About

Back in November of 2011, I released my first book, The Elite Trainer. This website was devoted to that book. It was a sales page at that time. Here’s what it looked like.

To say that the book was well-received would be an understatement! We had testimonials pouring in from all over the world.

The Elite Trainer was truly a labor of love. It took me about 10 years to complete. It started as a one-page outline for a lecture I gave at Ryerson University way back in 2001.

As I prepared for more talks on the subject of strength training, I kept compiling and adding information to the outline until it was hundreds of pages long.

It dawned on me at that point that this would be a perfect manual for personal trainers and other fitness professionals. I stopped adding and started refining, and eventually, The Elite Trainer was borne!

That was then, but this is now…

Today, The Elite Trainer has evolved into more than just a book for strength training. It’s a complete system of training, including business essentials, assessment protocols, training methods and programming, and much more.

The website has become a forum for personal trainers, athletic coaches, healthcare professionals, and fitness enthusiasts. Our flagship manual, The Elite Trainer, is still going strong, but now we offer more resources for health and fitness professionals, including articles, videos, books, webinars, and more.

TheEliteTrainer.com has become a regular home for many in the industry. Be part of our family. Sign up for our weekly newsletter and make sure to follow us on social media. We’ll keep you up to date, you’ll be privy to some top-notch information, and rest assured, we’ll never give away any of your personal information.

How did I start as a personal trainer?

I won’t bore you with all the details – you can read about it in The Business of Personal Training if you’re interested – but suffice it to say, I turned a passion into a career.

Early in my career, I opened a private training studio out of my home in Toronto, Ontario, and the business grew fairly quickly. I appeared on television, wrote articles for many publications, consulted for various corporations, gave lectures and workshops. Check out my bio here.

In the meantime, my client list kept growing and growing (as did my rate!) until I could no longer take any more clients and placed prospects on a waiting list.

Time was a commodity that I just did not have any more. Reading, education, and learning were – and still are – very important to me, something I will not sacrifice. It’s what has kept me ahead of the rest – that, and my experience, of course. Ultimately, if you do your job right, you get results, and results keep you busy!

In order to accommodate the “there’s only one of me” situation, I got the word out through books, webinars, and video presentations. These are all available on our website. I would encourage you to check them out.

Of course, I continue to stay active writing regular blog posts and articles, filming short videos here and there, as well as the occasional podcast and seminar.

Have a look around our site. Please share any material that you think is useful to others and help us spread the word. Feel free to send us a message at any time – any and all feedback is welcome.

To your success,

John Paul Catanzaro
The Elite Trainer