What Happens When You Train With No Excuses, No Ego, and No Way Out

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I have been coaching, teaching, and running events for a long time. Decades. And the thing that still catches me off guard is when someone walks in thinking they know what they're about to experience, only to walk out realizing they had no idea.

That happens every single Train Your Ass Off event.

Not because we try to break people. Not because we're running some boot camp designed to humble you. It happens because most lifters, no matter how experienced, have never been in an environment where someone with fresh eyes, no agenda, and no obligation to spare your feelings actually looks at how you move and tells you the truth.

That's a rare thing. And most people don't know what they're missing until they get it.

This Is Not a Seminar

I want to be clear about what TYAO is and is not.

It is not a lecture where you sit in a room and take notes while someone talks for eight hours. It is not a group class where you get lost in a crowd. It is not a series of Instagram-ready demos designed to look good on camera.

It is a small group. You lift. We watch. We coach. You lift again. That cycle repeats across two of the most concentrated days of training feedback most people will ever get in their lives.

One attendee put it better than I could:

"The ability to have hands-on and correct things in person is so much faster. What you can get done in two days would take six months with virtual coaching, and that's even if you figured it out."

Another said:

"I learned more in 48 hours than I have in almost 20 years of gym experience."

That's not a marketing line. That's a person who's been training for two decades saying two days changed more than the previous twenty years. And the reason that's possible isn't some secret method. It's attention. Real, sustained, individualized attention from coaches who have seen every version of every mistake and know exactly where to look.

The Thing Nobody Tells You About Your Technique

Here's what happens at almost every event.

Someone walks in with decent numbers. They've been training consistently. They've watched the videos, read the articles, maybe even done some online coaching. They think they have a handle on what's going wrong in their lifts.

Then they start lifting in front of us.

And within about ten minutes, we've identified something they have never been told in all their years of training. Not because they're terrible. Not because they've been doing everything wrong. But because the thing holding them back isn't on the surface, where it's easy to see. It's buried under years of compensations they've built to work around a problem they never actually fixed.

The most common one? Bracing.

Survey response after survey response from past TYAO attendees said the same thing in different words:

"I had no idea how poorly I was bracing."

"I learned what it really means to brace. Who knew I'd been doing it wrong my whole life."

"Bracing, bracing, and finally bracing."

"The importance of rooting and bracing, and how to do it. Apparently no one knows how to stand or breathe properly."

"I had no clue how to brace, even though I thought I did."

This isn't a coincidence. It's one of the most fundamental things in all of strength training, and one of the most universally misunderstood. Not because lifters are lazy or careless. Because most people have never had someone stand in front of them and work through it until it clicks, until they feel the difference, until there's no going back to doing it the old way.

That moment, that physical shift when something finally makes sense in your body instead of just in your head, that is what TYAO is built around.

What People Actually Get Out of It

I went through the feedback from past attendees before writing this. Not to pull quotes that make the event sound good. To remind myself what's actually transferring.

Here's what keeps showing up:

The technical stuff goes deep. Not surface-level cues. Not generic advice. Specific corrections, specific cues, specific accessory work tied to specific weaknesses. One attendee described it as "an inch wide and a mile deep." That's exactly right. We are not trying to cover everything. We are trying to fix the things that are actually limiting you.

The programming clarity. A lot of people come in lost. They're training consistently, but they don't really understand why. By the end of the event, they have a framework. They understand how the main lift, the supplemental, and the accessories connect. They understand intensity. They understand effort. One attendee said it completely reset how they train.

The intensity reset. This one surprises people the most. They think they're training hard. And then they train hard with us watching. And they find out there's a significant gap between what they thought hard was and what hard actually is. That gap is one of the most valuable things you can close in your training career.

"Now I know what an RPE 10 is. Now I can properly train at whatever RPE is needed."

That sentence represents years of better training compressed into a weekend.

The environment. The S5 gym is not a regular gym. The people training there are not regular gym-goers. The standard is different. The energy is different. Several attendees mentioned that just being in that environment, being surrounded by people who take this seriously, changed something in them. One person put it simply: "The atmosphere. The attitude. The legendary gym and lifters."

You cannot replicate that online. You cannot describe it in a way that fully prepares someone for it. You have to be in the room.

A Moment That Stayed With Me

One attendee from a recent event wrote about a moment worth repeating here.

They had just failed a squat attempt. When I asked what they wanted to do next, they chose a lighter weight to save face. I told them no. We were going to do the weight they just missed. And I told them that once they made the choice to get under it, there was no other option; it was going up.

Then I set up an environment where they couldn't fail. Everybody in the room around them. The kind of pressure that clears your head of everything except the lift.

They hit it.

What they took away wasn't just a successful squat. It was the idea that you can engineer an environment where success is the only outcome. That the space around you matters as much as the training program inside it. The people watching and pushing have a direct effect on what you're capable of.

That's what we try to build at every TYAO event. Not just better lifters. Better environments for better lifting.

Who Should Apply

I get this question a lot. Who is TYAO for?

Here's the honest answer: it's for serious lifters who are ready to hear the truth about where they are.

Beginners who are still learning the basic patterns of the lifts would get more out of building a consistent foundation first. But if you've been training with real intent, if you compete or plan to, if you coach others and want to sharpen what you know, if you've been stuck and can't figure out why, this is the right event.

One attendee said it well: "I would suggest this event to any lifter who has some level of experience beyond beginner and is looking to refine their skillset and build a platform that can take them to the next level."

Another said: "No matter where you are, you can always get better, and you probably aren't where you think you are either, so go anchor yourself there."

That second quote is the one that matters. Nobody is too advanced to benefit. The coaches who've come through have experienced the same kind of shifts as the competitive recreational lifters. The things we look for and the corrections we make scale with the lifter in front of us.

Ninety percent of past attendees rated the event as more than or far more than their investment. Almost everyone said they would attend another event. Those are not numbers we manufactured. Those are numbers that come from people filling out a survey after the fact, with no incentive to be kind.

The Numbers That Matter for 2026

There are 2-3 TYAO events planned for 2026.

These are small groups by design. The ratio of coaches to lifters is intentional. We are not trying to run a large production. We are trying to give every person who comes through the event the kind of attention that actually changes how they train.

That means spots are limited. And when they fill up, they're gone.

Applications close March 15th.

If you've been thinking about it, if this has been on your radar and you keep finding a reason to put it off, I'd ask you to consider what that delay is actually costing you. Not in dollars. In training time. In progress, but it doesn't happen because the correction never gets made.

One attendee wrote: "You owe it to yourself to do this properly. Life and lifting are just too hard if you don't know how to brace well. You're just driving yourself deeper and deeper into the ground the longer you put it off."

That's blunt. It's also accurate.

How to Apply

The application is straightforward. We review everyone. The small group size means we're selective, not because we're trying to be exclusive but because fit matters. The more you provide in your application, the better we can place you in the right event.

Apply for Train Your Ass Off 2026 before March 15th

Applications close March 15th. Spots are limited across 2-3 events in 2026.