Photo By Senior Airman Austin J. Prisbrey | U.S. Air Force Airman 1st Class Austin J. Prisbrey, 377th Air Base Wing...... read more read more
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New Year’s means new goals right? Nah.
I thought that measuring my body fat percentage through a ‘bod pod’ test over at the 377th Medical Group would be a great way to begin my ‘fitness journey’ of exercising regularly. It was Jan. 4, 2019 and I had a physical training test coming up in just over a month, so I figured I had better start exercising.
I was blessed with some pretty decent athletic genes from my parents. That meant growing up, I didn’t have to put in as much work as others to be good at football, basketball, track or any sport.
Unfortunately, that athletic ability gave me a false sense of security when it came to PT tests in the military and I put off preparation.
Reality hit when I went to my ‘bod pod’ appointment. It revealed that I was overweight.
That sucked.
I told myself that the stupid ‘bod pod’ machine, which had a plus-minus of 3%, was reading me at my worst. But I knew that it was right.
I still passed my PT test. With a 97.5% in fact. Don’t get me wrong, I died that day.
The nearly mile high elevation at Kirtland Air Force Base was rough on my lungs to say the least.
Still in my PT clothes, I went and got orange chicken and chow mein from Panda Express like the fatty I thought I was.
That false sense of security came right back with that excellent PT score.
I basically said ‘screw it’ to my so called New Year’s Resolutions with dumb excuses of “it’s too cold,” “I want to play video games,” “I want to hang out with my wife,” and many other excuses.
I wanted to be lazy and do nothing because that is the easy thing to do.
Fast forward six months.
After lots of Popeye’s, Chick-Fil-A, poor choices and excuses later. I found myself making a video at a weight lifting competition held at the East Side Fitness Center on base. There were some strong people there and frankly, it was a turning point for me. I wanted to look like them and pull that kind of weight.
So I finally got started on my New Year’s goal of exercising regularly … six months late. But at least I started.
During the first week of lifting, my body was reintroduced to this thing called endorphins and it was glorious. I hadn’t felt this good in a long time and I was skeptical about it. I feared that it was all too good to be true and thought that something terrible was going to happen.
The good feelings and sense of accomplishment never failed to flood my body whenever I worked out.
I learned to love exercising because it is a healthy way for me to release stress that accumulates in my body and mind from work, taking 10 college credits and just everything else that life throws at me.
Honestly the timing for me starting to exercise regularly was perfect. Those 10 college credits were hard for me to balance and I just finished what I think has been one of the most stressful seasons in my life … so far.
Now taking 10 credits of classes on top of everything else might not be stressful for some, but it was for me. Almost every hour of my day was accounted for.
My hour of offered PT time during the duty day was in the afternoon. Once my night classes began, my exercise time was cut short. Both working out and taking classes were important to me so I talked with my supervisor to see if I could get my hour of PT time in the mornings instead. My office is flexible and knew how important this was to me and allowed me to make the change. This meant I would need to wake up at 4:15 a.m., in order to get a gym session in before work every day.
Worth it.
That is how much I value the stress relief that comes through exercising regularly. I also highly value the recovery that comes through sleep. I love sleeping and now have a bedtime (I swear I’m an adult) of 9:30 p.m., to get just under seven hours of sleep.
About four months into this new lifestyle and working out an average of six days a week, a coworker reached out to me for help.
It was my superintendent. She is actually in-tune to what is going on in her Airmen’s lives and is great. She was aware of my goals and this new lifestyle of exercising daily. She asked me for some help in preparing for her PT test. She is smarter than me and started preparing about two months beforehand.
She just hit 20 years in the Air Force and was worried about passing the PT test due to wear and tear that 20 years in the military offers on top of having three kids.
I did my best to use the things that I had taught myself and learned in college to help her out. She put in two months of early mornings and hard work. She did the real work, I was just there for encouragement and guidance on types of workouts she should be doing.
The preparation paid off and she turned a 77% mock PT score into a 91.9%. Her smile, joy and sense of accomplishment that radiated from her was contagious.
I’m not trying to say I’m a qualified personal trainer or some great motivator by any means. I am far from either of those things. Being a part of someone’s journey and seeing them improve and progress was one of the greatest feelings I have ever had.
After watching her progress, I wanted to learn about my own.
So, I went back to the ‘bod pod’ five days after Thanksgiving to see what my body consisted of. I was scared of what it was going to reveal. I was confident that I had gained some muscle, but not as confident in how much fat I had lost.
The test revealed that I had gained just approximately 13 pounds of non-fat weight, which I was told was muscle gain. I was super happy about that! My fat loss percentage wasn’t what I wanted it to be, which was disappointing. However, the muscle that I had gained far outweighed that disappointment.
I will continue to exercise regularly. I still average working out six days a week, and I still get those good feelings and sense of accomplishment when I work out, especially on the days when I really don’t want to. The stress relief and benefits that comes with exercising regularly truly does help me to be a better person, a better husband and a better Airman. I’m not trying to say that I don’t have down days. I’m saying that I have a healthy way of relieving stress that life is constantly throwing at me.
I have a PT test coming up in February of 2020 and plan to get 100%. This time it won’t kill me. This time I will try really hard not to go to Panda Express afterwards.
What I am trying to say is find your source of stress relief. Set some goals (not on New Year’s Day) and work towards them and help out others that are struggling with the same things. I don’t know and will not tell you what your goal or form of stress relief should be but maybe it is exercising regularly, by lifting weights and running. Maybe yours is yoga, martial arts or basketball. I don’t really care what you do as long as you stick to it.
Whatever it is, get after it and don’t compromise. I know the benefits that exercising regularly has brought to my life and hope you can find that in your life.
| Date Taken: | 12.18.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 12.18.2019 13:43 |
| Story ID: | 356231 |
| Location: | ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO, US |
| Web Views: | 27 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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