Introduction: Hello I'm Chris Dao!

Hey fitness people! I just wanted to make this post to track my progress and to shout out to my friends @wil.metcalfe and Ivan, who've made a significant impact on my fitness journey :)

I started my fitness journey weighing in at 172 the beginning of June 2019.

With some of the tips and tricks I learned during an event hosted by @adventureready and @wil.metcalfe, I started to dabble my feet into a light (and I mean VERY LIGHT) cardio routine. I started a walking regime for about 2.5km-5km a day while carrying a ~30pound back pack, and I did this for about 2 weeks along side a slightly monitored diet and I lost about 8 pounds.

After building some self confidence I started to hit the gym 5 days a week (M-F for about 1.5-2 hours a day), and my work out routine consisted of legs, chest, back, shoulders and arms respectively. All my of workouts consisted of 4 or 5 exercises with 4 sets and 12-15 repetitions each. I did this work out along side an additional 4 sets of pull ups each day (more explained below) and a diet plan called OMAD (where I'd only eat once per day, usually between 5-6pm, which means I worked out in a fasted state).

These pictures were taken in chronological order and were roughly 1 week apart and roughly between June-July

This picture was taken in a fasted state and right before my unofficial 9.7K run :)

During my time working out I saw a lot of progress, I nearly broke a record/goal each day. Weather it'd be a new maximum for seated rows or perfecting my technique for squats. I really wish that I took a video, I remember myself laying underneath an Olympic barbell with 15 pounds on each side, preparing myself to bench this monstrous weight 12x. Sadly, I failed... I swallowed my pride and dropped the weight back down to 10 pounds, I totally struggled. I MAYBE managed to bench this 10 maybe 11 times. Thinking back to this memory brings me so much joy because it is an awesome reminder to see how far I've come. If we fast forward to the present day, I'm currently working on 35 pounds on each side, my current record is 9 reps with clean technique.

I still remember my first day stepping into the gym and my buddy asks "can you do a pull up?", and I'm like YEAH I CAN! So I hesitate for a second, standing under the chin up bar I go for a jump to grab onto it and nearly pull the muscles in my armpits, I hang there like a noodle trying my best to pull myself up and try to use my legs but I'm just not moving... I drop down and my buddy yells "HAHAH SAUSAGE" - which from this point on would be small inside joke. We move over to the assisted pull up station where I set the weight at (+85 and STRUGGLE to even hit 12 reps) lol and form this point on we made the decision to workout my back every day. We started small, I eventually lowered the assist to around 60 then to 40/25. I progressed slowly, I first started to do a 1 pull up "cheat" using the momentum from jumping and slowly progressed to 1 CLEAN pull up and then to 1 clean + 1 leg assisted sausage pull up. Over the course of the summer months, June - August, I went from 0 pull ups in general to 8 pull ups (bicep focused) and 5 (lat focused).

These pictures were taken around Aug 15

and theres Ivan with the photocred

This picture was taken on Sept 6 2019.

Thanks for reading my post! Leme know if you have any questions :)