Present Tense Fitness

04/16/2026

Been a minute, Dayton, since I’ve talked to you about Christina specifically, and today I wanted to point out one of her areas of expertise.

If you or someone you know is grappling with Parkinson’s, I wanted you to know that she is an Exercise Physiologist specializing in training Parkinson’s patients, helping them develop and maintain power and movement capacity.

Unfortunately Christina is also a fan of the perpetually sorry Pittsburg Pirates, which is a lack of judgment we hope you can overlook. (Before anyone points out that I’m a fan of the perpetually overconfident but underperforming New York Mets, my message to you is mind your business).

For real though, she is the real deal. Christina holds a master’s degree in exercise science from Ohio State, has competed as a bodybuilder, and is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS). She has experience coaching large groups of athletes as well as introducing strength and conditioning to people who are new to the gym, bringing a calm demeanor and rigorous approach to every session.

Christina has some slots available, so if you’re interested in working with her you should email her directly: christina@presenttensefitness.com.

Her varied interests and abilities as a coach emphasize a point I’ve made before: training a Parkinson’s patient is not as dissimilar from training a D1 athlete as one might think. It’s always—ALWAYS—about training the individual in front of you, finding opportunities to get stronger, and accommodating any movement limitations.

Christina does that with all of her people, and she does it well.

04/13/2026

I’m very proud of the work that Susan and I are doing and this piece really gets at why. (Link in my stories).

This quote in particular made me smile: “Stepping into a room teeming with teenage girls, baggy sweats pulled over their leotards as they consult clipboards with their individually designed workout programs is like entering a new age. They dead lift with serious weights, they sweat through chin-ups and they leave with a bounce in their step.”

Susan and I work within a team led by Aesha Ash, who was one of the first people to see the value in what we’re trying to do, and, maybe more importantly, how we’re trying to do it.

My sincere hope is that the work we’re doing now in this space will resonate and vibrate throughout the dance community. And I hope those clipboards and individual programs we write for everyone we train is a signal that individual experiences and bodies and goals and histories matter.

Also—a huge thank you and shout out to the Dayton dance community, with so many people who trusted us before they had any business doing so. Dayton Ballet, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, and Dayton Dance Initiative, this is your work too.

04/13/2026

PTF in the New York Times.

At the School of American Ballet’s new health and wellness center, bodies and minds share equal billing and everyone gets the help they need.

04/09/2026

With athletic movements, often we’re trying to work qualities like rate of force development and change of direction. But, to work these aspects of athleticism, intent matters at least as much as form.

Particularly for dancers and athletes—who have limited time and limited energy—we need to make every repetition count. Otherwise we’re just needlessly adding stress without adaptation.

For the dancers that I work with, who are used to rep after rep after rep in which they’re chasing perfection, the messiness of “throwing the ball through the wall” can be jarring and unfamiliar. And, sometimes to them, it can almost feel like a waste of time because they’re not feeling a burn or getting exhausted. it’s always important to keep in mind that we’re chasing adaptation, and fatigue is the result of training—not the point of it.

03/30/2026

Subway thoughts.

1.) Consistency and simplicity often go hand-in-hand. If the setup or logistics of an exercise are time- or energy-intensive, people are far less likely to do it. The simpler but potentially less perfect exercise ends up being superior simply because it actually gets done.

2.) An increasing number of dancers know that strength training is important, but when they program for themselves they often neglect athletic movements. Strength and conditioning ≠ bodybuilding.

3.) Sleep, nutrition, and stress management are not separate topics from strength and conditioning. As much as we’d like to pretend otherwise, we have one body. We take that body to work, to our relationships, to our responsibilities, to our kitchens, to our bedrooms. What happens in any one of those places can also impact what happens in the gym.

4.) There is no single exercise that every single person needs to do. Finding an alternative exercise to replace a movement isn’t so much a regression as it is smart training: it’s about finding the movement for our individual body that accomplishes the same goal while avoiding injury and accounting for experience and even preference.

03/20/2026

Training is stress management. Too much and the body will break down. Too little and the body won’t adapt.

One of the confusing things about trying to understand fitness in the social media universe is it can be difficult to discern the intended audience. So many times people are following fitness advice intended for different audiences, and the effect of that can be injury and/or illness because the recommended training volume or intensity are inappropriate for the individual consuming the content.

“How much is too much?” is dictated by your individual capacity for recovery, which is very inconvenient. But our bodies don’t react to our wishes. Our bodies react to our environments, both in terms of the culture and access to quality care we live in and in the environments we create for ourselves.

We always have to be thinking holistically, therefore, because what we do outside of the gym (and how we live outside of the gym) are the things we bring with us into the gym.

03/13/2026

World events got me thinking a lot about masculinity lately. With all of the talk from young men about “locking in,” so much of that energy is devoted to looking a certain way. And what I would encourage every man or boy or masculine-presenting person to think about first is being strong, rather than just performing it.

This isn’t isolated to dance. Go lift in any commercial gym, and you’ll see guys prioritizing the muscles that you can see. Biceps. Chest. Shoulders. Relatively fewer of them squatting, deadlifting, pulling, and moving explosively.

For dancers and athletes, you can’t afford to train like a software engineer whose only concern is filling out the vintage t-shirt. You’ve gotta be able to do stuff. And listen, I get it, we all have a little bit of that urge to look a certain way, but the great news is, strong-strong always looks good, and with a few finishing touches you can be both the person who fills the sleeves and the person who can help a friend move apartments without collapsing under the weight of a couch.

Both/and.

03/11/2026

If you’re training for performance, not every movement you do should be about building muscle. Your training should include movements that develop and challenge your ability to create force rapidly, to tie together the upper and lower body with coordination, and to sense where your body is in space.

These are three movements I prescribe for dancers, but they are applicable and helpful for anyone who wants to be able to move athletically.

1.) Rugby toss against the wall: great for teaching rotational power and transferring force through the ground and back hip, manifesting in a hard throw.

2.) Medicine-ball loaded side hop with vertical hop: great for teaching deceleration in the frontal plane (side to side), and great for developing coordination between upper and lower body. You’ve got to sense that landing and then rapidly create the force to get up in the air.

3.) Bosch cleans: great for single leg explosiveness. This morning I gave the cue to someone that they should try to make the dumbbell feel almost weightless because the hips are driving so much of the power.

Training isn’t always about building muscle. It’s often about developing the overall skills of athleticism. “What is this working?” It’s working your body.

02/23/2026

I took a walk to get a coffee. Took some pictures of the snow. Wrote a few programs. Studied some knee stuff for a few clients. Thought a lot of thoughts.