Jonathan Goodman

10/15/2026

Lin was a 28-year-old engineer who came to me from another trainer at our club. She was the hardest worker I've ever trained. She was also the quietest.
I talk a lot in sessions. Instructions, background on the exercises, stories to fill the silence.
Lin's answer to all of it was a nod. Sometimes a smile. Rest periods were awkward. I knew almost nothing about her life. I only found out her sister was getting married because she told me two days before she took a week off.
Quiet clients make you second-guess yourself.
I kept doing my job. A great workout every time. I explained the plan and why each exercise was in it. I trained her twice a week for a full year.
Then she gave me a holiday card.
She poured her heart out in it. She thanked me for getting her through a really hard time in her career and her personal life. She said she looked forward to the quiet motivation and the calm of our workouts.
She had been listening the whole time.
After that year, she started talking between sets.
To this day, I don't know what she was going through. It wasn't my business. I did my job.
-Coach Jon

10/14/2026

You don’t need to show your ass.

You don’t need better content.

And you definitely don’t need to buy
Gary the Guru’s fu***ng IG reel mastery course.

Begin building actual human connection.

If you’re frustrated that ripped IG Fitness influencers are getting clients and you aren’t, then stop acting like them.

They’re better than you at being a ripped influencer. That’s fine.

Stop playing somebody else’s game. You’ll lose.

Highlight what about you is different.

That’s why, if successful trainers were honest about how they got clients, they’d tell you that they listen more, and speak less.

—ask great questions.

—understand why fitness matters to them on a deeper level.

—genuinely give a s**t.

Too often good trainers get obsessed with IG and forget what’s important.

Then they complain that they can’t get clients.

The reality: The reason why you can’t get clients is because you’re wasting your time creating content when you should be cultivating connection.

10/13/2026

Alison and I decided to fill our garden beds with stone. Three tons. It took two months.
Between podcast recordings, I'd take thirty-minute breaks to haul it. I always came back to my desk refreshed.
The first few times, my boys just watched. We never told them they had to help.
A few days in, they toddled outside to join me. They were not helpful. If I'm honest, they made the job harder. I'd shovel. They'd pick up a few stones by hand and put them in the wheelbarrow. Then they'd walk beside me while I wheeled the load over. After I dumped it, they hopped in the wheelbarrow for the ride back.
Two weeks later, I was outside shoveling and saw Calvin rearranging my stones on a sloping garden bed.
"I'm making a wall so they don't fall," he said. "It's like building blocks."
I would never have thought to build a wall along the slope. He did. It was smart.
So my job for the rest of that day was to be his helper. I picked through my pile, found the biggest stones, and carried them over to him.
His design is still there.
-Coach Jon

10/12/2026

IG is entertainment first, information second.

What works on IG to get likes isn’t what works best to get healthy.

Realistic, sustainable, and effective exercise is often boring to watch. So it gets squashed by the algorithm.

Instead, what you see are sensationalistic circus acts by Booty-Band Betty and Billy the IG-Fit Kid.

And nothing against Betty and Billy. I’m sure that they’re nice people.

But Betty, not every exercise needs a booty-band. Triceps kickbacks don’t need a booty-band, Betty.

Fact is, we’re all blind to 99.9999% of what goes on behind the scenes.

Even the most prolific over-sharers disclose 1/1000th of a % of what they’ve been through and what they do on any given day.

If IG-Fitness were honest, they’d tell you that there’s no get-ripped quick secret just like there’s no way to get rich quick.

The body adapts in response to consistent, repetitive, and progressive stimuli. It is literally that simple.

That’s why if good trainers were to showcase their training, it’d look boring.

Same s**t, different shirt.

Don’t get it twisted. There’s nothing wrong with playing around in the gym. Just know that that’s what it is: play–not intelligent training.

There aren’t any secrets, nobody’s discovered anything new.

Oh, and the only reason booty-bands are popular is that they’re cheap to make and can be sold at a high profit.

Now you know :)

You with me? Drop a 🎪🎪🎪 in the comments if so.

10/11/2026

It was 8:37pm, raining, and the gym was nearly empty. My client and I needed the 5-pound dumbbells.
A member was doing standing curls so close to the rack that nobody else could reach it. We waited. He finished, put his weights back, and stood there adjusting the music on his iPod. Still in front of the rack.
The gym’s our second home. Leave space. Consider others. Treat the area in front of the DB rack as the no-lift zone.
-Coach Jon
P.S. Share this with a trainer who works the gym floor.

10/10/2026

If you’re frustrated by IG Fitness Nonsense confusing consumers, then you must share good work.

Support your colleagues. And learn from them.

When we all learn from each other. When you learn from others, your clients will benefit.

Give attribution and act with abundance.

When you do this you’ll quickly realize that what you get in return is worth many times more.

That, and it’s simply the right thing to do.

10/09/2026

10/08/2026

For over a year, I had a client who read almost everything I did.

We had such similar taste that we stopped talking about it and just started trading. I'd finish a book, hand it to him after his session. He'd finish his, hand it back with "you have to read this one."

One Christmas I got six gift cards. All to the same bookstore. Six different clients. None of them knew what the others got me.

I used to leave whatever I was reading sitting right there on my desk. On purpose.

Never said much about it. Just always had a book on me. Left it out to start a conversation and connect.

Making a friendship last starts with shared curiosity.

Lift with your body. Read with your mind. Jacked nerds are unstoppable.

-Coach Jon

10/08/2026

Sometimes I wonder how much healthier, wealthier, and happier society could be…

Then I remind myself that everything anybody ever wants to know is accessible.

This isn’t a post hating on the school system.

Instead, it’s a post celebrating the abundance of information.

You can’t blame anybody else for not teaching you what you needed to know.

You must hold yourself accountable

You can learn anything—for free.

Holy s**t that’s amazing!

All that it takes is the choice to skip the latest hit Netflix show you don’t actually care about and dedicating that time to making your life better.

—
These five skills are the most important topics you could ever learn:

1. Strength training
2. Empathy
3. Ethics
4. How money works
5. The science of happiness

Every person who studies them will live a healthier, wealthier, more popular, and more joyful life.

And you can learn them all. How wonderful!

—
Cool Jon, I get it. Where do I start?

Let’s get some recommendations going in the comments.

Please share a person, book, YouTube video, or anything else you think is useful on any of these topics.

This should make for a GREAT list for all of our benefit.

I’ll start with my two book recommendations:

1. Psychology of Money - Morgan Housel
2. Stumbling on Happiness - Daniel Gilbert

Make your recommendation(s) in the comments.