 Former Army Captain Burdell Vanson was another ripped rookie. Wow! One, two, one, go! Here he goes. Looking solid. And solid is a very good descriptive word for this man because he is built like a tank. What's up you guys? This is Adana. Welcome back to my channel. So I have another true life series for you guys and I'm really excited about this one. If you guys are new to my channel and you have not subscribed as yet, please go ahead and do so right now. Join me on this journey. If you have not seen my true life series, I have a playlist of all the different true life series that I have done. So you can just go and type that into my search bar, true life, and they will all pop up. But this true life is going to be about Burdell Vanson. He is a PA who also competed in American Ninja Warrior. What? That is crazy. I'm really excited to bring this one to you. I hope you guys are inspired by it. I know I'm excited about it. I'm ready to see what he has to say and without further ado because I know you can't wait either. I introduce you guys to Burdell Vanson. Hello. My name is Burdell Vanson. I'm a PA and I was a contestant on this year's season of American Ninja Warrior. And this is my true life. I decided to go into the military because I was a kid from South Carolina, you know, always close to home, but I always had the bug to travel. I wanted to seek new experiences and have an adventure, to be quite honest. And, you know, serving my country and the army I saw was a path to fulfill a bigger role in life as well as meet that need to seek new experiences. I have been to war. I was deployed twice with my unit out of Schofield Barracks. My first deployment was 12 months in Afghanistan in the Kandahar province. And that was my job as a medical service officer leading the medical platoon. I did that for 12 months and thankfully deployed back safely. I then was back on the island for just under a year and then got deployed again. So I did a second deployment to Iraq. And that was at Kirkhook Air Force Base and there I was an assistant operations officer for a brigade support battalion. And in that role I was performed as a tactical operations officer. So I was the guy you see in the movies that was in the command center kind of providing the monitoring of the battlefield situation for my unit and had to give the briefings to the higher officer whenever he walked into the room. So just to speak about that I had a rough kind of family time of my life. My father passed away from poor health. He had a lot of the chronic metabolic disease that sort of flipped the pretty much the American community but especially the African American community. And so my father eventually succained to his metabolic conditions and had kidney failure and was on dialysis and eventually was put on hospice and passed away. And so when this happened I really let the spark in me to pull back on my previous interest in medicine to begin with. And that's when I said you know I think I'm going to pursue PA and it just let the spark in me to actually apply and pursue a profession where I would be helping people by passing on medical knowledge and hopefully save someone else's father from making the same poor life decisions that my dad made. So he can be there for his kids. Now I'm currently working in occupational medicine where it's really a combination of everything I've done in the past. Doing annual physicals and doing screening for work. Pool is definitely on my primary care experience and then obviously people are getting hurt on the job. And a lot of it is orthopedics so I pull heavily on my orthopedic experience and then there's also maltramas that I manage as well. And so I pull my emergency med experience. So it seems like looking backwards connecting all the dots have led me to where I am right now and as you know I'm in a very nice position where you know I have my own office and I'm working in a clinic and you know I have a varied experience of a patient population and I'm currently happy in my new position. You know I think this is a problem that most people that are involved in fitness face we only have 24 hours a day you have to sleep. Most of us you know have to work and make money so you're really finding time or making time whenever you can in order to get your fitness goals in. And I say it comes in phases but there are times in my life when it was just my wife and I you know I'm able to go to the gym for two or three hours on a weekend or maybe early in the morning before work or even after work before she gets home. But now that we have a really young baby we have a seven month old son now and so life has changed obviously. So if you see behind me I actually put a pull up tower in my office so you know I have different routines depending on the day where maybe I'll go knock off a set of pull ups and dips and different various exercises in between patients. So it's really about being creative and making the time whenever you can in life. My wife is actually a PA as well and then so I think we have a pretty good balance obviously we have family help to help with with our little one here so we have grandma helping out with the baby and then we have a nanny as well to assist us. So I'd say that it's a very nice dynamic having a partner that's also a PA for anyone else that might be listening and can probably attest having a partner in medicine as well so you too can balance things up with each other and then obviously I'm able to discuss medicine with her and she with I and we can have that mutual understanding. So it's been great. It's been a great dynamic in the relationship. I remember being in the surgical suite when I was in orthopedic PA I was speaking with one of the anesthesiologists about American Ninja Warrior and he said to me you know you should really consider rock climbing because a lot of the better ninjas have those rock climbing skills. So that was about three years ago actually and I went rock climbing with with my kai league and I fell in love with rock climbing fell in love with that sport and realized you know I'm a bigger athlete compared to a lot of the ninjas on the show I'm you know maybe 5'11 on a good day and and I currently weigh over 205 I'm between 205 probably 208 so I'm definitely on the heavier side of a ninja a lot of that is muscle obviously and it's functional but still it's it's a different level of fitness and you have to train for a lot of the small forearm and hand and finger tendon spring and those small muscles in order to perform a lot of the feats and those obstacles I competed in many different local ninja leagues just to get experience also just doing rigorous training at the gym leading up to the show I was fortunate enough to be chosen out of tens of thousands of applicants across the country I trained really hard and had my shot at the show the hardest part about being on the show was really the timeline a lot of people don't know it's not early evening when when you're actually filming it's it's very late at night so I think my run was actually I think