How I learned to love the process and stop quantifying my existence

Earlier this year, I made a decision that had a butterfly effect on my mental state. I was set to compete in June in Men's Physique at the NPC Duel of Champions. I was six weeks out, and everything was coming together. My abs were showing, my muscles were full, and my calories were still above 2000 per day. I was on point to deliver a better package than my first show in 2021 in Des Moines.

I was fighting a battle inside that was coming to a head, and I was getting suicidal again. To be fair to the prep process, there was nothing wrong with that actual process, and it didn't trigger the depressive symptoms, but something had to be done before the point of no return was hit. I was wrestling with the idea of pulling out from the June show for a few weeks, as my heart wasn't in it despite my prep going so well. I was losing focus on my business, personal life, "me time," and mental health.

I was doing what I did in the past so many times - hiding pain behind the physical, but something was wrong. I couldn't push through it as I have in the past, and I am thankful for it.

I value therapy, mental health work, and inner peace. I am aware of the ramifications of neglecting those and am self-aware enough to know when it's time to get back to work.

I gave my gun to my business partner and sought help again from a therapist and a psychiatrist. I have already been diagnosed with PTSD and treated for it with medication and psych work (it's ongoing for those who are wondering), but my focus was horrid, and I could get by from sheer work ethic for years.

Work ethic wasn't enough anymore. I was losing my life. I was losing what made me - me.

After several sessions with the shrink, he diagnosed me with Bipolar disorder and ADHD, and we started to work on treating those with medication. My Lexapro dosage was increased, and I was given Adderall.

Therapy was helpful as she gave me work to do outside of our sessions that held me accountable and helped me process feelings and emotions better.

I decided to "retire" from all competitions, as I have mentioned before, but I quickly backtracked, texted my coach, and told him I would shoot for 2023. I told a few close friends about it and continued to eat and train.

But something happened when I pulled out of the June show to the decision to un-retire. I was able to maintain my ultimate goal bodyweight of 225 with ease. I was no longer feeling the need to grow and eat more than I needed, and I was finally happy in my skin from a physical perspective.

It is funny to read that, but I can assure you it is true. I spent a few decades training to be big, strong, fast, jacked, powerful, explosive, and a physically dominating force on the sports field. When I quit rugby in 2009, I wasn't ready to stop pushing for excellence. I took up powerlifting. Looking back, it was the worst decision I ever made with my training and mindset. I became obsessed with numbers, would train through pain, and be frustrated with myself over it. I threw tantrums, ate to grow, and jeopardized my health from the lack of care. I was already beaten up from the years of strongman and rugby, so why did I choose another activity that would put the same stress on my body as the prior ones?

Ego. That's all.

I stopped PL after a bout of A-Fib and heart failure and spent the next few years training for myself after the long road of recovery. I lost a ton of strength, and I am not sure I would ever get that back, considering my age, history, and unwillingness to do what it took to get to that level again.

There was even a brief point where I decided to compete again, this time at 220. Why? I saw Missouri State master's records that were well within reach for me, and my ego thought, "why not?" I hired a coach and went to work. I tweaked my knee squatting and had to go through PT for it. That made me decide to go from full power to push/pull. The moment came during a deadlift day when I didn't want to do this anymore. I sat and looked at the loaded bar and quit. Flat-out quit.

I emailed my coach, thanked him for being such a great human to work with, and that day I felt free. I trained for myself again, not for anything else but me.

Fast forward a couple of years, and I was back training the way I was when I first entered a gym. I grew up loving bodybuilding and always wanted to try it, but I thought I could never do it. On a whim, I decided to enter a Men's Physique show, picked the date for the November Des Moines NPC show, and got to work.

I trained, ate perfectly, and did all the work I needed to do. I came in 2nd in my class while only losing to the man who won overall. My first time on stage was a success, and I was proud. I thought I found my place, and for a while, I did, but as I wrote earlier in this excessively long article, something happened.

I grew tired of quantifying my food, body, training... well, all of it. I grew tired of body image issues while overthinking everything - my training, eating a "cheat meal," I was stepping on the scale 3-4 times a day, I was dreading going to the gym and had little desire to push myself the way I did during my successful prep. I hit a wall so hard that it triggered an existential crisis. I silently decided to end it all, not my life, but the quantification of training and my body. I spent too long trying to be "perfect" that I lost track of what made me happy.

