I was at the time 5'8" fat 230lbs, was later bulked "wish I went for ripped" 230lbs of muscle eating around 10k calories, curled 160lbs slowly so all work no swing, 180lb inclined press also.

Diet is everything I made for 2 meals 2 lbs of skinless chicken, large box uncle bens brown rice and family sized can cream of mush room soup. I made a casarole and was described as inhaling it.

I could eat anything and not gain a pound. Later after injury so lifting out went up to 260 fat and weak, now just over 210 leaned to drink water often and accidentally that fasting works when done fasting by changing stomach bacterial makeup to more fat then sugar urges.

I still can't do a pushup but I'm making myself do stuff even with pain. It's like the old joke. It's all mind over matter, it I don't mind then it doesn't matter. Just work through it since if it doesn't injure you then you gained for the next time.

Huge warning since many think like I did it doesn't matter. Exercise carefully your rotor cuff muscle groups. If your shoulders get worn then you cannot just fix them then forget about them.

Make sure you care for those joints since if they're weak and you're pressing you could be wearing them out and not even realizing it till they pop and grind daily and ache all the time.

Also I found flexing to warm up but avoiding stretching works for me best BUT you must do full range motion as in let that bar sit on you chest to stretch when warm or hot to make sure you're not over tight and can swing arms loosely without tightness, very big oversite for myself.

Now hamstrings they say toe touches, well try instead my own method, bend 90 degrees at the waist with knees slightly bent and then do squats no weight, you then stretch the hamstrings painlessly and you don't put wear on lower back disks with the hip movement.

Try this once when not tight and you'll see bent over squats I'll call them don't exercise the back or injure it but will loosen back of leg painlessly with far less effort then toe touches do and you can touch your toes this way also.

If you have pain in top of buttocks "beltline then squat down and sit on heels and just stay like that.

Told by doctors to do this or that stretch and get injured doing their perfect routine, just squat fully and stop at bottom or even touch floor with hands in front of you.

Almost but understandable, they are avoiding the challenges and taking the easy road and missing the lessons learned when taking on with a passion. I worked at a small factory. I had like 12 positions including shipping and recieving.

I was the circuit board tester and we used templates "flat plexiglass drilled to test with". Well they were all on 3 shelves and it took almost 20 minutes to find one of them.

Well one day I was walking to the office to ask where they wanted me to cover for on orders since I could do a dozen machines or acid baths. Well those templates had been bugging the fuck out of me. I knew if I asked I would be told no "cheap not seeing profit of spending a little to gain a lot". I had an old heavy desk. There were like 3000 of these with old masking tape with marker to ID them quick but most were faded totally.

I got a marker , roll of tape, and then picked them up 20 at a time and put them around my desk on the floor. I then started sorting them like cards by 100's so a pile of 0 to 100 another of 101 to 200.

It was like sorting books in a library to me. I was 3/4 done and my boss asked what I was doing wasting all this time. I showed him and promised him if he let me take another hour to finish it would save him money as in more than it cost for paying my low pay to do this.

I finished and these were stacked with the newest high number ones on top and I would sort the 100's piles as I was about to put them on the shelf so they were all in order. So like cards on edge in a 10 ft long row/shelf 3 levels high.

Next day need to pull 5 templates, remember one took me at least 20 minutes and he realized this. I went back to the office 10 minutes later, Done, he just looked at me confused. Done what? Got all 5 pulled to let you see that the 20 minutes plus for one is now 5 in 10 minutes. Now he knew math as in genius math done without paper for circuit boards with customers over the phone.

Later I got the engineer since the machine had no manual to show me how to troubleshoot or even pull a circuit board acting up on the test unit and then trace errors "old machine breaking and an engineer overworked and paid over double my pay "good friend weed smoking buddy" to fix.

Boss caught me fixing my own machine and freaked since it was vintage early 1980's no parts made anymore. He then was told I was trained by the engineer and that he then told the boss because of me asking for that training he could get to working on the almost a year late dozen projects they were always asking about.

Boss is realizing the stoner drunk is doing 3x more jobs at work, is finding stuff wrong and fixing it to save him 1000's a year and doing it without prodding from anyone.

He didn't realize this and I didn't either at the time but I learned that by stepping up I was also fixing my own attitude and work ethics. I realized that the years spent trying to do the minimum had harmed myself and my growth so I went and looked for challenges or problems everyone was avoiding or ignoring like they didn't exist.

So not only being challenged but searching for challenges and making sure to complete them is what my view is most important for personal growth of men and women.

Thank you