The Catholic Warrior Podcast

Isaac tells it how it is and keeps Catholicism simple as 1,2,3. 5 stars!

I contacted Isaac because I really wanted to lose weight and I liked the idea of a Christian masculinity angle to it. I was choosing between an online service like this and an in-person personal trainer. As soon as I expressed interest, he texted me repeatedly every couple of hours (“did you see my message?” etc) including overly invasive questions about my household income, before I had even met him. I got the sense he was trying to work out how much I could afford so that he could charge me as much as possible. When I finally spoke with him a few days later, he kept trying to ask how much I was willing to pay without telling me the price. He wanted me to commit to a long program upfront with no option to pay for a normal subscription. I don’t think he is certified as a personal trainer, nor a nutritionist, nor has any formal affiliation with the Catholic church (though I knew those facts going in). Against my better judgment I signed up for a $300/month plan, because I had struggled with weight gain and really needed to turn the course, and figured this was still cheaper than an in-person trainer. What I got was access to a generic fitness trainer app that served basically as a food logger, a copy-pasted list of exercises to do, and a daily checklist that you have prayed and read the Bible. All of this would be available for free elsewhere. There wasn’t any real coaching involved, and I got the sense he wasn’t actually following or seeing anything I put on the app. In contrast to his aggressive sales tactics, after I had committed, he was often unresponsive, and he didn’t adapt my program to anything I wrote to him. For example, the macro target in the app didn’t match the diet we had talked about, the workouts didn’t match the exercise plan that we discussed on the phone, and when I asked him to change the workout plan since certain equipment was rarely available at my gym, it didn’t happen. To be clear, this is a legitimate program and business that some people could benefit from. But please be aware that what you are getting is rented access to a habit tracker and a large group chat. This is not a personal training service, nor even fitness or lifestyle coaching. My advice is 1) be transparent about the price and stop the aggressive and invasive sales tactics, and 2) if you are going to maintain this scale you either need to hire additional coaches so that people get some individual attention, or you need to be clear that clients aren’t getting coaching per se, and instead this program is primarily an expensive habit tracker.

Love it. A podcast all Catholic men should listen to 🥊

Something we can all relate too as catholic man.