Present Tense Fitness

Present Tense Fitness Personal training for dancers and general population clients.

I know I risk being pedantic with this one, but it’s important, I think, to make this distinction. I don’t teach a class...
08/28/2025

I know I risk being pedantic with this one, but it’s important, I think, to make this distinction. I don’t teach a class. I coach people. That goes for students I work with. That goes for professionals I work with. That goes for my private general population clients.

I coach people, and through that process, I hope that people learn quite a bit. But, to me, coaching means there’s a contract. My end of the contract is that you will get stronger, more athletic, more explosive, and more resilient to injury while also improving your conditioning. And your end of the contract is that you tell me what’s going on with your body so that I can keep you safe, push you with tenderness, and help you achieve the results you need for your career.

The point of a fitness class is to move one’s body and maybe have some fun. Those are genuinely important things. The point of training—especially in the context of dancer sports performance—is to improve qualities that need to be improved to enhance one’s artistry.

If you follow strength sports athletes when they post their entire workouts, or if you ever see footage from the trainin...
08/28/2025

If you follow strength sports athletes when they post their entire workouts, or if you ever see footage from the training hall at, say, Olympic weightlifting events, one thing you’ll notice is how many of these athletes start their workouts with an empty bar.

Yet the finance guy who orders triple protein on his Chipotle walks up to the one empty squat rack at his Equinox and just starts loading plates? I don’t get it.

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that I believe in being smart and intentional about training. And I think I’m probably most known (to the extent that anyone knows who I am) for that messaging. But, listen, I’m also about that work. And it’s the intelligence and intentionality that allows for that work to take place!

I don’t have much of a fashion sense. So I ask the people around me, or the expert at a clothing store, what they think. When a waiter at a restaurant asks me about temperature for some sort of meat, I’ll always say, “what does the chef recommend?”

If you wanna be strong, watch what strong people do.

If you wanna be fast, watch what fast people do.

If you wanna log long miles on the pavement, watch what endurance people do.

In every one of those cases, you’ll see that intelligence and intentionality and care I talked about above.

If it’s good enough for all them, it’s good enough for me too.

08/27/2025

I’ve been using these two movements for a lot of the dancers I work with as a part of their warmups for strength training, but I think both moves would be great pre-class, pre-rehearsal, or pre-performance.

1.) I like these half-kneeling pronation drills to help grease the rotational element between ankle and shin. Key point here is to avoid commenting on my ash* while paying attention to the fact that my heel should stay planted. As my foot presses forward, you want to think of it flattening out against the ground, with the toes spreading. If you lose contact with the heel, you lose a huge part of what makes this movement work.

2.) The penguin walk we borrowed from David Grey rehab, and it’s a nice little maneuver to work dorsiflexion and calf strength. You’ll notice in the close-up that my heels are slightly elevated—dancers will find this to be far too easy if they are in full relevé. The point is to challenge that mid range of motion. And the dorsiflexion will help with plié.

*It was the end of a long day and I started making this video before remembering to moisturize. I apologize to all of those impacted by the sight.

You still won’t catch me training any of the dancers I work with like bodybuilders, because I don’t think bodybuilding t...
08/26/2025

You still won’t catch me training any of the dancers I work with like bodybuilders, because I don’t think bodybuilding training is an effective strategy for training all the attributes that dancers and athletes need.

BUT.

I damn sure will borrow best practices from the bodybuilding world to help the dancers I work with achieve the look that they need for people to believe that they’re strong—even when they’re walking into an audition.

So, the way I think about programming for people who have aesthetic concerns is that I have things I want them to do that will make them stronger, more athletic, and hopefully more resilient against injury. And then I’ll give them a low dose—low because my first priority is to manage cumulative fatigue—of bodybuilding stuff so that they have all the markers of masculinity that people look for.

I have a dream of a different world in which we’re not as silly about categorizing bodies and labeling them in all of these ways. But, until we create that world, my job always is to help the people I work with survive this one. So yeah, let’s do some bicep curls (AFTER we do our rows and pulldowns).

I’ve lived a hundred different lives. I started my personal training career a few hundred yards from here, quitting a jo...
08/22/2025

I’ve lived a hundred different lives.

I started my personal training career a few hundred yards from here, quitting a job recruiting teachers for New York City Public Schools when I realized the non-profit I was working for actually had disdain for the very students and teachers it purported to be helping.

I was earnest enough at the time to think that one starts an education non-profit because they love and respect the students and teachers in our public schools. I’ve found that’s rarely the case, and I quit that job on a whim.

Now, every day, I show up to train in this complex.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of work, and how distinct it is from the idea and framework of capitalism. The prison abolitionists I follow and learn from are all vehement anti-capitalists, and yet they talk *often* about work. The work we do because it needs to be done.

I think what originally drew me to training dancers is the extraordinary gap I saw between the amount of work I saw them doing and the amount of support I saw them receiving. That’s a very well-known gap in our culture, particularly for women and femmes and other marginalized communities. I wanted to help close it.

My goal starting out with training dancers was very simple: give them the same support and programming and attention to detail and rigor that high-level athletes get. I hope we’re doing that. I hope our work is doing that.

