Meet Taylor Rimmer | Strength & Conditioning Coach

We had the good fortune of connecting with Taylor Rimmer and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Taylor, what principle do you value most?
Honesty, by far. The world of fitness & training can feel a bit like the Wild West sometimes (though less so with each passing year), so I think building your reputation and credibility through relentless honesty is hugely important. A few examples: • Use simple contract structures that don’t trick people into something that they can’t get out of. • Tell people straight up what they could improve on, training-wise. No sugar-coating. This is not easy. • Say “I don’t know, but I will find out” if you don’t know the answer, and then follow through on that. • Most importantly, when a training plan doesn’t work the way you thought it would, figure out why and make changes accordingly. This is how great trainers make themselves great. I’m not there yet but I’m working like hell on it. Work hard and be honest. It’s a simple formula.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Before March of this year, I had only ever trained clients in person. When the pandemic struck, that came to an immediate halt. I was fortunate to still have a partial income from my job as Membership & Fitness Coordinator at LCC, but I lost over half of my income overnight when we had to close down. For the first couple of weeks, it was just a mad scramble to figure out what to do with all of our recurring membership payments, how to communicate with our members about what was going on, and navigate the whole crazy situation without losing our minds. Very quickly, though, I knew I had to do something to get my training business up and running again. So I invested money from savings in my website, upgraded it so that people could purchase online training programs, and contacted a few friends to form a Beta Team so that I could practice training people online before I started charging money for it. Needless to say, that went really well. The beta team all made great progress, and I started contacting people in my network and doing free consultations to see if online training would be a good fit for them. As I gained clients, I gained experience in writing custom training programs with the bare minimum of equipment, and sometimes no equipment at all. My favorite example is when I had a guy doing single leg deadlifts with a 3 gallon bucket filled with car parts. Not ideal, but there is always a way! Now that the world has opened back up a little, I have some people on my roster training in the gym, and some training at home. At this point, most of my home-training clients have picked up kettlebells and some other minimal equipment, and everyone is making great progress. I specialize in using proven training methodologies. I don’t like fads and I’m not here to entertain you. I’m here to get you stronger. I can write a quality plan regardless of your equipment availability, your crazy schedule, or what your current physical condition is. I believe that custom programming is the only thing that professional trainers should be doing with their clients. If your trainer has you on a cookie-cutter template, fire them.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
If you’ve got a full week, you’ve got to get out West a bit. Try to beat the traffic. You drive out to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison and hike down to the bottom. Glorious place. Eat a sandwich by the river, maybe see a bear (don’t feed the sandwich to the bear). When you’re done you head over to Crested Butte and have some rum at Montañya. Crash at the hostel in town. The next day you drive up to Schofield pass and camp. Bust out a Frances Mallman campfire recipe that blows everyone’s mind. Tell old stories of all the dumb stuff you did as kids. Since you’re already at Schofield pass, you hike up to West Maroon Pass the next morning. At the top of the pass, with the wind in your ears, you note that Aspen is “just over there,” and how you’re glad you went to Crested Butte instead. When you finally get back to Longmont, you make the obligatory stop at Avery Brewing and partake of their various strong, dark beers. Maybe you watch Jeremiah Johnson at the end of the night. Who knows. The most important thing is, at the end of the trip, you teach your friends how to take the shuttle from Boulder to the airport. This is a valuable skill for your friends, and will save you many trips to DIA in the future.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Too many to name, but here are three, in order: 1) My Dad. He taught me more than I could write about here. All of the talk about honesty I learned straight from my dad. But he also taught me how to expect a lot from myself, and how to keep working at something and appreciate the improvements that result from hard work. He also made sure I had good taste in music. 2) StrongFirst. The stuff I’ve learned from StrongFirst has been like a revelation: don’t train to failure, leave something in the tank, you don’t have to totally crush yourself in the gym to make progress. When I first started training, I worried that clients would not like this approach, that they would find it too conservative. Not the case. It turns out that clients like progress more than anything else, and the StrongFirst methodology delivers without fail! 3) Longmont Climbing Collective. They gave me a shot when I didn’t have much experience. They gave me almost total control over the fitness program at the gym. I’m not sure I would have made it if I’d started out training at a globogym! There was a solid year of staying up all night with a bad case of impostor syndrome, sweating every detail of everything. But these days I’ve had enough successes to feel confident in what I’m doing.

Website: www.revivethehuman.com
Instagram: @revivethehuman
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