Self Reliance Archives · Agoge Fitness Systems

Josh Serrano

By Dave Hall Agoge, Empowerment, Fitness, Fitness Business, Happiness, Interviews, Mental Meat Heads, Motivation, Movement, Perfect Imperfection, Personal Development, Personal Training, Recovery, Strength, Strength Training

Meet Josh Serrano. Josh is one of those young guys I love to interview. At 21 he has a clear sense of purpose and direction. At 21, I could have barely told you what I wanted to do today let alone with my life. Part of Josh’s sense of direction comes from having nearly lost it all at a young age. At 10 Josh suffered a stroke. It left him paralyzed on one side of his body. At 12 he was gifted with a set of weights by his grandfather and he’s been training ever since. Listen in as… Read More »

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Mental Meat Heads 2

By Dave Hall Agoge, Bodytribe, Chip Conrad, Fitness, Fitness Business, Happiness, Interviews, Jason C. Brown, Kettlebell, Mental Meat Heads, Motivation, Movement, Olympic Weightlifting, Personal Development, Personal Training, Powerlifting, Self Help, Strength, Strength Training, Weightlifting, Zen

Hoo boy. This just might be a mistake. This was supposed to be a joint interview with Jason C. Brown and Chip Conrad, a slick marketing ploy to help promote our upcoming workshop, Mental Meat Heads 2, September 21 and 22, in Indianapolis, Indiana. It would probably be better titled Laugh Track with Three Goobs. If we’re lucky there’s some intelligible material here, after all we are pros and really good at what we do. But the thing is whenever the three of us get together we just end up having so much fun. Which is exactly what you’ll be doing… Read More »

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Of Plans and Purpose

By Dave Hall Agoge, Diet, Emerson's Acre, Empowerment, Eric Hulse, firewood, Fitness, Happiness, Movement, organic gardening, Perfect Imperfection, Personal Development, Self Help, self reliance, Strength, Strength Training, sustainability, urban farming, urban gardening

I love it when a plan comes together. That’s the catch phrase of one of my childhood heroes, John “Hannibal” Smith of the A-Team. Actually, my real hero was Mr. T., who played heavy muscle and mechanical genius B. A. Barracus of the aforementioned team, but “I pity the fool” doesn’t really play into today’s blog post. And truth be told I’m stretching Hannibal’s catch phrase because in all honesty I’m not much of a planner. I just sort of head off on a particular path and then revel afterwards about how everything seems to fall into place of it’s… Read More »

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Fighting Over 15%

By Dave Hall Agoge, Empowerment, Fitness, Fitness Business, Mental Meat Heads, Motivation, Personal Development

I’ve said this before, but when I started out in the fitness industry I was a total whore. And not in the “I know who I am and what I’m doing” kind of way that takes advantage of the system for my own personal gain. No, I was that wide eyed girl from Kansas who’d never seen the big city before and got taken in by that slick pimp Willie who got her hooked on heroin and out turning tricks in less than two weeks. I became addicted to the idea of what I “could” look like. As if somehow… Read More »

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Devin Gage

By Dave Hall Agoge, Empowerment, Fitness, Fitness Business, Interviews, Mental Meat Heads, Motivation, Perfect Imperfection, Personal Development, Personal Training, Strength, Strength Training

Meet Devin Gage. Simply put, Devin is one of my heroes. He’s young, just two years out of college, but he’s a single dad, with shared custody of his daughter, AND an entrepreneur. Devin owns his own gym and online coaching service Gage Strength Training. Devin is a man of spirit, passion and commitment. Last January during Mental Meat Heads 1 Devin’s flight from Philly was cancelled due to a snowstorm. Undaunted Devin caught a flight to Atlanta early the next morning, rented a car and drove the remainder of the way from Atlanta, arriving just in time to make the… Read More »

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Kat Ricker

By Dave Hall Agoge, Empowerment, Fitness, Happiness, Interviews, Martial Arts, Mental Meat Heads, Motivation, Movement, Olympic Weightlifting, Perfect Imperfection, Personal Development, Personal Training, Strength, Strength Training, Weightlifting

Welcome to the platform the Mighty Kat, Kat Ricker. Not only is she a weightlifter, she’s a former competitive bodybuilder, a boxer, a published author (no, really, she’s got REAL books for sale on Amazon), a photographer, a film maker, and a promoter of park lands for the great state of Oregon. Listen in as we discuss all these things from ill spent youth to the joy of movement and doing battle with gravity. To listen CLICK HERE! To watch GO HERE! And don’t forget, the Creating the Holistic Weightlifter workshop is THIS weekend. Reserve your spot NOW! To our perfect imperfection, Dave Read More »

