Events in my life that led to my learning experience

   
          Events in my life that led to my learning experience: 

       When I was younger (around 8-10 years old) I spent a lot of time with my father. My dad has a very active mind; he loves competition, arguing, and physical activity. He has a very explosive personality to say the least. So, through absorbing some of his traits (mostly the good ones) I have developed a pretty competitive personality. My father is a very "macho" man, always boasting about fights he's been in and how strong he is and was when he was my age. So I admired him, he made me want to grow to be big and strong like him.

       When I was in elementary school around fourth grade I began setting physical goals. I was young so all I knew to do was push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups with half assed form. But I did a lot of these three exercises, I still have pages I wrote keeping track of the amount I did daily. I loved coming to school and bragging to friends about the amount of push-ups I could do. "Check out my six pack!" I'd yell and show the girls my abs, it really felt good on my ego.

     I continued these three simple exercises, with variations of ab exercises (my favorite muscle to work out), until about the end of my junior year in high school, when I was introduced to the school weight room. Lifting weights was a funny experience for me, I thought I was so strong when it came to push-ups and pull-ups but lifting objects other than my own body weight was a completely different feeling. It was like I had never worked those muscles before, and I liked the new feeling. Through lifting weights I saw quick gains strength wise and visually. I literally began to see new muscle forming all over my body I never knew I had before, it was an such a good feeling it's all I wanted to do.

     The way me and my brothers all began working out together started about one month before I entered the weight room (End of junior year). Me and my best friend Cameron Koven, now my step brother (our parents fell in love), hung out nearly every second of every day. The two of us are very physical and competitive people, it didn't take long for us to become obsessed with lifting weights and competing in strength related physical activities. Cameron and I went hard talking about serious body builders and strength idols we admired. We would go to the playground at night and do muscle ups, handstands, attempt one arm pull ups (which was a serious goal of ours) and simple play around and have fun. 

     Eventually me and Cameron encouraged a friend of mine named Daniel Ong (now an adopted brother of ours) to join us in our gym lifestyle. Daniel is of Asian ascent, and was about 5'6'' and 125 lb’s at the time. At first he was very reluctant to join us. He would come into the weight room and dink around, not putting any effort into building up a sweat. Majority of the time he would leave early or just sit around. So of course, as most bro's do, Cameron and I started taunting him and forcing him to work his butt of. For the first few weeks he absolutely hated it, but as time passed and he started seeing gains it was clear he liked it and became addicted to the gym lifestyle. Soon it was the three amigos, me, Cameron, and Daniel in the gym every day feeling the burn. Daniel has now lost all previous body fat and has gained 15 pounds of pure muscle with the ability to bench 225 lb's 4 times.

     I have a little brother named Levi Hernandez; he has always had broad shoulders, long arms and a big head, the perfect build for a heavy lifter. Eventually Cameron, Daniel, and I showed him the weight room. Levi started at about 145 lb's with a small about of body fat. Levi loved it from the start. I remember him benching 95 lb's at about 10 reps with lousy form. Levi now benches 225 lb's at 10 reps. After 2 years in the weight room he is now 165 lb's, that's a 20 lb increase of muscle, pretty impressive if you ask me.