I worked for Muscle & Fitness magazine at the height of the magazine era. We were King Kong in the fitness trade world; M&F had a half-million monthly subscribers, another couple million in newsstand and overseas sales – Dr. Jim Wright, the longtime science editor for Flex mag, brought me onboard. I had 90 + feature articles published – including five in one issue; I sat front row center at the Olympia and Arnold and my niche was training – I quizzed the living hell out of the best in the world about how they trained (lifting and cardio) and how they ate. Everyone else, the staff guys, dreaded being assigned to do training articles – I loved it. The guys I interviewed got that I was really in the deal (IPF world master champion powerlifter with an 800 squat) and they opened up to me and we made training article music together…

 

Perhaps the most intelligent bodybuilder I ever interviewed was also coincidentally the best looking: an exotic Eastern European named Milos Sarceev. Milos had a perfectly symmetrical physique and a face like a Slavic angel. Milos said something to me in 1991 that stuck with me to this day. "Marty," he said in his luxurious bohemian accent, "a real bodybuilder – you take and lock him in a empty room for twenty minutes – you come back and he has successfully pumped and activated every muscle on his body." Indeed, what could be more purposefully primitive, (my code of ethics) than being deprived of all equipment and still being able to engage in a productive resistance workout? To Milos, the ability to obtain an effective resistance training workout without equipment was the highest expression of the progressive resistance art.

 

So when John asked me to review a no-gear dude who had written a book about the whys and wherefores attached to being a personal trainer – my first response was, "Why me?" and without the slightest hesitation Du Cane said, "Because this guy is Gonzo, Marty." Oh, well why didn’t you say so earlier? Of course! Being a senior member, a Gonzo OG, requires I extend every courtesy and hospitality to another Gonzo Guild member. And so it came to pass. And, as Du Cane predicted, I loved the book.

 

Not so much for the content – not that there was anything substandard or insufficient –the essential core of the book is aimed at either being or becoming a better personal trainer. As a fitness cave monk that avoids contact with civilians, that subject matter was of little interest to me – just saying – I do personal training on an extremely limited basis and only with elite athletes. The PT tips, pointers, guidelines, landmines and ways to do better are all in place and discussed with a nice authoritative nonchalance – so that stuff was good –what was better was the vibe, the stance, the tone, the left-field, art school, skateboard,surfer, X-Game Gonzo feel.

 

Thank f*#king God someone in fitness has a creative streak and is capable of thinking outside the suffocating box of conventional fitness lockstep group thought: guys like the crazed Kavadlo brothers and manic Jim Steel are getting results for clients across the board and all the while maintaining idiosyncratic personalities – they are offbeat dudes using offbeat methods to create renovated humans.

 

In The Wild Ones, 23-year old Marlon Brando is the head of a biker gang razing a town and ravaging the locals. He is asked by a reporter, "What is it, Johnny that you are rebelling against?" Brando says, "What do you got?" Indeed, some of us are born to live a little wild and reckless, past the outer lip of societal norms, ethics and boundaries. The innovators never reside inside the box of conventional fitness thinking. Look to the radical thinkers for radical solutions – but caveat emptor! The frauds hide best amongst the freest thinkers.

 

Danny strikes the right tone: if you are built for it, personal training is one hell-of-a-satisfyingcareer: do it right and you are literally transforming people’s bodies and lives. So if you think you’re built for it and considering jumping into the shark tank of personal training, I would think this book would be invaluable. And the tattooed Gonzo vibe is priceless.