Jonathan

Exercise, whether it be organized, focused, or just recreational, has always been an escape for me.

I might not have been the star player on my youth teams, but I knew if I put all my energy into each practice and game the rest of the world would disappear until the end. And afterwards, there were always good feelings from triggering my brain to release some feel good chemicals into my bloodstream (although I didn’t know what was happening at the time …). I looked forward as an adolescent to team sports changing with the seasons and opportunities to play and feel alive.

As I grew out of the recreational team sports age, I was introduced to bicycles - what a liberating experience. I now had control to make the world disappear for however long my lungs and legs could endure – on my timeline. And nature on top of it. A close call with a car on the road or a tree on the trail definitely releases something into you. The longer you go, the more it hurts, the more it pulls you into the moment’s challenge of just pedaling another 10 miles to get home or back to the trailhead. Sudden downpour or wind changes directions, you’re not really mad. It’s just another opportunity to overcome a challenge you don’t have to make a decision about. Just pedal and be with pain you understand.

But at the end of the ride, when all the feel good chemicals had worn off, I was still left with the pain of my personal problems from the past, and of personal growth, of trying to become an adult. I was trying to figure out the rest of my life and I wasn’t sure if I could trust myself, yet.

Hello yoga.

I had always enjoyed throwing the occasional dumbbell around, hanging from a bar and struggling to get my chin above it, and I really liked cable chops. Yoga was different: slower, stretchy movements, internal feelings, and a historical background of being transformational, physically and spiritually. I was curious. This was in the 90s, really pre-internet, and the amount of accessible literature on yoga was minimal at the time. Used book stores were my jam though, and the books that were available from them were more philosophical based, explaining things like breathing and the yogi lifestyle rather than focusing on sequencing of movements. 

Yoga classes were now a part of my life. I had a hard time doing yoga by myself though. But in that class setting I was able to make the world disappear in a different way. In a way that felt different internally then the close call with a car or tree. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was learning how to turn on my parasympathetic nervous system. But the yoga escape from the real world was still temporary. I was still left with all my past and growth problems. I did have a pull, like a lot of others, to the historical lifestyle of living as a yogi. Give up modern desires for a simpler life. I was internally trapped between the infinite possibilities and opportunities of modern living and the finite direction of a historical lifestyle. I still couldn’t figure it out.

So I kept on my exercise routine medley of four or five long endurance sessions each week with a few of them starting or ending with some time in the weight room. I’d hit up three or four yoga classes a week, whatever I could fit in my schedule. And this kept going on for a while. I was still searching for what I really should be doing. I was putting off being an official professional adult. Instead I was training for and doing six hour plus mountain bike races, running marathons, spending time in the ocean with friends, and eventually had said “friends” talk me into doing an ultramarathon, Uwharrie. 

Even though I still hadn’t felt like I had a purpose in life yet, life was feeling really good at the time. 

Then I tore my meniscus in my right knee.

Leading up to the injury, I had just gotten married to Shelby at the end of a 10k race in November 2011. For our honeymoon that winter, we spent time together in Lake Tahoe, staying in a wilderness cabin and trail running. I was supporting her career as a journalist in North Carolina  and we were planning our next move for her to take the next step in her career. I ran my second ultramarathon later that winter followed by the Boston Marathon in April 2012. Wowzer. [Sidenote: I’ve been lucky and privileged in a lot of ways in my life, and running the second hottest Boston marathon with one of my friends (who had passes to the VIP tent for us) was one of the most special moments at that time of my life. All the towns along the course are filled with so much energy and love there’s no way to not be emotionally affected and uplifted.

I was out for a release of the” feel good chemicals” fun trail run a few weeks after Boston when it happened. Wowzer in a different way. The moment sticks with me. The trail I was running had a mellowey sharp incline that curved around a tree and shot you back down the mellowey sharp incline before ever leveling off or topping out. As I was at the apex of the curve running on the trail from left to right, I was reaching across my body with my right leg to plant my foot, twist my hips and flow down the descent. As soon as the weight of my body engaged with earth through my right foot, my leg locked up, I heard a pop, and my body went cartwheeling aggressively down the mellowey sharp incline. I was a couple miles from my manual transmission car, but that’s a different story.

