My Fitness

Most of the people in my family (especially my mother’s side) don’t value exercise and live a sedentary life. At a young age I mostly played video games and studied (like the nerd I still am) and eventually got to over 140 pounds in 3rd grade. Talk about setting myself up for poor health. I live my elementary, middle school, and 1/2 of high school as ‘the fat kid’. Eventually I started exercising in high school thanks to my friends (many of them were the star athletes in my school).

In college I joined Ohio State’s club rowing team my freshman year and lost 50 pounds in my first quarter (I went from ~210 to 160). The next quarter I tried out for the varsity team, made the team and kept rowing until I graduated. At my peak fitness, I was about 160 pounds and had 7% body fat. I completely turned my life around healthwise.

Junior year at the national championship weight in. I was at 7% body fat here.

Eventually, I started studying for my PhD in pharmacology (not pharmacy, think biochemistry focused on drug action). The combination of PhD candidacy and planning a wedding destroyed my nutrition and workouts so I ended up gaining ~25 pounds at the point when I got married to my lovely wife.

That was about a year ago. Soon after, I decided to get back to where I was, health-wise. I started using a lovely program called P90X. I made a lot of progress with this program; but it was slow because my nutrition/diet was very poor. I completed all the workouts and got stronger; but I only lost a few pounds through the 90 day program. That was when I finally realized that my diet/nutrition would be a key factor when it came to improving my overall health. After completing P90X, I moved on to another program called INSANITY. Here I made the switch regarding nutrition and I made huge progress toward my fitness goals. The great thing about P90X, Insanity, and all Beachbody programs is that they come with nutrition guides and online support. As I started Insanity, I used both. I stuck to the nutrition plan as much as I could and I started an additional accountability program through challenges on a website called FatSecret. Through the 60 days of Insanity, I got great results. I started at ~22% body fat and now am around 10%.

I continued with another cycle of Insanity and since then I have been completing Hybrid workouts that combine different workout programs. I’ve even combined Beachbody programs with other activities I love (i.e., marathons, 1/2 marathons, Karate). Since my 90 day P90X/Insanity Hybrid, I have completed a new program called ‘Insanity: The Asylum‘ which is the sequel to Beachbody’s Insanity. This is a great program and I feel that I’ve made some huge improvements in my speed, agility and strength. The program is only 30 days and in that time period I dropped a few more pounds of fat (now I’m at ~8% bodyfat). I repeated Asylum Once and Currently working through a new hybrids. As of right now I’m 163 pounds, at 6.7% body fat and I’m in better shape than when I was a varsity rower in college!

Right now I’m where I want to be, so my goals are to maintain where I am at. I’m now focused on helping others do the same. So if you have questions about how to get active, or improve your nutrition, please contact me! I would love to help you out.

Graphical layout of my progress (body weight and body fat 5)

 

 
Brandon Henderson, PhD
Division of Pharmacology, College of Pharmacy, The Ohio State University
440 Riffe Building, 496 W 12th ave, Columbus, OH 43210
henderson.324@osu.edu

3 thoughts on “My Fitness

    • Sorry it took so long; but I just completed an Insanity/Half Marathon Hybrid. Check it out on the homepage. Soon I will make a different page that will be dedicated to just the hybrids that I have made.

  1. I really appreciate the schedules you set up. I am preparing for my first half-marathon in April and another 5k in May. I can’t wait to see m results with your schedule.

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