How I Have Consistently Been The Most Overbooked Professional Trainer and Strength Coach on Earth for Two Decades

I used to not know. I figured a lot of top coaches ran back-to-back appointments 12-16 hours in a row, or logged 7 day weeks all the time. When I was at Bally’s 2004 to 2010, I had a peer who once did 141 sessions in a pay period, beating my personal record of 113 (65 in one week and 48 in the other) by quite a bit. These are only the 60-minute sessions, mind you. To those hours add notes, prep, scheduling, consults, assessments, meetings, workshops for CECs, etc. When I was at Lifetime 2010 to 2012, I once had a peer who about matched my record $65k productivity in a month, and several who beat me in the quarter. This was a lot of sales, but also a lot of serviced appointments. Granted, I was managing as well. But I just figured this is how workers work. My performances stood out. My teams did set a lot of national records. But they weren’t wildly divergent from other top performers. And frankly, people had bested me lots of times at lots of junctures along the way, in a month or a week or a quarter. I didn’t see these outcomes as spectacularly unique. There are many amazing pros out there in the top one-tenth of one percent.


Then, as I ran my own business in the independent sphere, often outstripping these hours and performances, I began to realize something was a little bit different about me in 2013. At the large facilities and giant corporate companies, I maybe stood AMONG the top one-tenth of one percent. But in the independent sphere, I found not a single person running the sheer number of client appointments that I ran, week after week, year after year. No one in all of the fitness influencer or strength-coaching sphere has ever shared calendar screen captures like mine. No one. Not ever. Not close. Not by miles.


For about a year or so, I would post my wake times and a message on Instagram, somewhere between 2:15am and 440ish, depending on the day. Scroll way back on my Instagram and you’ll see. But still, I found no one sharing schedules like mine. Wake times, sure. But no calendars like mine. No one. Ever.


And it started to dawn on me that no one has ever even been close to the experience I’ve logged in strength coaching and training. No one. It’s not a brag. It’s just that no one else on earth is built to be able to focus on others up to 18 hours in a day without breaks, and do it for decades. No one. It’s possible there are some guys in their 70s who’ve coached or mentored as many hours as I have. But again, only I have the receipts. Plus, everyone knows how consolidated intensives simply produce more learning. A person who practices piano for six hour per day every day for five years (about 10,000 hours) is simply going to be better than a person who practices one hour every other day for sixty years (about 10,000 hours as well). I just haven’t seen one person ever share even a short season of busyness that compares to my standard week of two decades. I have some great peers. I admire some great personalities who have curated vast social media followings. But respectfully, none of them are even close to the experience I’ve logged. I love ‘em. God bless ‘em. But humbly, I am the pinnacle in this domain.


Not at everything, mind you. But at quite a bit in human performance, actually. This is not an opinion of conceit. It is an objective measurable fact. We could look at my own metabolic experiments or client testimonies. However, lots of coaches have gained 80lbs of muscle and lost 70lbs of fat personally while having trained dozens of people through 50-200lb transformations. That isn’t very unique, actually. I could make a very lengthy list about bringing one of my clients to be an IFBB pro bodybuilder in her 60s, a client who lost 140lbs in 8 months, clients without limbs, clients without sight, clients with cancer, clients whose outcomes that absolutely boggle the mind, and some with 10 to 20+ year success and progress. But somewhere out there, you are still going to find a handful of coaches with a cool story for each of mine. I do doubt you'll find it all in one other person. And I am confident it's totally singular to have been doing that without a lull for two decades. Moreover, I’ve done that AND I have seen my kids nearly every day of their lives, I have kept my friendships, my relationships, and really just a fairly low-profile and balanced (as of the past 6 years) life.


My wife has been urging me to create workshops for men who want to be top performers and energy dynamos, and for trainers and coaches who want to be at the top of their abilities. Part of it is because I have now coached several famous influencers. Part of it is because I have coached many clients who previously trained with famous and world-renowned trainers; yet every time their experience with me was superior. Part of it is because I genuinely have been the most overbooked professional in this industry for two decades. And the distance between my experience and that of the best-known names in fitness is not even close.


Regularly, I meet with clients who worked with or are themselves world-renowned/famous influencers, clinicians or coaches. Every single time I uncover insights which that expert never dreamed of finding. It isn’t because I’m better or smarter than all of the top gurus in the world. I’m not. It’s simply because I have more experience than all of them. The way I achieved far more troubleshooting experience than every expert in the field of strength coaching and personal training is by consistently booking significantly more hours of appointments than any of them have ever covered, even in the busiest seasons of their lives. It’s just my default.


wrote about it ‘19:


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/experienced-coach-or-good-workout-er


And ‘21:


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/how-to-fit-workouts-in-a-schedule-with-no-time


And last year:


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/5-truths-from-45-hours-of-coaching-in-4-days


But also many many times on Instagram and LinkedIn going back to 2015:


https://www.instagram.com/p/B1PzPjKDwIp/?igsh=MXVlaGRrMThkdnc4ag==


https://www.instagram.com/p/BxN4Nltjzvf/?igsh=MWNkZTcwdDk4czc1Ng==


Going back to 2013, all work days were like that. Pick a random Thursday in ‘16; and it turns out I booked 7 hours of sessions on my “off day”.


