When Ryan first came to us, what he wanted was simple. He wanted somebody to tell him what to do again.
He’s capable. He knows his way around a gym. But a few weeks ago we were talking about whether he could just train on his own, and he said this:
“Could I go in two, three times a week? Sure. I’d probably end up cycling through the same five exercises.”
Then he described exactly how it falls apart:
“I’d be like, ah, I’ll go Saturday. Ah, I’m out of time today. Let me just kick it back to Monday.”
And then the part that stuck with me:
“That’s what I can’t do on my own.”
Ryan is 44. He played soccer from the age of six, competitive through college, then rec leagues after that.
Which means he spent thirty years being told what to do, and he was excellent at it.
A lot of former athletes hear “I can’t do this alone” as an admission of weakness.
It’s the opposite. Being coachable is a skill. It’s a big part of why you got good in the first place, and it doesn’t expire when the season ends.
The mistake is assuming you should have outgrown it by now.
Ryan didn’t outgrow it. He went looking for it again, found the wrong version of it, lost more than a year to an injury, and eventually landed here.
At the end of this month he tests for the 1,000-pound club, which is 1,000 lbs spread across your one-rep max on bench, squat and deadlift.
More than he ever lifted as an athlete. More than he’s lifted at any point in his life.
He got there using the same skill he had at 17.
