If I Knew at Day 1 What I Know Now

I've been training for about 20 years now, which is a strange thing to write because I don't really remember a version of myself that wasn't active.

Growing up, I played all the sports. I danced for seven years. I've always been a mover. I've always loved sports and competition, but probably more than anything, I've always been curious about what people can learn to do physically and mentally.

My real introduction to weight training happened when I was 20 and moved to Bellingham with my buddy Cale, who wanted to try to walk on to the Western football team as a wide receiver. We'd go out and do football drills together—me throwing, him running routes—and then head to the Western gym to lift.

I was coordinated. I considered myself a pretty good athlete. And I absolutely sucked at cleans.

They confused the shit out of me.

Cale was good at them, so naturally I assumed I'd be good at them too. I was not. The bar was supposed to go from the floor to my shoulders, people around me could clearly do it, and for whatever reason my body couldn't figure it out. Cale is still one of the nicest human beings on Earth, and even he eventually looked at me like, I'm running out of patience here. You really suck at this.

That bothered me. Not because I wanted to compete in weightlifting. Not because I needed an impressive clean. It bothered me because it seemed like a solvable problem.

People can do this.

So why can't I?

That question probably changed the trajectory of my life more than I realized at the time. I became obsessed with understanding mechanics. Positions. Angles. Why one technique worked better than another. How strength was developed. How people learned skills. How the body adapted to conditioning. Eventually that curiosity became a career.

Twenty years later, I co-own a gym, I've coached thousands of hours, and I'm still fascinated by essentially the same question:

What are we capable of becoming if we actually work at it?

If I could go back to Day 1 knowing everything I know now, I wouldn't try to give myself the perfect program. I wouldn't hand myself a list of supplements, a macro calculator, and 37 mobility drills.

I'd probably just tell myself these ten things.

Me, Zach, and Cale. Cale and I were Urkel and Jurkel. No idea. Zach was a banana.

1. Build the foundation before you chase intensity

If I woke up tomorrow with my current brain but a completely untrained 20-year-old body, the first six to twelve months would be pretty boring on paper.

And I'd be completely okay with that.

I'd have four strength-biased days each week. Squat. Deadlift. Press. Pull. Build actual muscle. Build strength around my joints. Develop my trunk. Learn to brace. Spend time in positions.

That doesn't mean four two-hour bodybuilding sessions with nothing else allowed. It means I'd make sure the basic movement patterns received enough consistent exposure to actually improve.

If I wanted to learn a handstand, I'd start by becoming comfortable holding myself upside down before worrying about walking across the gym on my hands. I'd absolutely practice Olympic weightlifting, but I'd treat it as a skill first. Empty bar. Light weight. Lots of good reps. Learn what my body and the bar are supposed to do before trying to perform it exhausted.

I'd run once a week. I'd have another conditioning day where I'd use bikes, rowers or SkiErgs and learn something incredibly underrated: how to pace myself. I'd walk throughout the week, aim for something like 8,000-plus steps a day, and I'd take a real rest day.

As I got stronger and more competent, I'd start layering things in. If I had a few good, strict pull-ups and wanted to learn how to kip, great. But maybe I'd start with five kipping pull-ups every minute for ten minutes. I'd prove that I could repeatedly find and control the positions before throwing them into a five-round workout, redlining my heart rate, losing the movement pattern, and then wondering why my shoulder hurts.

Skill by itself. Then maybe a couplet. Then a triplet. Then more intensity.

Could I do all of that at a good CrossFit gym?

Absolutely.

In fact, that's a big part of how we program at PUSH. We use strength cycles, intentional progressions, repeated exposure, and skill development because training should build on itself. CrossFit doesn't have to mean throwing random movements into a hat and seeing how badly we can fuck you up on Tuesday.

The methodology isn't the problem. Impatience is.

I wouldn't avoid CrossFit. I'd avoid trying to skip steps. Build strength. Learn positions. Practice skills. Develop an aerobic base. Then gradually earn more speed, volume, complexity, and intensity as your body demonstrates that it's ready for them.

Intensity is incredibly valuable.

It just doesn't need to be the foundation.

2. Consistency is king, but consistency at what?

I've always been pretty good at working hard. I could handle volume. I mentally adapted to being sore. Give me something I was good at, and I would happily do more of it.

That eventually became part of the problem.

I could do a million GHD sit-ups. Cool. My abs looked great. Meanwhile, I had skinny legs and didn't particularly enjoy heavy leg days because they fucking hurt.

