For twelve years I was addicted to things I could not stop reaching for. During most of those years I was also setting records in a sport that demands total control of yourself.

I came to lifting because I needed something to hold onto. It was the first thing I ever applied consistent discipline to, and it worked. I could see it working. The weight went up or it did not, and no story I told myself changed the number. I reached elite totals in three weight classes, squatted 661 pounds in competition, and I have coached for the last ten years.

ABOUT

BUT NONE OF IT TOUCHED WHAT WAS ACTUALLY WRONG.

You can build a body that does anything you ask of it and still be someone you do not want to be. I had the discipline. I had proof of it in plates on a bar. And I was still an addict, still depressed, still running from things I would not look at.

What finally moved was slower and came with no certificate. I went through dozens of therapists over the years and got very little from them, so I built my own framework instead, out of philosophy and religion and whatever else held up under pressure. I tested it in the only laboratory I had, which was my life.

I write about that now. One book on how to squat, which sounds like a different subject and is not. One on how a person actually changes, which took years and cost more. Both are about understanding the mechanism instead of following the cue.

I am not writing from the far side of this. I am three months clean and still working. That is the honest position, and it is the only one I would trust in someone else.