Training is a lifestyle for me. It is an entrenched habit, but it was fast becoming something I disliked. I needed to make it fun again. I needed to find something different.

While sitting at Steel Panther Tattoo waiting to get some work done by Noelle, a woman was there with her friend waiting for her to finish. Her name, amazingly enough, was Noelle. We started a conversation, and she shared that she trains BJJ at the gym around the corner. That gym is within walking distance from where I live. I have experience with martial arts from the past, but it's been a very long time. I never had much interest in BJJ as I erroneously thought it was too passive, but I wanted to try. I emailed the school, registered for a try-out class, showed up, borrowed a gi, and suffered.

My technique is completely new, and my conditioning is terrible, but my strength is a significant asset. I left the class, signed up for a membership, and ordered a gi and rash guard the next day.

I am forced to slow down, think, be present, and train in a way that enhances my sport rather than my body. Sure, I love to look good, but obsessing over it is a toxic mindset for me, and after so many years of shit body image, it was time to be an athlete again.

Little did I know how much I missed that.

The feeling of accomplishment at learning a new submission, nailing technique, and being humbled by better athletes is something I cannot describe adequately for you. The allure of sport for me is rooted in the feeling of primal competition.

My actions can directly affect how you perform and vice versa; however, in lifting "sports" like bodybuilding, CrossFit, Strongman, powerlifting, Highland Games, etc. I can do nothing to help myself win other than do my absolute best. I can only do my best and hope my competitors are off that day or I am better than they are. That me v. me shit wasn't cutting it anymore. I battled with myself enough physically and mentally. I was exhausted from it and wanted no more parts in that game.

Friends have noticed I am calmer, happier, and more "peaceful." Overall, it seems like I have better energy physically and mentally. Despite being tired, humbled, and sore, I feel refreshed after rolling. I am forced to train less and do more conditioning work, and I am thrilled with it.

Being an athlete means I no longer strive for a "perfect body". I strive for a body made for my sport. Looking good is a byproduct of eating well, recovering well, and being smart about training.

I have embraced being smaller, lighter, more mobile, and even losing a little muscle in the process.

Five years ago, that sentence would give me anxiety.

Today?

I breathe easier saying it.

I will never fully beat my mental health issues, but I have learned to cope with them. One thing I have learned from my life that is a stone-cold lock:

"Your happiness is your calling in life. Seek it at all costs. The journey to find it can be painful, heartbreaking, and unbearable, but when you see that light starting to shine on the path at the end, you will run to it with open arms and never take it for granted."

All the years of pain and mental agony, all those mistakes.... there is nothing I can do about them but move forward.

I may lose the battle to mental health one day, but not yet. There is time and hope remaining.

Here's to a new chapter in my saga.

A tribute to the Angry Coach, one of the last of a dying breed of men.

I wrote this on 4 May 2014. Bob died on the 3rd of May unexpectedly from a brain aneurysm. I texted him early in the morning, he texted back. The next time I heard about him was a few hours later when Jason Pegg texted me the news. It shook me to my core as this man was a major influence on my career. The only way I could properly pay tribute to him was to write this blog.

When I wrote this, I was in emotional turmoil. His death was fresh, I was crying, and I wanted to finally share what he had done for me and meant to me.

It was time to share to the world what kind of man he was to his friends.

This blog rambles, is repetitive, and I didn’t proofread, check grammar, or check for flow and readability. It was too raw to care about the technical details. This is pure emotion.

This blog was shared by dozens and dozens of people across the strength world, and his cousin read this blog to Bob’s mother. At the funeral she thanked me profusely for the kind words.

It was viewed and read over 20,000 times within two weeks. It was on my old webpage and when I transferred all my work to the Kansas City Barbell blog, it was preserved.

It was a small funeral, but those who went were in that circle of Bob. Jason Pegg, Cornell Key, Brian Carroll, Nicky Polanco, Armando Polanco, Ray Longo, David Kirschen, and others.

We paid tribute to Bob with drinks, laughs, insults, and shit-talking. Just like Bob would have loved.

Today, I transfer my best work back to it’s rightful home and it will find a new audience.

Most of you have never had the distinct pleasure of interacting with Angry Coach, but trust me when I say his legacy lives on in those who knew him.

RIP Asshole.

