The short version: Naval Nuclear Operator turned strength coach, coaching people who plan to stick around.

I spent over 8 years in the US Navy, mostly onboard submarines, keeping a nuclear reactor running. I served onboard the USS Salt Lake City and USS Kamehameha; I spent time teaching students how to safely operator a nuclear power plant in Charleston. You learn a few things in that job.

You learn that the flashy stuff doesn't matter and the boring stuff keeps everyone alive: checklists, consistency, doing it right when nobody's watching. You learn to stay calm when a gauge does something you don't like. And you learn that a good system beats willpower every time, because willpower runs out at 0200 and the system doesn't.

I carried that into the thirty years that came after - a long career keeping complex machines running in semiconductor manufacturing - and eventually into how I train and how I coach. Iron & Breath is what happens when nuclear training methods & systems are applied to fitness: reading the research, asking questions, getting certified, experimenting on his own body and rebuilding it, and then decides the people who'd get the most out of all that are the ones his own age.

What I actually believe

Strength and breath are the same project - which is why the name isn't a slogan, it's the thesis. The barbell builds the structure. The breathing and mobility work keeps it usable - keeps you able to get into the positions, recover between sessions, and calm your nervous system down enough to sleep and repair. Most training treats that second half as an afterthought. I don't. I now know training, sleep, and nutrition all play into my mental and physical fitness.

I found my way to it through yoga, which surprises people who meet the barbell half of me first. My current practice showed me that breath and mobility work aren't the soft option - they're what lets the heavy work keep happening, session after session, year after year. Strength and yoga turned out to be the same idea wearing different clothes. Add a long habit of tracking my own recovery instead of guessing, and this is what I landed on. It's the whole basis of how I work.

I'm not coaching from the sidelines

I'm 59. I've had 4 different doctors tell me I have arthritis in different joints in the last few years. I still train hard - I just train smart about it. I swap movements that aggravate the joints, manage the load carefully, and route the hard conditioning to a rower instead of pounding my knees on pavement.

So if you've got your own list of things that don't work like they did at 30, we already speak the same language. I'm not going to hand you a program built for a 25-year-old and wish you luck.

The formal stuff

Since you'll want to know: I'm a certified personal trainer through the NSCA and a CrossFit Level 1 trainer, and I'm currently earning my Yoga Teacher 200HR certificate; studying how breath and movement fit together. Before any of that, I trained as a nuclear operator in the Navy, which is where I learned how to run a system you can't afford to get wrong.

But the certification that matters most is the thirty-plus years I've spent doing this - on myself first, and now for other people.

Are we a fit?

I'm not the right coach for everyone, and I'd rather say so up front. If you want a 30-day shred or someone to scream in your face, we're not a match.

But if you want to be genuinely strong and mobile at 60 and 70, if you like knowing the reason behind what you're doing, and if you'll put in the unglamorous work week after week - we'll get along fine. That's exactly the person I'm built to help.