One With The Iron: My Health and Fitness Journey

Calvino the Gurth Kid

Hello everybody. I hope you enjoyed my last couple of blog posts about my family history and personal Viking Code. I know they were incredibly dense and fairly complex concepts. But it was so much fun writing those posts. I have found even more epic information about my overall ancestry and heritage, but I will share in a future post more about that as well as my methodology as to how I went through this family history rabbit hole, but I want to have a change of pace with this post. Today, I am going to talk more about my health and fitness journey.

About 4 or 5 years ago, I had ambitions to join the US Navy which I’ve shared in previous posts. At the time I decided I wanted to get physically fit for joining the military, my parents hired a family friend of mine to put me on a rigorous routine that would help me to prepare for military service. We catered my workouts to mostly bodyweight exercises and cardio. It was literally hell. I woke up in the mornings, 250+ pounds and super obese and I could barely run a full lap before I felt like I was going to throw up. Over time doing 1.5 mile runs, burpees, kettlebell swings and lunges, 24 in jumps and staircase sprints, I was able to get stronger. At the time, I didn’t realize how hard it was to do planks and other bodyweight exercises. Once I was able to consistently hit my pushup, plank and running goals, I enlisted into the US Navy. Obviously it never worked out since I was medically discharged upon a month into basic training. But, upon returning home, I was the leanest I’ve been since high school at about 210 pounds.

Now fast forward to about a few months after moving up to Redding, CA. I recently completed my CNA course and was officially certified as a nursing assistant. Working at a skilled nursing facility with my older brother, my eyes were truly open to what happens when someone doesn’t take their health and overall wellbeing seriously. I was exposed to people 300-500 pounds overweight. I saw people with the gnarliest wounds I’ve ever been exposed to. I saw people screaming in pain because they broke their hips due to muscle and bone deterioration. Or a double amputee deal with phantom pains due to neglecting healthcare professionals advice on eating more healthy and exercising. I could go on and on, but needless to say, it was a major eye opener to take my health and fitness more seriously, especially since I am still young. 

I found this awesome gym that is pretty expensive but so worth it because I get solid workouts in and it’s rarely busy. Paying a relatively high membership gave me the mental shift of “If I’m going to pay $85 a month to workout, make it worth it.” I initially started working out about 3 to sometimes 5 times per week on top of my shift at work. Over time as my physical demands at work became more intense and more frequent, I reduced my gym attendance to 2-3 times per week depending on how I feel. I currently focus on my upper body and midsection and less on my legs because my legs are so dead after my shifts (I workout at night before I go to bed) but once I am no longer a CNA, I’m going to workout my legs more than I do now. I’ve seen a massive transformation through consistency and proper nutrition. 

Nutrition has played a massive role in my body recomposition. This sounds intense, but this is my standard breakfast in all of its autistic detail:

•  4 eggs from my brother’s chicken coop mixed with arugula

• ¼ to ½ pound of grass-fed ground beef from a local butcher shop (R&R Meat and Seafood)

• Sometimes a 1.5 pound top sirloin steak (By itself of course)

•  A couple of red potato slices

• small bowl of plain yogurt from the Sierra Nevada brand with hemp hearts and chia seeds with blackstrap molasses and allulose sugar

•  A glass of raw milk from a local Dutch farm in Cottonwood, CA called Duivenvoorden farms. 

Part of a Complete Breakfast

This is the ultimate “brotein meal” that is a powerhouse full of macro and micronutrients that fuels me to be an absolute unit on the rehab floor. I don’t think people truly understand how physically demanding being a CNA is unless you were on or work with them. You are constantly rolling or lifting resisting patients, taking the brunt of patient transfers in and out of bed, pushing, pulling, squatting lifting, etc. If you have the mindset like I do, I view my time at work as my “gym outside of the gym” and I view every physically demanding task as a gym set. I am constantly lifting 40-50 pound oxygen concentrators, often two at the same time, so I can count it as a farmer's carries that I carry multiple halls sometimes a couple of times a day. After work, depending on how I’m feeling, I will go to the gym where I can be one with the iron and focus on isolated and compound movements. 

