I was sitting in the flying germ tube at 30,000 feet, heading home from Columbus, Ohio, after checking off a goal so big I had to read the invite three times to make sure my brain wasn’t cooking itself.
I had rolled into the elitefts compound in London, Ohio.
Yes, that elitefts powerlifting equipment mothership, and sat down as a guest on Dave Tate’s Table Talk podcast.
Honored is not a big enough word.
Let me back up.
More Than Two Decades in the Making
Rewind to 2000.
I’m a nobody with a barbell and a caffeine problem, and I hear Dave Tate speak for the first time.
It rewired something.
By 2003, I’d scraped together the cash for a full elitefts power rack, a straight Texas power bar, a trap bar and a flat bench.
I moved from training people in the local gym to my garage.
Those exact pieces?
Still in my gym.
Getting loaded to this day.
More than two decades of abuse and they haven’t so much as flinched. Battle-scarred old warhorses that refuse to die, plus a pile of other elitefts gear I’ve hauled in since.
So when the invite to Table Talk hit my inbox mid-flight, somewhere over the clouds on my way back from presenting at ISSN, the sports nutrition science crowd, I thought I’d misread it.
Read it once.
Blinked.
Went back and read it twice.
Third pass, I checked it like a kid matching a lottery ticket against the numbers.
It was real!
Three Hours That Felt Like Ten Minutes
I showed up early, shot some content with Noah, thank you, sir, then got to just… talk with Dave.
Business.
AI.
The kind of conversation that leaves you buzzing.
Then Tom Sheppard joined in for the podcast, and the three of us went for what I think was three hours.
The clock straight-up lied.
Dave and Tom made the whole thing effortless.
Both of them asked the kind of questions that pull the good stuff out of you, and I got to unload more than 25 years of hard-won nerdery on tape.
Yes, I am old. I still think in terms of tape and music albums.
Wild!
Here’s the Part That’s Actually for You
I’m not telling you this just to flex.
There’s a lesson buried in it.
The 19-year-old kid who started training in 1992, during my first year of college, had zero clue he’d end up across the table from Dave Tate.
By the time I outfitted my garage with lifting equipment in 2003, I still didn’t see that coming.
It is proof that it can be done.
Keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Keep working your craft.
Stack the small, unglamorous, nobody’s-watching reps.
In the gym.
The research.
Your writing.
Whatever your craft is.
Compound that over months, years and decades, and it builds something you couldn’t have drawn up on purpose.
That’s the whole trick.
Not the sexy part anyone wants to hear, but it’s the reliable one.
Keep sharpening your craft.
You too can do it!
