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Interview with Doug Bopst: His Personal Journey into Fitness and Healing

Written by: Sarah Oliver

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Published on

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Time to read 2 min

Interview with Doug Bopst: His Personal Journey into Fitness and Healing

Meet Doug Bopst, an award-winning CPT, author, speaker and business owner. Those credentials and accolades are a result of his own transformation. He is a former felon and addict, where he chose to use that time locked in a small cell to reinvent himself. We (virtually) sat down with Doug to learn more about his personal journey and what drives him.


Tell us about where your journey into fitness and health began.

My health and fitness journey began when I was incarcerated on felony drug charges back in 2008. My cellmate encouraged me to start working out and it saved my life. When I first started, I couldn’t even do a pushup from my knees. By the end of my 90 day sentence, I was able to do a set of 10 pushups and run a mile.


With your experience in recovery, how did fitness become your saving grace?

Fitness became my saving grace for a variety of reasons, but here’s my top 5:

  1. It helped me establish self discipline/accountability
  2. It forced me to get comfortable being “uncomfortable”
  3. It became a wonderful coping strategy to help me deal with a lot of the underlying issues that led to my addiction
  4. It helped me focus on my future and not my past
  5. It helped me gain self confidence and rebuild my self esteem

What has committing to your fitness and health taught you?

It has taught me the importance of embracing the process, controlling what I can and showing up even when I don’t feel like it. Fitness is a lifelong journey and the lessons it’s taught me have helped me tremendously in other areas of my life.


When and why did you decide to be a Personal Trainer?

I became a trainer in April of 2011 to help other people use fitness to change their lives and pay forward the gift my cellmate gave to me.


How important is nutrition when it comes to your (and your clients) training?

It’s so important. You can’t out-train a bad diet (in my opinion). With that said, there is no one size fits all approach and you have to find what works best for you.


How does personalizing your Performance Nutrition help you reach your fitness and health goals?

Like I mentioned above, I always have said that you have to find what works best for YOU. We are all different in what we like to eat, what we can stick to etc…so an individualized approach to nutrition is incredibly important.


What's your favorite Gainful product, and why?

I love the Personalized Protein, mine is whey-based. It’s super clean with limited ingredients and helps me refuel after a workout or it makes for a great snack on the run.


What's your go-to hype song to motivate you in the gym?

Eminem - Lose Yourself


If you were to give one piece of advice to someone starting their fitness journey, what would that be?

Develop a DEEP emotional WHY as to why you are starting your journey (this will be important when you feel like quitting), focus on small wins and don’t give up on yourself when things get tough.
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