Who is Gabo?

Discovering your passion is not what many people think of, you actually start to realize it after all the symptoms are there, at least for me it was.

Before I tell you how I got here, I want to share a short story that defines who I am as a personal trainer and coach.

While working in a commercial gym I had to confront a situation with the district manager for personal trainers, it was uncomfortable for both of us as I decided not to play the game it was set on the table of discussion. I’ve had too much experience in the corporate world to buy into scripted nonsense or even tolerate it.

I was being trained on how to improve personal training sales for the department I worked for, and it focused on how to convince people they needed the benefits of working with weights for muscle development. This included a diagram that was taught to counselors, tailored intelligently to paint a picture that few could refuse. The problem was: they were lies.

I was well aware at this point of the gimmick presented before me to be adopted as part of my job, I had previous experience with someone else who tried to push this strategy into my work, to which I respectfully rejected the application of it and I moved on. But this time I was talking to the creator of such diagram, who had influenced probably thousands of members and dozens of counselors over the years with it.

But this time I was talking to the creator of such diagram, who had influenced probably thousands of members and dozens of counselors over the years with it.

As I sat with him, I once again refused to use his gimmick because of fundamental flaws in the explanation, which in actuality was a distortion of the truth for the sole purpose of making a sale. I exposed the lies in it, and I firmly stated that my ethics prevent me from lying to people just to get some bucks out of their bank account. 

Needless to say, he wasn’t happy about it, he tried defending his lies with utterly invalid points, each one of them rebutted by my anecdotal and research knowledge. Now, I don’t take pride in this because these lies are so blatant that anybody who has a hint of how the body works in this field of metabolism can discern. This cost me the position I held until then.

I wrote a couple of posts debunking his rubbish, the most important ones being the muscle furnace myth and the frequency myth, two things that were both deceptively and manipulatively used to make people feel like they needed a personal trainer.

My integrity is never for sale, I got into this business to help people, not to sell them false hopes and fake results so I can make some money.

The rest of me

My name is Gabriel Lugo, for years I’ve been trying to fight the deceits and absurdity of the fitness industry. It has always bothered me how some individuals and corporations take advantage of people’s dreams to change their physique, to screw them over with fake products with the sole purpose of taking money out of their wallet. But my story is multifaceted.

I’m a simple guy who grew up in Venezuela, in a decadent period that was plunging the country into the misery it now lives in, where for the first time I fell in love with the strange sport of weight-lifting.

You see, I was never good at sports, I never liked them anyways and people still scratch their heads when I say it, but somehow once I grabbed my first barbell I felt I had found a new world. I remember this barbell was actually a pipe with cement on the ends at my friend’s house, back in my country and with my living standards a gym was a luxury.

I still committed to it, I remember doing squats, shrugs and rows with it, and perhaps some other exercises with horrible form and with no idea of sets, reps, tempo, or rest periods. I just did what my buddies were doing. And boy did it feel awesome.

The next day I was crippled from traps to calves, this soreness was the strongest pain I ever felt. It would take me about a minute to get up from bed, and walking was a struggle.

I loved it.

Maybe it was the teenager macho feeling, or the naive notion that I must have built lots of muscles that day, whatever it was it hooked me.

I sometimes entertain the idea that I enjoyed this physical activity, as opposed to other sports, because of my early millennial gamer mentality to take a challenge and be able to overcome it by myself. Silly as it may sound, this is what led me to develop this passion for what we call weightlifting, it really was a personal agenda to become a better me.

Gaining some structure

It wasn’t until I moved to the United States, more than a decade ago, when I learned the very basics and foundations of nutrition and training. I discovered a magic (ahem… science) for altering body composition and for years I used it to maintain a favorable physique, so it was just for personal use so to speak.

Learning the science about nutrition and training was like discovering a life hack, through which you were able to transform your body and improve your physical capacity. The passion to study and learn the foundations of what makes up this science was fascinating, and I’m still having mind-blowing moments when I find out new information.

It wasn’t long before I realized that this power was something that can also be applied to others, I knew I could help others by making them understand the principles of this science, and they in turn could also make the changes they wanted.

But times passes and things change

A breakthrough happened in 2014 looking at the mirror, I suddenly realized I had relaxed too much and through time I had become that overweight guy in his 30s, living in the comfort of US middle-class American Dream™.

One day I looked at myself and asked “what the fuck happened?”. Cliché as it sounds, I found a motivation that had never been there before: I was afraid of dying young.

You see, I carry a family history of heart disease and Alzheimer, both associated with poor nutritional and activity behaviors, and there I was with all my knowledge, helping others in this field while not considering my own health.

And that was it, the simple thought of not being around my son when he gets old was scary. So I took control of my situation once and for all as a lifestyle.

Taking it to another level

This is about the time I decided to take things beyond anything I had achieved before, I didn’t care that in my 30s I wasn’t young enough, there is actually never a right time for anything.

I got even more into my self-studies, practice, behavioral changes, and living life from another perspective.

Helping people became a passion, knowing that I could make positive changes directly into their lives was so rewarding it was addictive, and for years that fed me until the point I started questioning if I was in the right track of my life while working for a multi-billionaire pharmaceutical corporation.

The transition

In 2016 I got the first push out of it, massive and careless layoffs in a company I had somehow self-accepted as my second home, somehow I was kept with a small remnant of friends I deemed family. But the eye-opening experience had already happened.

Finally, in 2018 the unavoidable occurred, I lost my job after 11 years. I was filled with joy.

I had already taken a decision to make this my new career, one where I can actually touch the results of my work and measure its success, control its variables and feel my contribution to society. I prepared way in advance.

Everything was in the works even back in 2015, and it was materializing little by little. Obligatory thanks to Andy Morgan.

The mentality

Ever since the beginnings of my involvement in the industry, I realized how much I abhorred the misleading and deceiving market of supplements and training nonsense that populated the sales. They prey on people’s dreams to lose some fat or gain muscle.

The motive behind my free content comes from here, knowing that there are so many obsoletes ideas, that at best qualify as Bro-Science™, being promulgated at your gym, the supplement shop, the trendy guru, and even those “professionals” that sale you something.

When I made my decision to become what I am now, I knew I was going to battle these shitty gimmicks that for years had taken advantage of unaware customers. And by happenstance I discovered a safe haven.

A profound learning

A community of evidence-based practice had been growing for years and it catered to my approaches. I went knee deep into the education and basis of the scientific side of everything pertaining the field. Being of a scientific mind myself since my teen ages, this clicked perfectly in my life.

It was so refreshing to learn that other people had been fighting the nonsense for years and it was now becoming a growing influence in the world of fitness. Impossible to resist the temptation and become one myself. Learning from the likes of Lyle McDonald, Eric Helms, Mike Israetel, Brad Schoenfeld, and many others was really enlightening.

Knowledge is the understanding of the science at so many levels as possible, they are mathematical and biological concepts, physics and chemistry reasoning; but applying it to other individuals is an art. Here is where the essence of coaching comes from.

There has to be this passion to educate and enjoy seeing how other people can apply your knowledge to their benefits, having the power to change someone’s life is empowering, but at the same time a greater responsibility knowing that you are working with individuals whom you can affect physically and psychologically.

That has been my commitment always, the motivation to help and see so many change their lives positively thanks to the nutritional and training interventions that I can offer, but also see them take control on those aspects in their lives, is a satisfaction hard to explain.

And so here I am, that simple guy from the beginning trying to keep life simple and meaningful for myself and the ones that surround me.

Thanks for taking this reading trip through my story.