My Story

I remember walking with a young man of about 34. I was about to do what at my old job was called a fitness coaching consultation. I began asking him questions about his goals and where he would like to go with his exercise program. He told me that he was a wrestler in high school and was in excellent shape. Unfortunately, since high school, he had gained about 40 pounds and began smoking. “I’m realistic”, he said. “I don’t expect to get back into the same kind of shape, or look like I did when I was in high school”. Without hesitation, I turned to him and said, “Why not? He stopped and looked at me with what I can only remember as being a mixture of being slightly irritated as well as perplexed all at the same time. Before he had a chance to say anything else, I continued by saying, “I never looked like this when I was in high school”. “In fact, I look much better, and can do much more than when I was in high school”. “Really”, my very skeptical fitness coaching client replied. You see, most of my clients upon meeting me for the first time believe I’ve always been in shape. They are under the misconception that I was the typical high school or college jock. Many others have been under the false pretense that I’m naturally gifted and don’t have to work hard to look the way that I do. Still, others believe I can eat whatever I want because I have good genes. Nothing could be further from the truth!

In order to make the physical transformation that I did, it required hours upon hours of hard work and sweat through strength and cardiovascular training. It has also required a close adherence to eating the proper foods to help me complete the transformation. In high school, I was anything but an athlete. High school quarterback, you ask? Hardly! In fact, it was just the opposite! I was a member of the chess team, and also participated in the chorus, and played in the marching band. The closest I got to high school athletics was warming the bench for my high school’s junior varsity baseball team. I think in the two years I attempted baseball, I got a total playing time of around 5 minutes! When I went to college things really didn’t change, although my diet went downhill considerably. I did what many college kids do and subsisted on pizza, cheese-steak sandwiches, cheeseburgers, soda, and of course beer. After I graduated from college with a degree in English literature I began pursuing another love of mine, music. I became a lead vocalist and rhythm guitar player in a rock band. Of course, playing in bars limited me most of the time to eat the same foods that I had been eating in college.

My epiphany came when I reached the age of 33. For me, 33 was an extremely traumatic year. Due to certain events in my life, I became saddled with what I can only be described as a crushing depression. Not only was I dealing with the effects of depression, but also a stalled music career, as well as working a dead-end job. I was lost. One night as I lie awake in bed trying to deal with difficult events of my life, I prayed to God a very simple and direct prayer. I asked God to guide my life, to take me in the direction that he wanted me to go in. This is a prayer that I would repeat over and over again as I struggled to find answers in my life. About two or three weeks later something happened. At the time I worked for my parents. They had owned and operated a small ceramic mold company. My job was to make the molds. Each day I would carry 50-pound bags of plaster, dump them into buckets of water, mix and then pour the plaster to make the molds. One day an idea came to me. I thought that instead of just moving these bags from point A to B, I’d use the bags to do some curls in-between, just as a way to build up my arms. I remember my first attempt at grabbing the bag at either end and curling only yielded a total of ten reps. Initially, this was fine, but after a while, I decided that I need to do something for my triceps as well. I solved this problem by doing chair dips on the chair that I would mix the plaster from. When my body weight became too easy, I began to put ceramic molds of varying weights in my lap to increase the challenge. From there, things began to slowly snowball. Deciding that I needed to do more than just arms I began to do pushups and sit-ups each night before going to bed. To supplement my cardio needs I began to practice my martial arts katas (forms) each night for about an hour. About six months later I made my first equipment purchase. 50-pound plaster bags were no longer the challenge they used to be, so I bought a curling bar and two 25 pound plates. Yet another simple beginning. Again things began to snowball.

Just as with exercise, I simply used my own common sense and began to make better choices. It had been about eight months since the fateful day I decided to curl a plaster bag and my hard work began to bear fruit. Friends began to notice the changes in my body. Some of them actually thought I was getting taller due to the fact that for the first time in years I was finally standing up straight. Their comments and encouragement inspired me to work even harder, and I made it a point to never miss a workout. I even remember working out one night at midnight because I had friends over for dinner and I didn’t have time to work out earlier in the evening. At this point, I began to realize I was becoming a living example and inspiration to many of the people I loved the most. As I would talk enthusiastically to them about my own fitness, I could almost see the wheels turning in their heads. I knew that most of them were thinking, “If he can do it, why can’t I!” What an incredible joy it was for me to know that I was inspiring them to do something so positive for their lives. It was right about this time that I began to think about becoming a personal trainer. My life had taken a truly amazing turn. I had firmly established excellent habits and my casual beginnings lifting plaster bags had morphed into a lifestyle. It had been like coming out of a long dark tunnel. I was lost and suddenly had a new direction. Becoming a personal trainer seemed to be an excellent way in which to help others. I was learning so much at the time, that I felt that I could use this newfound knowledge to help others get better, as well as faster results in a shorter period of time. My only problem was where do I turn to become a trainer. There were so many different certification organizations, and I was only interested in those that could really help jump-start my new career. The answer to my problem was short in coming. One day I was invited by one of my best friends, who was an endurance athlete to go running as he trained for an upcoming marathon. About two miles into our run, he said to me, “Hey, guess what I’m going to do”. As you can imagine, he was becoming a personal trainer! It seemed the gym that he belonged to had tapped an obvious talent and asked my friend to become a part of their staff. He was about to take the Certified Personal Trainer course through the Nation Strength Professionals Association based in Timonium Maryland. With a little research, I realized what an excellent organization NSPA was and I took the CPT class with my friend.

Later that same year I took a bet with a good friend to see which one of us could get to the lowest body fat through healthy diet and exercise techniques. We started in the new year, and after 12 weeks I achieved an all-time low body fat of 6.4%. In that time I learned more about proper nutrition and myself than I had since I started this amazing journey. During this time I also began to think more and more about starting my own personal training business. In early 2007 I opened Weaver Personal Training Services as a way to offer a more exclusive personal training experience as well as one that was more affordable.