---

Bob Ihlenfeldt, Rob Fitzgerald, Angry Coach.

Three names of the same man.

A bitter, funny, angry, cynical, unselfish man.

I have written before in my book, and on this blog, about how he has influenced me. I have never before written about how much he has shaped my path in the strength world until now.

For one simple reason.

He would have called me and said, "quit being a fucking douche, ASHMAN"

That's Bob. All he ever wanted was a simple thank you.

I first met him at World's Gym in West Babylon, NY. I was lifting next to him, he was deadlifting and I was squatting. When he left I was still lifting and he said to me, "you train hard".

That was all... soon after we started lifting together and he was my first bonafide coach as I always trained myself and worked on my own form before that.

Before I go into details, let me copy and paste a letter Bob wrote for me in 2008 when I was up for a PT manager spot in a NYC gym.

I will be blocking the name of the gym out, but the rest is all his wording:

Robert Ihlenfeldt
Associate Editor/Training Editor
Muscle and Fitness
1 Park Avenue, Third Floor
New York, NY 10016
(646) 521-2844 (office)
(516) 640-XXXX (cell) 

XXXXXX,

I’m writing this letter of recommendation on behalf of my friend and colleague Jay Ashman. As both Jay’s friend and business associate, it’s been an absolute pleasure dealing with him over the past few years, and I can’t recommend him highly enough for the position he’s looking to fill with your organization.

As a trainer, Jay is independent, self-motivated, intellectually curious and exceptionally creative. His enthusiasm for the fitness industry, both in the gym and with regard to his considerable online and social networking abilities, is infectious, and Jay has developed the unique ability to motivate everyone around him and keep them motivated.

Jay’s efforts to reach out to the best trainers, coaches and business minds in the industry have enabled him to build a network of top professionals that will serve both him and your organization very well going forward. He possesses an astounding depth and breadth of training knowledge – including both program design and facility management – coupled with highly evolved and advanced communications skills and the ability to deal with people from all walks of life.

I highly recommend Jay for employment with your organization. He’s a team player and a person of integrity, and will contribute mightily to whatever you’re trying to accomplish. If you’d like to discuss this further, feel free to call me at either number in the letterhead at the top of this page.

Best Regards,

Bob Ihlenfeldt
Associate Editor
Muscle and Fitness Magazine

All he wanted, and all I could give him was a simple thank you.

Bob was the first person to call me after my speech at Mark Watt's Denison University Strength and Conditioning Conference. His first words to me were, "did you fuck it up?"

He was the first person to give me constructive advice in his usual asshole tone.

He put me in videos with him on the M&F magazine, quoted me in articles, hooked me up with Mike Carlson who featured me in the Vitamin Shoppe and GNC magazines for my rugby and also my e-book. Mike now is working with MuscleMag Int'l and I did an interview with them talking about how much I think Bulletproof coffee is full of shit.

That all came from Bob.

Bob taught me, gave me books, gave me clothing from EliteFTS and used to mock me when I wore it, while at the same time being a walking billboard for the company. We had laughs about that all the damn time.

He was a man's man, a dick and one of the truest dudes you will ever come across.

Bob would drunk text me; saying, "ASHMAN, I am drunk"

He would call me and say "guess who I am hanging out with ASHMAN?" and name drop who he was with and say "he's a great guy".

He worked with me back on Long Island as I helped him train football players as he was doing work writing 5/3/1 for Football. That book was his baby, based off of Wendler's program and he used that to train his athletes as he was a coach.

He worked with his athletes and molded them into better ones, and even better men.

When I moved to Ohio he was still there calling me and texting me to offer advice and be a friend.

He raised money and donated untold amounts of time to helping Long Island recover from Hurricane Sandy. Not once did he want a pat on the back, he just did it. I made sure I gathered up clothing, blankets, cleaning supplies and other things here in Ohio and had them shipped to him.

He wrote a blog called Standing on the Box which was the reason his journalism career took off. That blog alone got him in the door at Muscle and Fitness. You can find it by doing a simple Google search and see for yourself how good his ability to write was.

For over 10 years, Bob has been a massive influence on my life. There hasn't been a single fucking man in the strength world that I looked up to as much as I did him, nor will there ever be. Bob, to me, went above and beyond the call of duty in friendship and I am lucky for it.

He wasn't an elite lifter, he was a good lifter, but he was a great coach.

