I vividly remember walking into my mother’s kitchen in April of 2014, and seeing a binder in her hand.
The week prior, I had asked her if she knew anything about starting a “real” business. I was nineteen, had already been training clients for three years, and wanted to make everything I was doing “official.”
In the binder was everything my mother found on registering a business, keeping good books, drawing up contracts, and more. We went over each of the resources, met with two lawyers to make sure everything was done correctly, and Hercules Performance — my very own personal training business — was launched by May.
The name itself was largely inspired by my rescue pup, Hercules, who was supposed to be a big, tough, Rottweiler mix. Come to find out, he was an adorably timid, Rottweiler, boxer, beagle mix:
All ten pounds of him the day I brought him home
“Performance” reflected my primary goal at the time: helping athletes get stronger, run faster, and jump higher. This plan was foiled, however, when I found out local zoning ordinances didn’t allow me to train clients out of my home (that I had fully transformed into a studio).
In a matter of days, Hercules Performance quickly became an in-home personal training service, where I drove to anybody within 30-45 minutes of my home who willing to let a nineteen-year-old train them. Unsurprisingly, not many high level athletes were using services like this, so I ended up working with regular people who simply wanted to look and feel a little bit better.
My passion changed overnight.
Instead of wanting to help Tom the linebacker lift more weight off the ground, or Amy the basketball player jump higher, I became addicted to helping Christiana the nurse and mother of two learn to put herself first again, or Lori the bank manager feel more confident in her work outfits.
Seeing how exercise, nutrition, and generally healthy habits amplified every area of life — not only athletics — was so much more fun and satisfying to me.
But I realized that to really help people transform their bodies and lives, I needed to be helping my clients more between our sessions. The typical personal training model — seeing somebody for 2-3 hours per week and hoping they made good decisions between their sessions (the other 98% of the week) — wasn’t going to cut it.
In came hybrid training.
I started having my clients keep written food logs, and bring them to our sessions. I asked them about their sleep habits, and what time they went to bed the night prior. Or about their stress levels, and how they were impacting their day-to-day.
It was evident how much change they were leaving on the table by not addressing “life outside the gym.”
Out of necessity, my support systems evolved. Instead of having clients keep written food logs, I had them track their food in MyFitnessPal and share their diaries with me. Instead of asking them about their bedtimes and expecting them to remember, I had them record them on a spreadsheet — a spreadsheet that also tracked their weigh-ins, measurements, hunger levels, and more.
Unsurprisingly, they started getting dramatically better results.
But a 1,500+ mile move to Miami Beach changed everything (again).
At twenty-two years old, I put all my possessions in the trunk of my car (I’m a semi-extreme minimalist), and drove 20+ hours from my hometown in Southeastern Massachusetts, to an Airbnb in South Beach. I didn’t know a soul, and spend the next two weeks finding my apartment.
I had a blast on Muscle Beach South Beach in the meantime:
It was an overdue change of scenery, and important for my personal growth and development (a story for another day) — but I obviously couldn’t work with my longtime clients in person anymore.
Fortunately, my hybrid training experiment was so effective, that they chose to continue with me in an entirely online dynamic. Needless to say, I went even further down the online coaching rabbit hole, obsessing over how to deliver the most intimate, supportive service imaginable.
(A set of computer-generated macronutrient targets and generic weekly check-ins wasn’t for me.)
I then moved three more times over the next three years.
First to New York City, then to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, then to Providence, Rhode Island.
(I’ve been mostly nomadic since).
During this three year stretch, I hosted two charity events with 140+ attendees, ran 15+ group coaching programs, and worked with several hundred VIP Coaching clients all over the world. I also niched down to nutrition coaching, specifically, and launched my first podcast: Transformation Talks.
A shot from the Women’s Transformation Workshop I hosted in December of 2019
Now, in 2022, my business doesn’t look remotely the way the sixteen, seventeen, or even twenty-year-old version of me expected — and I couldn’t be happier about it. But my public brand — Hercules Performance — hasn’t been updated to reflect these changes.
Which is why I’m leaving it behind.
From an operational standpoint, this means nothing. I’m still proud to say I offer the most supportive, in-depth coaching service in the online fitness space. You won’t find a higher level of accountability elsewhere.
But ultimately, when you sign up for coaching, you’re signing up with me: Sam Forget. Not the “Hercules Performance” brand, an assistant coach, or anyone else. I’m not going to turn you into Hercules, and I’m not your guy if you want to tackle somebody harder or dunk a basketball.
I’ve already changed my website from “HerculesPerformance.com” to “SamForget.com,” and I’m actively working on getting rid of old branding, links, and mixed messaging elsewhere. I want what I do to be crystal clear:
I help regular people radically transform their bodies and lives without using radical or unsustainable methods.
This means I won’t tell you any one food is “bad.” I won’t cut your calories in half for the sake of manipulating the scale. I certainly don’t consider splurges and human moments being “off track.”
I’m much more interested in helping you break out of your yo-yo cycle and get you results that last well beyond our time together. If this sounds more appealing to you than 22” biceps or trying to dunk a basketball…
You can learn more about how I do things here:
And in case it crossed your mind: Hercules fully supports this decision.
