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Hi, my name is Rick Wise. I am a 38 year old from Hanover, Pennsylvania. The reason I chose to take on the P90X program is because of my family's history of heart disease and my personal battle to fight my family's legacy of weight problems. I come from a 100% Pennsylvania Dutch heritage of which the majority of my relatives have been short, and got heavy as they entered adulthood. This is

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Hi, my name is Rick Wise. I am a 38 year old from Hanover, Pennsylvania. The reason I chose to take on the P90X program is because of my family's history of heart disease and my personal battle to fight my family's legacy of weight problems. I come from a 100% Pennsylvania Dutch heritage of which the majority of my relatives have been short, and got heavy as they entered adulthood. This is no surprise considering that the diet included foods such as hog maw, picked beef tongue, scrapple, and shoo fly pie to name just a few things. Don't get me wrong, these are foods I don't eat often but they do represent the unhealthy habits of eating that I grew up with. As far as I know, every relative I have had in this Country was born and raised within 50 miles of where I currently live. In fact I may be the only one not born in Pennsylvania or Maryland. My father was in the Air Force for 22 years so I was born in Tom's River N.J. and spent 8 of the first 10 years of my life living in England. We finally returned to the U.S. in 1980 and at that time I barely knew any of my relatives at all. It was a tough time being an only child with an English accent and being a virtual stranger to my own family. Before my father retired from the military in 1983, I had also lived in North Dakota and Silver Springs, Maryland near D.C. At the time of my fathers retirement we moved back to Hanover where my fathers family resided. I had been very skinny and short as a kid, but I was starting to grow and gain a muscular build. I didn't have to do anything to get the build, it just came naturally. At that time I started to play football and ran track. I was a natural athlete and was very fast, setting High School records in the 100 and 200 meters. In my Junior year of High School I started to have injury problems, especially pulled hamstrings. Despite this, I continued in Track in College, where we trained daily. When we were not training, we were competing in meets. We utilized all kinds of training techniques such as isometrics, plyometrics, bungee cords, resistance training, weights and even mental training. I was in the best shape of my life! I weighed 145 pounds, had less than 5 % body fat, I could bench press 250 pounds. I had leg strength off the charts, and had fantastic anaerobic conditioning that allowed me to go and go and go and hardly even breath hard let alone get tired. It was incredible! During my junior year, I made a tough decision to walk away from track to focus on my class work and so began my weight issues. I didn't gain much weight at first, but over the years I gradually gained until my peak around the age of thirty. I was then almost 180 lbs. and had a waist that measured nearly 40 inches. By this time I was having career and financial difficulties as well. I ended up working 3 jobs, and would often work 60 days straight without a day off. My life started to get better in 2001 as I improved my finances and my career situation and for the first time in my life, started to watch what, and how much I was eating. I managed to drop as much as 25 pounds but the weight would just come back again. I tried to get to the gym but often didn't feel I had the energy or enough time to do a workout so I wouldn't. Then, a few years ago, my father was diagnosed with five arterial blockages of 90 to 98 percent. He was rushed to the Washington Heart Center where he had quintuple heart bypass surgery. Fortunately he did not have a heart attack but he was well on his way to having one. He made it through the surgery just fine but this incident reminded me about the fact that all of my Grand parents had already passed away, three of them from heart attacks. It was this incident more than anything else that made me want to change my health habits. The one thing that stood in my way was the joint problems I have been having, especially in my knees. The pain would deter me from wanting to work out and really effected me emotionally as well. It wasn't until recently that I finally took the leap of faith to try a joint supplement. The reason for my apprehensions was that I am allergic to shrimp, which as it turns out, is a primary ingredient in the formula. Since starting to use this supplement, my knee pain is all but gone and I can exercise with comfort and be ok the next day. I thank God I have had no ill effects from using this supplement. I officially started the P90X program on June 11th, 2008, and look forward to great results ahead. No mater how little time I have available, I know I just need to push play, do my best, and forget the rest!

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