Zach is an author, founder of The UnderGround Strength Gym, and Creator of the Underground Strength Coach certification. His inspiration in training comes from the Golden Era of Bodybuilding & days of Old School Strength. His mission is to help you kick ass & take names in life AND lifting without the hype, fancy fads or gimmicks. 

Note from Matt: This was a phone interview that was recorded and written down later by me. Some of Zach’s answers may be edited slightly for an easier read.

Matt: I want to start off by asking you a question on behalf of the coaches who use StrengthPortal and are currently in the earlier stages of their careers. What’s the most important thing to know when searching to find their voice and their purpose as a fitness professional?

Zach: Yeah, I love that question. It’s a question that most coaches struggle with. Instead of continuing to search to find themselves they usually end up with a voice that matches what’s popular or trendy with the fitness crowd at that point in time. These coaches are afraid to voice their opinion and to be different. The fitness space is so crowded that if you follow a path similar to what I just said you’ll never stand out and get noticed. What’s extremely important is that these coaches should not be afraid to be themselves. It’s completely o.k. to be influenced by other coaches because every great coach and every great entrepreneur there is an influence or mentor. But don’t be afraid to do your thing and to speak your words. The most successful coaches I’ve met are the ones who are doing their own work versus getting caught up in what everyone else is writing about. You have to do what you believe in your own heart and to trust your gut instincts. Your gut instincts will allows tell you if you’re doing the right thing and headed in the right direction. This is something I emphasize all the time to coaches I work with.

Matt: To build off of that, in your book you talk about the numerous styles of training you tried until you found a system that resonated with you. If you were going to start over what would you do to speed up the learning process?

Zach: Yeah, so I had a bodybuilding background before I started to focus on training athletes. Back then it was much harder to gain the information than it is today. On the flip side, today there’s so much information that it can be confusing. When I started there was one, maybe two, training websites that discussed training strategies. There were two websites that discussed the business side of fitness. To get to the point, what I would highly recommend for trainers to do what I did and immediately invest in their own education. I immersed myself to build my knowledge. Going back I would do the same thing. If I was starting out today and didn’t know right from wrong I’d be very careful to try to avoid reading too much from the internet. I would focus on visiting other gyms and facilities. I would find other trainers and pay them to mentor me. When I was getting started I would take trips to Westside Barbell and many other places to learn hands on. It’s just a completely different experience from reading an article.

Back when I started my certification the trainers I encountered didn’t know too much about actual training. They didn’t know how to deadlift or how to zercher squat. Today I see a lot of coaches who know how to do the big lifts. They’re not amazing at it, but they’re good enough. What they’re missing is how to apply these tools, how to change these lifts, and the knowledge it takes to make adjustments. They don’t know what to do when somebody’s weak or has poor posture. They don’t know what to do when someone is injured or had a major surgery. These are the things you can’t really learn from reading online. If I was going back to do it all over again I would try to quickly find the coaches I resonate with, connect with them, and I would find a way to pay them and learn from them in person. More immersion rather than learning just through the internet.

Matt: You mentioned in your book that you’ve worked and been mentored by some of the bigger names in the industry – Louie Simmons, Alwyn Cosgrove, etc. What’s the one piece of advice you received from that surprised you and everyone else seems to overlook?

Zach: I had some one-on-one conversations with Alwyn Cosgrove and Dave Tate who always gave it to me straight. They both advised me never to make decisions based off of money. They wanted you to look at pros and cons. How a decision would affect your family life and your personal priorities. That had me looking at things way differently than from a pure business perspective. Sometimes it’s difficult because the emotional aspect of business is something you need to remove. Those were things that they really focused on getting across to me and it’s something I still think about to this day. All of these answers I’ve given you is the way I operate today. I really don’t care what everyone else is doing. I focus on doing things that are going to help people. My talking points may not match up with what’s popular at the moment, but I know it’s something super important so I do it. I turn down many opportunities that could be lucrative because it’s something I’m not passionate about. Other times I take opportunities that offer a low financial return because I’m so passionate about the outcome and it could be beneficial to my family. The countless conversations I had with Alwyn Cosgrove, Dave Tate, Jason Ferruggia, and others helped me focus on this.

Matt: I want to talk about community. Through a lot of trial and error you’ve built an incredibly strong community of athletes who train in your gym. What advice would you give to other coaches who building a community of their own?

Zack: It comes down to caring. You can’t fake that no matter how hard you try. When you care you end up doing the right thing. You end up constantly learning and increasing your knowledge for you clients. Caring is the ticket. I don’t think enough people care enough. You see coaches who are missing opportunities to improve their clients technique/form and not making every session as great as it could possibly be. When you care you will rise above. You’ll be tired, but you’ll fight through it to give your kids, or adults, you train everything you have. I don’t think people realize how much of success comes down to just genuinely caring about helping their clients reach their own goals. I think this is what’s helped me more than anything in my career. I care about my athletes success so much that it drive me to a level I can’t even put into words. If you care only about a few of your clients or only when you feel good it’s just not going to cut it.