He was a writer, a trainer and a mentor.

Most of all he was a friend.

The times we sat down and talked he shared stories, we talked about strength concepts, he would shit-talk me and I would ride his ass back. That is Bob, he's East Coast to the core and if you are from that area, a thick skin is necessary.

Bob passed away Saturday morning and it broke my heart because the one man who helped shape my path in this industry died too young. He didn't take care of himself the way he should have and that is the curse of many of us who push our bodies and our careers to the limit.

He has little patience for social networking and even less patience to people who steal ideas, rip off others, act like they are gods of strength and who don't take the time to say thank you.

We had a conversation one time when he told me someone called him, left a voice mail and said, "Bob, Coach xxx here, give me a call when you get a chance." He said to me, "anyone who calls himself Coach to me that isn't coaching a team sport can kiss my ass, I am not calling him back, fuck that, he's a trainer not a goddamn coach."

He hated helping people out that didn't thank him. All he ever wants is that person to just say "thank you". If you didn't, he didn't help you again.

I made sure I always thanked him, every single time, because people do not have to help you, they do it because they want to. If you don't show thanks by a simple phone call or thank you note, you aren't deserving of it.

If he was here today, and read this, he would text me, or call me, and say, "ASHMAN, what the hell are you doing, pussy, quit being an asshole".

That is how he was, but inside he would appreciate every bit of it.

Only now that he is passed on, do I write a little about how he helped shape my strength career and my life.

I cannot go into enough detail about our interactions, a lot of them were casual, some were business, some were him talking about his life and giving me advice on mine. We laughed together, shared drinks, yelled at each other and lifted together for a time.

There will never be another Robert Ihlenfeldt and that is ok. The world only needed one of him to impact many people the way he did. I have talked with several of them in the last couple days and we all have been greatly helped by him.

You were my friend, my associate, my mentor and I will miss you with every passing day and I hope that I can make you proud wherever you are.

Goodbye, Bob. You were one of a kind, and the world you touched was better off for it.

One last time... thank you for everything, you were one the best friends I ever had and my heart hurts that you are gone.

---

Sunday Sermon 14 Aug 2022

To ensure I am staying accountable to at least a weekly article, I am starting a Sunday Sermon series on this website. Every Sunday I will write thoughts I had during the week, and expand upon them. Some will be training, some will be life, all will be thoughts I want to get on paper, or information I want to share.

I hope you enjoy these, and feel free to comment or reply with your own.

——

A man joined my gym a few months ago and before he signed up, we were having a discussion about his goals.

He was in his 40s, with a bad back that needed some work to fix, and he said to me, “I want to look like you.”

My reply was direct, empathetic, and realistic. I said to him, “don’t try to look like me. This is the product of 30 years of punishing myself in the gym, along with the genetics I was blessed with. Focus on you, what you can do, and improving a little at a time.”

He joined, but he hurt himself at work one week later, and required surgery. That ended his gym membership for the time being. Unfortunate, but such is life.

I want to remind everyone who reads this to focus on what you can do with your goals, not what someone else does. My story is not your story, and my success - or lack thereof - is not yours.

When they say comparison is the thief of joy, that is an understatement. Comparison is valuable for competition, but for personal accomplishments, your success is for you.

Own it, cherish it, nurture it, be proud of it.

And for fuck’s sake, don’t say, “It’s not as good as yours, but I am proud.”

Lose the first part of that sentence and say, “I am proud”

——

Your identity is not what you do, how you look, your weight on the scale, or anything which isn’t an internal view of yourself.

I want you all to do an exercise today for you.

Open a notepad, either on your laptop or use an actual piece of paper. This exercise will require some deep thought.

1. Who are you?

2. What are you?

3. What do you want yourself to be known as by others? Do you think that matters and why?

Work on them today, or at least this week. Be brutally honest about it because this is only for you.

If you are stuck on question one, now is the time to dig in and discover who you are as a person.

When I stopped competing completely, it was a moment of anxiety for me. Where do I go from here? How will I train to keep myself maintained and improve my health? These questions, simple to some, were hard for me to answer as I always pushed towards certain goals. Now my goal has been made simpler:

“To fuck life in the face”

Graphic yes, but in “Ashman-speak” it resonates with me.

