In 2017, Chris and I were in a weird spot with our training. Neither of us wanted to do it.   That’s right, two gym owners that spent the balance of their adult life as coaches struggled with training motivation. At the time, we filmed a segment every week called “Coaches in Chairs.” We’d sit...Read More

I started lifting weights when I was 12 years old. Initially, my brother took me along with him to work out at a gym in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. Soon after, I hit the Juniata Valley YMCA with my middle school buddies. We’d scour the muscle magazines for the next program that guaranteed us bigger, stronger muscles....Read More

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself...Read More

The only strength training you need is heavy barbell strength training.   There are a lot of folks that live and die by that philosophy. They think that as long as they are barbell strong, and they’re training others to be barbell strong, they’ve done enough. And they’re wrong.   As much as I love...Read More

Chicago traffic sped by. We weaved through cars and accelerated through cross streets. We’d stop at traffic lights and the L clamored by, protesting against patience along with the car horns and people shouting out driver’s side windows. I sat in the backseat, enthralled. “That’s it, honey. You can’t just take up space. You gotta...Read More

Let’s begin with a thought experiment.   Try to remember a day that you spent in total comfort. Not a pinch, not an awkward seat, not a weird sense of pressure, not a worry and not a care.   Can you remember the day? I doubt it. But let’s say that you did.   Remember...Read More

This isn’t the typical weight loss article. There are no before and after photos, and I won’t tell you how much weight I lost. I won’t say, “Here’s what you need to do to lose 10 pounds in a month,” or some such bullshit. I lost the amount of weight I wanted to lose for...Read More

There are no ways around uncomfortable truths. We can avoid them and we can pretend that they don’t exist. But the truth is the truth whether we like it or not. And it always comes knocking even if we lock the door. It will find its way in.   I spent much of my adult...Read More

I’m starting this party with a seemingly contradictory statement: We’re a gym, but we’re not, like, gym people.   To us, training is a tool that builds our bodies and minds so that we may live the fullest possible life. And while we enjoy training, it’s not entirely an end in itself. It is a...Read More

Fitness marketing has people obsessed with the burn, the sweat, the feeling that you’re going to black out in a pool of your own fluids. They sell you on things like the “afterburn” of excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). And to achieve it, you have to work so hard you piss down your leg while...Read More