If you pay more, you’ll be healthier—or so I thought, when I signed up for a concierge medical subscription for $80 a month.

And it would have been fine if the doctor in question—a very nice, but clueless naturopathic resident—gave me better advice than:

“Those good cholesterol numbers could be higher. Start resistance training 3x a week.”

So after whining to my husband for two weeks about the imminent death of my daily yoga practice, he passed me over to JD, and the rest, as they say, is history.

JD was raised by bodybuilder parents who owned a weightlifting gym, was a dual collegiate athlete, and has a bunch of acronyms after his name that prove he knows his sh*t with exercise.

On top of his training clientele, he’s also a devoted father to three children (all under the age of 5!) with a full-time job at Volt Athletics, where he designs workout programs for athletes all around the world.

In other words, he is just as busy—if not more—than I am, and still makes time to work out.

So when I emailed JD about what I could and couldn’t do because of writing and parenthood, he customized a yoga-inspired workout program I could do in my office with some dumbbells and a handful of resistance bands.

Six months later, I finally worked up the courage to drive to his house for a barbell tutorial because as much as I love my husband, I despise being “coached” by him. JD immediately made me warm up on a fan bike, followed by at least a dozen deadlifts, and too many split squats. By the time it was over, my legs were shaking and I stopped cracking jokes because I was having trouble breathing.

But the stronger I got, the more I doubted my writing abilities.

Why was I struggling to articulate my story?

Was I smart enough to grasp plot structure?

Did I really give up a career I was moderately happy doing to fail at executing the vision I had in my head?

The coolest thing about weightlifting (to me) is that you’re constantly evaluating yourself—your mood, your sleep patterns, what you ate or didn’t eat, the amount of weight for the expected number of reps for each exercise.

I still can’t deadlift much beyond the bar itself, but my goal is to be a published author, not become a competitive weightlifter. And JD never once tried to convince me otherwise.

He met me where I was at.

He let me take the lead.

He focused on my personal wins, not where I should be.

And most importantly, he gave me an external mechanism to rebuild my confidence as a writer—and learn to trust my instincts again.

Without weightlifting, I would have never stood my ground for a dual timeline, multiple character-arc story, going against all advice thrown at aspiring debut authors—and weeks later, the outline practically wrote itself.

When the price of the concierge medical membership jumped from $80 to $249 a month, I immediately cancelled; and used the savings to buy my own fan bike.

And when I decided to test for the firefighter fitness requirements, JD was the first person I called—and he was quick to remind me I was the one who did the hard work to get here. Not him.

In fact, I had to beg him to put together a special training offer for Spring because:

1. A medical professional is going to “strongly encourage” you to exercise eventually (damn you, good cholesterol)
2. There’s only so much talk about weightlifting I can do before a reader’s going to be like, “Uh, I thought this was a newsletter about writing?” before unsubscribing for all of eternity.

So without further ado, I'm excited to introduce the Forever in Progress Training Club, where you can access JD’s workouts and expertise alongside my snarky commentary—all for cheaper than what you’d pay for lunch in Seattle.

I’ll share more info in upcoming emails, but til then, check it out.

Talk soon,

Sophia :)

P.S. Don’t judge me too hard on the copy. I drafted it right before picking up my daughter, forced JD to futz with the layout over Zoom, and after 10 minutes of humoring me, said: “Seriously, stop overthinking this.” So I did. (See? I’m growing.)