Anyway, I’m very proud of Present Tense Fitness and I thank you very much for following this page and being here. Don’t forget my colleagues , , and . This is a collective effort, always.

I train everyone I see with the same principles, but I train every person I meet as a unique individual with their own h...
08/18/2025

I train everyone I see with the same principles, but I train every person I meet as a unique individual with their own history, injuries, fears of the gym, and goals.

Stacking joints advantageously is useful for everyone.

But supposedly cutesy cues about how to deadlift using off-color language or vulgar anatomical terms can be genuinely traumatic.

Exercise selection based on priority, accumulated fatigue, and ability to focus is useful for everyone.

But not every exercise will be accessible to every body.

Mechanical tension drives muscle hypertrophy for everyone.

But misogynistic or homophobic lyrics could be the signal to someone that they’re not going to be welcomed in your space, or worse, could even be bullied for the mere act of existing.

We don’t have to change the exercises. We don’t have to use different equipment. We don’t have to alter the workload (other than the obvious best practice of meeting someone where they are).

What we need to change is how we think about a gym environment and who belongs in it.

I don’t have much time left with before she leaves to go on tour (more on that later), but for now, check out these ket...
08/17/2025

I don’t have much time left with before she leaves to go on tour (more on that later), but for now, check out these kettlebell swings.

Kettlebell swings are hinge movements, meaning they are supposed to be hip dominant. Different coaches prefer certain details (more or less bend at the elbows, more or less upright torso, etc), but one constant should be that the movement is a hip-dominant hinge where the kettlebell stays close to the body as it swings toward the body and through the legs.

Liv does that so well and so powerfully here. She’s always honest with me about her programs, and she hasn’t been a fan of this one. (It includes walking lunges, these swings, and single-arm push presses, so, I totally understand 🤣).

Anyway, I first met her as she was leaving Dayton for New York right around the same time I was, so I’ve gotten to see how much work she’s put into teaching Pilates, auditioning, dancing, and training.

I’m super proud of her and I can’t wait to watch as this next chapter of her career unfolds.

I hope you read all the slides here, because the last one is important too. There’s this gap between the dance world and...
08/15/2025

I hope you read all the slides here, because the last one is important too. There’s this gap between the dance world and the strength and conditioning world that really doesn’t need to exist. To close it, we need more S&C coaches showing interest in dance—and we need a dance world that recognizes their expertise and contribution.

Bodybuilders often lack the shoulder mobility to rack a front squat in the “proper” position the way an Olympic weightli...
08/14/2025

Bodybuilders often lack the shoulder mobility to rack a front squat in the “proper” position the way an Olympic weightlifter would. This is an accommodation due to lack of mobility and training differentiation.

When we opened our Dayton gym, we bought Rogue Echo interval bikes, but our smallest clients found the bike to be too big for them, so we purchased another variation of the same bike. (Rogue has since changed the design of the Echo to make it more accessible to more people).

When I’m training a dancer who’s never squatted before, often I’ll have them use wedges because dancers live in what’s called plantar flexion (a pointed foot), but one needs a good amount of dorsiflexion in order to squat deeply.

Some people will be more comfortable deadlifting from a sumo stance than they would a conventional stance depending on their anatomy and hip structure/function.

Point is, too often people think of accommodations for different body types as “making things easier.” But good coaches literally make changes to programs, exercise selection, and exercise variation based on the specific needs of the individual. It’s just what good coaches do.

I don’t care if you’re injured, inexperienced in the gym, a professional dancer, missing a limb, unable to walk, an athlete seeking to challenge yourself in new ways, or afraid. I’ve got you. The gym is for you. It’s literally my job to coach you and whatever you’re bringing into the training space. Why else would you be paying me money?

One of my most important values is that I don’t judge people’s fitness goals. You want to get huge and muscular? Cool. Y...
08/13/2025

One of my most important values is that I don’t judge people’s fitness goals. You want to get huge and muscular? Cool. You want to get lean and vascular? Cool. You want to be able to run a marathon? Cool. You want to be able to deadlift the house? Cool.

I don’t judge people’s goals, but I always want the people I work with to be honest about what achieving those goals looks like and what it takes. People confuse visible abs with strength; leanness with athleticism; and thinness for health. As I always point out, sometimes there are intersections among all of these qualities—but not always, and not with every individual.

The truth is, strong, healthy, and athletic people come in a lot more shapes and sizes than we’re led to believe in the United States. If you’ve actually trained people for any amount of time, you know this. You’d be shocked at the superhero-looking bodies that can’t move well at all.

08/09/2025

My own work from today. I whined at least 14 times longer about having to squat than the workout itself took.

1.) Barbell back squat 6x5 at 285.
2.) Barbell Romanian deadlift 3x12 at 195.
3.) Hurdle hops 3x5.
4.) Decline leg lifts 4x5.
5.) Rogue Echo :10/:20 x5.

This was week one of a new training cycle. I hated every second of the squats, and they will only get heavier through the month (though the number of sets will decrease, adhering to the inverse ratio between volume and intensity).

Address

222 East 6th Street
Dayton, OH
45402

Opening Hours

Monday 7am - 7pm
Tuesday 7am - 7pm
Wednesday 7am - 7pm
Thursday 7am - 7pm
Friday 7am - 7pm

Telephone

+19373967073

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