whats everyone's athletic background

[James Bailey]

I didn't do too much outside of sport at school, tennis, football, cross country shit...till I was about 12 then did judo for a while and karate. Then got into other martial arts at about 16, muay thai, krav maga and kali mostly...did that for a bit then dropped it around 18 just kept up running and a little bodyweight conditioning until 22 when I discovered crossfit and did that not very seriously for about a year till I herniated two lumbar discs with a combitation of snowboarding and deadlifting.

Now I've been back to training for about 4 months properly and am concentrating on oly lifting, hoping to compete this year. Just getting stronger and fitter, still do some metcon and gymnastics work but am mostly lifting, occaisional sprints...

[Jon Brody]

Always played competitive sports as a kid -- lacrosse, football, tennis...in high-school I committed to tennis, was recruited by colleges, etc. If I didn't drop out of school I prolly would have made an attempt at playing professionally.

I also took up boxing and muay-thai around these years, and as I gradually burned out of tennis spent more and more time on that. Had a couple of boxing matches and one MT. Got hooked on combat sports.

Aside from actual skill training my background in GPP and strength and what-not is pretty limited, if not horrible. Some basic bodybuilding shit @ globos with friends....5 months ago I started lifting with more intensity, and then ~40days ago found this site and started some pretty legit programming.

I dabbled in BJJ, took to it well, and am going to start integrating that as my sport of choice. Building around it I'm looking to mix in oly, PL, gymnastics and heavy metcon work.

[Brian Solar]

Crossfit and SS, on and off, Ages 15-16

Crossfit Strength Bias, Age 16-present

Had a bar, dumbbells, iron weights and a jump rope when I started. Made a pull up bar, med ball, rings, parallettes, GHD, and a 400m track. Bought a steel power rack($100) off craigslist, and still need to buy a new bar with bumpers($570), and a Concept 2 off craigslist(will probably have to watch for months).

[glennpendlay]

tennis
cross country
track and field
strongman
scottish highland games
grip specialization
powerlifting
wrestling
Olympic weightlifting

those are listed in rough order of importance, not chronological. my three main sports have been wrestling, powerlifting, and Olympic weightlifting. there also may have been some things i've forgotten. my memory isnt what it used to be.

glenn

[Sam Nutt]

I swam in high school and college, then gave it up to focus on drinking. I then devolved into a total meathead, doing nothing but bench presses, curls, and everything else that targets the beach muscles. CF came along in '07, where I was introduced into the Olympic lifts. They've been my sole focus for a couple months now.

[John Filippini]

Another one for being extremely nonathletic as a kid - somewhere along the line with my parents hating football and my idolized older brother being a science nerd, I sort of got the "jocks are the devil" mindset early on.

The only two sources of regular physical activity I had as a kid were a lot of backpacking trips as a kid in Scouts and a lot of Ultimate Frisbee senior year of high school. Not particularly good with ultimate, but it was fun and for the majority of senior year I was playing something like 3 hours/day, 5 days/week. After I left, the group my friends had started actually turned into an official team and then a local league a few years later, which I'm mildly proud of.

I dabbled with going to the gym through college, but really didn't know what I was doing so I didn't stick with it. Sometime late junior year of college I started going to the gym with a couple of friends, doing split routines for the most part. I may have started because the girl of the two started to make me feel embarrassingly weak.

After that, started CF'ing at the end of senior year, moderately consistently for about a year I think. Found an oly lifting team downtown that I started lifting with for technique help for CF. Dabbled in Oto's hybrid program for a bit, which I liked for the increased focus on both barbell and gymnastic strength.

In November or so I decided that there was too much skill training to be done on both weightlifting and gymnastics to be able to be happy with my progress doing both at once, and decided to try doing 6-month splits between them, starting with weightlifting since the oly team was so convenient.

Now 8 months later I've decided to focus entirely on weightlifting because my gains have been too fast for me to walk away from. Going from a total of 127kg in July of last year to hopefully 190kg by the end of the month is just too exciting to walk away from. I'll likely return to something like my split idea when I finally start to slow down my progress in weightlifting.

[Emily Mattes]

I may have started because the girl of the two started to make me feel embarrassingly weak.

It's my patented "Over The Top" inspiration scheme!

[Dave Lemanczyk]

High School Football, Baseball, & Basketball
College Basketball
Professional Basketball (Overseas)

Nowadays I stick to lifetime sports like tennis, golf, frisbee, and I like to run long distance (3-13 miles) for cardio. It feels good to work hard but especially to know that I can do so on MY schedule instead of a coach's. Just yesterday, I was talking to an ex-college teammate about the battering our bodies took. The gist of the conversation was that it feels amazing to train and actually be able to recover. Sometimes coaches forget about the whole recovery thing.

[Brandon Oto]

Originally Posted by Sam Nutt

I swam in high school and college, then gave it up to focus on drinking.

My background's Allison Stokke in 1280x800.