I used to despise going to the gym. I hated everything about health and fitness, especially cardio. It was both a literal and figurative hell just getting out of the comfort of my home to be in the gym. Now, after consistency, the gym is my sanctuary and my refuge from the storms of the day. My gym routine focuses on proper form in the exercises I do and manageable weight instead of ego lifting. I focus on what the fitness world calls “time-under-tension”. I focus on explosive movement on the eccentric (ascending part of the rep) pause 1-2 seconds at the peak (height of the contraction) and then slow and controlled on the concentric (descent of the rep). It burns like crazy and it forces the full muscle to have complete, unforgiving control of the weight. Depending on the exercise, I do both bilateral and unilateral reps and count them as a set. Needless to say, my body is completely cooked but the great thing is that I consistently am hitting PRs for my bench press which isn’t much, bicep curls, and countless other upper body movements. My logic is that I will always put 100% into every session but never overdo it, especially when I had work earlier that day. I never half-ass my sessions but I’ve mastered listening to my body to prevent injury or over-fatigue. After my gym sessions, I sleep like a baby. 

The amazing thing about my current lifestyle is that despite the intense shifts at work, I still hit PRs when I hit the gym. My workout sessions on top of my job is a literal force multiplier for my overall health and fitness. I walk around 8k to 12k steps per shift sometimes more and almost every step is lifting, bending, twisting, rolling, pushing, pulling, etc. If it wasn’t for both of these demanding activities in my life, I wouldn't be able to see the massive upper body recomposition I am seeing from 18-24 months of consistency. I have successfully mastered my mind where my inner demons said I was a piece of shit who wouldn't amount to anything and that I should quit while I’m ahead, etc. Few things in life piss me off more than people who have been active and fit their entire lives tell you that it isn’t hard to go to the gym and get lean. No shit it was easy for you. You didn’t have to deal with the sacrifices or temptations of not indulging in the foods you used to eat all of the time without skipping a beat. Unless you’ve been fat before, you have not the slightest clue how hard it is to convince yourself to get up and do something like getting your ass in the gym. I’m not making excuses, but fit people need to be more gracious to those who struggle losing body fat and gaining muscle. Not everyone was a gym rat or an athlete like you were or are. Everyone nowadays has to give their two cents on what diet or fitness routine is the best for fat loss and muscle gain. I view it as external noise and I dismiss it entirely because I know that what I am doing is working extremely well. I won’t lie, it's nauseating when people tell me that what I’m doing is unhealthy or they are concerned about me being a heavier guy and that I need to lose weight in order to be healthy. The thing is that body weight doesn’t necessarily equate to overall health. The key is to increase skeletal muscle and reduce body fat healthily. When I show them my nearly perfect vitals, they don’t know how to react since they are used to attributing weight to unhealthy living. The fact of the matter is that I work an extremely demanding job that kicks my ass every single day, so for me to even have a tiny bit of energy to work out, let alone hit occasional personal records, is a massive testament to my overall functional strength, work ethic and consistency. I fuel my body with high quality and clean whole foods, hydrate well and because of that I am able to become the strongest and healthiest version of myself for the first time in my life. Because of this, I am capable and I am competent which means the world to me.

Blown away with my results so far, this photo is from earlier this year

Because of this, I am now pursuing a career path into personal training, specifically with the aging population, but also with any age demographic. I’m in a unique position where I have 2 years of experience in the trenches as a Certified Nursing Assistant and I have a daily front row seat into what happens when one lives a lifetime being sedentary, obese and eating junk. My desire and goal is to help the aging population break the stigma and mindset that they are too old to worry about their health and that it’s too late for them to gain muscle and strength into their elder years. Although the fitness goals are vastly different for older people compared to younger adults, it doesn’t mean it’s not less important to one’s longevity. Longevity is the ultimate goal: to thrive in one’s overall wellbeing into their elderly years. 

I get stoked when I meet people in their 70s and 80s who chose from an early age to take their nutrition and fitness seriously. I look up to men in my own family who also took their health seriously.  My grandfathers and my dad’s older brother Chris were/are perfect examples of this. My dad’s father never worked out at a gym, but he was always walking, building, repairing and doing random things that kept his body and mind sharp. His name was Chester Hollingsworth. I remember seeing him in his mid to late nineties in the backyard digging trenches for our sprinkler systems so we didn’t have to pay someone else to do it. Once his wife (my grandmother) passed away, he got bored of retirement and went back to work to keep himself busy and his mind off of missing her constantly. He ended up retiring at 101 but he passed away from a bad fall that shattered his pelvis. He was almost 103 when he passed away, but he would have lived at least a couple more years if he didn’t have that horrible fall. I always shared his longevity with others because he was a living embodiment of longevity even though he enjoyed drinking Dr. Pepper everyday, an occasional donut and taco bell multiple times per week. 