I want to optimize my life in the best possible manner. Balancing training via lifting, conditioning, yoga, and meditation. I want to focus less on food, and more on enjoying the food. I want to nurture hobbies, make friends outside of my career echo chamber, and experience life more.

Life is meant to be lived, and I have sacrificed a lot of life to my internal demons. I will never fully purge them from me, but I will learn to lead the dance.

Will you?

The Fitness industry

We are failing.

In 2000, 32.8 million people had memberships at gyms or fitness centers. In 2019, 64.2 million people were members.

In 19 years, that is an increase of 96%. That is an amazing number taken by itself, isn’t it?

Let’s dig a little deeper, throw the garden trowel to the side and grab that big-ass spade sitting in the shed.

In 2000, the US population was 282.2 million while in 2019 it was 328.2 million. That is an increase of 16%. While the population grew 16%, gym memberships grew by 96%. That is damn good to see, and we can assume a lot from this information.

1.    More gyms

2.    More trainers

3.    The online world growing along with the fitness sphere

4.    Interest and “acceptance” of women in strength sports and muscle growth

This not-so-exhaustive list are but four reasons the growth of this industry is what it is. There are more but those four stand tall above the rest.

But, before you pat yourselves on the back…

In 1999-2000, the obesity rate was 30.5, while that rate increased to 41.9% through March 2020. That is an increase of 37%.

Source: CDC

When you dive down the rabbit hole, you see that cardiovascular disease rates are increasing dramatically and projected to continue. While death rates for cardiac/stroke events have steadily decreased over the years, the slowing of that trend concerns health practitioners.

With these facts in mind, are we collectively doing our jobs?

Some of you want to blame the government for “not pushing health and fitness on us but being paid off by Big Pharma.”

That excuse is about as lazy as it gets and paints us as a victim. Searching the CDC’s own website gives you a plethora of resources on both exercise and diet. They even have information about sleep health. Michelle Obama made school nutrition policy a central effort for her work, and the data showed an improvement in their diets. Since the childhood obesity rate rose from 14% in 2000 to 22.4% in 2020, can you blame her for wanting to work on a solution?

While some people scream, “THE GOV’T NEEDS TO DO MORE,” they are ignoring the facts in front of their faces while simultaneously screaming about how the government should stay out of their food business and lives.

NYC banned artificial trans fats in 2006, and in three years heart attacks and strokes fell by 6%.

Which is it? The government isn’t doing enough; they need to do more, or do they need to get off your lawn and respect your unlimited freedom?

Despite our industry seeing exponential growth in brick-and-mortar locations, participation, revenue, and number of coaches/trainers to choose from, we have a health problem in this nation and it’s only projected to get worse.

I feel slightly qualified to write about this being my career started in this business in 1998, and I have seen trends come, go, and return. I watched the online world grow along with me, and I have enjoyed the fruits of the work I put forth as the industry grew with it. I have strong opinions, as most of you know, and I feel strongly about how this business can find the proper hammer to dent that sturdy metal of obesity, disease, and sickness.

Science-based is not selective-science based

Never has this been more clear in the age of Covid, vaccines, and choice. The same trainers using the words science to validate their methods are using shoddy “scientific” studies to justify their personal stance. The beauty of science is how it evolves along the way. A study can conclude one thing a year ago, and you will find another study coming to an alternate conclusion tomorrow. Does it make the first study a lie? Not always, but what it means is that science develops under different conditions and variables.

Being science-based requires being intellectually honest. Pushing dogma based upon cherry-picked studies is akin to telling a falsehood with your fingers crossed behind your back. You are hoping the reader doesn’t pick up the fib, or you genuinely don’t comprehend what you are parroting. Neither of which are a good way to help people achieve wellness if you aren’t being truthful about your dogma.

This causes a hell of a lot of confusion in the general public with information coming from all angles. When the public isn’t given correct knowledge, but has to sift through reams of information, they will choose who resonates with them and listen to that person or thought process.

What rises from that are charlatans and grifters - people who prey on the insecurities, dogmatic thinking, and the gullible of the lot. They offer something or someone to blame. Whether it’s Big Pharma, Big Sugar, Big Gov’t, “They”, or a specific macronutrient or food group.

It’s easy to say, “yea, sugar did this to me! Let’s go Carnivore/Vegan/Paleo/Atkins/etc.!” Or “these damn pharm companies want me to stay sick,” while they ignore the work they did to preserve life in the context of rapidly rising rates of disease.

