Strength: Push Press 1-1-1-1-1 @ 85%
RX’d – 2 Mile Run
5 Minute Rest
"A young man without ambition is an old man waiting to be." -Steven Brust
Since I can remember I always dreamed big. When I was around 8 yrs old, I swore I would be a professional baseball player when I got older. Everyday I would practice throwing baseballs in a tire that my dad hung from a fence in our backyard. Then I got to high school and realized I was not nearly as good as I thought I was and high school was a lot harder to stand out than little league was. So at around the age of 14, I decided I wanted to someday join the military and be on a special forces team. To properly prepare myself, I joined the Civil Air Patrol (Air Force cadets) to learn as much as possible about military planes and the customs of the military when I became old enough to enlist at 18yrs old. Although, things didn't work out as planned with my military aspirations, it allowed me to move on and set my next goal on getting a college education to one day become a stock broker on Wall Street. After receiving my BS degree in economics, I was hired right out of college to work as a global loans specialist for Citigroup. Within in that time, I quickly figured out that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life running on the corporate treadmill doing work for the money and not for the love.
As luck would have, an opportunity came up to work in father's pest control business with plans to one day take over and run the family business. My dad told me that I had to start out running a route before I could learn the adminstrative, sales and business side of things. That way, I could learn the business from the bottom up and knew what every position entailed. So for about 2 years, I ran a route treating apartment complexes and houses in some of the worst neighborhoods in Camden and Philly.
It was working as an exterminator that paved the way for my next big dream to some day open a gym for the wayward kids that had little hope growing up in such a dangerous and drug infested environment. Many of the kids I met were actually great kids, despite growing up surrounded by negativity all day everyday. Since I loved working out and working with youngsters, starting Steve's Club seemed like the only right thing to do.
After I got done my 9-5 day job killing bugs during the day, I would drive over to Camden and train the kids of Steve's Club until about 6:30 to 7pm at night. It was a very long day and I still remember driving home on those days with my head spinning....but I loved it. Just loved it. It was a great feeling giving this kids things they never had before - coaching, nutrition advice, personal attention, guidance and support for their goals and dreams. Someday that geniunely cared about them.
I was reminded of all this today when Jimmy (aka "Dwight" they call him Dwight bc he is the only white kid in town!)....started sharing some of his personal career goals and dreams with me. He first asked me if I had any jobs available for him to make some extra money. He said he needed the money to build a wrestling ring in his backyard. He went on about his gradiose plans to start a wrestling league in his backyard and put the videos on You Tube to help spread the word. As the league grew in popularity he would buy a bigger ring and then eventually start renting out banquet halls and getting corporate sponsors. You could see the fire in his eyes. This kid was serious. He said he's been thinking about this big for years now. Anyone that know Jimmy knows how much he loves wrestling (WWF style). When we asked him some time back to fill out Q&A for the athlete profile postcards, most kids said they wanted to be pro basketball player or cop. Not Jimmy. Jimmy said he wanted to be a professional wrestler. One of the other questions was "What would you do if you were the mayor of Camden?" Jimmy's response: I would pass a law to allow death match wrestling.
I'm confident Jimmy is going places someday. The kid has some serious ambition.
The greatest discovery any outsider could make about Camden is it's overriding response to failure: If it didn’t work last year, do it AGAIN this year (and if possible do it MORE).
Every year they pass more laws, hire more police, build more prisons, and sentence more offenders for longer periods-all without moving one inch closer to “ending” crime. If it didn’t work last year or the year before that or the year before that or the year before that, but you can be sure we’ll try it again this year, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that it won’t work this year either.
Every year they spend more money on schools, hoping to “fix” whatever’s wrong with them, and every year the schools remain stubbornly unfixed. Spending money didn’t work last year or the year before that or the year before that, but you can be sure we’ll try it again this year, knowing beyond shadow of a doubt that it won’t work this year either.
Every year they try to make the criminals go away, and every year they remain with us. We couldn’t shoehorn these criminals back into the “the mainstream” last year or the year before that or the year before that or the year before that, but you can be sure we’ll try it again this year, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that it won’t work this year either.
Maybe its time to TRY something DIFFERENT.
Afterall, IF Camden is saved, it will not be saved by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all.
Much of my inspiration comes from Daniel Quinn in "Ishmael."