Courses
I use the building block approach to training and a “crawl-walk-run” progression. I have experience with a variety of movement and mobility modalities, traditional bodybuilding techniques, Olympic lifting, calisthenics, and hand balancing, among others. Based on your free consultation, I’ll recommend a focus of effort based on one of the courses below.
Depending on what equipment you have, or can access, whether you’re an in-person or online client, and your particular fitness goals, I will develop a custom training plan for you that safely and systematically builds your capabilities. You can anticipate using some combination of your body weight, barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, bars, and gymnastic rings, in order to accelerate your progress.
Fundamental Courses
As the saying goes, it all starts with “brilliance in the basics”. These courses are almost always my go-to recommendation for new clients, because they do a great job covering all of your bases and ensuring you have a strong foundation with great options for the future.
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As the name implies, the movement fundamentals course is all about movement. We’ll focus on tasks like crawling, walking, jumping, running, as well as calisthenics and balance exercises, because these movements are fundamental to the human experience and because your ability to perform them will strengthen your muscles, bones, joints, coordination, and balance.
The overarching goal of the movement fundamentals course is to hone your mind-body connection, which will make it easier and more enjoyable to get into and out of the various positions of daily life—whether that’s the car, the golf course, the tennis court, or the ski slopes!
We’ll start with an assessment of your activity levels and balance in order to identify target areas for improvement, and then we’ll systematically enhance your capabilities with a literal crawl-walk-run approach that is fun, effective, and liberating. You can expect to feel younger, stronger, and healthier, as you build a broad functional foundation and reclaim range of motion in your ankles, knees, hips, spine, and shoulders.
The movements we practice will translate into greater body awareness and confidence, greater control and comfort, improved balance, and an overall sense of well-being. As a bonus, you’ll improve the function of your heart, lungs, and metabolism, in an exciting, fun, and effective practice.
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What is mobility? What does it mean to have full or limited range of motion? What impact does range of motion have on your fitness, strength, posture, risk of injury, energy levels, sense of well-being, and general quality of life?
In the Fundamentals of Mobility course, we’ll answer these questions together, starting with a general assessment of your overall mobility level, paying special attention to any areas that feel tight, painful, or that have been previously injured. Then, we’ll learn techniques and routines to warm up, cool down, and improve your flexibility and mobility. We’ll also cover the theory of how your muscles and joints operate best over time. This will build your body control, improve your alignment, expand your range of motion, and give you greater access to the strength you already possess.
The best way to understand mobility training is as a means of unlocking your holistic physical potential. Whether you’re an athlete honing your sport, or just looking to heal a nagging injury, mobility training unlocks profound downstream improvement in all aspects of life.
At the end of this course, you will have an understanding of your current mobility levels, your capabilities and limitations, how to properly and safely mobilize yourself to improve your flexibility and range of motion, and an understanding of how your daily routine impacts your biomechanics. The things you learn in this course will lead to improved performance, more energy, better posture, less pain, reduced risk of injury, and an overall enhanced sense of well-being.
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You want to be fit. You know it’s important. But you’re not looking to obsess over exercise. Instead, outsource to me, a coach who will obsess over your training.
This course focuses on the four fundamental lifts (squats, pushes, pulls, and hinges), how to do them safely and consistently in the gym, and how to recognize analogous situations in the real world. After an initial assessment, we will train you on the techniques necessary to ensure a stable spine, and strong hips and shoulders. You will learn how to warm up properly, use correct form, appropriate rest periods for different fitness goals, and the advantages and disadvantages of different techniques and tools of strength training.
As a result, you’ll see progress in your overall strength and conditioning, which often leads to increased energy, metabolism, fat loss, and tone in your physique. Above all, we will do this while avoiding the number one impediment to progress—taking on too much, too fast.
In other words, this course is as much about teaching you what not to do as it is about teaching what you should. Because by avoiding unsafe training exercises, and guarding against “ego lifts”, we’ll make sure you have a solid fitness foundation and a ton of options in what you can do with it.
If you’re young, we’ll make sure that your technique and programming sets you up for a lifetime of sustainable fitness. If you’re older, we’ll make sure that you’re primed to delay the effects of aging, and that every time you get in and out of your car, lift your luggage into overhead storage, carry your groceries into your house, or pick up your kids, that you have the muscle memory, balance, and control, to do so safely and comfortably.
At the end of this course, you will have an understanding of the foundational building blocks of fitness, improved strength, muscle control, and muscle definition, a sustainable fitness and strength routine that incorporates into your life and schedule, a clear sense of your current fitness capabilities, and a plan for next steps you can take to make further progress.
Intermediate Courses
If you already have a foundation in fitness, or have progressed through the Fundamentals, these Intermediate options are a great next step.
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The Intermediate Movement, Calisthenics, and Balance course incorporates a higher degree of intensity, complexity, and speed in order to progressively develop your body awareness and control. Building on the skills you learned in the Fundamentals course, we’ll continue to hone your coordination, power, balance, speed, and strength, with a particular emphasis on correct form and fluidity during transitions into and out of various positions and movements.
In addition to learning more advanced movements and positions, we will increase the ranges and intensity of those skills you learned in the Fundamentals course, and we will progressively remediate any imbalances in your body and joints, with a focus on enhancing your consistency and efficiency.
We will also spend time figuring out your current capabilities and limitations, discussing any lifestyle choices or patterns that contribute to any of the limitations we have observed, and developing alternatives, or counterbalancing movements, to keep your body functioning optimally as a whole. For athletes, and those who have specific repetitive-use patterns or requirements, we will also train on supporting movements and transitions.
Throughout this course, you will develop and experience improved posture, energy, body awareness, coordination, and access, all of which translate directly into better performance, reduced risk of injury, and improved overall enjoyment of life.
