmic gymnastics? Probably not.


It’s the spandex, ya know! But like I said earlier, when you chase excellence, you never know where it’s going to help you end up. The lessons of my former coaches and my time with Takano have helped me as a sport performance pro- grammer immensely. I’ve been able to do individual program design for Olym- pic hopefuls of various sports, and from training with Takano, I ran into an old friend from the training center, Emmy Vargas, who now coaches our weight-


lifting program at my gym. You really can’t ever get away being surrounded by the best people, and I’ve been so fortunate to have stumbled upon some really great ones. Like so many of us reading this, it all


starts with wanting to be the best — the very, very best. When that’s your focus, you end up putting yourself in some amazing places and are ready to take advantage of situations that others would pass by. More always lies ahead than behind us, and I really feel that our next choices are more critical than the ones we’ve previously made. When we chase excellence, the


end result matters less than the process of


the journey


finally internalized. And then you’re unstoppable.


that we’ve


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