A few years ago a young kid walked into my gym by the name of Jeff D’Annunzio. He was a baseball player and wanted to get bigger and stronger in order to increase his chances of fulfilling his dream of playing college ball. From day one Jeff busted his ass and outworked everyone around him. I only had to show him how to do something once and he would master it immediately and do it from that day on with text book form. Eventually I started to use him as an example to help teach other kids. He even helped me demonstrate technique once in front of the 300 kids I was speaking to at his high school.
Every single day that Jeff walked into the gym he was happy, positive and ready to train hard. He never complained once or had one negative thing to say in all the years that I’ve known him. To have 20 Jeff D’Annunzio’s would be any trainer or coaches dream.
The thing about Jeff is that, like me, he doesn’t have the best muscle building genetics in the world and in many scouts eyes he may have often been considered too small. Not only was he skinny, but he wasn’t exactly the tallest guy in the world either.
But Jeff never let that bother him or hold him back. All he did was work his ass off day in and day out in order to achieve his goal. Unfortunately he suffered what could have been a career ending injury a couple years back and was on the shelf for nearly a year. Never once did I see Jeff let that get him down. Instead he was back in the gym shortly after surgery and doing everything he could to rehab and get ready for next year to go out there and take his spot back. He stepped back on the field bigger, stronger and faster than ever before and shocked everyone. After an outstanding season following his rehab Jeff began getting offers from numerous schools across the country and eventually decided on Catholic University in Washington, DC.
He left recently for his freshman year at Catholic and although I miss regularly seeing the kid who became a little brother to me it makes me proud to see all that he has accomplished and think of how hard he worked to overcome the odds and make his dream a reality.
Shortly before he left he squatted 425 at a bodyweight of 176 pounds and recently ran the fastest 60 time of anyone on the CU baseball team, not to mention finishing second in the mile by only 30 seconds to a kid who is on the cross country team.
Jeff never made excuses and always worked his ass off and that’s why he is where he is today.
That’s really all it takes; hard work and a belief in yourself. Although it’s corny and cliched to say, “if you believe it you can achieve it.”
So ask yourself:
Are you making excuses?
If so then stop immediately. There are none that are worth a damn.
Are you working as hard as you can?
If not then why?
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For the training principles that helped Jeff gain over 40 pounds of muscle and get one step closer to his dream click HERE now.