So guess which one I naturally wanted to do more of?

I also wasn't particularly interested in running. I could run, but at the time I didn't really understand or appreciate what developing an aerobic base would eventually give me.

It's easy to mistake doing a lot of work for doing the work you need. Sometimes working hard is actually a very sophisticated way of avoiding your weaknesses. You get to leave exhausted, sweaty, and proud of yourself without ever confronting the thing you're worried you might suck at.

If I started over, consistency would still be the first word I'd hammer into my own head.

But I'd add an important second sentence:

Be consistent at the things you need, not just the things that make you feel successful.

For reference, those were 6" shorts in a medium. You see me today in 5-6" larges.

3. "I'm bad at this" is information, not an identity

I think this is one of the biggest things training has taught me.

I sucked at cleans.

Okay.

That means I currently suck at cleans. It doesn't mean cleans aren't for me.

I've carried that mentality into almost everything physical. If something can be learned, I'm curious whether I can learn it.

That doesn't mean everyone needs to care about everything. You don't care about doing a handstand? Fine. You don't want to spend six months learning double-unders? Also fine. We all have priorities, and there are only so many hours in the day.

What I don't love is when we turn "this isn't important enough to me to practice" into "this is stupid and pointless."

Those are very different statements.

Being upside down isn't required for survival. Neither is snatching a kettlebell, jumping rope, swimming, throwing a ball or doing a muscle-up. But every additional physical skill represents something your body and brain learned to coordinate: balance, timing, strength, mobility, proprioception, motor control, spatial awareness.

Being able to do more things is generally better than being able to do fewer things.

There's some humility in this too. I think adults should continue putting themselves in situations where they have something to learn. Not twenty frustrating things at once just to crush your ego, but enough challenges on the horizon that you don't always get to be the expert.

Something close enough that you can imagine yourself doing it, but difficult enough that you might not knock it out of the park on Day 1.

You don't have to learn everything.

Just never lose the curiosity to see what else you could learn.

4. If I had to bias one thing early, I'd bias strength

Cardio matters. A lot.

VO2 max matters. Aerobic capacity matters. Your heart and lungs matter. I'm not interested in building someone who can deadlift a truck but gets winded walking up the stairs.

But if you gave me two otherwise identical 30-year-olds—one who spent the last five years bodybuilding and one who spent the last five years running—and told me to turn one into a broadly capable athlete, I'd take the bodybuilder.

It's not particularly close for me.

Building meaningful strength and muscle takes a long time.

Think about someone with a 225-pound deadlift who wants to pull 450. That's a massive physiological change. We're probably not talking about a couple of months. Depending on the person, that could represent years of consistent exposure to progressive strength training.

Now take someone running a 10-minute mile who wants to get down to 8:30. That's still a significant improvement, but with consistent and appropriate training, we don't necessarily need years before seeing substantial progress.

Obviously, there are exceptions in every direction. Some people figure out double-unders in six hours. Someone else fights with them for six months. Genetics, training history, age, starting point, and the size of the adaptation we're asking for all matter.

I'm talking generally.

Muscle takes time to build. Strength takes time to develop. Tendons and connective tissues adapt over time. And that strength gives you physical infrastructure onto which you can eventually layer more volume, speed, and intensity.

Someone with a big aerobic engine can tolerate a lot of cardiovascular work, but that doesn't automatically mean their body is prepared for repeated squatting, pulling, pressing, carrying or loading.

If I started again, I'd still run. I'd still condition.

I'd just start depositing into the strength account as early as possible.

5. Train broadly. Don't train randomly.

Unless you're training for something specific, I don't find most general fitness goals particularly useful.

"I want to get stronger."

Yeah. Who wants to get weaker?

"I want to be leaner and fitter."

Who is signing up to become fatter, slower, and less fit?

If you're trying to run an Ironman, compete in powerlifting, make a rugby team or PR your 5K, now we have something specific to specialize around. Otherwise, I think most adults should generalize.

Lift weights. Run. Condition. Sprint occasionally. Carry things. Learn skills. Move through large ranges of motion. Play sports.

But broad training and random training are not the same thing.

There's nothing wrong with trying different classes or activities. Variety can be fun, and sometimes that's how you discover something you love. But bouncing between a completely different style of training every few days and never returning to anything long enough to improve it is exposure, not progression.

Trying a completely different workout every day can make you tired. It can expose you to lots of things. It can even be fun.

That doesn't necessarily mean you're getting better at any of them.

You need repeated exposure, progression, and enough consistency to allow adaptation to actually happen.