Another way I feel lucky and privileged is I’ve never had any body anger, image issues, or hatred. I’ve always been on the slight side, but that’s not the reason why. My body has always been my escape. Feeling depressed? Go mountain biking. Brain static feedback? Go climbing. Feeling like you don’t have purpose? Yoga session. So when I tore my meniscus I didn’t feel like my body let me down, I felt like I had let my body down. I had been doing all these physical things for myself emotionally (even though to the outside world it might have looked like I was doing them for myself physically, but again, that’s another story). I was doing it wrong. 

Even with the consistent balance of endurance training, yoga, and time in the weight room, I tore my meniscus. Just like everyone else, I’ve heard from a young age, “just wait til you get old, everything is going to hurt… yada, yada, yada”. As I was consistently living this routine leading up to my meniscus tear, I was also living in constant low level achiness. Obviously expected from my athletic mentors (mostly old cranky guys that rode bikes or ran) with the “everything is going to hurt” bit, I’d take a couple ibuprofen and move on. It’s what’s expected as we get older. I was okay with all of this, I had even pictured myself as a cranky old man in spandex stretching my hamstrings on my bike telling the youth of the day to get used to stretching if they plan on getting old. But my acceptance of the feelings of getting old changed with that pop at the top of the mellowey sharp incline. It wasn’t my body, it was what I was doing with my body. My consistent weekly routine still led me to this.

By summer 2012 and after the tear, Shelby found a gig with a startup in Portland and I had found my purpose. When we were in Tahoe, we were sharing a gondola ride with a cross fitter. That sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it’s not. He was from San Diego and telling us how he was getting injured constantly doing cross fit. Still not a joke. A friend recommended he try out the Egoscue Method, created by a local therapist Pete Egoscue, and our cross fitting gondola acquaintance said as he started balancing out his cross fitting with the Egoscue Method his injuries started to go away. I was curious as he was telling us, but after tearing my meniscus a few months later, my curiosity was off the charts.

I was managing a sushi restaurant and owned a pedicab business to pay the bills while we were living life by the beach in NC. When we made the move to the PNW, it was time for me to be courageous and fully empty myself into the career that had always tempted me for escapism: fitness. Since all the time and energy I had recreationally put into learning about how to train for endurance sports and fitness had led me to an injury, I obviously needed to learn more. This injury was keeping me from partaking in my physical outlets to treat my emotional needs.

After reading some Egoscue Method books, the plan was to partake in training and certification from Egoscue. But as fate had it, when we moved to Portland a local gym was hiring which also taught a version of the Egoscue Method to all its trainers. After an awkward step aerobic class and an interview, I was hired. This was an opportunity to learn a different view and version of training as well as work on my softer skills needed for working with clients - learning to listen to them, craft plans that support and work into their schedule, and hold them accountable so they can keep working towards their next goal, not just the same goal. This was another one of those wowzer moments.

It was another gratifying moment in life. We were living where we wanted, in the PNW. I was learning so much as a trainer. Not just how muscles work and how to build them, but things that are so much more important, like how your nervous system works with your musculoskeletal system leading to biological markers being released to signal your brain to feel good, have more energy and focus, and send repair materials to rebuild your body stronger with the good food you eat consistently. How we don’t just have muscle memory for good things like throwing a ball, but also have muscle memory for bad experiences hiding in tight muscles that living in a modern world encourages. We get stronger after we recover from breaking ourselves down through stressful situations (physical, professional, or emotional). Which means understanding how to release tension daily, of tight muscles or negative emotions, is critical to not becoming injured or burnt out. I was learning it was even harder for my clients than it was for myself to say “no” to things that did not support their life and make space for routines that release tension. Sleep is more important than anyone has ever told you.

Everything I was learning lived in its own place though (sleep, nutrition, active recovery, progressive workouts, breathing techniques, accountability, etc.), and that place was not in an individual training session in which your client expects to get their heart rate up a bit and maybe be on the sweaty side.

Feeling good, progressing, and having energy and focus are all dependent upon a complicated balancing act of all these variables and more. They all either neutralize each other if not done in the right dosages or they amplify each other when given the correct amount of energy and space in your life. I was experimenting with and applying everything I was learning to my own training. I had learned how to decipher mechanical body imbalances that lead to overuse injuries, like my meniscus, and put together easy progressive movement routines to relieve the imbalances if done consistently.

