As a young, aspiring athlete, I didn’t know much at all about the world of training for sport. In fact, when creatine rose to popularity in the supplement market, I used to take two 20g scoops daily (this is way too much). However, what I did know - better yet, what I thought I knew - was that more work = better. This led to tireless hours in the weightroom, on the field running gassers, eating everything in sight and giving my absolute all in any physical endeavor as often as possible. Eventually, this gave rise to three very important events in my athletic career which led me down the path that is now my passion and career.

The Story

1 - The Fall

At the spry age of 14, I had found myself already deep within the consuming lifestyle I mentioned above. It was the Spring of my freshman year in high school. I was, at the exact moment, involved in the school baseball team as well as making appearances at basketball open gym pickup games on top of lifting with the football program whenever I could make it to the weight room. Additionally, over the last year or so, I had begun to develop an accelerating case of Osgood-Schlatter disease. Already, you should be sensing an impending downfall. For those of you that haven’t been or raised a teenage boy, this is where the top of the tibia begins to rip away from the rest of the bone due to fast and sporadic growth spurts. In most cases, this results in a sensitive knee and “growing pains” until growing slows. Typically, it does not end in significant injury and goes away in time. However, I was not so lucky. One day in a pickup basketball game, as many young boys find themselves pursuing, I achieved my first dunk. Immediately after, my friends encouraged me to go for a second dunk. On my way up, the force from the jump ripped my tibial tuberosity off of the rest of the bone and essentially shattered my knee.

Yes this was an impactful moment, but the events following are wherein lie the rub. Because I was young and my blood was coursing with growth hormones, I had surgery and recovered fairly quickly and therefore did not learn my lesson. After all, what is there to learn when you’re a teenager and you can bounce back from literally anything.

2 - The Covenant

Without boring you of too many narcissistic details, I came back from the injury bigger, stronger, more motivated and eventually earned multiple scholarship offers to play Division I football. I made a promise to myself to do more, naturally, because more = better and I finally signed a national letter of intent to live my dream. In college, I was met with the rude awakening that is a level of competition I wasn’t prepared for, but I adapted. I grew, tuned my skills, and had success. Even though I was rigorously studying to become an exercise scientist in the background, I did not heed the instruction of this newfound knowledge and almost burned myself out of my love for the game of football.

3 - The Second Fall

This “more = better” attitude combined with an experience of college football that was lackluster and that most will never perceive, I reluctantly entered into training for a pro day after my senior season. In the midst of this training, I went on a snowboarding trip where, on the first run of the first day, I tore all three ligaments connecting my acromion-clavicular joint in my right shoulder. What I hadn’t realized until this exact moment was that prior to this event, during my pro day training, was the deep truth. This was embedded in the most divinely-interventional conversation with an elderly woman in a grocery store late at night, only weeks prior. In so many words, she (a messenger?) revealed to me in so many words that my calling wasn’t that of a professional football player, but something else. Something more impactful, something that the unifying principle could pull from my life’s events to give for the betterment of other young athletes. Something that allowed others to have the “me” that I never had. Someone that could help young athletes understand that more ≠ better.

“MORE ≠ BETTER”

The Big Picture

Soon after I graduated and began working in the field of sports performance, strength and conditioning, fitness, whathaveyou, I quickly realized the issue of young athletes not understanding how to train. The industry that I had just stepped into was absolutely littered with things like genius, ego, beauty, toil, sacrifice to the highest, sacrifice to the pointless, humility and pride. In short, it was a mess. Even today, if you take a bird's eye look at the landscape, you’ll realize that it may be the most underregulated field in the world in proportion to its magnitude and market value. Ok, maybe second-most behind the global illegal drug market.

If you will take just a second to fathom the vastness of sports in its entirety on all levels and the fitness industry and both of those fields’ progression over the last 150 years, you can only imagine how the innumerable coaches, trainers and wannabe’s impose their ideologies on athletes and the general population alike. Some things stick, some don’t. The things that stick don't inherently carry the virtue that makes them right or good. Sometimes it just means that someone somewhere is making money or that it’s rife with novelty or that it makes people feel good. So what’s the solution? How do you organize this mess to classify what’s good and bad, what works and doesn’t work, what makes a good coach or a bad coach? After all, these coaches’ roles aren’t trivial. Professional and even collegiate sports have a giant impact on the global market, regardless of how poorly it’s measured. On a more individualized scale, a good personal trainer can save a person tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills and in many cases, their very life.

