Why I started working out

In February 1996 I found myself in Los Angeles County Jail. I got moved around a lot in there, and at one point I was moved into a cell with two black guys and another Hispanic guy like me. One of the black guys was extremely muscular, while the other was slender, yet more muscular than I was at the time. I remember reading a science fiction magazine while I was in that cell.

At some point, it was day time and the slender black inmate was asleep on one of the lower bunks, and I was having a conversation with the Hispanic guy, who was being extremely loud. I recall the conversation was about the Hispanic guy saying he still liked Saturday morning cartoons. The slender black guy woke up, and accused me of talking too loud and waking him up. He wanted to fight me, and called me a pussy for not wanting to fight him.

I jumped down from my bunk, willing to fight. I knew nothing of how to block at that time, and within thirty seconds, my head was split open and he had knocked out one of my front teeth. I ended up moving to a different cell, and eventually, after getting moved again, I decided to start doing push-ups. Prior to that, the most push-ups I was able to do was about 35 in one set, but I worked my way up to 50 per set.

Once I could do 50 per set, I started doing sets of 50 every day between breakfast and lunch time. I don't recall how many sets I did, or how many days a week I did them, but I did them consistently for most of the time I was in there, which turned out to be three months.

In May 1996 when I got released, once I was established at a weekly motel with my friend Vance, I got a membership at a gym which was less than a quarter of a mile away from the motel. I started training six days a week, but I made rookie mistakes, such as only training arms. I would work my triceps for an hour on Monday, then my biceps on Tuesday, and I would repeat that process until I had trained my triceps three times per week and my biceps three times per week.

I bought a bicycle at Walmart, and started collecting aluminum cans. I made about five dollars a day, on average. There was a self defense book by Bruce Lee called "Tao of Jeet Kune Doe" that I saw at a book store, so I spent two days collecting cans and turning them in to get the cash until I had the $20 or so that I needed, so I bought the book. I studied it, and learned the blocking techniques that would've proved useful in that fight in the jail, if only I would've known at the time.