We’re Gonna Open a Gym? Not So Fast!
Left: Drunk, fat and pissed off at the world. 230lbs
Right: I REALLY hate mirror selfies, but it gets the point across. 175lbs
Well here we are, less than two months away from our grand opening here at Lyons Den Sports Performance! This has been an incredibly long, frustrating, and at times debilitating process. This whole thing started as an idea a little over a year ago, and if there’s one thing this process has taught me it’s that not everyone is ready to start a business when they want to, and everyone’s journey’s going to be a little different. Here’s mine.
Life in the Industry - We Don’t All Make It
I’ve been in this field for almost 13 years now, but I’ve wanted to be a strength and conditioning coach ever since I found out that job existed. I get to work in a gym, wear gym clothes every day, coach and hang out with athletes? Sign me up! On the surface, this is such an incredible industry with tons of opportunity, underneath the surface it’s a disgusting mess at times. Job security doesn’t exist and you can be fired at the whims of a head coach or athletic director, no one really has any appreciation for the time you’ve spent grinding through experience and education, and the pay tends to suck until you hit the upper echelon of the field. Here are some of the highlights of my first job in the field:
Salary - $24,000 per year in 2012
Hours - 70-80 hours, 6 days per week (Sundays are ALWAYS off)
Hourly rate came out to about $6.15
Had a parent ask me if I even went to college and was dumbfounded when I said that I graduated from USF’s College of Medicine
Same parent was also upset when he found out his kid didn’t throw up during our session
Regularly slept in the training room because I wouldn’t be done until 9pm and would have to be back for 6am treatments and I had an hour commute each way
No health insurance in a field that should honestly require it due to the demands
Regularly coached between 10-12 sessions per day (that’s a lot and tends to hurt the clients at the end of the day when you’re just not “in it”)
I got a chance to program for 30 NFL Draft hopefuls, and 10 MLB players
Helped place 24 of them on active NFL rosters
Coached a record breaking vertical jump in 2012
Coached a record breaking L Drill in 2012
Got to see two of those clients end up in the MLB All Star game in 2012
Got to learn about running a small business from my boss
Created great relationships with great people and was able to begin to make a name for myself
Was promptly fired when I put my two weeks in to leave for another opportunity
It’s pretty interesting, that first position was a microcosm of what the field has to offer. Mind you this was my first paid gig, I had been interning throughout college which means I put in roughly the same kind of hours for zero pay for the prior two years, and needless to say I was pretty excited about finally collecting a paycheck. I had some great experiences, a lot of glory in coaching, trash pay, and a fickle boss (who I honestly think everything he could do for me, I just wanted more). Now none of this is meant to sound like I’m complaining about my situation, I entered into a contract for an agreed upon wage knowing full well what that entailed. This was never meant to be a forever job, it was just a “get my foot in the door” kind of job and I was ok with the short term sacrifice for what would inevitably be a long term gain.
My next position was a better title, better pay and finally some level of “normal” hours (which means 50-60 a week which is a breeze after putting in about 80). I was going to be an Associate Director making a base of 40k plus commission less than a year after graduating college and I thought I finally made it. Enter: the new NFL/NFLPA CBA. We went from having about 25-30 guys preparing for NFL Pro Days and the NFL Combine to ZERO. For those who aren’t in the industry and don’t understand the costs associated with it, that’s about a quarter million dollar loss in revenue in one year. Needless to say after that the writing was on the wall, and my boss was eventually let go and in this field when that happens all the assistant strength coaches job’s are no longer safe. We were terminated the following summer and the facility went through a restructuring but I don’t think it ever really fully recovered to be honest. I got a decent severance and was back on the hunt for a new job.
My next job was at a large state of the art facility here in Tampa and I managed to make my way to being in charge of NFL Pro Day/Combine prep but this place was an absolute nightmare. Paychecks were always late, short, and it may have been the most mismanaged facility I’ve ever been a part of. The amount of kids injured during training under some of these coaches was insane, and a lot of it fell at the feet of the director of sports performance. This was also a mostly commission based job, which is how this field tends to operate so during down times in the year hopefully you were able to save a decent chunk of change or you’re going to have a rough season when it comes to paying your bills. And when those paychecks come late/short sometimes you’re just SOL. That facility still owes me in the neighborhood of 6k, but sometimes you just cut your losses and move on. The former director of this facility has managed to weasel his way into a facility here in Wesley Chapel, Florida and while I’m not at liberty to say which one make sure you do your research into who you allow to train your kids.
