I grew up differently than most people. When I was born, the doctor cut me with the scalpel and I had to get stitches in my head as soon as I was pulled out of the womb. As I toddler and young child I would ram myself into walls and throw myself off of furniture. Once I became angry, I would explode and attempt to hurt myself or others. As I grew up, we moved 9 times from Kindergarten to 9th grade. I went to a different school in 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th grade. My mom was a gambling addict and I didn’t see my dad very much. All of this and much more filled me with a level of hate and violence that was toxic.
I didn’t realize that getting in a fight every other week was abnormal. I actually wondered why people did not fight more. Violence was my way of solving everything. While I was very intelligent, I did not see that the way I behaved was not ideal.
This violence and hate is what I used to pour into competitive sport. I played college football and then powerlifted professionally. I won a world championship in powerlifting and was very successful. Then one day I herniated L5/S1 doing an 1,100lb. squat. I went from being one of the strongest people in the world, to not being able to dress myself. This is what lead me to Be Activated.
After my injury, I became open to learning anything I could to get me back to powerlifting. I traveled around and learned many different methods and sought out many different experts. With all my travel and learning, something just seemed to be missing. I did not know what it was until I attended my first Be Activated workshop.
After Douglas went through 1-2-3, it was like everything I had experienced in my life made sense. From injuries I had experienced to injuries I had seen happen. Athletes that did not respond to certain training, or had certain issues that I never could address, they all made sense. When the workshop was over, I told Douglas this was the most life changing information I had ever learned, and this could not have been a bigger understatement.
I immediately went home and worked on long time friend and powerlifter who has had many injuries in his career. After just one session of Be Activated he set a 90 lb. record on his squat. The performance improvements were amazing. The impact I was having on friends and clients was insane. People who needed surgeries, now didn’t. People in chronic pain, now weren’t.
From this amazing experience, I co-founded Reflexive Performance Reset (RPR), the performance partner of Be Activated. I have been traveling around helping to spread the amazing system that is Be Activated. In RPR we focus on people doing everything themselves. We teach people the underlying philosophy and how to use the methods themselves. I look at RPR as brushing my teeth and Be Activated as going to the dentist. I use RPR everyday and go to a hands on person to get Be Activated about once per month.
Doing this, I have seen insane changes. Aches and pains that had long persisted are gone. If my lower back starts bothering me, I can immediately make it feel better. I had gone to Be Activated to help my body and it did so immediately. However, the changes that were the biggest, were not physical and were not expected.
After a few months I noticed that I was much more relaxed. Things that easily angered me, did not do so anymore. I had never read a book cover to cover in my entire life, and all of a sudden, it was happening without effort. I used to yell at my kids all the time, and know I found myself being able to speak with them in a calm and rational manner. I had to apologize to my staff as I now realized that same yelling behavior I used with my kids, was how I had been to them. I would not have believed anyone had they told me how profoundly Be Activated would change my life.
I am a different person than I was the day I walked into my first Be Activated course. I would say a much better person. I am a better father, partner and boss for doing the Be Activated work. Doing the work will be a continual process for me as long as I live. I still struggle, I still have bad days and now I understand those things and have a tool to address them. That is the key with Be Activated. It’s not just about making you aware of issues, it gives you practical tools for addressing those issues.
Whether it is making changes in your own life or being able to help your clients make changes both physically and mentally, there is nothing I have found in my life that has had a more profound impact on these things than Be Activated.