Extremist: Rilin Desamours
Name: Chief Warrant Officer 3 Rilin Desamours,
United States Marine Corps
Combat Development and Integration (CD&I), Information & Waveform Integration Division (IWID).
Q: Rilin, what do you do?
A:
I’m a Capabilities Integration Officer— I manage four Satellite Communications (SatCom) Programs. I develop and manage requirements to support Marine Corps missions. On fun days I conduct Martial Arts Training for my fellow Marines.
Q: Have you always been a “fit” person or did something change in your life to make you fitness conscious?
A:
I haven’t always been fit, I was overweight as a kid. All the way through preteen age. Then I got into martial arts-boxing, Muay Thai. And, when I joined the Corps, Marine Corps Martial Arts which is a combination of six different disciplines. To be honest, I now measure my level of fitness by Physical and Combat Fitness Tests which are required twice a year. Based on my score which is usually between 270 to 290 on a 300 grading scale, I determine whether I’m at my lowest acceptable or highest fitness level.
Q: When do you workout?
A:
I used to work out in the morning, but I prefer to workout in the afternoon. My body feels more awake, I’m mentally more focused, and overall I feel better and a lot more motivated. Also some added benefits of afternoon workouts: the body is typically warmer, warm muscles tend to reduce injuries, and the body produces more testosterone, which assists with muscle growth.
Q: What do you do to “stay in shape”?
A:
My workouts include; standard weight lifting, dynamic weight lifting, running, some high intensity circuit workouts, and core training. (My wife says I have to work on flexibility LOL). The only group training I participate in is Unit Training, and usually I’m the instructor.
Q: How often do you conduct Unit Training?
A:
Every Friday.
Q: Fitness high point:
A:
As a Marine Corps Physical Fitness Trainer, I’ve learned physical fitness is a personal journey. The goals, the achievements, the high and low marks, the defining moments are all personal. Once you’ve defined what being fit means to you, you can work toward achieving that goal.
Surprisingly, that approach motivates people to set some pretty high goals.
Q: Do you have a crazy fitness story?
A:
In preparation for boot camp, I spent countless hours, days and months exercising because I was afraid of getting sent back home for being physically unfit. So when I got to boot camp I was in pretty good shape. To pass the initial physical test, you had to run 1 1/2 miles in 15 minutes, do 7 pull ups and 50 crunches in two minutes. While you are sleep deprived, completely disoriented, and barely able to pay attention to anything, the test started; as we were doing pull ups the drill instructors screamed at us and yelled all kinds of scary stuff in our ears the entire time! I kept doing pull ups until my upper body gave out. By the time I fell off the pull-up bar, I completed 37 pull-ups without even knowing it. While doing crunches, I ended up doing 132 crunches. When is was time to run, I had a complete brain fart, I completely forgot the route and how many times I was supposed to go around. To complete the 1 1/2 miles you run pass the starting point twice and stop on the third time. I kept running until a drill instructor noticed I passed the finish line 5 times, on the 6th time he finally stopped me. I ran 3 1/2 miles in 19 min and 45 seconds. There were so many of us on the track I couldn’t figure out when to stop, so I kept running until someone told me to stop.
MORAL OF THE STORY: falsely perceived fear for my life, adrenaline, and a decent level of fitness pushed me to do two, three times more than 73 other recruits.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARINES!
BE FIT. BE PRODUCTIVE. BE JŌBU.
