The Greatest Personal Trainer in the Universe is the first fitness parable in the tradition of The Go-Giver and Who Moved My Cheese, but set where we live: on the gym floor.
Please click here if you’d love to support
The book will be released early next year on Kickstarter. In exchange for pledging your support, you will get limited edition copies plus a secret reward tier with a bigger discount than what’ll be available publicly.
Here’s the problem with every fitness book ever written
Nobody quits the gym because they ran out of information
There are a thousand books about changing your body. They’re all instructions — sets, reps, macros, whatever. They assume the reader’s problem is missing information, so when they finish, they have a plan.
But a plan doesn’t get a person to the gym in week six. Identity does.
You already know this. You’ve watched it happen.
- The client with the perfect program who vanishes in February.
- The member who knows more about nutrition than half the trainers on the floor and still can’t string three weeks together.
They didn’t run out of information. They didn’t self-identify as the kind of person who trains.
There’s never been a book about that. Until now 🙂
A story, not a manual
The whole thing is a metaphor – about what happens to your confidence, career, and relationships if you keep showing up for fitness.
It follows Mike, a single guy stuck in a soulless corporate job, who wanders into a big box gym and meets Ray Pompeii — the legendary trainer who’s been coaching since before personal training was a career.
Ray introduces Mike to a series of his clients: a banker whose ambition nearly cost him his family, a VP who rebuilt herself rep by rep, a high school music teacher who took up powerlifting in her late forties . . . Each one passes along one of Ray’s 5 Laws of Sensational Strength.
The fitness industry has spent forty years perfecting the answer to a question nobody’s asking.
Everybody knows what to do. Not enough are doing it.
This book ‘s goal is to change that. If it works, somebody’s still training in five years who would have quit in six weeks.
Why a story?
Because you can’t instruct someone into a new identity. You can only show them someone becoming it.
Atomic Habits made us all aware that identity change is the engine behind lasting behavior change. But a concept book tells you identity matters. Nobody has ever written the story where you get to watch it happen, to a regular guy, in a gym, one rep at a time.
That’s the book I spent fourteen years writing.
Fourteen years in the making
I started writing this book 14 years ago. Picked it up, put it down, threw out whole drafts, started again.
In that time I went from a young bro in the gym to a business owner and a dad of three. The book kept changing because I kept changing. It turns out you can’t write honestly about why we train until you’ve had some years to watch what training does to a life.
I also went looking.
For twelve years I’ve been a fitness tourist.
Everywhere I travel, I join the local gym and hire local trainers.
I’ve hired personal trainers, online coaches, and nutrition coaches in Canada, the USA, Costa Rica, Greece, Montenegro, and Indonesia, and trained at gyms and CrossFit boxes in Toronto, Hawaii, Japan, the Dominican Republic, Australia, Nicaragua, and South Korea.
Stamy’s gym. Laie, Oahu. Circa 2012. Trained there for three months. Guarded by two pitbulls. He refurbished old high school equipment and let anybody in the neighborhood train for free. It played a big part in curbing alcoholism amongst the local youth. Just one of the amazing spots you’ve never heard of I’ve had the pleasure of working out in.
Different languages, different equipment, different cultures — same people.
The same fears, the same breakthroughs, and the same lifers.
And for fifteen years, my day job has been talking to the people who see it closest. I ran the largest collaborative publishing platform in fitness, sold books and education to over 65,000 trainers in 125+ countries, wrote the top-ranked book on Amazon for personal trainers (Ignite the Fire), and traveled internationally to speak to thousands of trainers and gym owners.
My work has been featured in the New York Times, Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Schwarzenegger.com, and Livestrong. The Robb Report called me “The Trainer’s Trainer.” Forbes says that I am a “leading global authority”.
I’m telling you all this for one reason: this book could only have been written by somebody who’s spent a life inside this industry.
If you know what the word “hypertrophy” means, this is for you. If you can feel the pain when I say “it’s the day after the day after leg day”, this is for you.
If you’re a trainer or gym owner, this book was built to be handed to someone
Consistency. Patience. Trust the process.
You’ve said it over and over again to clients and members but can tell it bounces off.
You also know that you can’t hand that client a textbook. They won’t read it.
But you can hand them a story.
Here’s how this book is designed to work:
- short enough to finish in an evening,
- true enough that they’ll ask if you told me about them, and
- transformational.
It’s the book you give instead of the speech.
I’m also exploring gym editions. Think: a stack at the front desk for every new member (or on hand to gift to a member at an important milestone). If that’s interesting, there’s a place on the form tell me.
I need your help
The first draft is done. Before it’s locked, I’m talking with hundreds of trainers and gym owners to dial it in.
My goal’s ambitious: 18,000 copies at launch in the hands of the right readers: Trainers and their clients who know that fitness is a lifetime thing, and not a 30-day challenge.
I need your help to make it happen. There are a few specific ways you can support.
- Early copies — be first to get the book when it launches
- Review crew — get an advance copy in exchange for an honest review
- Beta readers — read parts of the draft before it’s locked and tell me where I got it right (and wrong)
- Bulk & gym editions — first look at pricing for trainers buying for clients and owners exploring custom editions
If you’d like to support, please fill out the short form below (only 4 questions).
In exchange for pledging your support, you will get early access, limited edition copies, plus a secret reward tier with a bigger discount than what’ll be available publicly.
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