We recently connected with Cristian Plascencia and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Cristian, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about how you went about setting up your own practice and if you have any advice for professionals who might be considering starting their own?

I was a fitness trainer at a local private ATX gym when my current fiancé (then girlfriend) mentioned how important it is for our current clients to be optimizing their health and lifestyle habits outside of the gym. She emphasized that most clients believe achieving true health and fitness is all about the 1-hour inside the gym for your workout when in reality, it is the other 23 hours that matter the most! Most specifically, your sleep, diet, stress levels, and movement habits all dictate how you show you each day not only inside the gym for a workout but for your job and the people you love and care for the most.

This was the birth of the Durable Athlete – where our goal is to help educate people about the importance of lifestyle habits and empower individuals to take ownership of their current health and wellness journey. Our four pillars that we aim to educate and empower around are: sleep, nutrition, breathing (stress), and movement.

Some of the main steps we took was being able to come up with some sort of system and digestible actions that clients could take to improve their current health and wellness status!

For anyone looking to branch off and create their own brand/business around health and fitness, be sure that you are genuinely involved in the practices that you are attempting to teach to others. Experience and that perspective you gain from this personal experience allows you to really understand and mold what it is your mission is as well as assist clients in their journey. You must travel the journey you are attempting to take people through.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am the Co-Founder of The Durable Athlete. I have spent my whole life trying to find the best equation to life to help maximize daily function and the longevity of our career. It all began when I was twelve years old and sprained my ankle playing basketball. Having spent about 2 months in the physical therapy office, it was apparent that this was a setting that I wanted to surround myself with. I had always been into athletics and sports and the fact that this facility was helping athletes and general population move and feel better really resonated with my passions. I ended up spending 1000 hours at this physical therapy facility before leaving high school and heading into college.

While in college, I was able to intern with another physical therapy clinic out in Los Angeles County who exposed me to a holistic approach to health and fitness. It was the first time anyone had explained to me how nutrition, sleep, and our mental practices ultimately dictated the quality of everyday life as well as our physical performances. It was not too long after this realization and exposure to holistic health that I received a grant to conduct research on the effects of Whole Body Vibration techniques. This was a great exposure as it led me to eventually work with the strength and conditioning coach in assisting in the weight room with football and volleyball athletes.

Soon after graduating from California Lutheran University, I received admittance into the University of Texas, Austin and decided to move out to Austin, TX. Upon moving to Texas, I was able to land a personal coaching position at the Onnit Gym working with general population as well as elite professional athletes. Wanting to compliment the structure of the gym, I decided that I would put all my efforts into helping people improve their quality of movement and more importantly, improving the quality of joint health for clients. Within my first two years working at Onnit, I was elected the lead Durability coach position which assisted other coaches at the Onnit gym better understand and implement movement and breathing techniques to assist in recovery protocols.

During my time at Onnit, I was able to travel and train with individuals like Earl Thomas, Andre Roberson, and The Taylor Swift ‘Reputation’ tour. One of the major themes I realized was regardless if you are a professional athlete or a 9-5 desk athlete, the principles’ that dictate your quality of life and performances are the same. If you are not sleeping enough or setting yourself up to sleep appropriately, then we can’t expect our physical performances in the gym and mental performances at work to be optimal. If we are not eating at the best times or eating the best type of foods, we should not expect our body to transform in the fashion that we are expecting.

At the basis of what I, my fiance, and our current coaches do is help people feel and move better inside their body. Feeling limited inside your body and what it can achieve physically, then our team will help you get back to doing the things you love to do. Having a hard time understanding and maximizing your nutritional intake of foods and supplements? Then Natalie will help you optimize your current nutritional and lifestyle habits! You an athlete looking to take your game to the next level, then I am your person.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

having mentors who have been in the game for a long time and have experience to share. Having a team and cohort of people you can learn from and grow with.

put your head down and accumulate as many reps and experiences as possible. forget the $, and just be a fly on the wall as much as you can.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I was a salary employee at a private gym in ATX. the benefits were amaZIng but internally I could tell that there still wasn’t an alignment of my goals and current environment.

I wanted to train high level professional athletes and specifically basketball players but this was not the place that this could happen.

I decided that in order for me to grow in the field that I wanted, I had to jump and leave my salary position.

That jump was scary, I had 2 clients at that time and was unsure how I would pay my rent, etc.

I messaged as many basketball players and coaches that I could find on social media (no joke – about 75 messages minimum were sent) and eventually, it lead to my business partner Zach Urbanus who was a skills coach for basketball athletes. We now run the largest player development program in Central Texas and continue to grow to this day. We grew from 70 players our first year to now training 400+ athletes in the greater CTX region.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.durableathlete.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/cristiangplascencia?igshid=NmNmNjAwNzg=
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cristian.plascencia
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristian-plascencia-ab2456104/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/coachcristiangp?s=11&t=Q9hzwI7SJWlNru5u-07fVA