I would like to start with a deep and sincere thank you to Coach Sommer for sharing his incomparable expertise with us with remarkable lucidity and patience. I also owe a lot of gratitude to the prolific forum contributor Joshua Naterman. His work never fails to trigger epiphany moments and has dramatically improved my understanding of anatomy, nutrition, and strength training.
To give a brief account of my training history, I was always active as a child and loved playing in the woods. However, as I grew into adolescence, I fell into the pattern of sedentary media consumption that is far too common in the modern world. I was also a heavy consumer of soft drinks and processed food during that period.
A couple of years age I became interested in strength training and began experimenting with weight lifting and eating a whole food, plant heavy diet. Due to often poorly conceived programming and allowing far too much deterioration of form, my first year of training yielded sub par results. But it did leave me with a deep love of strength training.
Over the past year I have been doing a lot of research and becoming more serious about my training. I had been aware of Coach Sommer's work for a while, but always felt daunted by the idea of trying to put together a program and follow it without injuring myself. At the beginning of last May I finally got over my reservations and began training according to the Gymnastic Bodies method.
At first I had some set backs due to pushing too aggressively and not doing sufficient mobility work, but I soon realized that disciplined patience is absolutely vital to success with this style of training. As seems to be a common experience around here, once I swallowed my pride and started over at the most basic progressions and made mobility and preparatory work central to my programming, I was delighted with the progress that I began to see. I've also been struck with how much more enjoyable the Gymnastic Bodies style of training is.
So far my abilities are nothing impressive, certainly in comparison with the humbling performances of so many of my fellow forum members, but it is becoming increasingly clear that if I can remain consistent with my training and diligent in my study I will be able to achieve great things.
I'm excited to finally be a participating member on the forums. Thank you to all the wonderful people and inspiring athletes who make this forum the greatest fitness community on the Internet. May you all reach your goals quickly and without injury.