That was over a year ago.  I’ve come far.  I’m almost closer to 200 than 300.  It’s a long process.  It’s something that takes effort. 

I don’t know if I put as much effort into a year of college as I have into my health in the past year.  I’m not perfect.  I’ve had setbacks.  I’ve had plateaus.  I’ve made mistakes.  I’ve succeeded.  I’ve failed.

I’ve met some great people.  I’ve made new friends.  I now have a group of people who ask me to hang out.  I have a group of friends to count on.  I have people who sent me random text message telling me that I’m a motivator, that I’ve impressed them, that I’m making strides.

It’s not a bunch of bullshit.  It’s an ego boost, yes, but it’s also something that builds you up from the inside.  The mental game is just as important as the physical game. 

I’ve gone from having a 40 inch waist to a 36 inch waist.  I’ve gone from wearing 2XL shirts to wearing XL shirts.  I can still wear my 2XL shirts, but my wife usually asks how my swim is going when I’m in them.

I like where I’m going.  I like where I’ve been.  If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you may not know where you’re going.

I had it in myself all along.  This program brought it out.  Now that it’s out, I never want to put it back in.  I will wear it with pride.

Not that training outside is bad.  But it’s hard.  And dealing with something that was hard was something I was a little concerned about.  I didn’t want another obstacle.  I wanted things to get easier.

This is NOT how DDIP works.

So, we moved to the outdoors, and training in part-dark, part sunrise, part early morning began.  The bugs.  The dirt.  The mud.  A playground of land to run in.  To do pushups in.  To sprint in.  To do side-straddle-hops in.

I was still at the point where I was new to the program.  It was my second session, but I was determined to make myself stronger.  The problem was that I hated to run.  I still do.  As soon as I step off, I want to quit.  I want to stop. 

There is no quitting in DDIP.

Somehow, we were lucky for those 8 weeks, because there was no rain.  None.  It made for some dusty mornings, but it made it easier to deal with.

There’s a different mentality when training outside.  The source of motivation is different.  When you’re in a gym, you’re constantly moving back and forth.  So when you feel like you’re lagging behind, here comes somebody to help you out.

Outside is different.  We would go on runs, or marches, and people would extend away from you.  You have to find it within yourself to catch them, or at least keep up with them.  It’s not easy.  Especially when you are slower than them.  Heavier than them.  Not in as good of shape as them.

But, I persevered.  I’m still persevering.  I’m still trying to catch up.  I’ve found a group of people who don’t judge you by how fat or thin you are, by how beautiful or ugly you are, or by how fast or slow you are.  They don’t judge you.  They find out who you are, and accept you as you are.  There is no judgement.  There’s only encouragement and motivation and acceptance.

If the rest of the world was like this, we’d all be better off.

Drill gives out awards each session to different recruits.  This is something extra that he does to award sometimes the recruit with the most heart, the most discipline, the most motivating, and the coveted honor grad.

Discipline and Motivation awards are nearly self-explanatory, but the Heart and Honor Grad aren’t exactly known to the layperson.  The Honor Grad goes to a veteran who has been around, exemplifies what DDIP is all about, and has earned a free 8 week session.  Drill has described the Heart Award as a ‘rags to ritches’ story of fitness.  Somebody who comes into the program with little physical prowess and completely encompasses themselves into the undertaking.

Drill called our names that day for the Heart Award.  I had no idea what it was, but I imagine that the commitment to success after the major injury to Melissa and the fact that we never faltered in our mission is what made us get recognized.

Whatever it was, it showed me that I had come a long way since being called “fatass” and “fat piece of sh!t” in high school so many years ago.  I had finally been accepted into something where there is no fake, no garbage, no politics, and no negativity.  I had waited my entire life to find something like this.  This was my comeuppance.  It was something that I deserved.  It was something that I needed.

Now that I had found it, I wanted to capitalize.

I was still determined to keep going strong.  And Melissa encouraged me from the couch.  It wasn’t easy for her to see me making improvements while she had the worst setback she could have imagined.

I had to keep charging, but I needed her with me.  Mentally and spiritually.  Good things were to come.

Everyone should understand that we are a part of something. Sometimes all the love spawns animosity, and can manifest itself in a friendly competition.

I’m glad to be a part of something where we push each other harder and harder every day, motivate each other, praise each other, and help each other.

This is an amazing group of people, from the newbies to the most experienced of the veterans. I’m proud to know each and one of you.

Congratulations to the award winners. Each of you has earned a special place within DDIP. Congratulations to the new graduates, who have now been indoctrinated within the ranks of this program.

I honestly don’t know where I would be right now without DDIP. I don’t know where I would be without the likes of Drill, Coop, Stoney, Val, Crazy, Cherone, Patrick O’Neil, BBM, Iron Mike, Hurricane, Instructor Phil, Tami, Cook, Rico, Bruno, Beebach, Zimm, KC, Cook, Bandit, Hooly, Ten, et al. You all are my second family up here. I’ve never been made to feel like an outsider. And that list leaves NONE of you out. You are all a part of this. If I had room I would list every single one of you.

