16 years as an Army Infantryman. 12 of those as a Sniper. I went from rifleman all the way up to acting Operations Sergeant Major. And when it was over, I was wrecked in ways that took me a long time to fully understand.
Not just physically. Mentally. I was depressed, I felt like I had nothing going for me, and the only thing I knew how to do was train. So I kept training. Hard. Too hard.
I got into powerlifting because I was strong and it did not require cardio. Then I started BJJ and just kept stacking more on top of everything. At my worst I was doing four sessions a day, five days a week — morning lift, morning BJJ, afternoon BJJ, evening BJJ. Then two open mats on Saturday and one on Sunday. My body was screaming at me and I was treating every signal as a weakness to override.
I hit 285 pounds at nearly 30% body fat. I had been decorated, I had led men in combat, I had competed at the national level in Muay Thai — and I was standing in a bathroom mirror not recognizing the person looking back at me.
The rebuild did not come from a better program or a harder training block. It came from finally understanding the actual problem. My system had been running a debt for years and I kept drawing it down instead of paying it back. The Deployment Age assessment is the tool I wish I had at the start of that process. It would have told me clearly what was actually going on, instead of letting me guess while making it worse.
That is what it is here to do for you.