If your first thought on how to fix this issue was to regulate the field through a government agency in the medical establishment, let me bluntly explain to you why that will never happen: healthy people stunt profits for the medical industry. As dark as it sounds, it’s the truth. If you’re not fat, a smoker, cancerous, or weak, the medical industry along with its evil brother - Big Pharma - can’t make any money off of you. Educated and well-trained medically-certified personal trainers or strength coaches would only steal business. “Alright then, what if there was just a privatized organization that could offer a science-based rigorous certification that could qualify coaches and trainers at different levels?” Well there is. Kind of. There are thousands to be exact. There are a few who have been around for a long time that have nearly monopolized markets like collegiate strength coaching. There are new ones popping up every day. There are kettlebell certs, landmine certs, even a “Social Media Fitness Influencer” cert and I am not kidding in the slightest. Sure, this is a danger of the free market. But here’s the difference between this industry and all others: the average product in another industry will sell based on the demand of the product that is based usually on the quality and cost of the product. This is common knowledge. However, in this field, there are three significant reasons why the above statement does not ring true: 1) The average consumer (along with many of the service providers) cannot differentiate between good training and bad training. 2) Because the consumer cannot demonstrate qualitative reasoning, what sells is what feels good or what is novel. Unfortunately, those two reasons often lead away from “healthy” rather than towards it which creates a net negative impact. 3) Because the consumer is blindly chasing novelty, typically the organizations that grow the largest are the ones who do not deliver the best product, but instead deliver the biggest hit of dopamine. This leaves the best product high and dry.

One very important note to make right here is that of care. It’s very difficult for a practicing coach to be a good coach in the technical sense (being educated, hard-working, results-driven, etc.) but to not care about their athletes’ emotions, personal lives, family, etc. If the motivation for this care is not because this coach is simply a humble and sympathetic human being, at the very least, caring about such things will actually lead to a better ability to deliver good coaching to the athletes.

Obviously this is an oversimplification of what’s truly going on, but it’s a large problem and you can witness it anywhere in the country. More than likely you can witness it in any first world country. There are never simplistic resolutions to complex issues. To boil down what the actual issue with the sports performance and fitness is would be one word: discernment. Thankfully, I have had the blessing of observation and attention to detail to the degree that I take careful note of older* coaches and trainers who are now resentful toward themselves, their athletes and clients and their job as a whole. The thought of ever getting to that point scares me. So, how do I not? Like Gandhi said, “be the change.” So, folks, that’s why you’re here. If you don’t know the answers to questions like “What are the qualities of a good coach?” or “Should I back squat or front squat?” or “At what age is lifting safe for kids?” then please indulge that curiosity and have a look around the site. This is the purpose. This is the way.

I’m clearly very passionate about this and my main purpose for this site is to educate athletes, coaches, parents, and people who just want to be healthy on anything and everything related to training. The more people I can educate, the better off this field will be and the wiser the consumer thereof.

Culture

When you begin to learn what good training looks like, you also begin to be less excited about it because the truth is that largely the best training out there is very boring and very simple. Fancy equipment and exercises have never stood the test of time and are not used widely by good coaches. Novelty has a relatively small seat at the table. However, something that can have a much more variable impact on the training experience is culture. Culture is the cumulative attitude of the people within a community. Vibes, if you will. I’ve seen bad culture turn over ownership and eventually close gyms. I’ve seen mediocre culture suck the life out of coaches and athletes, and never being bad enough to reach the breaking point, become a cockroach roost that lasts years, even decades, stealing potential from a network of communities and their children and their children. I’ve seen just good culture completely catalyze a community into health, growth, prosperity and strength on all fronts. I’ve seen great culture imitate the archetype of the castle on the hill. These cultural epicenters beckon from far and wide to those who align with their values of constant growth and adaptation. The athletes who submit themselves to the fire of these cultures are molded by it and become part of the culture that they can then take with them and use for their own success as well as shining a positive light in other dark places. Those who aim to impose their egotistical presuppositions and impure practice in this great culture are quickly chewed up and spit out. This is the type of culture that nurtures growth and that makes good training far less boring. Good culture may be represented at first glance by great taste in music, aesthetics, equipment, training modalities and branding, but anyone who has ever been part of something of this sort can tell you that great culture is truly represented best by the individuals curating the environment. Great culture cannot be replicated, only constructed with immense attention to every single brick. Great culture is not a front or tied to a geographical location, but it is the lifestyle of those who lead it. For this reason, great culture is not simply limited to programming or the environment of a gym, but expands into things like the philosophy of nutrition, recovery and fellowship. Great culture may look like perfection in this description, but those who have been around the block know that perfection is unachievable and that only in the pursuit of what is highest can we approach perfection. And that, specifically, is what great culture means. Now, on to the most efficient and highest ROI toward great culture that I’m aware of…

Personal Responsibility

The Spider-Man franchise has been obliterated in its essence with remakes until the cows come home, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. However, in its original rendition - the 1962 closing narration of the late Stan Lee’s comic book series - Uncle Ben is quoted as saying in his final breath, “With great power comes great responsibility!” This axiom is not to be understated.