We are to blame, because we allowed slick marketing to take precedent over the basics of eating, training, aerobic conditioning, and health. Disease and obesity is increasing for a myriad of reasons, but if you are a middle-class person who is fairly educated, you should know enough about nutrition to know that eating excessive processed food or gimmicky diets will not benefit your long-term health and wellness. If you need education on the matter, you will need to sift through a lot of dogmatic bullshit to find information, but you can start on my website or a few others like Dr. Nadolsky, Layne Norton, and Sohee Lee Carpenter. From there, you will be led with articles, links, and other people who share a similar philosophy about fitness. All three of them avoid sensational claims and dogmatic science.

The “popular” are thought to be the “best”

Influencer culture is wild, man. In 2022 it pays to be social media savvy and follow the social media trends for maximum exposure. Instagram has made it known they are pushing reels more which means we need to be competent in front of a video camera, do some minor editing, and create a 60 second clip in the hopes our message reaches the people we want it to.

Some do this better than others, and the content shows, but not always in how is needed.

Good visual content doesn’t always mean good educational content. Take Liver King for example. He is built well and looks like a jacked caveman, has videos that showcase his “primal” life, claims to be drug-free, and has 1.6 million followers on Instagram while pushing laughable bullshit. He was even given top social media treatment by the UFC. He got his exposure using well-created videos and sensational claims, and no doubt a sizable portion of his followers just follow him to laugh at him, not listen to him.

This leads into the simple question. Why do you follow people who push blatant bullshit if you know it is? You are padding their reach when you share their videos laughing at them, and defeating the purpose of combating worthless information in the fitness world. We have all been guilty of this, me included, but it serves nothing than to cater to your echo chamber. Cheap mockery doesn’t do a thing, and we can argue that exposing charlatans has a minimal effect on their reach as they seem to keep growing.

When a sizable portion of the populace believes insane conspiracy theories despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, do you think your screaming about bad information is going to make a dent in it?

No, it won’t, but what will?

Don’t write to me, write to people not like me

One of the most common things I tell aspiring coaches is to not give a shit about my opinion, or what I think of your work.

Yesterday I was training at Flex Fitness and ran across a kid there who I am friends with at the gym, and in person. His name is Kefrene, and he is in his mid-20’s. He is starting off in this business, and his content is directed exactly towards the people he wants to serve. It is simple, cheesy, and communicates his message very concisely. I approached him and complimented his work saying, “your content is cheesy as hell, but that is good. You don’t sell me, you sell people who buy. That is key, keep it up.”

With information, many of my peers have this habit of looking for validation from other trainers. We want to be liked, and instead of remembering who pays our bills, we seek too much of the attention from the people who are competing against you. Yes, professional courtesy and respect is a thing you should value, but if you have a friends/follow list of 2000 people and 1500 of them are people who don’t work in this business; that is 1500 people you can direct your messaging towards.

If your niche is training bodybuilders, direct it to them. Same with powerlifting, CrossFit, or any specialty. You should curate your information to the client you want to pursue.

This means a few things:

1.    What do they need to be better?

2.    How can you tailor concepts to read simply?

3.    Is your information rooted in reality or in utopia?

There are educators who focus on the training world’s professionals to expand their knowledge, and there are coaches who focus only on people who have no desire to be fitness professionals. What do you want to read? The information that helps you.

This leads into the next point…

Competition doesn’t exist

I do not know how many gyms there are in the KC area. I don’t feel like doing a market analysis on it. What I know is this; not a single gym is my competition.

How?

The KC metro has a population of 2.3 million people. If you look at the national average of gym memberships you are looking at less than 20% of the population has a gym membership.

19.5% of 328.2 million is 64 million.

19.5% of 2.3 million is 449,000.

2.3 minus 449,000 is 1.85 million.

That is assuming the national rate. That is 1.8 million people in the KC metro who do not have a gym membership.

Why should I give a shit about the gym down the street from me when about 81% of the KC area isn’t a member of any gym?

This ties into the prior point about catering your message to the people that need to hear it, absorb it, and follow it. This comes with a responsibility to be properly science-based, not dispense or cater to bad information, and understand despite our business growing, more people entering gyms, and our collective knowledge becoming better, we still have a long way to go when you look at the obesity rate, disease rate, and the future of a world where it is simple for someone to fall into the trap of disinformation.

