Who This Is For

First off, good for you for taking the first step toward your health. If you want to build a stronger more capable body, look better, and improve your health markers, you're in the right place. Whether that means keeping up with your grandkids, exceeding a military fitness standard, or just feeling good in your own skin, the path is the same: honest coaching, sound programming, and consistently doing the work.

 

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Our Mission

Our mission at The Strength Standard is to promote health, capability, and physical change for anyone willing to put in the time to earn it. For 10+ years, I've professionally helped people from all walks of life, from active-duty military members, to middle-aged clients seeking a drastic physique change, to older adults building the physical capital they'll rely on for the rest of their years. We pride ourselves on being honest above all else, grounding everything we do in sound strength and conditioning theory and an evidence-based practice.

 

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My Story

The Early Years

I was ten years old when I had my first gym experience. A friend's mom would sneak us in, telling the front desk we were thirteen. I've been obsessed with training the human body ever since. I was an information hound, every magazine, every book, every DVD, every forum post and grainy online video I could find. This was the 2000s, so there wasn't much online yet, but if it existed, I found it. That search led me to Westside Barbell(Louie Simmons' legendary powerlifting gym in Ohio), and to Elitefts(a strength equipment company and training resource founded by powerlifter Dave Tate a former Westside powerlifter) and an Elitefts 2006 article with a small blurb: "best book for all coaches: Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe." I bought and read everything by Mark Rippetoe, probably not fully appreciating what was being said at the time. I still have the old Starting Strength editions with Rippetoe & Kilgore (Starting Strength, Practical Programming, Anatomy Without a Scalpel), as well as the new editions and Mark Rippetoe's other essay books. I also obtained all the Westside Barbell books, and every other text any good coach at the time recommended: Zatsiorsky, Verkhoshansky, Siff, Bompa, Bondarchuk (mostly old Soviet Bloc sports scientists and coaches, whose research became the foundation of modern periodization theory).

 

Ventura Barbell Club

In 2009, I found a small, private powerlifting gym listed on powerliftingwatch.com called Ventura Barbell Club. I emailed the coach, polite and sheepish, hoping for a reply. He must have liked my email, he told me to meet him at the gym for an assessment. I had no idea who he was or what he would look like. His name was Thad Coleman. He was a giant man, a 6'4", 350lb wall of muscle, and a former Westside Barbell powerlifter(which I just thought was the coolest thing ever), college football player, and believe it or not a former ballet dancer.

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It turned out this wasn't a commercial gym at all. It was invite-only, run out of a big private storage space that Thad had paid for entirely out of his own pocket. Thad was pivotal for me and my coaching career. He never charged me a dime, he made the excuse that I was a student, but really he was just a genuinely kind guy who wanted to help a young kid learn and get strong. The equipment in that gym was the best money could buy: 2 mono-lifts, 3 competition benches, 2 full power racks, 4 platforms, a full dumbbell rack, sleds, reverse hyper, GHR, and all the weight in the world. Thad was chasing his own personal best, a 1,005-pound multi-ply squat. There were usually five to eight other monsters lifting at any given time, all old-school powerlifters. To say the least, I was lucky to be in the room. I got strong in that gym. I learned to cue, to spot, to run the mono-lift, to take care of equipment most gyms never see. Eventually I became an assistant coach there. My only regret from that time is with myself, I wish I'd been more consistent, pushed harder, and asked more questions, but that's probably true of anything in hindsight.

 

Eventually Thad moved into bodybuilding and relocated to Metroflex Long Beach, coaching powerlifting alongside Liz Freel(an old-school legend in the sport). Once Thad left, I started my own small gym out of a friend's parents' yard, bought the equipment myself, let the family use it whenever they wanted, and ran group sessions for a rotating cast of college friends. Eventually I made the full-time move to San Diego, working in commercial and private gyms while I kept building my education.

 

Valens Strength & Conditioning

That's when I found Valens Strength and Conditioning, a Starting Strength gym that had just opened in San Diego. Valens was an incredible gym: knowledgeable coaches, a tight-knit community, and every bit of space and equipment you could need. I first reached out to Nicole the head coach and SSC at Valens because I knew what the Starting Strength Coach certification(SSC) actually meant, a standard I couldn't get from almost anywhere else. 

