When I started explaining to the stone-cold beginners why I wanted them to do things in a certain

way, I noted that I could rattle off reasons and rationales like an auctioneer at a cattle sale. But it
somehow seemed hollow to me. I was being superficial and rote. I said things without thinking and
decided that I needed to reevaluate how and why. Dealing with total beginners, something I had
never
done, caused me to rethink much of what I’d taken for granted for so long.
It was as if someone had opened a window in a room full of stale cigar smoke and a fresh breeze had
blown in: hard, cold, chilly and bracing. It felt good to reexamine my treasured orthodoxies. Normally
I only work with elite weight trainers. These are very experienced athletes who without exception
have a tremendous amount of progressive resistance training under their belts before they seek me
out. I’m purposefully obscure, hard to find and off the beaten track. When an ardent lifter or athlete
makes their way up to the mountains to see me, they are looking for fresh direction on a journey
already long underway. I see these seekers for four or five hours then they head back to their world.
I’m sort of a one-man Iron Finishing School: a guy who might be able to alert an elite athlete to some
heretofore unconsidered offbeat angle or progress-stimulating approach.
This time it was different. This time I’d decided to work with complete beginners with zero fitness
experience. These were local folks from right in my neighborhood. To compound complexity, I was
looking to extract maximum xresults in a relatively short timeframe. I’d worked hard and diligently to
remove myself from society. I purposefully constructed a rural, isolated lifestyle in order to get really
good at my many solitary pursuits. Now life suddenly took a sharp left turn. Circumstance presented
me with an opportunity to give something of value to folks who could really use some assistance.
This
required I reenter the societal world I purposefully left.
Fitness folks that come to me for advice are a savvy lot. I don’t spend time going over why I do the
things I do. Like a celebrity chef I have my particular style of cuisine and my very own repertoire of
signature dishes. A certain segment of the public loves what I do. All was right with my relationship
to
the world insofar as maintaining my comfort groove.
Then along comes a gaggle of stone cold beginners that have no freaking idea who I am; people that
have never ever touched a weight; and now I’m put in charge of maximizing physical progress of a
little gang of totally untrained regular people.