Following my departure from that facility I was unemployed for nine months. I got by on odd jobs and making house calls to clients who were fortunate enough to have gyms at their own homes, and renting space at a few facilities to take care of my clientele. Then it seemed like God extended an opportunity that I couldn’t turn down. I got my first Director title, a substantial bump in pay and could finally do things the way I know they need to be done, or so I thought. Without going into details (I legally cannot) over the course of three and a half years we went through 3 GM’s who all had different ideas of how my space was to be utilized and frankly none of those ideas involved making any money for the department, but instead propping up other departments to the detriment of my own. I was forced to compromise my principles on an almost daily basis and ended up leaving on somewhat mutual terms. During this time I was also fortunate enough to be hired by USA Hockey to work with the Women’s Senior National Team. I got to travel the world and I was on staff for an Olympic gold medal, two Four Nations Cup gold medals, one IIHF Women’s World Championship gold medal, and two IIHF 18U Women’s World Championship gold medals over two years. As much as I grew to hate this facility, I’ll be forever grateful to them for giving me the opportunity to meet Reagan Carey and get my foot in the door with USA Hockey. All that being said, what this facility represents is something amazing and I truly hope that it exists for a long time. It’s brought such an amazing sport to an area and people who otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get to know this sport I love so much. And I’ll be forever grateful that I had a hand in and was able to be a part of it all.
I’m grateful for every experience I’ve had in this field. I’ve worked with All Stars, Pro Bowlers, won gold medals, watched as my clients won Stanley Cups, Super Bowls, Olympic gold, and World Championships, it’s been nothing short of amazing. But if you’re not a strong individual it’ll eventually eat you alive, which leads me to the next section of this blog.
Getting Through The Lows
The highs in this field are incredibly high, but in turn the lows can be downright debilitating. There are strength and conditioning coaches who are some of the smartest and most successful in this field who simply can’t find work. Guys like Buddy Morris, Joe Kenn, Ron McKeefery, and even my old boss at my second job can go months and sometimes years without finding work when any program would be lucky to have them coaching their athletes. Some are able to make it through the lows and come out on the other end with amazing positions, and some aren’t. I don’t talk about it much, but when my boss and I were let go (from my second job) we both took it incredibly hard. My coping ability was precisely zero, and his may have been even worse. I managed to find another position but when you’re a director (as he was) it can be incredibly hard to find a job as there’s only so many director positions available. In addition to that, very few current directors will be able to push their ego aside to hire a former director to be their assistant, and he fell into this “gap” where you essentially become unhirable unless it’s the perfect storm of opportunity. His name was Kyle Morgan and he took his own life towards the end of 2018, and the world is a worse place without him in it.
At this point, I should probably mention that I’m a recovering alcoholic. But for most of my professional career I was missing the recovering part and I was just an alcoholic. For as long as I can remember alcohol was a part of my every day life. I grew up in a home with parents who regularly drank, at every business function there seemed to be ample amounts of alcohol, and probably the biggest influence on my drinking was the game of hockey. That may sound weird that a sport with some of the fittest athletes on the planet would have an alcohol problem, but it’s woven into the sport in a way that no other sport can compete with. You ever wonder why there aren’t bars at your local little league field or basketball court? It’s not part of the culture the way it is in hockey. Every local rink has their bar, some nicer than others (I personally recommend Top Shelf at AHCI here in Wesley Chapel, great people and a great atmosphere) but it’s unequivocally part of the sport. You won’t get by playing junior hockey and college hockey without dabbling a little bit in the sauce and it can be incredibly fun being an absolute degenerate at times, but it’ll eventually take its toll if you’re not smart enough to keep it under control. I was one of those ones who wasn’t smart enough.
Coping with Rejection and Failure
Now that we’ve established that I wasn’t one of those people who was smart enough to keep drinking under control, let’s dive into what got me there: an inability to cope when things get tough. This is a weird thing to say but for most of my life I’ve been pretty terrible at coping with things. Taking a step back and looking at the entirety of the past 15 years it’s pretty easy to see, but in the moment it’s not always that clear. Can’t pay your bills because your paycheck’s short/late? Spend the little bit of money you do have on booze so you can escape it! Lose your job? Booze! Have to sacrifice your principles to keep your job? That’s right, booze! Relationship ended? No need to take a look in the mirror and try to be a better person, you know it was their fault so you should drink that beer and escape it all! I thought I was a relatively well adjusted, I was a successful strength and conditioning coach with a great track record who kept climbing the ladder of success. But inside I was dying a little bit more every single day.