my first run was one or two o'clock in the morning so you're you're a little bit off of your cycle so a veteran move and I've learned this now as to maybe a week before filming is to kind of change your sleep cycle so that you can readjust and be better prepared to exert yourself physically in the middle of the night one rookie mistake I made so definitely something I hope if they have me back next year I have the ability to do that and be better prepared for the competition itself so the most rewarding part of the show for me I'd say was right when I was standing on the stairs about to walk up on the platform for the qualifier night and so they're they're telling me to get ready and I just got into a nice mental space it was very serene I was very calm I just closed my eyes and I and I thought back to my journey you know everything I've done in my life to get me to that point you know I'm finally living part of my dream to actually have the opportunity to compete on American Ninja Warrior and be on that grand stage and so I I would be quite honest about a little emotional you know almost started crying before I even ran the course because I was just so happy that all of the work I've done and the preparation paid off and I earned a spot to prove myself and I had the opportunity to actually get on that grand stage so that was the most actually the most rewarding part of the run so this is this is a great question I would say that you know I it's flattering to hear I hope that I'm inspiring people to maybe make positive changes in their life I embrace that fully whole heartedly I'd say it's it's my mission in life and I think anyone that wants to pursue medicine can relate to that obviously we choose this profession which isn't easy which is very tough actually and we do that in order to serve as not just role models but to be teachers and in order to lead people I'd say the the main job as a PA or medical provider is to be a leader not just in your own life but in other people's lives in order to help them reach their goals obviously of medical fitness and being of sound mind and body so that they can go on and live their lives and make a difference in other people's lives I am honored if anyone thinks I'm any speck of inspiration or hope or if I can inspire anyone to make positive change in their life just my key takeaway in order to achieve anything in life do something every day that's going to move you closer to your goal and I think we all get caught up that in order to make a difference or to achieve something big you have to make a big move you know it's it's it's all about putting it all out there and in a short amount of time and achieving something great whereas the reality is every worthy goal is actually comprised of many many small steps I mean sometimes maybe it takes a lifetime right or maybe it takes a year everyone's story is going to be a little bit different and based on their goal but my main point for everyone to take away is do something every day it only has to be one little thing one little step we've all heard that that saying the journey of a thousand miles starts with single step it can be done one step at a time every day do something small something measurable that isn't going to overwhelm you to help you meet your goal in life whatever that is and that can be building your your body to meet some type of physical goal obviously becoming a PA going through a PA school every single day you know you're studying a little bit in order to layer that medical knowledge on board I mean the list really goes on I think this can be broken down and apply to anything that you're aspiring to achieve in life oh my gosh first off I just want to thank Virdell thank you so much for your service to the country as well as your family service because I'm pretty sure like it's a family thing so just want to thank you so much for that but secondly thank you for doing this true life because I'm sure that there are many people who look at American Dewarri and they're like oh man like I wish I could do that and you know your your video right now is inspiring them to be like yes I can't I just have to take small steps and that is one thing that I took away from this I really hope that everyone kind of takes that away as well it's just kind of doing little things to get you to the goal that you want to be at because a lot of times we want to kind of just skip the line you know jump a few steps further than where we need to be and we need to be able to kind of just trust in the process and do those little things each day just do one little thing every day to take you closer to the goal that you want and so I'm that's my takeaway because even now in clinical year of PA school that's what I'm doing one step every day as I'm seeing more and more patience as I'm doing more and more questions it's getting me closer to my goal of being a PA so I'm really excited about that message that you gave me it's something that I'm gonna hold dear to I just have to commend you on that dedication man like having the pull-up bar in your office doing pull-up sets in between patients that's amazing and that has inspired me to do more myself with respect to my you know physical activity because you always like you always make excuses but instead of making excuses you need to make the time to do the work so thank you for that as well really really appreciate that y'all if y'all didn't get anything from this I don't know what y'all was watching but I definitely got a lot really appreciate you taking the time out to talk to us about this stuff being an American Ninja Warrior contested and also being a PA and being a veteran I commend you on all of those it's amazing so if you can do all these things we have no excuse right just continue to take the little steps for those of you who are interested in being an American Ninja Warrior go do some rock climbing if you're interested in being a PA go ahead and take the necessary small steps to that be it a class be it some type of training be it studying be taking a training course to pass the GRE whatever it may be take those steps do what you need to do and you'll get there alright you guys thank you guys so much for watching if you have any questions please leave it in the comment section below please please please be sure to go follow Verdell on all of his different social media sites support this man he's doing some great things also if you haven't already done so go ahead and subscribe to my channel and follow me on Instagram at adana the PA I thank you guys so much for joining me on this journey and I will talk to you guys next time bye I appreciate you guys allowing me the opportunity to share my story I do I'm a fan of your program actually you know I was really pleased with the with the quality of the videos so I hope you know I can help meet your intent of reaching out to people interested in the PA profession and there's anything else I can do to be of service for what you're trying to accomplish in life let me know alright guys thank you very much