About Me
About
My Story.
My Mission.
I am sharing my story here so that anyone who may have doubts about whether or not you can achieve your goals, I’m here to tell you that…YES, YOU CAN! As long as you set a goal, focus on your goal, and don’t let anything or anyone distract you, you can achieve your goal.
My name is Cory Jarriel. I started my fitness journey back in 1996. I joined a gym and began to lift weights. I was 5’11 at 160lbs. I had no idea what I was doing. I would do what most people do when they join a gym, I watched other guys that were bigger than me which was pretty much all of them. The problem was, most of the people in the gym really didn’t know what they were doing. I met a personal trainer, who is now an Olympia judge and still a great personal friend. He was training to compete in a bodybuilding show that year. I went to go see him compete. He won the overall show. I said to myself, “I want to do that.” This was my first fitness goal. I hired him to help me grow and compete the following year at the same show. I knew that trying to do this myself was out of the question. After hiring him, I realized how much I did not know about lifting weights. He taught me how to lift properly using control and proper form. I needed to put on some muscle and then diet down to my contest weight. I gained 25lbs that year. This was the first time that I ever had to diet. I soon realized that the diet was just as hard as the training. I competed in 1997 and took 3rd place in my division. I did not compete again until 2015 at 43 years old. More on this later…
Training, Learning, Firefighting, & Heart Surgery
Throughout the years I continued to train and build my knowledge base in nutrition and personal training. I have been working full-time as a firefighter/paramedic since 2000. During that time, I have continued my education to complete my fire science and EMS degree. At the age of 38 years old, I hurt my back while on duty. And for several months prior to hurting my back, I continued to have heart palpitations. I decided to find a cardiologist and have it checked out. During my simple little checkup, I was having an ultrasound done on my heart valve. The doctor walked in, took a look at the monitor, and said “Your heart is extremely enlarged and you need open-heart surgery”. In my head, I thought “WAIT! I’m just here for a checkup! I’m only 38 years old! How can this be right?” Come to find out, I was born with a bicuspid aortic valve instead of a tricuspid valve and it was not closing all the way. Surgery was inevitable. In 2009 I had an aortic valve replacement. After taking care of my heart, it was right onto my back, literally. In 2010, I had to have a lumbar fusion. In the same year, I had two more surgeries on my chest due to my sternum not healing from the open-heart surgery. I was not able to train for the next year and lost all the muscle that I had gained.
Driver Engineer/Paramedic
July 2017—My Wife, Eng Jarriel, With Her Trophies!
Starting Over—My Wife Wins Her IFBB Pro Card!
It was like starting all over again but I was determined to get back to where I was before the surgeries. I continued to train and work hard for the next several years. I met my wife in 2010. She was in great shape but was not into training like I was and she had no idea about nutrition. We started to train together in 2014 when my wife decided that she wanted to try competing in the women’s figure division. I also decided to step back on stage in the men’s physique division. My wife did extremely well in her first year, taking the overall win in one of the shows and I also placed 1st in my class. Realistically, we both knew that we needed more muscle to compete at the national level in our divisions. However, my wife did not want to put on more muscle so she decided to transition to the bikini division. I continued to train my wife for the next year for her first national show in her division. In 2017, my wife beat out a total of 50 girls over Ages 35+ and Ages 40+ to win her Pro Card. She was 49 years old at the time and now an IFBB Pro.
Perfecting My Training Techniques & Health Setbacks
I on the other hand placed in the top 3 at my shows but never getting to 1st place. The national level was much harder than the local level. In 2016, I decided to take 2017 off from competing. I knew in order for me to be able to compete and try and win my pro card, I would have to be bigger. So, I started training under Ben Pakulski at MI40 gym. Ben was an Olympian bodybuilder. Ben has trained many other Olympia competitors. Training with someone at Ben’s level was an eye-opener. He is one of the best in the world and has traveled all over the world with Milos Sarcev to hold training seminars. It was here, under Ben’s training where I perfected my training techniques. However, in May of 2017, another setback to my plan…I tore my pec tendon while training. I had surgery to repair my tendon, but I knew that the rest of the year would be spent recovering. Then in November of the same year, I went into Afib — where I had to go to the hospital and be cardioverted (shocked) out of that rhythm. One week later, while we were traveling on our vacation, I began having severe stomach pain. My wife had to drive me to the closest hospital in Panama City, where they found a blood clot in my kidney. They told me that I had lost 40% of my left kidney. During that hospital stay, I contracted an infection that would stick with me for months.
