I Was Doing All the "Right" Things and Still Falling Apart
“I recently had my functional tests done, and fuck. I have to admit I was wrong. Dead wrong about my ability to train and 'good habit' my way out of internal dysfunction.”
Before I got convinced that functional testing would change how I coached and saw the application of training and exercise, I thought I could blindly apply good habits. For years, I took supplements because they were generally promoted as "good," I trained hard, and ate "better" than the majority of people. I experimented with diets to get leaner and build mass. I even went further, using breath work to regulate my nervous system, psychedelics to address mental constraints, and I learned music because of the vast research on its health benefits.
But in all the years of avoiding plastic, teflon, and fast food, almost none of it was validated in traditional blood work. In fact, a few tests would show I was "pre-diabetic" (an incorrect diagnosis from high-intensity training) and even an incorrect prescription for injecting testosterone, which came with three other drugs to "keep me in balance."
The above is from a friend of mine—a gym owner, coach, a gold medalist in weightlifting, and a fellow health enthusiast. I would label him "healthy," as in the top 1% of the population. He is lean, muscular, and tan, and he's also falling apart internally. His test revealed—similar to mine—that his system was not on the healthy trajectory we expected despite our concerted efforts.
When asked, we'd both say we "feel good." Mostly because we're comparing ourselves to the majority who look and feel terrible. But we had a common profile: our cortisol was flat, we weren't producing melatonin, poor methylation meant we were wasting money on all that healthy food, and I didn't need more testosterone—I needed to convert it properly. The injection would have just driven up estrogen, a problem that was actually compounded.
These markers weren’t bad enough to ping "disease" in traditional blood work, but they were enough to start changing how we felt. I was run down, burned out, unable to recover, and because I was just using what I thought were "good habits," I blamed it on aging or the consequence of owning businesses. What I didn’t know was that my failing motivation, negative thought patterns, and loss of lean mass all had specific internal causes that a doctor’s exam or traditional blood work can't see.
What sucked is that I couldn't just cold plunge my way out of it or shotgun the latest trend of supplements down my throat.
It's no shock that a doctor looking in my ear with a light and hitting my knee with a tiny hammer isn't going to discover much. Our system is fucked. If you wait for yours to break down entirely, the above protocol will be the drama, followed by an all too common: "well, that’s getting older for you." It's not. And fuck the medical system for gaslighting us. We know when something is wrong. The horrendous part is that they could measure it; they choose not to. I know this because WE measure it.
One of the biggest problems in our current healthcare is that we don’t try to fix a problem until it’s a disaster. This is the equivalent of waiting for someone to file bankruptcy before you look into their spending habits. Functional testing is like an audit for your entire system, the parts you can’t see or know, but distinctly feel.
Finally getting answers completely changed how I saw coaching. Before, I would blame a client's lack of results on their poor work ethic, a lack of discipline, or lying about their habits. That wasn't entirely wrong, but we have a much better way of detecting the culprits.
It shouldn't be any surprise that we are unique in our internal composition, and sorting problems requires pinpoint accuracy because the system is entangled. What’s more important than absolute values is the relationship between them. This is what functional testing provides, and what so few of us coaches wait entirely too long to understand.
If you guide others and don’t have a very good idea of what's happening internally, you are guessing. For most coaches, this will look like better income and extending their service. For me, I can't tolerate that. I want my clients to fix their issues as quickly as possible so they can get back to doing the things that they want. Because that's how I would want to be treated.
If something here resonated, or sparked some kind of interest, message us. You know when something is off. We say trust that and let’s validate it with real data.
