Meet Me: Brett
AKA FightSmith Training

Fitness and health is tough. I mean like, "whine and complain crying because I don’t want to do it anymore this is stupid I hate this", kind of tough. Unfortunately in the world today, we are inundated with get-fit-quick schemes. Flooded with social media posts about diet pills, blogs about 5 minute abs, magazines and books about detoxing your body with magic juice cleanses. It’s a lot. And frankly, it’s a lot of crap.

I was your typical Texas athlete growing up. I played football in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring and summer. My life revolved around sports. I focused in high school on baseball and it became my life. I was pretty good, not to toot my own horn too much. I went to the state championship several times and had numerous college scholarships.

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“Hey Brett, cool story. What’s the point?”, you may be asking.

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Well the point is this: being young and having coaches forcing me to workout and eat certain foods made fitness and health pretty easy. The problem was when I graduated, went to college and then grew up and realized that no one was forcing me to workout or telling me what to eat. I went from the extremely athletic high school all star, to a pudgy, winded and out of shape adult. I had no drive. I had no goal. I had no purpose. And just as much as I dealt with weight changes, I also started dealing with some serious depression and mental illness.

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So I decided to make a change. And I tried everything. I mean everything. The “Alphabet letter- 90 day-extreme” home workouts. The crash diets. The fad weight loss attempts. And each time the weight came RIGHT back. Usually with more and more drastic results. Until one day I woke up and found a 260lb man with almost 45% body fat staring back at me in the mirror. And I realized I didn’t recognize myself. So I mixed it up again. For real this time.

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I joined a martial arts studio.

Whoa. This kicked my butt. Both literally and metaphorically. I realized suddenly that I loved the discipline, but I had to make some serious physical and health changes if I wanted to really excel at it. So I changed my diet. I looked into actual research and found what science has proven to be effective. I researched actual peer reviewed articles on lifting and exercise. I dug in deep to find what would not only be effective but actually maintainable. I was tired of the back and forth. I wanted a life change.

Time went on and I ended up becoming a certified instructor in Krav Maga. It taught me many important lessons.

Two of which really changed me:

1, you can always be more active and work on your fitness. There is no final spot or mountain top to stop at. Your body is every changing, and the goal will be too.

2, no matter how bad you want to stop, never stop fighting. Never. The changes with your physiology come with changes in your mindset. You have to find comfort in the uncomfortable. Peace with the monotony. And happiness with the small incremental successes. 

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So I wanted to keep fighting. Sure, some literally as a self-defender and improve on those skills, but also in the health fight. I ended up contacting the National Academy of Sports Medicine. I became a Certified Personal Trainer and went on to become a Certified Nutrition Coach. Which in turn I then went on to work with CrossFit HQ to become a Level 1 coach.

With everything I learned, I knew one thing for sure: if I had to fight to find the right information to help me turn my health and fitness around, then other people were too.

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And here I am today, a real voice in a sea of bad advice and social media “experts”, to help you in your own journey. We all need someone in our corner. We all need a little help. And that’s what I’m here for. To offer you hope, encouragement and science based tools to help you in your health and fitness journey.

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The name FightSmith is a play on multiple things. Of course the most obvious is my name and the fact that I train in self defense and firearms. The other aspect though is about metal work. Like a blacksmith.

 

Hang with me here...

 

My grandfather was a metal worker. And he related a lot of life lessons to metal work. When I was in the thick of dark or hard times in life, he reminded of what metal work is.

It’s taking a piece of iron.

Shoving it in the fire.

Hammering the hell out of it.

Beating it mercilessly.

All in order to make it something brand new. Something that the iron wouldn’t even dream of becoming in the end.

 

And that’s how life is. Usually we can’t see the end goal. We can’t truly imagine what we are capable of becoming. But to get there, we have to go through the fire and into the forge. We have to endure the pain, the heat, the sweat and the process. All of it. And we have to have the right tools for the job.

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That’s why I’m here. To offer the right tools for your journey of change. To help you, as you go out of the fire and into the forge.