My Entry into the Martial Arts and Tips for Getting Started

I, unfortunately, was a very small child until puberty hit. I was short and scrawny, so I was bullied a bit. I became shy and lacked confidence. When I hit 12 or so, that changed. I grew, and while I will never be tall, I gained average height, with the shoulders and chest that had the football coaches drooling.

There was a major drawback, though. I also started packing the pounds on really easy. I became a chubby, then husky teenager. When I hit my junior year in high school, I decided to do something about it and I started working out. My mother was a rabid collector of exercise equipment, so we had a large collection of stuff that was bought new and only used once. I hung a small punching bag in the basement, set up a weight bench, popped a boom box down and every evening I would run from one end of the basement to the other until I was ready to collapse, and I would then hit the punching bag, and lift weights. I started out with the exercises in the brochure that came with the weight bench, but I eventually gave in to my nerd roots and started buying work-out magazines and trying the routines in there. My routine started out about 20 minutes, but eventually ended up about an hour long. I did loose weight and tone up some, but then college came and I ended up packing it all back on.