I never found a role model or mentor who even came close. A few guys on social media appeared to put in the sweat equity: Jocko Willink, David Goggins, Gary V, and Dwayne Johnson. But I also noticed they often slept in 1-3 hours later than my usual:


https://www.instagram.com/p/BdDAMnznRR3/?igsh=c2Z2cTZlOTQ4NTA5


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/there-is-no-kinda-disciplined


https://www.instagram.com/p/Bau1khXBUnq/?igsh=amx1bnhsOXJpbXlr


https://www.instagram.com/p/BICdWWsDnAE/?igsh=MWc5cW1udzdwcXZi


Moreover, they aren’t running packed days like mine focused on other people. Almost all of their waking hours are on self. They aren’t mentoring others thousands of hours per year. They aren’t spending time with their kids every single day of the week.


I became my own role model. Most people cannot handle the intensity of 12-16 hours of coaching in a row with no breaks at all. So they don’t. Either they can’t be on their feet that long. Or they cannot mentally focus. They aren’t organized in a manner to keep the notes/memories straight. Business acumen and experience aside, even pretty tough people cannot handle it. So they don’t. It’s not a knock against any of them. They spent their energy and hours on building massive social media followings or on gaining suffixes, writing books, fame, or obsessive self-improvement which leaves little time in the week for anything/anyone else. They hit their personal limit and hire everything else out.


But for me, I can. So I do.


But HOW I got here may be more instructive for the newer coaches or even for the many, many, many veterans who pretend to be far more successful than you and I both know they actually are.


In recent years I’m more discerning, never overtly working more than 3.5 days per week, but easily logging no fewer than 8 appointments on those 3.5 days (yes, I consider 8 coaching sessions a half day), and typically 12-16 on Sundays and Wednesdays both. Occasionally, I cannot keep a Monday or Friday less than that as well. On very rare occasion, my long days are only 10 hours of appointments (but still 2 hours of note prep and research, NOT counting bookkeeping, spreadsheets, and payment management). Ask my coworkers, employees and peers going back 20 years. This is mostly how it’s always been. I still have pages from my planners in 2004-2010 when I’d get up at 3a, take appointments 5,6,7am, management hours 8-2p, lift, director work 4-7, appointments 7p, 8p, home. And I still spent time with my wife. I still did laundry and dishes. I still mowed my lawn. I still went to family gatherings. Somehow. I wouldn’t recommend it. The cost came from my sleep, recovery, health. I could. So I did. But I also found that at the extreme limits it would impair my value. Technically, I could take even more hours, but my capacity to be electric and engaged for each hour is greatly inhibited after much more than 50 appointment hours in a week I’ve come to notice.


How am I the most consistently successful strength coach on earth?


It’s not marketing dollars or google ad words. In fact, I am probably the worst person on the planet with regard to these. We have previously hired SEO teams and curated social media efforts. For us, they aren’t a fit. No one addicted to screens and social media is my target audience, I’ve learned. Incredibly successful business owners and academics which I tend to coach often don’t even have a social media account. Most of my super wealthy clients do not even have Meta applications on their phones or devices. So an online presence is nice. But for advanced coaching, it’s actually a hindrance by virtue of being such a massive loss of hours and energy spent on people who aren’t ever going to be substantial supporters. This is also how I’ve discovered that the fitness trainers and coaches with massive online followings are mostly frauds. Not all. But most. The people camping out on YouTube for hours a day and viewing your videos at 3am are not serious, not committed to growth or change, and 110% not investors of any kind. Go ahead and slave to get 100 million followers; and I can pretty much guarantee you have no valid real world coaching experience or business knowledge to discuss. Pay a full-time team to optimize your social and website; and I know you haven’t developed anyone, you’ve never managed people, and you have no long-term or serious clients.


I’m talking about how I gained real experience to be a real coach in the real world with real people, running a real brick-and-mortar physical storefront. For tips on the online illusion of expertise or success, you will have to go elsewhere.


A few weeks ago I met with a client who’d trained at the Olympic training facility and with the founders of MAT. He has had famous coaches. I’m sure all of those experts are impressive in their own right. But I always find areas they’ve missed. These meetings were no different. I uncovered opportunities for this client to reclaim athleticism that other experts hadn’t dreamed of. However, it would be a mistake to think my expertise is what gained my success or my hours. Rather, it was these hours that gained me my high level expertise.


To get the hours started first with willingness. Since everyone begins as a non-expert, the fastest path to expertise is willingness to take opportunity and to generate chances for opportunity. I began in the fitness industry with the willingness to accept any duty. If the facility needed toilets cleaned before opening at 5am, I wasn’t too proud or too good to do it. If the pro shop needed the till counted before opening on a Saturday or Sunday, so be it. When members joined at 9pm, someone needed to meet them, interview and interact with them, welcome them and hear them, guide them, and instruct them. In my mind, all of these “menial” tasks were a path to understanding the total working machine of the fitness industry and ultimately gain more chances for more opportunities to advance my understanding ever further.