Covid Lockdowns: The Government is Mostly Terrible at Everything
I’m not going to get into the politics of it all, but let’s just say that I don’t believe that there was enough thought that went into the policies dealing with curbing the coronavirus in 2020. Keeping hospitals from getting overwhelmed is a noble endeavor, as is saving lives but no one seemed to think about the mental health of the population throughout this process. Unemployment, closings of small businesses, alcoholism, drug addiction, financial ruin, homelessness, domestic violence, depression, and suicide have all been increased over this time. At one point in my own county here in Florida we saw an increase of over 100% in attempted suicides from the lockdowns while we had 6 deaths from Covid. I’m not going to sit here and debate which lives are more important, however I will say simply shifting deaths from one column to another isn’t saving lives, it’s simply spreading the carnage.
How does this play into my situation you may ask. Well, have you ever tried to open a brick and mortar during a pandemic filled with lockdowns? It’s not that easy and I don’t recommend it. Between metal shortages, manufacturers shifting their production towards home gym equipment, and the lockdowns themselves stopping production for a lot of products we simply couldn’t get the equipment we needed to open a facility. On top of that gyms themselves were closed, and it just didn’t seem like a good idea to dump a couple hundred thousand dollars into building one out when I didn’t know that I’d be able to actually open my doors. So here I am, with this great idea and great track record and I just have to sit on the sidelines and wait. And you know what they say about idle hands, they’re the devil’s play toy.
Now we’ve already established that I’m great at skirting the responsibility of dealing with my emotions by numbing them with alcohol, so this next part shouldn’t come as a surprise. I fell in a hole so deep that the only way to feel like I was making my way out of it was to be in a drunken stupor for most of the day. So here I was, left my job just before the pandemic with the intention of opening my own facility, but I can’t open it because of the lockdowns and manufacturing issues and I’m so drunk that I can no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel. If you’ve been unfortunate enough to ever put yourself into a position like this I’m sure you can relate but if you haven’t it’s kind of like living in the movie Groundhog Day, only the movie setting is in Hell instead of Punxsutawney, PA. You even have the ability to change the day and end the situation like in the movie, but sometimes you just feel like you don’t know how.
I can remember at times throughout the day I’d go to the bathroom (remember alcohol’s a diuretic so there were lots of trips to the bathroom) and I’d inevitably be forced to see myself in the giant mirror in my bathroom. I mostly tried to avoid it at all costs but sometimes I just couldn’t escape it. I can remember looking in the mirror only to see this fat, dejected, pissed off drunk staring back at me. I can remember on more than one occasion saying out loud “What the f*ck is wrong with you? What the hell are you doing?” But I was in the depths of it, and alcohol had its clutches in me. I wanted to change and I needed to change, I just don’t think I knew how (or even wanted to to be completely honest) to take that first step. I was getting by, and in the moment that seemed to be enough.
Something Needs to Change
Over the years alcohol has cost me a lot. Relationships, friendships, money, and even my mental clarity. This all came to a head in the beginning of the fall in 2020. Here I am, money in the bank to start a business, dating the woman of my dreams, lots of interest and support for me living my dream of owning my own gym and I can’t seem to get out of my own way. I hadn’t gone looking for a space for about 3 months, I had gained a solid 30lbs, and I’m pissed off at the world. For what? Everything’s in place all I have to do is get the ball rolling. But I just couldn’t. The alcohol had created a perfect storm of anxiety and depression that literally had my life on pause. I couldn’t get anything done and I was living in a constant state of terrible self talk, low self-esteem, and fear. That’s no way to live life and after one of the most stupid and loud arguments I’ve ever had in a relationship the woman of my dreams decided she could no longer watch me self destruct anymore, and I don’t blame her. I’m surprised she stuck around as long as she did. I hit rock bottom, I had nowhere to go but up. I was suicidal, sad, anxious, fat, and in a constant state of misery.
At this point I was at a crossroads: I either fall deeper and permanently into the hole I was in, or I get my s*it together and start climbing. I was currently on a diet of about 15-20 beers a day coupled with frozen pizzas and a multivitamin. Continuing on this path wasn’t an option if I wanted to be alive in a month and in a brief moment of clarity I realized how much I still had to offer the world, and how much the world still had to offer me. Sometimes God has a funny way of showing us this, and I won’t get into the story of how this happened but let’s just say that I laughed for the first time in an incredibly long time when it happened.