An amazing group of people we have here. I say that a lot, but it’s true. You all are the reason I get up in the mornings. You’re my reason for losing almost 50 pounds. You’ve done this for me.

I can only hope that I give a sliver of it back to you.

My mother came to visit IVMF a few weeks ago. She wanted to see what this was all about. She walked out of there and said, “WOW.”

If you guys ever need anything, call me. Text me. Email me. Whatever. I don’t care what time it is or where I am. I will try to help.

Bring on Session 23.

We had a huge group of people this morning, dressed in black, decked out with war paint, all to bring some motivation and excitement to graduation.  Words cannot express right now the amount of excitement and cohesiveness we had.  I’ve been up since 4am.

Best graduation so far. 

These two people pulled me from a personally tough 8 weeks, along with some very select others, namely Ten and Stoney.  Just incredible.  I love these people.

Things in life were improving.  Work life was getting better, as a new zest for life was coming to fruition, as the catalyst was exercise.  Married life started improving, as I wasn’t always suffering from bad moods and exhaustion.

Drill was in the house that morning, at the Indian Valley YMCA.  Drill’s workouts were always different from the other instructors.  Drill’s workouts were…different.  He always mixed it up, giving you different ways to tackle motivation, harness it, and exact it upon some unsuspecting passerby.  He drove us to new heights.

He designated that morning as “ARMY PT Test” morning.  We were going to see how many situps and pushups we could do in a minute.  And then we were heading out on a 2 mile run.  We were being timed by the now notorious BBM (Barbara Beth Martin), so we were gonna go get after it for an hour.

We headed outside, and started with pushups.  My AB, Patrick O’Neil, started off.  I’m pretty sure he eclipsed 60+, as an experienced veteran.  Then came my turn.

I remember my first day.  We did pushups that day.  I could do 4.  Without stopping.  4.  Four.  F. O. U. R.  Four.

That day, I felt pretty good.  This was 5 weeks in.  I did 52.  I couldn’t believe it.

Then we did situps.  Patrick hit some obscene number near the triple digits.  I didn’t fare nearly as well, as I think I was only around the 40 mark.  Way up from the zero I could actually do the first day without evacuating my dinner from the previous evening.  Or at least some gaseous representation of it.

So, I was pretty happy.  Pretty motivated.  Pretty excited.  The group took off on a run, which I still wasn’t acclimated to doing.  Melissa and I stayed in the back of the pack.  She told me how many pushups and situps she did, how proud of herself she was.  How she couldn’t believe how far she had come in 5 weeks.  Shannon was with us.  I’m not sure who was the proudest of the two of us.  Me, Melissa, or Shannon.

We caught up to the group as they were completing this two mile jaunt around a cinder-based track near an elementary school.  I took off, trying to keep my breathing steady, my shoulders relaxed, and motor through two miles like it was nothing, when in reality it was the farthest I’d run since high school.

I finished up, and some people were still motoring along.  Melissa wasn’t really supposed to run that much, as she has a condition that causes her bones to be quite brittle, and a break could happen from anything majorly high-impact.  So, she was slowly trotting around the track.  Working hard, since she always did.

So, she hits her last straight-away.  Patrick is with her.  Drill is with her.  LKC is with her.  People motivating her along, telling her she can do it, to sprint off the rest few steps.  To work hard.  To finish strong. 

And she did.  She was strong.  I saw it all.  I saw that fire in her eyes.  I saw her smiling.

She crossed the finish line, triumphant.  She took that last tell to transition back to walking.  And then everybody who was there that day, will tell you, heard something pop.

POP.

Melissa’s Achilles tendon tore.  It tore in half.  Like an old rope on a sailboat that has been pulled taught one to many times.  Completely shredded.

She collapsed onto Patrick O’Neil.  Her world collapsed.  Her life collapsed.  My entire outlook on the future twisted on that cinder track.  Everything she had worked toward for the past 5 weeks was obliterated.  It happened in an instant.

Drill and Patrick helped her into the Jeep.  She couldn’t move it.  Luckily she wasn’t in that much pain.  I stood there, helpless.  I couldn’t fix anything now.  I was picturing her needing surgery, laying in bed, or on a couch, for months.  What would I do?  The program and exercise routine I was starting to fall in love with just tore my wife into a million pieces.

We got home, and I grabbed a few things to take to the hospital, like my phone, wallet, etc.  Drill ran over from his house, and duct-taped a giant ice-pack to her ankle.  He gave her a kiss and said “stay motivated.”  I could tell that he might have been a little heart-broken over it.  All three of us were.

I took her to the hospital.  ER doc fitted her with a temporary cast, told us to see an orthopedist, and sent us along.  By 1pm that day, we met with a surgeon, scheduled an MRI for the next day, and went home.  Tears flowed.  I tried consoling her.  Not much was going to improve her mood.

She had surgery on the 22nd of April.  What followed was a summer of her being on the couch for most of it.  I was still working in Jersey.