Power can take many forms and includes, but is not limited to: knowledge, wisdom, strength, skill, wealth, authority, sympathy and experience. Regardless of the form, the hierarchy of power runs parallel to the hierarchy of responsibility. This means exactly what Uncle Ben said: the more powerful (intelligent, strong, rich, etc.) you become, the greater the load of bringing up those around you. This makes power much less desirable upon first reading. Responsibility is scary. However, as anyone with great power who has successfully reciprocated it can tell you, accepting responsibility is the most efficient way to personal growth and creates the strongest attributes for living, as opposed to surviving. On the flip side, as enticing as that revelation is, you must also accept the reality of where you are at this moment in that hierarchy of power, and that the only way up is to accept more and more responsibility. The path up is a straight and narrow path and is not to be taken lightly. Reference Sisyphus, the Greek myth of the mortal king who placed himself higher up in this hierarchy than he actually was, and for punishment was sentenced to pushing a boulder up an endless mountain. This concept, taken in its entirety, applied to our purposes now means something like this…

As an athlete:

To distinguish good from bad training as well as good from bad coaching.
To recognize the reality, but also the skill that is respecting their coaches despite qualitative or personal differences.
To honor their parents, despite differences of opinion or preference on sport, training or coaching selection.
To place their education first, before their athletic career. Lord-willing and the creek don’t rise, their brains will far outlive their bodies’ peak performance window.
To learn as much as possible about their own training for sport so that all of the above responsibilities won’t seem so difficult to grasp.

As a coach:

To not take credit, but constantly prepare to have the answer when blame is assumed, regardless of the concreteness of that blame.
Humility to collaborate with other coaches that I may not appreciate, but to do so for the sake of the athlete and perhaps even the elevation of the other coach.
To have the self awareness to recognize when I’m wrong and when I need the guidance of another coach, peer or medical professional to properly train an athlete, to mitigate inevitable injury, or to better instill mental and spiritual growth.
To meet the parents of athletes where they are in terms of education or values for their children. To treat those parents with respect, regardless of their decisions for their children or opinions on what is best for their children.

As a parent of an athlete:

To obtain the humility that their kid may not be as talented and have as much potential as they hope and that a parent’s love for their child can cloud much of reality.
To not outsource core values, principles and virtue to the outside world including sport or S&C coaches.
To be educated and prepared for when their athlete enters into the realm of sports and to be able to distinguish good from bad coaching and training practices.
To learn and exhibit the fundamentals of training, nutrition and recovery so that they can be an admirable example as well as pass this on to their children regardless of potential athletic careers.

These examples are just that, and I encourage you to contemplate what it means for you in your specific situation to define what responsibility means. The most important point being: it’s on you. Blame is distributed by the least honorable. Don’t be a victim. Be the solution. Accept responsibility. Infuse responsibility. This is what it means to be a good athlete, coach, parent and human being.

Epilogue

This may seem like a wordy explanation of what this whole thing is about, but keep in mind that great literature isn’t great because it's accessible and easily understood. Otherwise, Tik Tok would be the greatest literature database of all time. I’m not claiming, by any means, that what will be published here will ever be considered “great literature.” However, if I’m to reach those who are hungry and striving after their purpose, then this demographic certainly won’t mind a little bit of articulation.

This platform is meant to be a wellspring for those who are taking up their mantle. For the young, aspiring athlete that doesn’t yet have someone leading them down the straight and narrow. For those who have a story of falling and getting back up again. For those who want to be educated. For those who yearn for and work to create great culture. For those who are willing to take responsibility for not only their hand in matters, but also for those who are not willing. For the servants. For those who say, “I’ll figure it out.” For the strong. For the weak. For the ever-growing. For the meatheads. For the pencil-necks who don’t want to be. For the fat who don’t want to be. For those who won’t build isolating excuses. This is a place for discourse on how to train, eat, sleep and relentlessly live in the study, practice and coaching of Kinesiology.