If you’ve never been through withdrawals from alcohol let me tell you it’s an absolute treat. You get to enjoy a resting heart rate of about 150 bpm while laying down in bed and not moving at all, nausea, diarrhea, dehydration and fevers. I was fortunate enough that I didn’t deal with hallucinations, or at least I think I didn’t. I was by myself through the process so who knows honestly. It was a rough couple of days but I made it without having to go to the hospital and I’m thankful for that. Part of me wanted to remember how terrible it was to go through that, and I honestly didn’t want to make it any easier. Whether it was me subconsciously trying to punish myself, or I just needed to remember how it felt I’m honestly not really sure. All I can say is that it taught me that all that fun (and misery) alcohol helped create has a tab due at the end, and paid it. All this being said, if you’re trying to make a change I do not recommend quitting in this manner, get professional help and make sure you’re alive at the end of it all.
I’ve Made it! I’ve Changed! Now What?
So now I’ve got this new found sobriety and clarity in life and I’m ready to tackle the world! I was laser focused on getting and maintaining my sobriety. I had a new routine that involved a lot of walking when I would get anxious for a beer (I walked over 80 miles in the first week while going through withdrawals), staying busy by getting back in the gym more consistently, and even creating a new down regulation routine at the end of the day that involved drinking tea instead of booze. Throughout all of this, the one thing that never even crossed my mind was my inability to cope. I gave up the booze so now I’m supposed to be happy, right? Nope! Not even close, it was only part of the equation. In getting sober all I managed to do (outside of regaining my health) was get rid of the one coping mechanism I knew. I was ill prepared to deal with anything outside of life being perfect. If something went wrong or I got rejected I still dealt with bad self-talk, and getting down on myself. It would be another five months before I realized this, and I wish more than anything that I could have had that revelation back in September but these things tend to happen for a reason, and that reason hadn’t been clear this entire time until I was able to take a step back and look at the entirety of the situation.
Throughout this journey for the past year I’ve experienced some incredible highs, and many many lows. I’ve been as heavy as 230lbs, and I’ve managed to drop all the way down to 175 by deciding to take my life back. It’s never too late I promise. Whether its substance abuse, abusive relationships, an unhealthy weight or an overall unhealthy lifestyle don’t wait to make the change that can help give you your life back. The best day to make a change is yesterday and the second best day is today. Don’t put off taking your life back, don’t dwell on what you’ve lost and instead put your focus on what you have, and what’s in front of you!
We’re Building a Gym, and a New Life!
This journey has been an incredible one. At times I’ve been lower than I’ve ever been in my entire life, but I believe I’m on the verge of some of the highest highs now with this new found love for life. Whether or not you believe in God, or Karma, or the Universe working things out just know that all these things happen not by chance, but by some kind of design. I wasn’t ready to start a business a year ago. I wasn’t emotionally strong enough to handle the stress, and there’s no way that business would still be around today because it would have been a bandaid on what was a broken life. I always thought that the next thing or circumstance would make me happy but I now realize that was an exercise in futility. We need to create our own happiness on the inside (I used to roll my eyes when people would say this but it’s unequivocally true) in order to enjoy the happiness life has to offer. Our gym is scheduled for a mid May grand opening, and I can now say that I’m fully prepared to deal with both the stresses and successes that come from owning a small business. And I can’t wait!
Thank you all for taking the time to read my story. This is actually an exercise I’ve been wanting to do for a while because I tend to care too much about what others think and I’m awful at being vulnerable (at times). If you’re dealing with addiction or depression/anxiety and need someone to reach out to, my phone number and email address are both on this site. I don’t have all the answers but I’m a good listener and it’s always judgement free. Nothing you can say will surprise or shock me, I’ve sat through some AA meetings and phew. If you ever think you’ve got a crazy story, spend a week listening to alcoholics and addicts and you’ll probably change your mind as to how crazy said story is. If you’re one for reading I recommend the following books as they’ve really helped me change my perspectives on a lot of things:
When Panic Attacks - David D Burns, MD
This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol - Annie Grace
Unf*ck Yourself - Gary John Bishop
Easy Way to Control Alcohol - Allen Carr