The amazing thing that happened was that members of the DDIP family brought us dinners, came and visited, continually asked about her and how she was doing.  I didn’t miss a class because of the injury (an advantage of the class being at 5:30am), so it was still helping me, but hurting her every day because I could go and she couldn’t.

[DISCLAIMER:  We knew that something like this could happen, so we never really blamed the DDIP program for her getting hurt.  It was just unfortunate that it happened there.  She could have been walking our dog, stepped off of a curb, and torn it then.  Never will we ever direct the blame anywhere except for a case of bad luck and terrible timing.)

See, the physical torture that my body was going through with the driving to work every day, a suffering marriage, and a suffering mental state started having a toll on my weight and my happiness.  I was losing that balance I had in my life previously to starting to work in New Jersey.

I considered DDIP a new birth for me.  I was meeting great people, I was working out like I’d never worked out before, and I thought I had found an answer to a lot of my troubles.  I was sore a lot, but I was sleeping like a baby at night.  I was truly finding who I was again.

I learned that DDIP wasn’t really the answer I had been looking for.  DDIP was simply the catalyst of my motivation.  The motivation came truly from within.  It was always there.  When Shannon talked about it to me, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

The motivation was there all along.  Everybody has their motivation.  It’s the job of the individual to find it.

I remember when he walked into that gym that first day.  He commanded attention.  He commanded respect.  He struck fear into you, if you didn’t know was about to happen.

I was petrified.

When he walked into the room, we were already standing at attention.  We were already warmed up.  He walked in and stared us down.  He was a Drill Sergeant.  Not unlike R. Lee Ermey from Full Metal Jacket.  Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.  I was completely unprepared.

Drill knew everybody.  He knew every name.  He knew how we felt.

He led us through an hour of exercises, most of which I failed to accomplish.  From side-straddle-hops, to super jacks, to combo-calisthenics (not for the faint of heart), I’d never been through such a workout. 

It was fantastic.

Class took on a whole different meaning from there on in.  Drill classes were different when he was there.  The other workouts were great, but he had (and still has) such a presence that everything changes when he is/was there.

Every DDIPer out there will tell you, never miss a Drill workout.  The reasons for never missing are:
1.  He’ll know that you aren’t there.  He will ask why.
2.  You’ll most likely miss something that hasn’t been done yet.  And may never be repeated.
3.  He’ll know that you aren’t there.  He will ask why. 

No workout is EVER the same at DDIP.  They all have similarities, but none are ever the same.  That’s the best part.

It comes two days after your training.  If you don’t believe me, ask anybody.  They’ll tell you.  They’ll tell you that it’s something that everybody goes through.  They’ll tell you that it’s worth it.  They’ll tell you to just keep working.

It was St. Patrick’s Day, 2010.  My wife, the Irish fan she is, LOVES her some St. Patrick’s Day.  We got up that morning, worked out, and went to work.  We got home, and decided we’d head out with her brother and his girlfriend for a green beer and a bite to eat.

Everything was fine.

Until we sat down for dinner that is.  I knew I was sore.  What I didn’t know was that it would be impossible to stand up AFTER dinner, as my muscles had contracted and cemented during dinner, unbeknown to me.

My legs hurt.  My arms hurt.  My eyes hurt.  My head hurt from processing all of the hurt.

I learned that stretching and drinking enough water to flood a small basement helped, but only a little.  The soreness was something that you earned.  It was something to remind you that you worked hard.  It was something to remind you that you were still alive.  And it was something that would eventually go away.

After people started to show up, I noticed that we were welcomed with open arms to a group of people.  All walks of life were in the gym that morning.  The old, the young, the large, the small.  They were all there for one reason: to get fit.

A post-knee-surgery Zimm hobbled in on a crutch, and Shoneil takes one look at him and yells out, “TINY TIM!!!”  Hugs and smiles followed.

I was introduced to two instructors: Iron Mike and Becky.  They seemed nice and quiet, until the class started.  Then they turned into two yelling, screaming, motivating machines.

They started out by doing side-straddle-hops.  This, to the lay-person, is the jumping jack.  Not hard…right?  The slight difference is that this group does them 4-count style.  So each count is REALLY 2 side-straddle-hops.

We start off, sounding off each count.  We get to 20.  I’m warmed up.  We get to 30.  Legs are warm.  We get to 50.  My calves are on fire.  We get to 60.  I want to go home.  We get to 70.  What the hell did I sign up for?  We get to 100.  I was spent.

Welcome to DDIP.

The next 57 minutes were spent running through a gauntlet of exercises, stretches, and cardio routines.  I remember Mike making us do pushups.  I could do 4.  Four. F. O. U. R.  4.

We were welcomed with open arms and big smiles.  We left the gym with sore arms and sweaty bodies.  I knew I was in for the long haul.

At the time, I was working in south Jersey, and had a long car ride to get there in the morning.  I was apprehensive about doing the workout and then driving for an hour or an hour and a half in the car, but I had to try it.

I was afraid that I would fall asleep at the wheel after waking up at 4:41am (I always set my alarm for an odd number), but what I realized was quite the opposite.  After the workout, I woke up even more.  I was alive.

And then came the soreness….