Variety is valuable.

Randomness isn't a training plan.

6. Training doesn't always have to be fun. Your life should be.

"Find exercise you enjoy."

I understand the advice.

I also think it's incomplete.

I love sports. I play competitive softball. I'm now that guy obsessed with pickleball. Give me a ball, a game, a scoreboard, and something to chase, and I'm probably having a good time.

But softball isn't my training program.

Training is the foundation that allows me to keep doing those things. And sometimes training itself is fun. Hitting a PR is fun. Finally learning a skill you've been chasing is fun. Finishing a workout you weren't sure you could finish feels fucking great.

The middle of the workout?

Not always particularly fun.

Heavy squats don't owe me entertainment. Running doesn't need to be my favorite activity. Working on something I'm bad at is almost inherently less enjoyable than doing something I'm good at.

That's okay.

I don't think you should build a life around physical activities you hate. Quite the opposite. Find things you love doing.

Then build a body capable of continuing to do them.

After I raced HYROX in Vancouver, my daughter told me she'd like to do one with me someday. I love that her assumption can simply be that Dad will be physically capable of doing it with her.

She wants to practice volleyball? Let's go. She wants to race something someday? I'm in.

That's what I want training to buy me.

Train so that when someone asks you to hike, ski, play pickleball, join a softball team, move a couch or try something completely new, your physical capacity isn't the reason you have to say no.

But also, don't ask me to go hiking with you. Ya boi's not a hiker.

Training is the foundation.

Put the fun stuff on top.

I like sportsball.

7. Listen to your body. Stop negotiating with your mood.

There's an important distinction here.

"Listen to your body" is good advice.

Persistent knee pain is information. Turf toe is information. Something that has hurt every time you've loaded it for the last two weeks is probably information worth paying attention to.

Waking up, seeing that it's raining and deciding you suddenly hate running is not your body communicating with you.

That's your mood.

Training long enough actually helps teach you the difference between pain and discomfort. If I bump my knee into the corner of a table and bruise it, that's uncomfortable. I can warm up slowly, assess it, and see what happens.

If I have an actual injury and decide to run 20 miles through it because I'm "tough," I'm not disciplined.

I'm being an idiot.

Part of becoming experienced physically is learning when to push and when to back off. Listen to physical information. Respect pain. Modify when you need to.

But stop waking up every morning and asking yourself whether you feel sufficiently motivated to do the things you've already decided matter to you.

Motivation is unreliable. Your commitments shouldn't be.

8. Eventually, your training has to belong to you

For most of my training life, I've actually trained alone.

Not because I think training alone is better. I don't. I love training with other people. A good training partner, a great class, competition, and community can make training significantly more enjoyable.

But for more than ten years, I worked as a personal trainer in different globo gyms while also running and coaching my own group training programs out of those same spaces. Monday through Friday, I was usually there by 5 or 6 in the morning and worked until around 2 to 3 in the afternoon.

Somewhere in that day, I'd usually have about an hour without a client.

It wasn't the same hour every day. There wasn't a class conveniently starting when I was free or a training partner waiting for me. Sometimes it was 9 a.m. Sometimes noon. Whatever hole appeared in my schedule, that's when I trained.

I think there's an assumption that when you work in a gym—or own one, like I do now—you basically get to work out all day.

I wish.

Training still had to fit into my workday just like it does for everyone else. My "lunch break" just happened to involve a barbell more often than lunch.

Nobody needed to be there with me. Nobody needed to motivate me. It was simply the time I had, and the work needed to get done.

Looking back, I'm incredibly grateful I learned that early.

Coaching people for as long as I have has only reinforced that lesson.

I care deeply about the people I coach. Sometimes too much. I'll research something for someone, think about their programming when I'm not at work, get excited to ask how their nutrition went or what weight they hit on a deadlift.

And sometimes I check in and discover they didn't do any of it.

That's okay occasionally. People have jobs, kids, stress, and lives outside the gym. But eventually there has to be a transfer of ownership.

I, or any coach, can't be your motivation forever.

One of my favorite clients I've ever trained was a woman I worked with for around twelve years. She was about 75 when she eventually moved away.

Every once in a while she'd ask me whether I still enjoyed training her because she worried she wasn't exciting enough to train. She wasn't some elite athlete I could hand a crazy workout to just to see what happened.

I loved training her.

She showed up wanting to work. She asked questions. She researched things. She was curious. She appreciated being able to move her body and genuinely wanted to understand how to keep doing it.