Now, onto my mom’s dad David Deloy Dodds. When he was in his fifties or sixties, he made a conscious decision to work out at a LA Fitness near his home. He went four to five times per week at 4:30 in the morning for nearly 30 years. While he was in his eighties and nineties, he had some pretty nasty falls, but he never broke a bone. I attribute it to him going to the gym and eating moderately healthy that his bones were dense and strong enough to not break. He lived to be almost 94 when he passed away peacefully in his home. 

My uncle who I admire and love dearly has been lean and fit his entire life. He is 70 years old and has been a bike enthusiast for most of his life. He oftentimes would bike 30-50 miles a couple times a week and quite often even more than that. He also worked out at the gym a few times per week as well. When I saw him a few months ago, he asked me how my fitness is going and he told me how grateful he was that he took his health and fitness seriously at a young age and he was stoked on my own personal fitness journey and saw the massive strides I have made in the past couple of years. 

My grandfathers' and my uncle’s lives were/are a testament to the fact that longevity is built on decades of sustained, quiet persistence. My own training is simply an attempt to channel that same enduring spirit into a more deliberate, focused pursuit of functional strength and the kind of physical readiness required to carry the literal weight of my heritage. 

Alright, enough of my Ted Talk, on to one of the main reasons why I got into fitness and it’s not what you’d expect. When I have the financial means to throw down some serious money into this dream, I want to wear and wield medieval weapons and armor and look like an absolute unit while doing so. I’ve done extensive research and found out that if I were to go back in time 800-1200 years ago, I would be part of the Viking elite warrior class. I am a couple inches taller than the average Scandinavian of the Viking age, but I have a massive frame. I essentially would have been in the front lines of a shield wall. Or, I would have been a shock trooper (Berserker or Ulfhednar) with a dane/langeid axe who would have smashed through the ranks of the opposing army. How freaking badass is that? So, with that being said, aside from donning the armor of an elite viking warrior or a Templar/Teutonic knight armor, I want to get into this kind of stuff to pay solemn homage to my Germanic-Scandinavian ancestral roots and what better way than to build my body as a lowkey powerlifter while wearing chainmail, a sword and shield, axe and spear? In my headspace this is peak fitness. It would be sick to be a gladiator too but I don’t want to get ahead of myself too much.

I think its time to get a bigger shirt lol

My dream is going to cost a small fortune, but it is an awesome way for me to pay reverence to my Scandinavian and Germanic ancestry. So, for now, I am going to continue to strengthen my body and be fit enough to walk around in 70 pounds of armor. I have slowly through a lot of sacrifice, dedication, perseverance and commitment have built a robust and capable body. I went from despising my body for being fat and miserable to eventually becoming strong and for the first time in my life I am starting to be kind to myself. It took me long enough and it's been an arduous journey, but that is totally ok with me. At least I am getting there. I still have a ways to go since this is going to be a lifelong pursuit. But thanks to my fitness journey, I am making a career pivot from a healthcare nursing assistant setting to a healthcare-focused fitness coaching role.

Ultimately, longevity is my goal. The beautiful thing is that you don’t need to be able to deadlift or squat massive weight to be healthy. You don’t need to chase every expensive fad that eats away at your finances. Honestly, most of them are just scams anyway. True health is mundane, not sexy and at times, it’s lonely. It’s not about performing for anyone else. It’s about the quiet, consistent work you put in when no one is watching. When you finally look in the mirror, the reflection won’t lie and the results will speak for themselves. You’ll either see the evidence of the sacrifices you’ve made to secure your future, or you’ll see exactly what you’ve been avoiding. I’m here to tell you it’s not too late to turn that around. Set your sights on goals that are actually attainable, stop looking for external validation, and just show up for yourself.

As I close this chapter as a CNA, I’m leaning fully into my next mission which is to train the aging population to reclaim their own strength. Society loves to push this narrative that once you hit a certain age, you’re destined to wither away. That is a complete bullshit lie and is the farthest from the truth. You can gain muscle mass and bone density well into your later years, and you can effectively fight off the decline of sarcopenia through consistent resistance training and whole-food nutrition. My time in the trenches working in the rehab wing of a skilled nursing facility has shown me exactly what happens when you neglect your foundation. Now, I want to help others build theirs before they end up in a facility and suffer and be a slave to medications and pain killers. I’m incredibly stoked for this next phase: becoming the mentor I wish I had, and helping people thrive instead of just existing. At the end of the day, longevity is the ultimate goal. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for supporting the journey. Until next time, stay consistent, and get after it. 

Recent progress photo