On Wednesday, November 15, I official hired a new fitness coach to lead me on the next step of my fitness process.

As I mentioned in my last post, I had trouble finding my "center" in Richmond. In Connecticut, it was easy... I had my gym, the coaches, and the gym friends who kept me grounded. 

As I walked through the initial stages of testing with the prospective new coach, it became abundantly clear that this was going to be my trainer. He was concise, clear, and helped me quickly dig through my muddy mind to find exactly what my goals were.

The new coach identified a couple of issues for us to work on. First, ankle mobility. Second, some back and arm flexibility. Provides five key daily stretches / activities to do going forward until we resolve those issues. 

We also talked about direction; both where I was, and where I am going. Let's be honest, when I began this process two years ago I was a hot mess. My coach had to burned to the ground and rebuilt to fly again. It took a while before I was even mobile enough to lift much weight. What I lacked was my own direction. I went from "I'm going to be dead in two years" to "fitness is awesome!". I followed a path of powerlifting for quite some time. It was something my coach did, and it made sense to me to follow this as part of my journey.

Through powerlifting, I've gotten stronger than I have ever been in my life. I never deadlifted or barbell squatted in my life two years ago, and now I can push and pull 3-4 plates on each side of the bar. That is no small accomplishment. 

When I looked at where my process will take me next, and my specific goals, I have begun to think more about how to get there. Working with my new coach, we've developed an initial plan. We will focus more on time under tension and hypertrophic lifting programming with cycles of cutting and bulking to achieve my overall body composition goals. Moving away from powerlifting isn't an easy thing to do, but I think it's the right move in order to achieve my larger, overarching goals to get leaner and bigger. It doesn't mean I won't come back to powerlifting later, but right now I want to focus more on body composition efforts.

As part of the kick-off for the next phase of my fitness process, today I had a 3D scan done of my entire body. This gives me complete measurements of my body, weight, and bodyfat. 

I'm going to admit it is 20 seconds of insane courage to post this publicly. I thought long and hard about whether to post this scan on the blog. In the end, I decided that Ben 3.0 needed to be transparent. Sometimes things aren't always great and that is okay. 

I wasn't entirely happy with what this told me. I did, however, accept it as is. Let me be clear that I don't think everything here is 100% accurate; no device or tool can give you numbers that are absolute. Do I think I am 33.68% bodyfat? No. However, I don't think I am really 18% either which was done with calipers and dealing with loose skin. I think the reality is the answer is somewhere in the middle. 

As with all technology in fitness, I always say the same thing. "It's inaccurate, but it is consistently inaccurate." I will take the numbers and run with them, and use them as a baseline to track my progress going forward.

As anyone can see from the 3D imagery on the graphic, yes I have a long ways to go to get to a body composition that resembles my overall goals. While I'll talk more about that in the future post, I can say there is work to do.

With the new workout plan being developed, the new nutrition plan being put into place, and doubling down on my goals, I know I can achieve what I want. It's simply placing mind over matter and driving myself forward towards my goals.