These easy progressive movement routines I was using not only repaired my meniscus and gave me complete confidence back into my knee, but they also let me get back to doing some longer trail runs here in the gorgeous PNW without the constant achiness that I used to take ibuprofen for. I am stronger without having to punish myself as much. I was committed to my new routines.

Yoga was out. Traditional weight training was out. I was feeling the absolute strongest I have in my life. So why not put all of this confidence I was getting from my new way of training into a tough test. I signed up for, trained with focus for nine months, and completed an Ironman. Knee felt great the whole time training and racing and I did not take even one ibuprofen. Instead of my body getting tighter and holding onto all the negative muscle memory and having to punish myself to escape the world, I was putting more focus on releasing tension than I was doing tough workouts. I was getting stronger both physically and emotionally. This last part is a crazy dynamic to fully explain, so I’m going to leave it for later.

Everything I was doing in my own training, I was also experimenting with how to apply it to my clients who all have different needs and goals from my own. I was trying to put all this together for each client on my own, and my attempt was keeping me the most successful trainer at our gym, but I still didn’t feel I was really giving my clients everything they needed to be consistent with health and fitness for a lifetime, which is true success in this field. I was just spreading myself too thin trying to connect and teach everything needed in an environment that was set up for physical training. 

This led me to create Spears Strong.

From my brief previous experience as a small business owner (pedicab business) and my multiple years helping others manage their businesses, I knew starting a small fitness business would not be easy. I was way off, it’s really difficult. I’ve partaken in multiple mentorship programs to grow myself as a business owner, have encouraged feedback from clients and staff, and luckily have the passion for not just keeping people motivated but also trying to figure out the puzzle of being a small business owner.

When opening Spears Strong I tried helping too many people by myself and it didn’t work out well for either one of us. Clients were not progressing as they could and I was running out of energy, and my passion. With this initial experience, I realized again, I was doing it wrong. I needed to change the way Spears Strong was going to help our community and succeed.

Personal and group training is a field with a high turnover rate. There is lots of competition and whether you start out with a degree from college or a training certification, the thing neither one provides you with are the soft skills. How to communicate with your clients in personal training and group training sessions. How to support your clients outside of their sessions and hold them accountable. How and where to start your training programs and sessions. How to identify and modify movements for clients in the same sessions. And the list goes on.

When pivoting how Spears Strong supports our community my goal has been to put together training programs (Spears Strong Training Process) that supports and guides our trainers and health coaches at Spears Strong and provides structure for our clients. With the help of Shelby and Sara, when the pandemic hit we were able to come together as a team and create our Foundation Program which gives both our trainers and clients easy access to at home routines that we all have confidence is exactly what is needed. 

We have not stopped fine tuning our programing and over time I have slowly garnered the confidence to start talking more often about all the other things (sleep, nutrition, active recovery, progressive workouts, breathing techniques, accountability, etc.). With Shelby’s help (and her transformation from an anxious journalist to a supportive, experienced and knowledgeable health coach), we have changed Spears Strong from a place you go to do a workout, to a place you go to work on yourself. Sometimes that includes a workout.

With the support of our programming and consistent self and staff development, our clients are loving their Spears Strong experience. When you are changing lives, positive or negative, you are going to hear about it. That’s one of the things I love the most about working in health and fitness: the instant feedback from clients to know you need to change for the better or keep building on what’s succeeding. With the feedback we’ve been given, we want to help more clients.

We’re currently working on a mentorship program to teach others how to successfully support a community of people to consciously make positive changes in their lives and live it consistently. Shelby, Sara and I are gearing up to teach and support more health coaches and trainers. We are ready to expand our Spears Strong community. And we’re excited.

So this is not where my about page ends, it’s just where it ends right now. After our mentorship program is fully realized, we can’t wait for what’s next. More in person community events, supporting the passions of future Spears Strong health coaches and trainers to give our clients more variety and excitement on how they can chase their fitness goals, and so much more. I can’t wait to get back to this about page and update it as my role at Spears Strong, and in life, progresses through the years. Cheers to living the journey daily, and looking forward to seeing you at the Lab!