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The Intermediate Mobility course begins with an assessment of your specific ranges of motion, and then we will create a progressive program to systematically improve any limitations. Based on our assessment, we’ll take steps to improve these ranges of motion, to even out any imbalances, and to build up your ability to control your body. We will also come up with specialized homework and programming for any mobility deficits, so you can be empowered to make progress any time you find yourself with a few minutes in your day.
This course also adds tools and obstacles to the various mobility exercises in order to more accurately mimic a real-world environment and the sorts of movements you encounter in daily life. Often this will translate into better posture, balance, and flexibility throughout the day, as well as increased energy levels, reduced soreness, stiffness, or pain, and a greater sense of comfort in and connection with your body.
At the end of this course, you will have a clear sense of your starting and ending ranges of motion—especially in your hips, knees, back, and shoulders, you will have better control, coordination, and balance, and you will experience an improvement in your mind-body connection. You will also have better awareness and understanding of how to keep making progress on your mobility, simple steps you can take to avoid injury, and how mobility translates into overall improved quality of life.
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Building on the knowledge you gained in the Fundamentals of Strength course, we’ll increase the weight of the lifts in order to improve your muscle control, stability, and strength, as well as your confidence in your body. By adding weight to the movements you mastered earlier, you will see an increase in muscle definition and capacity, and improvements in balance, coordination, joint, and spine health.
This course is for people who have some background in squats, deadlifts, and bench presses, and are interested in improving their technique, putting more weight on the bar, and learning the building blocks of sequencing the bigger lifts into Olympic patterns like the hang clean and jerk.
We’ll use an assessment of your overall fitness level, and your fitness goals, to target specific areas for improvement, with a particular focus on the muscles and joints that stabilize and support your body during progressively more complex and advanced lifts.
At the end of this course you will have a base level understanding of why certain techniques and gym tools exist, how to safely and properly use them, your current maximum in the most common lifts, and a plan for continued development.
Advanced Courses
Advanced Courses are available on request. Contact me via the consultation form and we can identify a custom program for you. With my elite athletes—whether that’s high school / college age, or master’s level—I find a blended, periodized approach that incorporates mobility, movement, and strength, is required to squeeze out optimal performance.
Special Situations Courses
For clients with unique requirements I offer courses that have a narrower focus of effort, or incorporate an especially tailored approach.
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Has it been a while since your days of peak fitness? Have you invested heavily in your career, or family, to the detriment of your physical fitness? Do you catch yourself feeling resigned, or rationalizing that “this is just part of aging”?
Even just one or two years of high-intensity office work can have a huge, negative impact on your overall fitness level, to say nothing of one, two, or even three decades.
Fortunately, the human body is highly resilient, and transformations are possible. The number one roadblock? Injuries from too much, too quickly.
In this course, we’ll make sure you safely and systematically get back in the saddle, dust off any cobwebs, and put yourself on the path to sustainable fitness and health. We’ll assess your current condition, identify realistic goals and timelines, and build a maintainable foundation that works with your lifestyle and schedule.
A significant component of this course will be building effective habits, and the development of accountability.
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The Fit over Fifty course is specifically tailored to individuals fifty years and older. Clients in this category often start from a place of chronic low back pain, low amounts of activity, medication, declining enthusiasm to move, and a mindset that despairs of regaining robust physical fitness. In other words, the age-old, but outdated and false belief that, “this is just part of aging.”
We’ll start with an assessment of your current physical condition. From there, we’ll work to restore the full use of your hips, knees, and ankles, we’ll strengthen the muscles that stabilize the spine, and we’ll strengthen your muscles, coordination and balance.
We’ll also work on mindset, and restoring your faith in your own capabilities, through the establishment and achievement of standards-based assessments. At the end of this course, you will have proven to yourself that change is possible, and that you have cause for optimism, through the measurable improvements in your physical fitness, range of motion, energy levels, and overall sense of well-being. You will also have developed a sustainable and fun fitness routine, and you will be empowered with the knowledge of how to maintain it.
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If you have been recently-injured, or have a nagging injury that just won’t seem to heal, this course is for you. We’ll work together to identify the musculoskeletal groups that are affected, any muscle imbalances that might be hindering your recovery, and we’ll perform exercises that mobilize and move those areas to break up any scar tissue, get blood flowing to the affected areas, and build strength back into the system.
In the process, we’ll answer questions like, “What’s the difference between pain and aches?” so you can get a felt sense of what it’s like to progressively heal and grow after an injury. We’ll also explore whether elements in your daily routine—excessive sitting, offset posture, infrequent movement, etc.—are negatively impacting your recovery, and we’ll develop strategies for how you can live life fully, pain-free.
We will cover techniques for pain-free movement, goal-setting that exceeds each of your specific markers, joint health, dynamic warmups and cooldowns, pre-habilitation and rehabilitation techniques, the importance of proper abdominal pressure, and breathing concepts and full relaxation.
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Always on the move? Frequently in a car, truck, or airplane? Do you spend more time in hotels than at home? The Road Warrior Course is for you.
We’ll work together to clear up common issues and pain points in the hips, back, neck, and elbows. We’ll cover prevention techniques to avoid common repetitive motion injuries like cysts developing due to arm rests, sciatic nerve pain, and even headaches and reduced vision.
We’ll also address the impact of travel and time-zone changes on mindset, a commonly-overlooked factor that can lead to depression and weight gain.
At the end of this course, you’ll have a plan to mitigate the impact of travel so you can maintain your progress and positive momentum, an understanding of the relevant factors that influence your health and well-being, as well as flexible tools, techniques, and strategies that you can use to sleep better, recover faster, keep training, and stay healthy, all while on the road.