Let me first start off by saying how this will probably be the one and only blog that seems more autobiographical than informational. I guess besides the About Us page, I really wanted to give our followers a background into not only who we are as a brand, but who I am. My name is Johnny Galanoudis. To my friends and family, I’m known as “Johnny G” (for obvious reasons). I am a former athlete having been a collegiate and independent professional baseball player. It was in college where my passion for training, strength & conditioning, and weightlifting in general began to take shape.
COACHING
When my playing career ended, I had the opportunity to get into coaching where I began coaching Division II Baseball. After my first year coaching, I decided to work towards my first fitness certification which happened to be in Strength & Conditioning. Although the athletic department at the school I was coaching at had a general strength coach for all teams, I pretty much served as our team’s strength coach along with my normal baseball and on-field responsibilities. I fell in love with designing programs for our players. The challenge of coming up with something different and unique to each player was exciting and got away from the standard hitters vs. pitchers training splits of old.
I then moved on to coach Division I Baseball for two separate Division I institutions in the following two years. Although these institutions had more sport-specific and I’d even say more “advanced” training programs and strength coaches, I was still able to design training programs for when we were traveling and on the road. This consisted of quite a few team hotel-lifts. If you just pictured 20 grown college baseball players packed into a 250 square-foot hotel fitness center using the same one elliptical, one treadmill, and dumbbell-up-to-50s rack next to the two moms circuit-training prior to their son’s soccer tournament… … you are on the right track. But nonetheless, it was a blast.
TRAINING
Throughout this entire time as a coach, my personal training regiment stayed consistent. I was OBSESSED with weightlifting. I was lifting religiously 5-6 times a week. I was looking up every type of training split and routine, and experimenting with pretty much every single one of them (this blog will go into why you shouldn’t do that…) I was finding random gyms in no-name towns to train at while on the road prior to baseball recruiting events. I was showing up to events at 8am having already trained legs before any of the other coaches even took their first sip of coffee. Yea… that obsessed. I like to think the underlying root of it is that I needed something physical to channel my energy and work-ethic into once my playing career ended, but who knows. The bottom line is that I have always had a passion for training.
NUTRITION
Fast forward a little bit and my passion for sports nutrition begins to develop. I begin seeing changes in my personal body composition by adjusting my own diet and learning more and more about how different manipulations in eating habits lead to different performance and physique results which supplemented my already existing training routine. I began extensively researching topics related to sports nutrition, bodybuilding, and following as many credible PhDs and sports scientists as I could in order to educate myself on these various topics. I wasn’t doing any of this with a blog or business in mind but more-or-less just because I loved it. This led me to completing my second CFT certification with a specialization in Sports Nutrition.
PURPOSE
I’m going to try and tie this all together to give you a better understanding of what this blog is all about. Along my journey, I learned that I have an intense passion for a few things: coaching, training, and nutrition but the underlying concept that has always been prevalent is helping others. I was put on this earth to help people and make an impact in their lives. The sense of fulfillment I would feel when one of my student-athletes would tell me about how I influenced their life off the field is a feeling to me that is completely unmatched. My purpose is to take the concepts that I have learned along the way and pass them on to people so that they will not make the same mistakes I did. Do I have all of the answers? Hell no! I’m constantly learning from people who are much smarter than myself and plan on relaying that knowledge to everybody following this blog. Student-athletes have, and always will stay an important focus of mine but the opportunity to impact the general population is what I find to be an exciting challenge and one that I cannot wait to get started.
PERSONAL
Lastly, I wouldn’t be where I am today without the loving support of my mother and father, brother and sister, along with my girlfriend Amanda. They are pretty much the driving factors behind why I am even starting this whole journey. I am also a country music singer-songwriter with a few collections of music available to the public through streaming platforms such as iTunes, Spotify, and others. I used to be able to channel my writing and creativity into songs and realized that now that I can channel it into these posts. I have also become addicted to golf no matter how many fairways I continue to miss but just like anything else, I’ll never perfect it. The only hope is to stay in love with the process and continue to grow and develop. Welcome to The Strength Lifestyle.
The Strength Lifestyle 