Reuben Adler.
Coach.
I started coaching in 2017 while finishing a master’s in exercise physiology. Full-time online since 2018. Eighty-four active athletes today, three hundred forty-seven coached lifetime. The work is straightforward — build a block, watch the data, adjust based on the data, repeat.
- 2014
Started lifting · undergrad
First-year exercise science at SUNY Cortland. Squatted 95 lb. Read Starting Strength like it was scripture. (It wasn’t.)
- 2016
First coaching gigs
Two years coaching club sports + intramural strength teams. Wrote about 40 different programs. Most of them were wrong; the failure modes are the curriculum I now teach from.
- 2017
Master’s · exercise physiology
MS at Springfield College. Thesis: 'RPE-based auto-regulation in trained powerlifters.' Some of the data made the second edition of Helms’s pyramid.
- 2018
Started coaching online
Six athletes the first year. Took a year off social media to build the methodology. Never went back to social media.
- 2019 — 2021
NSCA-CSCS · PN L2
Got the certifications that mattered to me. Skipped the ones that didn’t. Built the roster slowly — 18 athletes by end of 2019, 47 by end of 2021.
- 2022 — present
Roster cap at 100
I can do 100 athletes well. I can’t do 200 well. The cap is the practice. Currently coaching 84.
The
credentials.
- NSCA-CSCSCertified Strength + Conditioning Specialist · 2019
- Precision Nutrition L2Master Coach · 2021
- MS Exercise PhysiologySpringfield College · 2017
- BS Exercise ScienceSUNY Cortland · 2015
- Published research2 peer-reviewed papers · J Strength Cond Res, Sports Med
Sleep is the bottleneck
Eighty percent of the lifters I take on aren’t over-training. They’re under-sleeping. The first thing we measure isn’t a lift; it’s a Saturday morning.
Numbers tell the truth
Every claim in your block has a citation in your spreadsheet. We don’t adjust on a hunch — we adjust on the trend.
n=1, but informed
The literature says what works on average. Your block says what works on you. Most of the work is reconciling the two.
Honest about tradeoffs
If you want a 4-week shred, I’m the wrong coach. If you want sustainable body composition, I might be.