 

They ran me through my Novice Linear Progression the right way this time, with enough food, enough sleep, enough consistency, no second-guessing the program like I used to as a kid, and I got strong. Fast. I wasn't the only one. I watched it happen over and over: people with zero lifting experience, people who'd tried everything else, seniors reclaiming the strength they needed to stay independent. I watched 80-year-olds squat and deadlift again. I watched people recovering from serious injuries, people just finishing chemo, rebuild into some of the strongest, most capable versions of themselves. 

Somewhere along the way, Nicole found out I had training and coaching experience in the industry and asked if I wanted to be their first intern. The answer was an easy yes. I coached clients under her supervision, studied the books front to back, attended multiple seminars, and absorbed as much as I possibly could. Eventually I became a coach at Valens, and my coaching ability took a large jump. My cueing got so sharp, I could cue someone accurately from across the room, just a little flex ;). Starting Strength and Nicole gave me the deeper principles; Valens clients gave me the opportunity to apply them.

 

I'm endlessly grateful to Nicole for taking a chance on me, and to the community and everyone at Valens, some of the funniest, kindest people I've ever met. I still miss it.

 

Building My Own Path

Like a lot of gyms, Valens didn't survive COVID. Like a lot of coaches in this industry, I spent that stretch picking up the pieces of my career, going back to gyms I'd worked with before while I rebuilt my business and my client base. Today, I run The Strength Standard as my own standalone business, and I bring the same integrity and honesty to it that I learned from every coach who came before me.

 

The unique edge I bring to my clients comes from my years of experience, and from the fact that from day one, I intended to be a coach. I've competed a handful of times in various sports, but before, during, and after each one, I knew competing wasn't the goal, the goal was to make me a better coach. What I loved was the process: understanding it completely, and figuring out how to hand that understanding to someone else. I'm not the athlete who became a coach. I'm the coach who was built for it from the start.

 

A lot of people confuse athletic ability with coaching ability. And while there's some value in having an amazing athletic career of your own, I firmly believe that at the higher levels, the two are completely different jobs. You can take comfort in knowing that what you'll always get from me is honesty, a vast and unique experience, and from the ground up high-level coaching ability.

 

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How I Coach

As a coach, I work with you. I bring my expertise, but I want you to be as informed and involved in the process as you're willing to be. Everyone falls off track sometimes. My goal is to make sure that, over time, you're applying not just the right signals to your body, but the right amount of them, consistently enough to create real, lasting change.

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I bring a deep understanding of programming and periodization, along with years of experience in behavior change, built through self-study, formal education, professional training, and hands-on work with some of the best athletes and coaches in the field. All of that experience and knowledge goes into every client I work with. The goal isn't just to build bodies, it's to build capability that carries into every part of your life.

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Above everything else, I'm honest with my clients. This is a deeply personal endeavor for me, both as a coach and in my own life. Integrity, honesty, and the constant search for truth come before anything else.

 

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Credentials & Experience

• Mesa College A.A. Kinesiology → SDSU B.S. Kinesiology Pre-Physical Therapy

• NSCA-CPT → NSCA-CSCS

• S&C Coach and personal trainer, 10+ years across multiple commercial and private facilities

• Strength Coach, Valens Strength and Conditioning (Starting Strength Gym)

• Assistant Powerlifting Coach, Ventura Barbell Club

• Intern, SDSU Division I Athletics, SDSU Adaptive Clinic, and physical therapy clinics 

 

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Thank you

Thank you to my parents, friends, coaches, mentors, teammates, coworkers, classmates, clients, and anyone who's had an impact on my life. Thank you for shaping who I am, both as a coach and as a person.

 

I'm lucky to live in a world with such a wealth of information. And I'm grateful for my own health and physical and mental development, which keep me sharp and grounded in this work.

 

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Ready to Get Started?

Navigating your health and your body can and probably will be one of the hardest things you ever do. We're here to stack the cards in your favor, no matter where you're starting from or how much you feel like you're slipping. Our goal is to be a lasting resource for you, helping you build real lasting change in your health, body, and mindset.