Elite coaches Jon Heck, Joey Szatmary, Dave Tate, and Sam Brown share their most critical advice for upcoming fitness professionals, emphasizing deep client empathy, effective communication, and purposeful social media use.

When social media showed up, lifters swore it would destroy everything authentic about training. Now, those same lifters are fighting algorithms instead of PRs. The problem isn’t the platform,  it’s how you use it.

The challenge is knowing when to pass that on and when to let someone else learn the hard way. Because sometimes the best lesson isn’t what you tell someone; it’s what you let them experience.

The gym teaches you more than how to get strong. If you pay attention, it teaches you how to lead, how to think, and who you actually are.

For years, bodybuilding work was treated like fluff, something “real” lifters didn’t waste time on. Powerlifters mocked curls, lateral raises, and cable work as meaningless vanity exercises. If it didn’t build the squat, bench, or deadlift directly, it didn’t matter. But time has a funny way of proving you wrong.

Brett Carter details how Omaha Barbell evolved from a private studio into an 8,000-square-foot public facility furnished with durable elitefts equipment to serve a diverse community ranging from "average Joes" to pro strongmen. Carter emphasizes his goal of building a legacy through conservative expansion and hosting expert workshops to continuously improve training techniques.

"The mission behind the whole company, Elite FTS, is to educate and outfit those with a strong desire for strength to become better".

Every generation of entrepreneurs thinks they’ve discovered something new, a revolutionary marketing system, a game-changing funnel, or the perfect “method” for growth. But when you strip the buzzwords away, the fundamentals haven’t changed: create real value, communicate clearly, and build trust through consistency.

The guys who laughed at online training now rely on it to pay their bills. That’s not hypocrisy — it’s evolution. If we return to the pre-Internet era, it’s the same story told through different technology.

The deciding factor for success in lifting is confidence, requiring lifters to work on their inner dialogue and reframe negative thoughts, such as the limiting belief of a sticking point that "always" happens.The only consistent variable among top strength athletes across all disciplines is the ability to autoregulate training, a crucial skill that prescriptive programming often inhibits.

Those promoting the safest, injury-free training solutions become rehab specialists.

There comes a time when the barbell stops being a scoreboard and starts being a lifeline. It’s no longer about chasing a number — it’s about maintaining the ability to move, to feel capable, to keep doing the thing you love for as long as possible. You stop chasing validation and start chasing continuity.

 "If we cover all these bases all year round... you will make faster progress because you don't spend time correcting weaknesses because nothing gets particularly weak in the first place".

Many trainees are consistent with their physical presence in the gym but fail to maintain consistency in the mental discipline and specific habits, such as sleep and stress management, required for genuine growth. This disconnect often leads to the "training sins" of ego lifting and program hopping, where short-term gratification is prioritized over long-term, sustainable progress.

"God damn it, this place has some fucking voodoo magic on her or something, it feels so fucking good. I feel like I pulled 800 today."

"If you work shift work, if you're a first responder, if you're a nurse, if you're a new parent, there are things that you can be doing to improve the amount of sleep you're getting, to improve the quality of that sleep, to reduce that overall cortisol. You don't just have to suffer through it. It's not the cost of doing business, like I chose to do this job, and I made the choice to suffer for as long as I did before I found somebody who could help me write the ship."

Time has a way of humbling lifters. You stop worrying about who’s right and start recognizing who lasted. The legends weren’t always popular — they were just consistent long enough for everyone else to catch up. When you’ve been around this long, you realize that respect always arrives late, but it’s the only thing that sticks.

Shaun Kopplin's life pivoted around 2014 when powerlifting became a crucial path, helping him focus and deal with the grief following his brother's death after he had struggled with criminal activity and drug addiction. After time in solitary confinement, he focused on lifting weights to maintain a trajectory that kept him out of prison, eventually founding Wolfpack Barbell and Cream City Clothing.

Top powerlifter Craig Foster (2298 total) follows an unconventional training philosophy where he rarely lifts heavy weights in the gym, preferring to work up only to his opener in sessions. This approach relies heavily on high-volume work, such as five sets of 10 squats at 50-60% of his maximum, allowing his competitive maximum to exceed his training maximum far.

As middle-aged lifters, we carry a decade or more of experience to draw upon, giving us a competitive edge in training. However, we must protect our health and follow Cole’s advice when we feel the stakes are too high.

Limited Time - Lifetime Crew Access ends Tuesday, Dec 23rd, 2025 

Rebecca Roberts, a three-time World's Strongest Woman, currently holds the titles of UK's Strongest Woman, Europe's Strongest Woman, and World's Strongest Woman concurrently. Winning her second World's Strongest Woman title was deeply meaningful, as it occurred the day before the first anniversary of Paul's passing, proving she could overcome the hardest time of her life and emerge as the strongest woman, both physically and mentally.

Most lifters don’t stall because their program sucks—they stall because their habits do. These are the 7 “deadly sins” of training that quietly wreck your progress and what to do about each one.