This series of articles will layout a complete blueprint on how I accelerated my recovery from a major setback. It’s something I wish I had access to as soon as I needed it. Instead, I spent many hours of research and self experimentation to put this together.

I hope it saves you time and accelerates your path to optimized health and performance.

2020….I was 41 years old and in the best shape of my life. I felt great, I set personal records in physical feats, exercised regularly and had a great routine to optimize my health and performance.

Then in July, I felt a weird sensation on my left side. It progressively turned to a pain so I saw my doctor. After a chest x-ray and a CT scan (which I almost declined because I am not a fan of being exposed to radiation but more on that in a little bit), I was diagnosed with pneumonia. I had no other symptoms other than the pain…no fever, shortness of breath, etc.

So I went on ten days of antibiotics (again, not a fan of killing off my good bacteria too), but I completed the round and felt better.

In fact, August and September I felt great. I even PRed a daily measure measurement I take — I do 10 minutes of breathing exercises, then completely exhale and do as many push-ups on the breath hold as possible.

57, my best ever! (BTW, as of January 2021, I am now up to 72)

Then, in early October, I started to feel a weird pain in my side. It progressively got worse and on October 24th, I woke at 5am, barely able to breathe so my wife rushed me to the ER. I saw two doctors leading up to this moment that had both reassured me the asymptomatic pneumonia I had in July had resolved and the pain I was feeling was due to scaring from the pneumonia.