Biography
"Experience, combined with an understanding of principles,
cultivates the patience to
witness the fruits of your efforts.
We all want health and longlife. I always had a healthy body, yet never had a body I liked. Back in the 90s in Bulgaria, there was no fitness culture, only old post-communist weightlifting gyms. This is where we started. Information about training was non-existent, and the situation with sports nutrition was even worse. This unique set of circumstances was where we began lifting weights, running, and doing calisthenics (working with body weight) to try shaping our bodies. Meanwhile, I was playing basketball at the national level. Our coach was not happy with me and other members of our team getting bulkier. He thought that the muscles would make us heavy and slow. He was a student of another time and the Russian exercise nutrition school, which to a certain extent still dominates the field of sports exercise science, but things are slowly changing.
From these early days of my teenage years through to the very end in the Bulgarian army, I was a dedicated disciple of weights and training. I served in a special forces unit in the army, where I built my first improvised gyms—both an indoor room and an outdoor summer space for the soldiers and me to have options to lift weights. This passion and dedication have always helped me in my life. Lifting weights makes everything easier; that’s the whole point.
After the army, I had to figure out my life in a real way, but I did not want to work a job that would limit my ability to train and improve. You can imagine how many of those jobs were on the market: none, zero, zilch. From here, private enterprises were my only option. I tried many things—from working with my father in a car body shop to selling projects for the first wind turbines planted in Bulgaria. It was hectic, stressful, and, even if successful in financial terms, very empty of essence for me. And again, all these endeavors were roadblocks to my training passion. In the mid-2000s, I decided to devote myself only to training, and the way to do that was by opening my first supplement store in partnership with a friend of mine. It was okay, but not very successful. We took too much credit to open it, had too little experience to run it, and even less free capital to live while we were trying to survive as a business.
At the end of this period, I offered him the option to keep the store, and I left for America, specifically New York City. I’d heard that personal training was a thing and a very well-paid one. I was done. I found what I was looking for, or at least I thought I did. Soon after arriving, I discovered that NY was not the best when it came to hospitality. I got discouraged and flew back to Bulgaria, where, upon arrival, I saw the magnitude of my mistake. Nine months later, I was back in America, this time in Los Angeles. I met a great Bulgarian karate master, Grisha Todorov, and he showed me around and gave me valuable insight into the state of the fitness business in general and shared his roof with me for a couple of weeks, for which I’ll always be thankful. We did not know each other from before, which shows what a person this man was and still is.
After this brief period, I moved to Las Vegas, got certified by NASM – National academy of sport medicine, Precision Nutrition Level 1 and 2, in reality mostly trough 30 years of experience training myself and others.Then i have rented a local gym to begin my journey in personal training. This would never be possible without meeting my amazing wife, Ivanka. The beginning was like every beginning—full of expectations and free of clients. Nobody knew me, the language was still a limiting factor for me, and I was struggling to make a full schedule of clients. This changed in the next six months, and as the client base increased, I decided to compete in natural bodybuilding for the sake of seeing how far I could push myself, and I did. I prepared under the critical eye of Matt Porter, a heavyweight bodybuilder who opened my eyes to the world of online training. We never met, but under his guidance, I achieved my all-time best shape and won my category in the 2015 WNBF competition in Sacramento. After that, I was committed to developing my own online personal training practice. For one simple reason—it was way cheaper and more efficient than in-person training. Today, we call this coaching. It’s great because it compresses time for our clients.
From that time to today, I have had the honor to help, educate, and train thousands of people with my fitness challenges, including those with the best-ever Bulgarian fitness model, Bilyana Yotovska, only for women. Combined, I’m training more than 500-800 people a year in all challenge editions. At the same time, my personal coaching is the essence of my operations, where I spend time with people to discover ways to find their full potential and fit it into their lifestyle, which is the hardest thing. Long story short, I finally managed to achieve what I was looking for—to do fitness, to teach fitness, and to be part of the most important industry in the world, the one that gives people not only the longest life but the one with the highest quality.
