By Doc | Stronger Personal Training
I get this a lot.
“You’re a young guy in great shape. You have no idea what I’m going through.”
Oh yeah? Hold my beer.
The Kid Nobody Picked
I grew up a fairly active kid who loved food. My genetically gifted sister loved food too — but there was a wide gap between us. And I mean that literally.
She was fit, beautiful, had a great personality. I was an eleven year old motormouth diagnosed with childhood obesity.
I remember running down the street after the ice cream truck and teenagers hanging out of car windows yelling “run fatty.” Every time. Not once. Every time.
Fat kids are supposedly cute. I can tell you I didn’t get a lot of attention from girls.
Then at twelve I was threatened off the football team. Twenty pounds over the weight limit. Twenty pounds! Football was my entire life and they were going to take it from me.
My dad put me on a crash diet. There were days I could barely walk because my energy was so low. But I lost over twenty pounds in two weeks and got my first girlfriend.
The things we do.
The Spiral
I struggled with weight through most of my teenage years. Football helped make it an asset — size was suddenly useful. Until sophomore year.
I got injured. Embarrassing story I’ll spare you. Gained thirty pounds. Two hundred and fifty pounds at fifteen years old.
The mental strain was implosive.
I lost the weight again — but lost too much. It affected my play, my strength, and my ability to perform. I developed an obsession with the scale. Waxed and waned on carbs. Ate all the protein. Kept constant tabs on my body to make sure I wasn’t gaining.
I got injured again because I was weak.
That’s when I learned how completely unprepared coaches and parents are for this. Not their fault — nobody taught them. But as a young kid I needed guidance that nobody around me knew how to give.
That realization planted a seed. I decided then that I wanted to become a physical therapist and strength coach so I could give others what I never had.
But the struggle wasn’t over.
College
I took up boxing my freshman year and dropped to a hundred and seventy pounds. People started asking my parents if I had cancer.
I was bingeing and purging. Taking laxatives. Crash dieting. Working out constantly. My appetite always won — and so did the weekend drinking that came with college.
My life was a mess. Fights with my girlfriend about my body. Criticism online from what was supposed to be a support group. Constantly grilling professors about the next best thing.
I once almost died. We won’t go into that.
Side Note: If you’ve been in that place, or you’re in it now, the way through it looks different for everyone. What matters is finding help — a dietitian, a mental health therapist, a coach, someone you trust. Just be mindful of who you turn to. The right person meets you where you’re at without judgment and without an agenda.
The Credentials Didn’t Fix It
I got my doctorate. Became a licensed physical therapist. Spent years studying what I’d lived through — the physiology of it, the psychology of it, the research behind what actually works versus what the fitness industry sells.
By 2020 I was working as a physical therapist. Nina was pregnant. Life felt like it was finally settling into something real.
Then COVID happened.
I was furloughed. Knew I wasn’t coming back — last hired, first cut. Suddenly jobless with a pregnant wife and a world that had completely lost its mind.
I met a business partner. We opened a gym together. I ran a cash based physical therapy practice out of it. My PT credentials helped us grow faster than most during COVID — people trusted the clinical background when everything else felt uncertain.
For three years we built something real. Over two hundred members. Ten employees. A community that actually meant something.
Then the partnership ended.
I won’t relitigate it. I just know that I left with nothing. No members. No staff. No building. Nothing.
The Garage
To keep things moving I started training people out of my garage while I figured out what came next.
It took about a year.
In that year I had a wife, a young son, a mortgage, and the kind of quiet desperation that doesn’t make it into highlight reels. I showed up every day anyway. Not because I had it figured out. Because stopping felt worse than continuing.
When we finally opened the doors to Stronger I already knew what I was going to name it.
At what felt like the lowest point of my life — no business, no income, starting completely over — I made myself a promise. I would come out of this STRONGER.
It was born.
Why I’m Telling You This
I’m not writing this for sympathy.
I’m writing this so you know that when I say I understand where you’re coming from — I actually do. The yo-yos. The diets that worked and then didn’t. The obsession. The injuries. The mental strain of watching your body feel like it’s working against you. The rock bottom moments you don’t tell anyone about.
I went through all of it. And I went through it so I could understand you in a way that someone who’s never been there simply can’t.
Stronger exists because of every one of those chapters.
Our mission is to help over ten thousand families in the Pittsburgh area become strong, fit, and resilient — to become their personal best in whatever way that looks for them. We start with the parents because we believe that when a parent gets healthier, stronger, and more confident, it doesn’t stay with them. It trickles down. It changes what their kids grow up seeing as normal. It rewrites the story for the next generation.
That’s not a marketing line. That’s why I get up every morning.
I’m not a coach who had great genetics their whole life and decided to make money off it. I’m not an athlete who got hurt once and pivoted to a new career. I am someone who fought for this — who needed this — and who built something real out of the wreckage of the hardest chapters of my life.
I went through all of this for you.
Now let’s get to work.
Strongfully,
Doc