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Tamara Reynolds

By Dave Hall Agoge, Crossfit, Empowerment, Fitness, Interviews, Mental Meat Heads, Motivation, Movement, Olympic Weightlifting, Perfect Imperfection, Personal Development, Personal Training, Strength, Strength Training, Weightlifting

What up everybody! As promised, today I’m bringing you my other weightlifting coach and the founder of Asheville Strength and Conditioning (remember, the conditioning is silent), Tamara Reynolds. If right now, you’re thinking, “Hey, I thought it was Tamara Cohen.” It was. And now it’s changed. Deal with it. 🙂 Tamara is a powerhouse. On her way back from a knee injury, she’s already squatting weights that question my notions of my own abilities, and I easily outweigh her by 100 pounds. Needless to say, having her as coach is a tremendous inspiration and a swift kick in the pants.… Read More »

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Brian Lederman

By Dave Hall Agoge, Empowerment, Fitness, Happiness, Interviews, Mental Meat Heads, Motivation, Movement, Perfect Imperfection, Personal Development, Personal Training, Strength, Strength Training

By all rights Brian Lederman shouldn’t be here. And by here I mean HERE, as in among the living. Raised in a highly dysfunctional household under a single mother crippled by addiction and her own abusive past, Brian, at the tender age of nine, discovered, after a prolonged and undetected infection and an unplanned stay in the hospital, that he was now a Type I diabetic. Fast Forward another 6 or so equally dysfunctional years full of drug and sexual abuse, parental neglect and the not infrequent hospital stay. At 15 Brian found his salvation. It came from the mall,… Read More »

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The Icarus Deception

By Dave Hall Empowerment, Happiness, Motivation, Perfect Imperfection, Personal Development, Self Help, self reliance, Uncategorized

As a kid, I read a lot of mythology. Greek, Egyptian, Norse, it didn’t matter. The heroism found in these fantastic stories of gods, men and monsters, resonated with me. They showed through analogy and metaphor the best me that could be. So, I was familiar with the story of Icarus, which if you’re not involved Icarus, his father Daedalus and the king of Minos. Icarus and his father were prisoners of the king on the island of Crete. To escape, Daedalus, a famous inventor, fashioned two pair of wings made from feathers affixed to a light wooden frame with… Read More »

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Mace Clinkenbeard

By Dave Hall Agoge, Empowerment, Fitness, Happiness, Interviews, Mental Meat Heads, Motivation, Movement, Perfect Imperfection, Personal Development, Personal Training, Strength, Strength Training

As a writer I pay attention to names. You might say I’m a bit of a collector. Cool names catch my attention and I hold on to them, sometimes just to trot out and say, “Hey, have you heard this cool name?” Mace Clinkenbeard made the short list. Which I’m very happy about because not only does Mace have one of the coolest names I’ve ever heard, he’s also one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. Mace started his strength journey as a female athlete. He started with basketball and moved on to shot put and hammer in high… Read More »

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I Don’t Know Squat(s)

By Dave Hall Agoge, Fitness, Mental Meat Heads, Motivation, Movement, Perfect Imperfection, Personal Development, Personal Training, Strength, Strength Training

As much as we, as Mental Meat Heads, like to say we work outside of ego, we are not immune to it and from time to time fall prey to it’s lesser qualities. So it is with humility and no small touch of embarrassment I offer this post. I thought I was a good squatter. Despite the fact the squat is not my strongest lift, I actually thought it was one of my better lifts. I can get pretty deep into a squat, or I should say, I can get my butt very close to the ground with my feet flat… Read More »

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Jennifer Conlin

By Dave Hall Agoge, Empowerment, Fitness, Happiness, Interviews, Mental Meat Heads, Motivation, Movement, Perfect Imperfection, Personal Development, Personal Training, Strength, Strength Training

Meet Mental Meat Head Jennifer Conlin. Jennifer is the head Coach at CrossFit Legitimus in Canton, Connecticut. Self described as “Sporty” Jennifer has a history of athletic involvement in nearly every shade of the spectrum from endurance sports, like cycling, to her current passion, Olympic Lifting. Listen in as we discuss the fitness industry, training and the ups and downs of running a gym in the “new” economy. To listen click HERE. To download, Right Click and ‘Save As.’ To our perfect imperfection, Dave Read More »

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