How the student became the teacher - can you relate?

As an undersized athlete with an average level of talent – I needed to find an edge.

Or accept losing.

If you saw my last post – you know how I feel about being ‘average’ or ‘normal’.

Losing (really defined as not fulfilling my potential) is not acceptable.

As a result of me knowing I was never going to be 6’6, 250 pounds, and 5 percent body fat (things I couldn’t control) – I shifted to controlling what I could control.

I could get stronger and build muscle.

I could get gain more knowledge about the game and be more cerebral than the talented guys.

I could simply gain more repetitions than everyone else in a shorter time frame to shorten my learning curve.

I could improve my endurance so when others got tired, I could continue playing at a high level.

To improve as a basketball player – I shot endless amounts of shots with the exact same footwork from the same exact spot over and over and over… and over again.

Not many guys were doing this. But still, shooting shots, dribbling, and passing drills are normal for basketball players.

The separator was the actual physical performance and preparing my body for war.

The 17 year-old pictured above fell in love with the sport performance side of things. The sprints, the running, lifting weights, building strength and losing fat became the game within the game.

That’s when I was Googling everything under the sun from ‘how to build muscle’, ‘how to run faster’, and ‘how to jump higher’. Reading every article. Watching every YouTube video.

I knew this ‘extra stuff’ mattered.

I didn’t know it was the beginning of the rest of my life.

Growing up, I was skinny, fat, and everywhere in between. There were multiple years were I lost 10-20 pounds, gained 10-15 pounds – and I kept rinsing and repeating.

All in all, the ‘extra stuff’ allowed me to be a team captain every year I was a part of the basketball program – and earned the trust of my middle school coach the point where I am his Assistant at the Varsity level in our hometown as my ‘fun community work’ on the side of running my own 1 on 1 health coaching program for entrepreneurs.

When I was younger - I overate, underrate, played around with my workouts, and completed a ton of trial and error.

As my playing days came to an end, I caught the ‘iron bug’. The weight room gave me the same physical discipline that basketball did. I was able to exert and express myself in a way that was challenging, yet fun.

My own physical journey transformed from being an athlete a part of a sports team to totally focusing on the less-sexy physical labor. The ‘extra stuff’ went from being a side dish as a basketball player to the entrée as a now non-competitive athlete that somehow found peace within the physical pain of lifting hundreds of pounds.

The competition was no longer me versus our rival. It wasn’t me versus you. There’s no scoreboard. There are no cheerleaders. There’s no Tuesday and Friday night games anymore. There’s nobody cheering for me. There’s no recognition in front of an entire city. There’s no external feedback.

Lifting weights became an internally gratifying journey. It’s entirely cool to build muscles and transform my body. It became me versus me. My music and the weights. No jersey, just a beat up t shirt without my name or the city name on it.

In the same way I was testing, failing, succeeding, and tweaking my thoughts, plans, along with my strategies as a basketball player – I did this again with my own health.

I did two a day workout for nearly 2 years straight. I gained 50 pounds of mostly muscle over several years. I tried every diet and once again, spent hours upon hours of reading, listening, and watching health and fitness professionals online. I was up at 4:30 AM as an 18 year old so I could wait in line for the gym to open at 5 AM.

When the girl I was with for part of college met me – she said, ‘So you played football in high school? You’re too muscular to have played basketball.’

*Insert ego boost emoji*

At the same time, I suffered multiple injuries. One injury included my ending up with my spine out of alignment, a bulging disc in my back, nerve damage down my leg, a lot of pain, and an X ray of my spine that looked like a roller coaster.

I was all in. In the same way I transformed my basketball ability as a kid, I transformed my body as a young man.

Just like basketball, there were ups and downs along the way – but there was one more thing I had to do in order to take my fitness journey to the next level:

Share what I learned with others.

5,000 clients later – I’ve helped my incredible clients make the same transformations, realizations, and ‘light bulb’ moments that I had.

“Return to those who were once where you were” is the reoccurring theme in my life that I’ve let play out and has given me a relentless sense of purpose in my life.

Helping thousands of people started with my own journey – first as a basketball player, and now an entrepreneur fitness coach.

I coach high school basketball because I know how weird going through puberty is. I know what it’s like to be an undersized athlete. I know what it’s like to be an ambitious, young person. I coach with my mentor so I can attempt to repay him for molding me into the coach I am today.

I help entrepreneurs because I am one. I know what it’s like to make money, lose money, get screwed over, be celebrated, be criticized, and everything in between. I help you improve your body because I know exactly what it’s like to be frustrated with where you’re at, trying to figure it out by yourself, and feel like nothing is working.

Just wanted to let you know – I get it.

As the incredible Ed Mylett says, “You cannot transfer to someone else that in which you are not already experiencing yourself.”

Empathy fuels my coaching in the same way empathy (and money) fuels your business.