01 · The dose
Forty minutes a week, and the industry sells you five times that.
40MIN/WK
Where strength work and living longer line up most strongly.
n=7 studies · GRADE very low
69% US
Of American adults who do no strength training at all.
CDC, 2022
1SESSION
One fifty minute session with me is slightly more than the dose.
Not a starter dose
Every number on this site is printed with its sample size and its certainty rating next to it, including when that rating is bad. The full working is on the method page.
02 · Working with me, one to one
You’re not buying sessions. You’re holding a place.
“He considers and cares about the whole you, not only your fitness and nutrition, but also your emotional health and wellbeing.”
01
Coached
Two conversations a block and a program written for you. For when the thing in your way isn’t the lifting.
$349per block
02
Trained
A standing slot, live, the same time every week. I watch you move and stop you mid set when it matters.
From $499per block
03
By arrangement
Five spots with more attention around them than a standing slot gives. A number answered the same day, and the program rewritten every block.
Quotedfive spots
Billing cycle
Every 4 weeks
A year
13 blocks
Trained roster
8 people
Charged before a session
$0
The way in that ends on purpose is Groundwork, six Tuesday evenings from 12 January. It ends, you leave with a plan you run without me, and the fee comes off your first block if you carry on.
And underneath all of it
Everybody who has ever worked with me is in one room together.
Nobody is removed for stopping. There’s no fee, nothing to cancel and no exit interview, so you’re in there whether or not you’re currently paying me for anything. That’s deliberate. If the aim is that you stop needing me, there has to be somewhere to stand that’s not either paying or gone.
Nobody in it is working on the same thing. One person is working on sleep, somebody else is slowly rebuilding around a shoulder they’ve been avoiding for about two years, somebody else mostly wants to stop dreading Thursday afternoons. That’s the design rather than a compromise, and it’s why there’s never anything in there to catch up on.
Decided, or nearly?
Twenty minutes on the phone, no form. If it is a fit the first session is free too, and a card only goes in after that.
Not for yourself
Bringing this to a building or a workplace.
Forty five minutes on sleep, breathing and recovery, in your own space, for up to thirty people. The first session anywhere is free. You get a written report on what the room said and never get to see who said it.
+33% VS +25%
Same program, same sets, same reps. The only difference was somebody watching.
Mazzetti 2000 · n=18 · 12 weeks · squat 1RM
Volume was held constant, so the supervised group didn’t do more work. They did heavier work, because they were not the ones choosing the load. Left alone, people go lighter than they could.
03 · Who you would be working with
Ian Kendall
I trained for years without asking why. In baseball somebody else set the standard and my job was to meet it. Afterwards I kept going out of habit, on not enough sleep.
That’s why we start underneath. Not because training matters less, but because it’s the first thing to fall over when there’s nothing holding it up.
04 · Where the work comes from
Six certificates, and what each one actually taught me.
Letters after a name tell you somebody sat an exam. What follows is the part that matters to you, which is what each one changed about how I work.
Wellcoaches
Starting from your reason, not mine.
The training is in motivational interviewing and readiness to change. The practical effect is that the first conversation is about what a good life actually looks like to you, and I’m not allowed to answer that one for you.
Lifestyle Medicine, ACLM
Sleep and the people around you’re part of the training.
Lifestyle medicine is built on six pillars: nutrition, movement, sleep, stress, risky substances, and positive social connection. That last one is why there’s a room full of other people here and not just a program.
NASM, CPT and WFS
Writing for the body in front of me.
Programming and physiology, including the Women’s Fitness specialty, which exists because a lot of training is written for one kind of body and handed to everybody.
Pain Free Performance
Working around the shoulder instead of ignoring it.
How to keep somebody progressing without pretending the painful thing isn’t there. Most people arrive having been told to either push through it or stop entirely.
Oxygen Advantage, in progress
Breathing as something trainable.
Functional breathing instruction, currently unfinished and labeled that way everywhere on this site. It’s the piece that sits underneath sleep and recovery both.
Five years, Rays organization
Knowing what happens when the structure disappears.
Not a credential, and the one I lean on most. Somebody else set my standard for years. When that stopped I kept training out of habit, on not enough sleep, without asking why once.
“He’s sensitive to the immense changes women go through over the ages.”
The breathing qualification is in progress rather than finished, and I’m preparing for the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching exam. Both of those are stated as they are, because a certificate you’re halfway through isn’t a certificate.
05 · The part I actually like
The moment somebody stops asking me what to do.
What I like isn’t the programming and it’s not watching a number go up, though both are satisfying. It’s the session where somebody arrives having already decided something, and tells me about it rather than asking me whether it was allowed.
It took me years to be able to do that for myself. In baseball somebody else set the standard and my job was to meet it, and when that went away I kept going out of habit without ever choosing it. So the thing I’m actually trying to give you isn’t a plan. It’s practice at deciding about your own body, often enough that you trust yourself with it.
Which is also why everything here has a stopping rule on it. If the aim is that you can do this without me, I have to mean that when it happens.
“He genuinely remembered details about my life, which made it feel like more than just a workout. I actually looked forward to our sessions instead of dreading them.”
06 · Free, and it stays free
If the point is that you need me less, this can’t be behind a call.
Everything I write that helps somebody do this on their own is free, and none of it asks you to talk to me first. That’s not generosity. It’s the same thing I say at the end of every program, which is that you should be able to run this yourself.
So take it whether or not you ever work with me. I’d rather you had it.
Your aerobic number
Two ways to estimate your own aerobic fitness without going near a laboratory. A measured mile for most people, twelve minutes of running for anybody who would find the walk too easy, the arithmetic worked through, the one calculation everybody gets wrong, and a table to track it across a year.
It opens with the screening questions, because both tests ask you to push and one of them is a maximal effort. If any of them is a yes for you I’ll say so and not send you the test, which I’d rather do than be polite about it.
Twenty minutes on the phone, and there’s no form to fill in.
You talk, mostly. I’m working out whether I’m the right person, and if I’m not I’ll tell you which cheaper thing is the better answer.
Twenty minutes to see if I’m the right person
No pressure · no countdown · no price that expires tonight