We all want health and longlife. I always had a healthy body, yet never had a body I liked. Back in the 90s in Bulgaria, there was no fitness culture, only old post-communist weightlifting gyms. This is where we started. Information about training was non-existent, and the situation with sports nutrition was even worse. This unique set of circumstances was where we began lifting weights, running, and doing calisthenics (working with body weight) to try shaping our bodies. Meanwhile, I was playing basketball at the national level. Our coach was not happy with me and other members of our team getting bulkier. He thought that the muscles would make us heavy and slow. He was a student of another time and the Russian exercise nutrition school, which to a certain extent still dominates the field of sports exercise science, but things are slowly changing.
"Experience, combined with an understanding of principles,
cultivates the patience to
witness the fruits of your efforts.
From these early days of my teenage years through to the very end in the Bulgarian army, I was a dedicated disciple of weights and training. I served in a special forces unit in the army, where I built my first improvised gyms—both an indoor room and an outdoor summer space for the soldiers and me to have options to lift weights. This passion and dedication have always helped me in my life. Lifting weights makes everything easier; that’s the whole point.
After the army, I had to figure out my life in a real way, but I did not want to work a job that would limit my ability to train and improve. You can imagine how many of those jobs were on the market: none, zero, zilch. From here, private enterprises were my only option. I tried many things—from working with my father in a car body shop to selling projects for the first wind turbines planted in Bulgaria. It was hectic, stressful, and, even if successful in financial terms, very empty of essence for me. And again, all these endeavors were roadblocks to my training passion. In the mid-2000s, I decided to devote myself only to training, and the way to do that was by opening my first supplement store in partnership with a friend of mine. It was okay, but not very successful. We took too much credit to open it, had too little experience to run it, and even less free capital to live while we were trying to survive as a business.
At the end of this period, I offered him the option to keep the store, and I left for America, specifically New York City. I’d heard that personal training was a thing and a very well-paid one. I was done. I found what I was looking for, or at least I thought I did. Soon after arriving, I discovered that NY was not the best when it came to hospitality. I got discouraged and flew back to Bulgaria, where, upon arrival, I saw the magnitude of my mistake. Nine months later, I was back in America, this time in Los Angeles. I met a great Bulgarian karate master, Grisha Todorov, and he showed me around and gave me valuable insight into the state of the fitness business in general and shared his roof with me for a couple of weeks, for which I’ll always be thankful. We did not know each other from before, which shows what a person this man was and still is.
After this brief period, I moved to Las Vegas, got certified by NASM – National academy of sport medicine, Precision Nutrition Level 1 and 2, in reality mostly trough 30 years of experience training myself and others.Then i have rented a local gym to begin my journey in personal training. This would never be possible without meeting my amazing wife, Ivanka. The beginning was like every beginning—full of expectations and free of clients. Nobody knew me, the language was still a limiting factor for me, and I was struggling to make a full schedule of clients. This changed in the next six months, and as the client base increased, I decided to compete in natural bodybuilding for the sake of seeing how far I could push myself, and I did. I prepared under the critical eye of Matt Porter, a heavyweight bodybuilder who opened my eyes to the world of online training. We never met, but under his guidance, I achieved my all-time best shape and won my category in the 2015 WNBF competition in Sacramento. After that, I was committed to developing my own online personal training practice. For one simple reason—it was way cheaper and more efficient than in-person training. Today, we call this coaching. It’s great because it compresses time for our clients.
From that time to today, I have had the honor to help, educate, and train thousands of people with my fitness challenges, including those with the best-ever Bulgarian fitness model, Bilyana Yotovska, only for women. Combined, I’m training more than 500-800 people a year in all challenge editions. At the same time, my personal coaching is the essence of my operations, where I spend time with people to discover ways to find their full potential and fit it into their lifestyle, which is the hardest thing. Long story short, I finally managed to achieve what I was looking for—to do fitness, to teach fitness, and to be part of the most important industry in the world, the one that gives people not only the longest life but the one with the highest quality.