learning tournament grind...

I have noticed a recent trend from me playing in live tournaments. I always have a sub par start tend to pretty much tread water. I normally find myself getting ate by blinds and having to be force to push with anything...I'm not sure on what to do next???

There are a whole lot of ways to improve your MTT play. If you play a lot live, I would think about visiting a coaching site - there are a lot of them out there, maybe try "poker coaching site reviews" in google as a start - as well as a number of good books. The Harrington on Holdem series is good, a bit dated but a great place to start. The Winning poker tournaments 1+2 are more geared toward online play, but give great insight to a winning players thought process in various stages. The Raisers Edge is a great book as well.

Not to mention a lot of stuff here can help you. Check out the Golder Archives for a lot of good stuff.

thanks...ive been look at books to purchase and now you gave me a start..

In general: Run better, probably be more aggressive earlier.

Keep in mind, in the vast majority of MTTs, you will lose even if playing perfectly.

thats true...just never looked at it that way..

Lot's and lot's of variables but it looks like the first thing you might want to address is how you start. There are three schools of thought - 1) widen your range a bit while you can get opportunities cheap (blinds are small) - 2) tighten your range a bit and let the donks sort themselves out - 3) what's a range? Just play cards.
I;m going to guess you are doing either #1 or #2. If it's not working for you try the other for a while.
Personally I do both and it is predicated on how deep the starting stack is. In my deeper stack one ($5500 to start) I pretty much allow myself $1500 of it to donk around with. See a bunch of flops, establish myself as loose, yada, yada. The other live tourney I play is a faster stack ($2000 to start) with more accelerated blinds. It's going to be a shove fest very quickly so I am pretty tight up front. There just aren't enough chips to play with on spec hands. Not that you can't recover (got down to $400 with blinds at $50 and ended up winning it) but why make it hard on yourself. Let some donk chip up and then take them away from him later on.
What is the blind structure? You're biggest opponent in this game is the blinds. Know what they are doing at all times. One weapon is your stack of chips. let it get too small and it is no longer a threat to anybody, but instead a feast - don't let that happen.
POSITION, POSITION, POSITION -

well i think the idea of setting some aside to see a few flops is wise..also with the image of me being a loose player should help also..

What's your starting stack?

1. 7500 chips
2. 10k chips
levels are 20 min blinds...25,50 50,100 100,200 25 ante 100,200