My health and fitness journey started like most, in a youth sport with volunteer coaches doing the best they could. Even with the benefit of time and only the rosy memories left, I was terrible. I remember striking out in T-ball- and I never played baseball on an organized team again. In soccer I wasn't good with the ball or coordination, but I was willing to stand in front of a kicked ball- so I became the goalie. Moral of the story, play to your strengths and work on your weaknesses. Many years later and post puberty I became a fairly reasonable athlete- and had a few injuries that started my education into the realm of professional coaching and the theory of performance improvement. I started paying attention to the why not just the what to do during practice or during my Physical therapy sessions. 

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I walked onto the University of Alaska Anchorage track and field team- I achieved a dream and became a collegiate athlete. My coach had a Phd in exercise physiology and I cannot express how much I learned from him as a coach or as an instructor at the university. His level of understanding and his ability to teach it to the regular 19 year old kid who doesn't know a danm thing other than run fast and pick up heavy objects and put them back down is somethin I strive for to this day. Other than the amount I learned being on the team, I have no real accomplishments in my college career. I was good enough to be on the team, but not good enough to win or earn a scholarship. Great learning experience and I'm proud of making it to the next level. 

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So, after my track career ended with another injury, I leaned into the education, theory of performance and started coaching. My proudest moments of my careen are from my time coaching high school track and field. I could talk about it all day, to keep it short, in 3  years I turned a small team of kids from willing losers to a team that took home trophies as the standard. It was a culture shift, it was a different mindset on how we as athletes approach our day. The kids understood how much effort I put in to their success, how much I cared about how they did and what they learned. It did not take long until they understood- I cant care more about them than they do, and I'm not going to care less, so they needed to start to care more, and they did. They started to hold each other accountable in and out of practice, for homework, what they ate for lunch, for low effort reps in practice to what they did on the weekends. Their efforts resulted in some of the best memories I have as a coach. I did not win anything, I did not put in the work. The kids won meets, won races, qualified for state, lost close battles and became better humans for the dedication they put into a silly sport of running fast, jumping far, and turning left.   

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All good things come to an end, and I had to move on from being a college kid who coached a small HS team to being a young professional in the real world. From an internship with USAF operators then to the Army Wellness center working with an incredibly wide range of individuals then back to USAF operators.  My next chapter is using what I have learned to help improve individuals lives.