If you’re of a certain age—or just someone who spends too much time on YouTube—you might remember the old Hair Club for Men commercial. The founder, Sy Sperling, who had a solid 80’s poofball, would hold up a photo of himself with a bald head and say: “I’m not just the president, I’m also a client.” It was cheesy, it was memorable, and it actually said something important: he believed in his own product.
Now, as a bald man myself, I obviously can’t relate to the hair part. But the spirit of it? That resonates. Especially in fitness.
Coaches Who Walk the Walk
At Lumos, one of the things I’m most proud of is that all of our coaches actually do the things we teach. Some take our group classes, or follow our Compete programming, or tinker with their own training—but it’s always in the framework and philosophy we practice here. They live the process we’re asking you to trust.
That might sound obvious, but in the wider fitness world? It’s shockingly rare.
The Group Class Shuffle
Too often, the instructor telling you that your spin ride is “the most important moment of your week” is the same person who sneaks off the moment class ends to train somewhere else. I’m not exaggerating—I know of more than one pretty big fitness celebrity who works for a major corporate brand, smiles for the cameras, and then pays out-of-pocket for private training with a coach they actually trust- coaches who are friends of mine, at gyms like ours.
I don’t blame them. Working in fitness is hard. Pay can be inconsistent, hours are weird, and sometimes you take the job you can get, not the one you want. But it does reveal something about the industry: a lot of it is marketing and branding first, effectiveness and longevity second.
The Integrity Gap
This gap between what’s marketed and what’s practiced is one of the big reasons people get disillusioned with fitness. When the faces of a brand don’t even use their own methods, it’s not just hypocrisy—it’s a quiet admission that the workouts aren’t sustainable or effective long-term.
It’s also why “quick fix” fitness sells so well. You can market hype. You can brand aesthetics. But you can’t fake consistency.
That’s what makes me so proud of Lumos. There’s no sleight of hand here. The coaches doing the teaching are the same ones sweating next to you, scaling workouts the way we ask you to, and following the same cycles we program.
Walking the Same Path
I don’t need my coaches to train like me. JoJo might emphasize gymnastic development work. Brett leans into conditioning cycles. Jon lives to throw a barbell around. I…do whatever the hell it is that I do. But the point is: we’re all on the same path, guided by the same principles—effort, curiosity, community.
That alignment matters more than people think. When your coach tells you that today’s stimulus should feel like an “eight out of ten,” they’re speaking from experience, not just theory. When they tell you that showing up consistently matters more than hitting a PR every week, they mean it because they’ve lived it.
The Hair Club Spirit
So yeah, I guess Lumos is a little like the Hair Club for Men—minus the hair. We’re not just the coaches; we’re also the clients.
We don’t sell you something we wouldn’t buy ourselves. We don’t tell you to train one way while we secretly chase gains another way. And we definitely don’t build programs around what looks good on Instagram instead of what works in real life.
In an industry full of smoke and mirrors, that feels like something worth saying out loud.
The Takeaway
The fitness world doesn’t need more hype. It needs more integrity. More coaches who believe in the thing they teach. More communities where the leaders walk the same path as the members.
At Lumos, that’s who we are. It’s why I’m proud of my team. And it’s why, if I ever did grow hair again, I’d say it loud and cheesy: I’m not just the owner—I’m also a client.
