In August of 2013, I was driving up to my dad’s house in Pennsylvania and it was a ride that took my life in a different direction. I get a lot of thinking done on long car rides and, on this one, I was contemplating what to do with my life. I was soaking in the last bits of summer before another high school football season was to begin, and I didn’t know how much more I had left in me. I wasn’t enjoying it like I used to.
At the time, the newspaper business was a six-to-seven day a week grind. That usually wasn’t a problem for me, but the business was changing. A big part of what made the grind fun was all of the friends I made along the way and they were gone. They either moved on to another field or company or were let go. The new people that came in were cool, but the total number of people in the building was much smaller than when I started.
I was 27 and quickly went from one of the youngest guys in the office to one of the most tenured. It was a reality check. The hours will increase, but the pay won’t. In newspapers, you’re just a number. What people don’t understand is whether you work hard or not, if you’re next on the list to go, you’re gone. You can’t outwork your way from being laid off because they just want to find someone cheaper. I was even looking outside of my paper and seeing huge names in the industry losing their jobs.
Reality was settling in and the thought that kept running through my head during this car ride was what was going to do with the rest of my life. I needed to figure out something before it was too late. It was a hard decision, but, after seeing what was going on around me, I was able to come to terms with it. When I was growing up, there were only two jobs I ever considered: working in sports media and being a special education teacher. Now that I realized sports writing could come crashing down at any moment, I needed to pivot. I had to figure out a way to get into the school system and fortunately I was able to.
Then, after I crossed that bridge, the thought of getting into training came into my mind. Around 2010, when the internet started getting bigger, I needed to make a change in my life and started looking up sites about training. Specifically, I focused on training for sports and how to get leaner. I was looking around trying to find the best coaches online. These things weren’t easily accessible when I was growing up, so I thought I stumbled on a gold mine every time I found an interesting article or program. I learned about fasting and thought I found the ultimate diet cheat code. I’d try to share this information with people, but nobody cared.
I figured that since I liked reading and learning about training so much, I should try to pursue it. I had no idea how to get into becoming a trainer and didn’t even know it was possible. It’s crazy looking back at it now, but I thought there was this huge barrier to entry. By the end of my car ride, I decided I was going to dive deeper into it.
The next week, I went into my gym and decided to ask John Errichello if it was possible. John ran the training business at the gym, and I’ve known John since I was in high school. John was the first person I met when I walked into Dolphin Fitness, which is now Intoxx Fitness, in 2002. My mom wanted to find a trainer to help me get stronger for baseball and he set me up with Frank Tripodi.
I look back at my time with Frank and it’s one of the things that led to me wanting to work with youth and high school athletes. He didn’t give me this crazy program, but emphasized the basics that still apply today. We did full body workouts to hit everything, focused on getting strong legs and told me how cardio could play a role in helping my strength training. He was also a big advocate for stretching and always said, “Charl, make sure you stretch so you aren’t walking around all stiff like these guys.” Just by doing the basics that Frank stressed to me I noticed an improvement in how I played.
Now, back to bringing up training to John. I think I’ve seen John mad once in my life, but I was still nervous to ask him about training because I didn’t want to come off as disrespectful. I wasn’t in the best of shape at the time and really didn’t know much about training outside of the things I read online. John is just a genuinely nice person and has always been good to my family so I knew he wouldn’t steer me wrong.
While most people would try to shut you down, John was helpful and told me I could become a trainer and that I’d actually be good at it. John said he would help me get in, I just needed to get certified. He said a good certification to start off with would be through the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM). He would help me with the studying along the way and, at the gym, took time to go over and answer any questions I had about training people.
I wound up studying the textbook every night when I got home from work. I’d get home around 1-to-2 a.m. and would read for about an hour or two each night. Outside of weekends, I didn’t have to get up early, so it wasn’t a problem. I was used to going to bed when the sun came out anyway.
The work paid off and I passed my training exam. On February 7, 2014, I was officially a certified trainer. I had no idea what the future would hold.