June 2017—Pec Tendon Surgery
March 2018—Second Heart Surgery
Another Heart Surgery
In January of 2018, I had another blood clot in my left leg and brain. After undergoing thrombolytic therapy, they were able to break up the clots. I had already had an ablation (a procedure that blocks electrical signals in the heart) for the A-fib in 2016. During the procedure, there was a complication and I went into cardiac arrest and then revived. Now, I needed the same procedure…again, and in March of 2018, I underwent my second ablation. Meanwhile, I still had an infection from the hospital stay a couple of months back, and the doctors could not find the root cause of the infection or the kind of infection I had. Three weeks after my ablation, I got a fever and began to shiver violently. I again went back to the hospital in mid-March. After many tests, the Doctors found that the infection had destroyed my aortic root and aortic valve. There was not a doctor in the area that could do such a complicated surgery because of the aortic root being involved. I was transferred to three different hospitals due to the complication of the surgery. I underwent my second open heart surgery replacing my aortic root and valve and suffered severe pain for weeks. I spent 22 days in the hospital with another 6 weeks of at-home IV antibiotics, after I was released from my second open-heart surgery. Here I was again. I lost 25 lbs. and looked like I had never worked out. All that I could think about was how am I going to get back to where I was. I was so frustrated that all of my hard work was gone, but I was also grateful and lucky to be alive. I knew that 2018 was going to be spent recovering. During this time, I continued taking classes to complete my degree and further research everything that I could get my hands on about training, nutrition, and recovery.
Refocusing on Training and Goals
I took 2019 and 2020 to focus on my training and to get to a level that was higher than I had ever achieved with my physique before all the setbacks. I would get up in the morning around 4 am and sit with my dogs for an hour. I would drink a cup of coffee and read something on training or continue my nutrition certification training. I would do my fasted cardio, then I would get ready for work. Before going to work, I would hit the gym for an hour. I would then go to work for my 24-hour shift. No matter how tired that I was when I got off work the next morning, I would go back to the gym for another training session. I did what was necessary to achieve my goal. I went from 185 lbs at 19% BF to 220 lbs. I then dieted down to 185 lbs at 5% BF for my contest. I had not only put back on the muscle that I lost but had added some as well. Now, I felt like I could compete at the national level. So, in 2021 I competed in 4 shows—the Mid Florida, the NPC Universe, the Tampa Pro, and the North American Championships. I placed top 4 in all of my shows with a 1st place win in my division in the Tampa Pro. In the North American, I decided to compete in classic physique for the first time. I took 3rd place in my division. This was a huge accomplishment for me—3rd place in a national show in a division I had never competed in before. I am extremely happy with my comeback year. A first-place victory in my hometown at such a prestigious show as the Tampa Pro was the highlight of this year for me. It has been a goal of mine since I competed at this show back in 2016 and placed 3rd. I am already planning and prepping for next year with my goal of achieving my pro card.
NPC Universe 4th Place
Tampa Pro 1st Place
North American Championships Classic Physique 3rd Place
Achieve Your Goals Through Nutrition & Training
I am sharing my story here so that anyone who may have doubts about whether or not you can achieve your goals, I’m here to tell you that…YES, YOU CAN! As long as you set a goal, focus on your goal, and don’t let anything or anyone distract you, you can achieve your goal. You will have setbacks as I have. But…you don’t ask “why me” or make excuses or blame others for not being able to succeed. You just look forward and ask yourself how I can get there. I have helped many clients get to goals they never thought were possible. I have such a passion for health and fitness and for helping individuals achieve their success. Just take the next step, and ask to speak with me and I will sit down with you and tell you how I can help. Whether you are just looking to lose weight, to transform your physique, or you want to step on stage and compete. I will lay out all of your nutrition and training for you. All you have to do is commit.
Let’s work together to get to YOUR goal!
Cory
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