About
I didn't get into fitness to become a trainer. I got into it because I needed something to hold onto.
Fitness was the first thing I applied consistent discipline to in my life. It taught me what I was capable of before I believed I was capable of anything. It kept me physically healthy during periods when everything else was falling apart. Over time I realized fitness was the foundation everything else in my life was built on.
I've competed as an elite powerlifter across three weight classes and as a competitive bodybuilder. I've studied body mechanics, nutrition, programming, and the psychology of discipline at a level most trainers haven't. That level of knowledge is typically reserved for competitive athletes. Most people never get access to it, but my clients do.
General health clients are who I prefer to work with. They tend to get the most out of coaching and seeing them make progress is the most rewarding thing I do.
It is far more satisfying to hear a client say she can now reach the bottom shelf at the grocery store or get off the couch without pushing herself up with her arms, than it is to hear a powerlifter hit a new personal record. Those are the results that mean something to me.
Training Philosophy
Most people treat exercise as optional, like it's something you add when you have the time or the motivation. I think that's backwards.
Your body evolved to move. To hunt, carry, climb, build. The modern world has engineered almost all of that activity out of daily life. You sit in a car to get to work swipe a card for your food. The movement your body was designed for no longer happens automatically.
If you don't exercise, your body isn't staying the same. It's degenerating. The function you maintain now is the function you carry into old age, and it only gets harder to build as you age. Start now.
Physical function and mental wellbeing are not separate things. How you feel in your body directly shapes how you engage with your life. It is possible to be happy while sedentary, in pain, and physically declining. It is just very, very hard. Why make it harder than it has to be?
The discipline you build in the gym doesn't stay in the gym. Every time you train when you don't feel like it, you are building a capacity that transfers to everything else in your life. Self-discipline is the foundation of everything we value, in ourselves and in society. Nothing great has ever been built without it. The body is the most honest place to start developing it. You get stronger or you don't. You can see it, feel it, measure it. There's no ambiguity.
That's what strength training really is. Not aesthetics. Not performance. A practice of doing hard things when you don't feel like it, until that becomes the kind of person you are.
