Dave Thomas Performance

My Story

I like ice cream, deadlifts, Sam Adams, eggs, box jumps, circuit AND strength training, fellowship, meat, the Redskins, and many other things not related to one another.  I eat clean but don’t really enjoy it.  What I really enjoy is a California burrito but hey, gotta live long and thrive so I stay away as best I can.  I like being strong and lean.  I hate the bulky ‘all show and no go’ look.  I believe in having a Hemi engine over a shiny hood.  I believe in buying local, buying American and buying Aaron Rodgers in fantasy football.

I hate olives, terrorists, seated leg extensions, cockroaches and the abbreviation of words that don’t need it, but whatevs.

That’s my 10 second sales pitch to get you to like me.

My story is unlike just about any other fitness blog you will read in the sense that I have never been a fitness “purist” so to speak.  I grew up playing sports all the way through college and have trained my entire adult life but I’ve always considered myself a bit of an outsider to the fitness industry.  Partially because my gym does annoying industry things like no contracts, partially because they don’t understand that training is best done away from machines and partially because I don’t eat dry turkey and brown rice for every meal.

I was your typical 18 year-old kid trying to get into college a few years ago, going through the exact same struggles of most kids that age.  I grew up playing sports my entire life and while I was pretty good at a few of them, only baseball had the potential to help me with college.  The funny thing is that I actually wanted no part of playing sports in college.  I wanted simply to pick a school and enjoy myself as much as humanly possible.  Baseball would only get in the way of that!

Well, things changed when my rejection rate to schools I applied to was around 90%.  I was a smart kid, but the phrase “never applied himself” was my calling card during my youth in just about everything I did.  Once I realized that baseball might help actually help get me into a school I otherwise might not have been able to attend, I started taking it seriously.

After the dust settled on my college recruitment and application, I ended up getting accepted and committing to the University of Richmond, located about two hours outside of Washington, DC.  This absolutely made my parents day since there’s no way in hell I would have been able to get into Richmond on my own academic merits (hey, I’m a realist).  I was forced to put aside my desire to party balls and readjust my thinking to take athletics seriously.

Well…I didn’t.

Not by a long shot.  However, I did find out just how many Milwuakee’s Best you can consume while still maintaining some semblance of athletic productivity (by the way, it’s a lot).  I half-assed it in the weight room and would make a literal mockery of the workouts that Coach Roney had the team do.  Looking back on it, I was a total pain in the ass to my strength and conditioning coach (sorry, Roney!)

Not until my fourth and final year of college did I really start to shift my thinking and take Coach Roney’s training and diet advice seriously.  I began busting my ass in all workouts and eating drastically different.  Rather than pile up my plate with seventeen different fried items at d-hall, I’d opt for healthier choices and I noticed immediate dividends.  The Fall of my senior year I lost sixteen pounds of fat and increased my strength by 15% across the board…all in about three months.

WOAH.

You mean that you can actually cause drastic changes in performance and body composition by altering your habits?  It hit me like a day pack full of bowling balls and things began to change for me.

I still kept most of my partying ways since let’s face it, I was a 21 year-old in college and it was damn fun, but from that year on I gained a real interest in training and began to greatly respect the process of changing the human body via training and nutrition.

Upon graduating from Richmond in 2004 with a Bachelor of Science my interest and level of seriousness with obtaining as much training and nutrition knowledge as possible increased each year until I finally said, “fu*k it”.

In 2008 I went back to school to formally study and immerse myself in the learning as much as I could about nutrition and the human body.  I’m now a Certified Personal Trainer and Nutrition Consultant through the National Strength and Conditioning Association, as well as a certified kettblebell instructor.  My motto?

Train.  Eat.  Play.

If you take care your body then it will take care of you so you can enjoy doing the things you want to do in life.  While I don’t funnel beers anymore I do like to get out there and have as much fun as possible, as frequently as possible.

Whatever and wherever you get your kicks, I guarantee you that clean dieting and proper training will make it more enjoyable.  So get out there, go do it and let me help you take care of yourself along the way.