I'd rather coach a hundred people with that attitude than a thousand physically gifted athletes who need to be parented into caring.

I'll take curiosity, passion, and ownership all day.

A great coach can make this process better. So can a great gym, a training partner, or a community of people who make you excited to show up.

Take advantage of all of that.

Just don't make your willingness to train dependent on any of it.

Eventually this has to become yours. Not your coach's program that you're following because they're holding you accountable. Not something you only do when your favorite training partner is there.

Your training. Your health. Your curiosity about what you're capable of.

The earlier you take ownership of that, the better chance I think you have of doing it for the rest of your life.

But I do prefer working out with friends. Me, Austin, and Charles, aka The 2 Fit Crew, at our first CrossFit competition in 2013.

9. Build a body you're proud of, but build it for independence

I'm completely okay admitting that I want to look good.

I wanted that at 20. I still enjoy it at 40.

I've gotta keep Trysh interested somehow.

I think most people would be lying if looking better wasn't somewhere in their top five reasons for exercising. There's nothing shameful about that.

I've actually developed more appreciation for a strong, capable-looking body as I've gotten older because I understand what it represents.

You don't accidentally get strong. You don't accidentally build muscle. Nobody wakes up one morning confused about how they developed an athletic body.

There are years behind it.

Training sessions nobody saw. Sleep. Food. Repetition. Failed attempts. Mundane Tuesdays when you didn't feel like doing anything but did it anyway.

Genetics obviously matter. I can't control that I'm 5'11". Someone else can't control that they're 5'1" or 6'8". Bodies aren't all supposed to look the same. And that's a beautiful thing.

But there's something satisfying about looking at your body and seeing evidence of work you've earned.

At 40, though, appearance isn't the thing I care about most.

Independence is.

I picture human physical capacity almost like a graph.

When you're born, your physical capacity is below what we could jokingly call the "nursing home line." You're completely dependent. Someone feeds you, carries you, dresses you, and wipes your ass.

As you develop, your capacity rises above that threshold. You can take care of yourself. You get stronger. You become coordinated. You learn to run, jump, climb, carry things, and eventually become an independent human.

Then, at some point, aging starts pulling all of us in the other direction.

None of us gets to stop time.

Training isn't going to make me 25 when I'm 90. The goal is to build as much capacity as I reasonably can and slow the rate of decline enough that I don't cross back below that independence line until as late in life as possible, or ideally, never at all.

I want to put my own clothes on. I want to shower myself. I want to cook. I want to step over a curb. I want to get off the floor.

And yes, ideally, I'd like to keep wiping my own ass.

That's functional fitness.

I don't need to be doing five strict pull-ups at 90 to prove anything. But if I can do five today, and I continue giving my body a reason to preserve strength and range of motion, why would I voluntarily surrender those abilities any earlier than I have to?

I don't just want a long lifespan.

I want as much of that lifespan as possible to be spent actually capable of living my life.

Train because you want abs.

That's fine.

But build the body underneath them for the version of you who is going to need it 50 years from now.

Whip and Nae Nae.

10. Do hard things on purpose

Modern life is incredible.

We can have food delivered to our door. Amazon can bring us almost anything we need. Some people can apparently make a living selling pictures of their feet on the internet. Modern medicine can help us live longer through things that would have killed people generations ago.

I'm very happy about almost all of that.

But living longer and living well for longer aren't automatically the same thing.

And I do think we've accidentally removed a lot of the circumstances that used to require us to physically prove things to ourselves.

Training gives some of that back.

You can voluntarily choose something hard. You can start a workout knowing there's going to be a moment when you're deeply uncomfortable, and part of your brain is going to start looking for an exit.

And then you keep going.

Eventually the clock stops. You put the bar down. You catch your breath.

And you're okay.

Do that enough times, and you start accumulating evidence about yourself.

I can do hard things.

I've watched that belief transfer far beyond fitness.

Relationships. Business. Projects. Problems. Sitting down to write something like this and refusing to stop until I think I've done it well.

Hard physical training has taught me that highs and lows are temporary. Discomfort isn't automatically danger. Failure isn't permanent. And being bad at something today tells me almost nothing about what I might be capable of becoming.

I originally started training because I wanted to understand what my body could do.

I wanted to figure out a clean. I wanted to get stronger.

Yeah, I wanted to look good too. Still do.

Twenty years later, I'm still trying to figure out what my body is capable of.

But somewhere along the way, training taught me something much bigger.

It taught me what I am capable of, period.

Stay Dope.