We are not victims in this business

No, they do not want you sick.

No, they are not out to fit shame you.

No, they do not want you to be a subservient tool to the system.

No, the government isn’t pushing vaccines over all preventative measures as countless times their messaging has been geared towards health.

Yes, we need to improve as a business and not play the victim. We don’t need to enable that mindset. Grifting off of people is a shitty business model. Sure, it might earn you a fast following in a certain segment, but are you helping people or are you leading them towards dogma?

When the business has a barrier to entry that is lower than the ocean floor, you are going to have an industry filled with people who have no business training others and telling us how to eat.

As a consumer, sifting through all of this can be a task. As a coach, we are the supposed expert in our field. We are the subject matter experts (SME) although you only need to take a simple test online to become a personal trainer. Even the highly respected CSCS only requires a 4 year degree.

Only?

Yes, and here’s the funny part - you don’t need a degree in an exercise or health-related field. Starting in 2030, that will change, but that is not now nor was it so in the history of the NSCA.

Our dedication to our bodies and nutrition doesn’t mean our clients share the same goals

The biggest issue this business faces is a two-headed snake

1.    Lack of empathy

2.    Lack of understanding basic psychology

People like me are immersed into this business and lifestyle much the same as any career-minded person is. This isn’t a hobby for me, it’s not self-care, it’s my life, and that is both a blessing and a curse. I compete in Men’s Physique, eat healthy, track my calories most days, and my entire life is wrapped around fitness. It gets exhausting, yes, but I do love my career despite the noise surrounding it.

It is easy as a coach to push our clients to think like we do, train like we do, and treat their fitness like we do, but they often have other priorities which include a life not dunked into the world of fitness with concrete shoes on.

I train four days a week, which is about average, and my workouts take me about 45-65 minutes to do each session. In the past I would train for 90 minutes to two hours. The mental effort it took for me to simplify my workouts and not irrationally fear losing “gains” was staggering, and it paid off.

Do you think a career-minded married father of three is going to want to spend four to five days a week in the gym doing 90 minute workouts? He may think he does, but until the reality of life sets in and he’s taking too much time away from his family, obligations, and his career.

The facts are simple. Our clients are not us. They don’t care about MRV, Rest Pause, Prilepin’s chart, HRV, or any of the other scientific principles we geek out over. They care about a few things:

1.    Lifestyle and sustainability

2.    Managing their nutrition

3.    Efficient training

4.    Results

If you put an “Average Joe” on a program that is designed for someone like you, are you serving them or molding them into a mini version of you?

Unfortunately, there are too many trainers who do this, and the lack of empathy and understanding is apparent with them.

“You just have to want it.”

“You aren’t working hard enough."

“Do or don’t, there is no try.”

All of those statements are rooted in some sense of reality with every client, but learning good bedside manners will tell you who needs to hear them, and who needs to be talked with to find viable solutions to their problems.

This is where psychology comes into play and most of us are ill-equipped to use it.

I am not writing this to prop myself up as the best trainer money can buy. The “best” is highly subjective and each client can decide who their best trainer is. I write this as a man who has spent 24 years in this business. I watched it grow, I watched trends come and go, I was coaching people online before it became a trend, and my biggest dream was opening a gym - which came true with Kansas City Barbell.

I write this to remind you all the responsibility of a trainer with education, information, coaching, and messaging. For better or worse, we are role models and leaders. We cannot escape that fact, no matter how hard we try. The cult of personalities are strong in this business, and cliques are going to happen. If you spent any amount of time online, you see it right in front of your eyes, but like the old saying goes, “let the buyer beware,” it is your responsibility to sift through the noise and the bullshit to find the right fit for you as a client.

I implore you all to be your best advocate as a client. This country has no regulation on the fitness industry. You can flat out lie about any cert and still be insured by IDEA and other large fitness insurance carriers. It is illegal to give a medical meal plan unless you are a registered dietitian. This means if a person comes to you, as a degreed Nutritionist or “certified” nutrition coach, and they have a specific medical need with food, you legally may not take them on as a client. Many do otherwise, and I have seen horror stories from past clients and people I know when poorly educated “Nutrition Coaches” with a weekend cert give medical advice to a client or attempt to analyze a medical issue with food.

Do your due diligence as a client, because this industry is horrid as policing our own.