I could. So I did. I can. So I do.


Be willing. That’s first.


And from that I find is a natural gravitation toward learning. I long ago lost track of speciality certifications, workshops, classes I’ve attended since working professionally in this industry. It’s in the hundreds. I spent a good portion of 2012 memorizing the entirety of the USMLE1 medical school lecture series. I shadowed cardiologists. I trained a lot of MDs and physical therapists and exercise physiologists and PhDs in Nutrition Science. I learned a lot from them along with teaching them a great deal. I ran workshops. I hired and developed a few hundred health and fitness professionals. I found early on that the more brilliant your employees and peers and clients, the more you could learn during every minute of work. I increasingly maximized. When I gained clients who were successful business people, I learned about business. When I took on clients with outrageous health challenges, I learned health troubleshooting. Every single second is a learning opportunity.


Every. Single. Second.


That is the “how.” The “why” is a little trickier.


The short answer is I needed to. I never had a side gig. Fitness wasn’t a side hustle. I didn’t have backers or family money. When things went sideways in my wife’s workplaces or when we started a family, there was no alternative. I had to be the greatest who ever lived. I did not have an option to fail, to flail, to falter, to be average, or even to be pretty great. I had to be superb. And it helped to have some healthy competition and know that I had some peers who were busting their asses as well.


Sadly, that is missing for too many influencers or fitness pros. They don’t have mentors or even genuine hard-working peers. So they are never going to mature into the potential they have. They don’t have anything to draw them up other than views or likes, which are, by definition, a hallmark of INexperience. When I worked at Bally’s, there was a pride in having the appointment book as full as possible. I could actually SEE what other trainers’ days looked like. When I obsessed over national reports, I was legitimately intent on being at the top of those reports. I could observe the number of sessions sold or serviced by hundreds of clubs across the country. I knew what it meant to be the best, and what it would take to beat the best. I could see some absolutely freakish performances and call those clubs and talk to those trainers or directors. Today, that spirit is gone. It’s been replaced by trying to have the greatest social media followings, which is largely a measure of how little genuine coaching experience you can even have. Think about it: you can either work; or you can post. You should do some of both. But the “reports” today are not reports at all; they are merely measures of popularity which reward only the marketing. That’s where the incentive is. So that’s where the “performance” remains.


I have now coached a number of influencers who have never completely more than 25 appointments in a week, most do no more than that in a month. They monetize their followings and sell online programs. So there was never the incentive for them to book up on mentoring or direct coaching. They cannot ever achieve high level mastery of exercise science or nutrition or just progressive human movement with this low volume. It’ll take them 30 years to be where I was at in my first 5-10 years, but maybe even longer since there will be no intensive consolidation of experience.


But they don’t have any spirit of competition around them to hone them anyway. Almost none are starting at high volume fitness centers. And they are burning up tons of hours on videos and posts at the BEGINNING of their “careers.” It’s actually quite sad, because I think I may be among the last generation of great coaches. The measure of expertise in human performance has been steadily shifting toward entertainment, not evidence-based, not empirical, not experience-driven facts. And the young coaches don’t even know it. They are comparing themselves against equally-inexperienced online personalities. Influencers online genuinely don’t know that they are actually quite terrible and should probably not be sharing their “insights”. And the overall market has no way to know this. For a lot of people, it would stand to reason that a guy with five million YouTube subscribers must be an expert, even if you have never seen him post a single calendar shot like mine, even if you’ve never seen him post videos with different clients, even if you’ve never seen him change an ounce of body composition or personal performance himself.


So people have to understand there are two markets. There is the real world market where investors will support incredibly advanced strength coaches. I would include online and virtual coaching within this market. But then there is an entertainment market which has little to nothing to do with health and fitness. The up-and-comers and the veteran coaches alike need to make a decision about which market they want, because deep personal connections are not related to Facebook ads and ebooks. Again, you could do both. I admire those who’ve generated a fair bit of effort at each. But the massive experience with real world coaching is not going to come from bending over backward to make another post, to get more content, to shoot another video, to snap a few more shots. NONE of that is exercise science. None of that is valuable experience in strength coaching. It is cinematography experience. It is entertainment experience. It is moviemaking experience.


More than anything, choosing the real world market is how you become the most consistently overbooked professional trainer and strength coach on earth. Don’t look at helping people as a temporary launch point to get to your next scheme. You have to look at training/coaching itself as the actual peak. It’s not a stepping stone. It’s not a layover. Coaching is the peak. And being an online famous person is not coaching. They are unrelated. They are in opposition, in fact.


The way you become the most consistently overbooked professional trainer and strength coach on earth is you must first see that it is THE height. Be willing. Make every second a learning opportunity. Be ravenous to learn, dying of thirst for experience. If you crave online fame, that’s fine. Pursue that. But please don’t try to place yourself on the same level as me or professionals like me. If you crave opportunity and learning and experience, then you will be a genuine master, a true expert. And that’s how you’ll go on to excel in the real world with real people as a real teacher. Not just for a moment. But for decades.