Little background on me, I am a 9 year veteran of the National Football League and CEO of Power Athlete Inc., a global strength & performance company focusing on large group training, online training programs for athletes and a comprehensive coaches development program.

In a previous life, I started in the NFL for a decade and was the mastermind behind the CrossFit Football training program that revolutionized CrossFit in 2009 with a focus on strength and performance. I ran a food company and owned a gym in Newport Beach, CA.

Today, Power Athlete Inc is located in Austin, Texas. In my spare time I am working to change the paradigm of physical education in Texas schools with FUSE MOVE. I enjoy welding & fabrication and building off-road trucks with large diesel motors. I am a father to 3 rad kids and have a rad wife.

So “Talk to me, Johnnie”?

If this is quote is not familiar, you need to watch First Blood a few times – it is one of my all time favorites. The quote comes from a scene in the movie when Colonel Trautman, John Rambo’s former commanding officer, has been sent to help the Sheriff Teasle talk Rambo into giving himself up to the authorities. Some back story, Rambo just escaped from Police custody and hiding in the mountains. Local authorities need Trautman’s help trying to find Rambo’s location and prevent his raining hell fire down on a small town in Washington state. With a final last ditch effort, they offer Trautman the radio, he clicks the mic on and says,

“Covey leader to Raven….Covey leader to Raven…talk to me Johnnie”.

Might seem like an esoteric name for a website until you understand the back story.

When I played in the NFL (I am sure many athletes are like this) I was consumed with work. Training camp started the 3rd week of July and most years the season didn’t end till February. During that period, I would fall off the grid. I worked 14-16 hour days, 7 days weeks in training camp and once the season started, it was wrap speed with no looking back. Practice, meetings and games don’t leave a lot of extra time for staying in contact. I was not great at returning calls or emails and dealt with most of it once the season concluded.

Needless to say, I fell off the grid.

This was a relatively common occurrence. However, once it got late in the season a good friend would start texting me, “Covey leader to Raven…talk to me Johnnie”. Much like Col. Trautman contacting Baker Team, it was his way of shooting up a signal flair and checking to see everything was headed in the right direction. I would respond as John Rambo did in the movie…”They are all dead, sir”.

My 10th season with the New England Patriots ended prematurely due to a knee injury. Shortly there after I launched Power Athlete and started a global revolution of unlocking athletic potential. Since retirement, I have navigated the globe teaching the Power Athlete methods and been fortunate to work with many of the best athletes and highest speed individuals on the planet. With so much information available at our finger tips, I was bombarded with questions about training, nutrition and life. Many of them were the same questions over and over again. At first, I tried answering them individually but I find there was no way for that information to trickle down.

Talk To Me Johnnie (TTMJ) was born – a personal collection of my practices, reflections and thoughts as an informational resource for power athletes looking to improve athletic potential, increase speed, strength and power all while crafting the baddest motherfuckers on earth.

A bit more backstory, in 2012 I ran a Power Athlete contest called Occupy Strength. We needed a tag line to promote the event so I went into the gym to bang heavy weights while blasting Motorhead. During Lemmy’s “Eat The Rich”, I thought about reworking it’s sentiment to “Eat The Weak”.

That became the tagline for the event and one of the defining trademarks of Power Athlete.

This is not a call for cannibalism, but a mindset to dominate. Total domination, not only of your competitors but of yourself. No one said it’d be easy. Conflict crafts character. Devour weakness, doubt, fear and feeble excuses. Consume them before they consume you. Eat The Weak.

John