Matt: So you’ve carved out your niche in the fitness world which is focused on garage-style training for the sport of wrestling. What are your plans from here to continue to impact this market?

Zach: Right now we’re making the Underground Strength Coach certification available online. To be honest with you I don’t know if it’s the best way to do this. The past two years we’ve found that people aren’t as willing to travel and want to learn from their computer. I’m not one to aggressively market our certification and get people to our seminars. We have one coming up in a few weeks that has 12-13 people signed up. That’s a pretty good number, but it takes a much longer time than it used to. I get emails from people around the world everyday who just can’t reach these locations where we are. They keep on asking for an online course. So, we’re going to offer this as an option and do a test to see how it goes.

Everything that came back from the book has been quite amazing. I’ll be working with some pretty heavy duty military units which is beyond exciting for me. I’ve also been hired by the Lehigh wrestling team as their strength coach. So I’m doing a lot more in-person work and less online stuff. It’s just what I feel comfortable with. I’m just going to keep focusing on offering great stuff for people.

One thing I would love to do but has been really hard to find is a steady camera guy to come in and do a reality thing with the kids who come to my gym. I want to show the amazing commitment that they have to their training and the lifestyle. They go on and succeed at college and beyond. It really is something that the country needs to see.  There are so many excuse makers out there and I want to show these guys who are kicking ass in all areas of their lives.

Matt: Since just about anyone can create a certification nowadays why should fitness professionals take yours seriously? How could they benefit from doing the Underground Strength Certification?

Zach: That’s a great question because you’re right. When I first started this certification the only one’s around were the big one’s that had been there for years and years. It’s been six years since we started our certification and it’s constantly evolving. They truly learn a system and how to individualize their approach for each client. They learn our warmup system and how to use it as an assessment tool. They use these assessments to create training program and to improve program design. On top of that they get to be a part of our community for a lifetime and get put into our mastermind group. The experience of learning they go through is very intense. They are required to come in and work with us and our athletes. They get feedback from working with us in-person that I could just never explain through an ebook. Coaches who have gone through my seminar in-person have become extremely successful. They’ve opened their own warehouse gyms, left jobs behind that weren’t fulfilling to them, and learned how to leverage their expertise to create money online. The life-changing aspect of the certification and the knowledge gained is powerful. Like anything I do with people I tell these coaches that I will not let them down. I’m there for them and I really care about their success. It’s just the way I operate. Anyone who comes to this certification is going to leave armed with knowledge about business and how to approach life. They are things you just can’t learn elsewhere. It’s an amazing community of coaches that we’ve slowly built and I love meeting everyone that wants to be a part of it.

Matt: What question should I have asked you today that I didn’t?

Zach: That’s the question I always ask people (laughing). I don’t know….I don’t fear any question. Maybe the piece of advice I would give to the coaches using StrengthPortal would be to not be afraid to evolve as a coach. Don’t be afraid move on to different methods and experiment. I’m always evolving as a coach. There are times when I step away from the online fitness world because I don’t resonate with it. Sometimes I get tired of it. When I do that I just push heavily on my in-person training and focus on what’s happening in the gym. All of these aspiring coaches should ask themselves why they’re doing this all. Nobody asks me why I do what I do which is what drives me to be a successful coach. Coaches need to know their why. Why are you a coach? Why is it so important for you to become an amazing coach? When you can answer that and have a great why you are unstoppable. You will become a great coach. My why is very simple. I want to represent my family and to be a person that my kids look up to. When I make decisions I want to make sure they are ethical business decisions and that I can always tell my kids how I built my business. How it came from my heart and wasn’t built with tricks, gimmicks, or fads. That’s the question you should have asked me and what you should ask every coach.

Matt: Well I guess I’ll have to end it right there because that’s about as good as it gets. I was at a fitness event called Motivate this past weekend with Dan John and Coach Stevo and that was one of the things we focused on as well. I’ve known this for a while, but to put it in words was powerful for me. Our focus with StrengthPortal is to build a software that leverages personal trainers expertise and allows them to help more people than ever before. There’s a lot of people out there who need someone but just may not have access to them so we’re going to do what we can to help.

Zach – It’s true. It’s great that you’re doing that because a lot of trainers who are training on the floor might be asking why they should move online in some form or fashion. Man, I get emails every single day from people thanking me for helping them out in some way. Whether it’s inspiring them to lose weight, or get stronger, or to become a better coach. When I first got started I certainly had some doubts, but I genuinely had an attitude where I knew I could help people. If you’re a coach and you believe in what you’re doing get out there. Use StrengthPortal and reach more people to help them. It just feels great to change more lives. This is the age of technology and we have to leverage it as best as we can.

Matt – Big shout out to Zach for giving us some of his time and sharing his experiences with us. If you’re interested in reading or interacting with Zach more check out the links below:

– Zach's Website
– Book – Non-affiliate link
– Podcast