We recently connected with Zach Saffell and have shared our conversation below.

Zach, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

Having my children with my wife Jaycee was a defining moment. Shortly after they were born I decided I didn’t want them to watch me work a 9-5 their whole life. Kids learn from what they see, I wanted them to see me work hard to follow my dreams. I loved coaching, and I loved the gym, I worked in a career I hated, and I wanted them to learn that if you are passionate about something, and you work extremely hard for it, you can make it happen. “Find what you love and never work a day in your life.” I have found what I love and I hope they do too.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Zach Saffell, I am the owner and head coach at Custom Built Strength in Ogden, Utah. I started my gym 3 years ago after identifying and believing there was a need for a real gym that offers strength and sports performance training for young athletes that is comparable to what they would receive at the division 1 or pro level. For a long time, there has been programs focused on speed and agility. Most of these training facilities sold flashy looking drills, and gimmicks that looked like hard work but weren’t backed by science. Athletes were paying a lot of money to work hard, but they weren’t seeing any measurable improvements to verify if their time and financial investment was worth it. My goal was to develop a program that put strength and speed at the forefront, not a program that appears like hard work, but doesn’t give the athlete the results they desire. At my gym we use real, measurable, and trackable data. So my athletes and their parents can see where they are improving and where they need to work harder to improve. I am proud to say we have accomplished and continue to accomplish that goal every single day. My athletes know how high they jump, how fast they run, how strong they are, how well they change direction. They are constantly tested and monitored on these metrics so they know where they started, they know where they are at, and they know where they are going from a performance standpoint. We don’t just say we get athletes better, we prove they are getting better every single day. As a young athlete I lifted a lot, with little to zero coaching, that’s how myself and all my friends did things when we were growing up. We learned quickly the wrong way to do things, and it wasn’t till the end of my athletic career that I realized how badly I had missed out on a ton of potential improvement, by simply not knowing any better. Not only that, but we learned the hard way through injuries a lot of them. You see turning kids loose in a weight room with little to no supervision is the equivalent of letting them be in a garage full of power tools and asking them to build a table without any prior instruction, someone is going to get hurt. The human body is an extremely complex organism, there are good exercises and bad ones, there is a right way to do a lift and a wrong way, there are training methodologies that might be ideal for an adult but are not ideal for an athlete. When I gained an interest in this business my goal was to remove the trial and error for these athletes so they don’t have to make the same mistakes as myself and so many others have made throughout the world.

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

If I could go back I would absolutely go into the same industry. I love what I do, it doesn’t feel like work. This is my life, from the moment I wake up till the time I go to bed. I started this business for more than performance. I wanted to help people. I believe we live at a time where confidence is at an all time low, anxiety is at an all time high, mental health problems are more prevalent than ever before, and weakness is a toxic disease throughout our society. Maybe my gym can’t fix all of that in the entire world, but I have seen it tremendously help in all of those areas with the athletes I work with. So many times, I see a kid start at the gym, and within weeks weeks their parents are telling me how much more confident they are getting and how good it has been for them not just from a strength standpoint but from a mental health standpoint. I build athletes, but I also build human beings, who will grow up and have families, who will work in careers that impact the world that we live in, if I can help just one of them stay on the right path and keep them from making bad decisions and hurting themselves or their future, then every bit of struggle I face with owning this business makes it all worth it. I have worked with over 100 athletes, and watched their lives change before my eyes. I have worked 2 jobs, 14-18 hour days, 7 days a week, for 3 years to get this business where it is. My family has faced countless emotionally, physical, and financial struggles to get to where we are. We built this thing from the ground up, with literal blood, sweat, and tears. We started in my garage, and now we are on our 3rd location, and I would do it all over again if it meant we would be where we are today and we would impact as many lives as we have.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think what helped me build my reputation is that I genuinely care about the people I work with. These aren’t just clients from which I cash a check, I love and care about them and I do everything I can to help them in the gym. If they are struggling in life I want them to know they can talk to me, outside of the gym I support them the best that I can. If one of my athletes is facing a hard time in life or in sports I take it personally and it’s not rare for me to lose sleep over these situations. It’s a regular thing for my family to spend our weekends attending sports games to support my athletes, we can’t always make every game for every kid but when we can we do our best to be there for our people. It’s amazing how rare it is to genuinely care about the people that keep your business running and food on your table, I’m not one of those people, we are thankful for each and every person that supports us and I think that plays a major role in why we receive the support of so many.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Custombuiltstrength.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/custombuiltstrength/profilecard/?igsh=bzFkcTdnZHNiMTNq
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/xRkqbXtgAsJDYNFM/?mibextid=kFxxJD