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The Trainer Who Has Actually Been Through It

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Most personal trainers will tell you they understand your struggles. Few have lived them.

I have degenerative disc disease. I herniated two discs at 17, spent a year trying physical therapy, acupuncture, and steroid injections with no relief, and had double microdiscectomy surgery before I was old enough to vote. For the next 18 years I managed bilateral SI joint pain with radiofrequency nerve ablation twice a year — a procedure that burned the nerves transmitting my pain signals every six months because nothing else worked.

I reached 260 pounds. Not slowly, not from neglect — from a decade of a physically demanding career, chronic pain, and the kind of gradual drift that happens when life takes over and your body stops feeling like something you can invest in.

Then I changed everything.

Over 14 months I lost 87 pounds. I went back to lifting seriously for the first time in a decade. I rebuilt my body from the inside out — studying the research, applying it to myself, learning what actually works for a compromised spine and a metabolism that does not play by standard rules. Today at 36 I am stronger relative to my bodyweight than I was at 19, leaner than I have been in my adult life, and for the first time in nearly two decades my SI joint pain is responding to training — not just pain management.

I am not a trainer who studied this in a textbook. I am a trainer who has lived every version of this problem and found the way through.

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What the Numbers Say

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Wall of Fame Bench Press Record Holder 405lbs at Hanscom AFB 2011-2019
Most Successful Personal Trainer at Hanscom AFB - 2012-2019
​Most Successful Personal Trainer Across All Bases in the Country. - 2016
Number 1 Rated Personal Trainer in Lexington, MA on Google. - 2017
Number 1 Rated Personal Trainer in Massachusetts on Google. -2018
​Ten Years of Personal Training Experience - 2019
Personal Training Studio Open Nov 8th, 2019
Wicked Local Readers Choice Award Winner - Best Fitness Studio Lexington 1st Place 2020

Number 1 Rated Personal Trainer in New England on Google 2020

Number 2 Rated Personal Trainer in the USA on Google 2021

Number 1 Rated Personal Trainer in the USA on Google 2022- Present

Best Gyms in Boston - Expertise.com 2021 and 2022

Seven Figures of Personal Training Sold!

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Why I Built This

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After my surgery I could not sit at a desk. Chronic pain made office work impossible. I chose personal training not because it was glamorous but because it was the only career that let me stand, move, and still do something I genuinely loved.

What I discovered over two decades of training clients — first at Hanscom Air Force Base, then in my own private studio — is that the fitness industry is built around the wrong people. Group classes, bootcamps, CrossFit, high-intensity programs — they are designed for the already-fit, the already-mobile, the person who does not have a disc issue or a bad knee or 80 pounds to lose or a back that has been surgically altered.

The average middle-aged adult with a history of injury, significant weight to lose, or a body that has been sitting at a desk for 20 years is not prepared for group training. Putting them in that environment does not help them — it injures them and sends them home convinced that fitness is not for them.

I built Eppinger Fitness for that person. The one the mainstream fitness industry ignores.

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What I Specialize In

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Post-Surgical and Chronic Back Pain

Double microdiscectomy. Spinal fusion. Herniated discs. Degenerative disc disease. SI joint dysfunction. Sciatica. Spinal stenosis. I have trained clients with every one of these conditions and I have personally managed most of them in my own body. My approach is built on Stuart McGill spine research, functional movement principles, and 20 years of learning what actually works when the textbook approach fails — which it often does.

The difference between my back pain programming and standard physical therapy is not credentials — it is the depth of understanding that only comes from living with a compromised spine while simultaneously training it to do more than anyone said it could.

GLP-1 Weight Loss and Muscle Preservation

I used semaglutide myself. I lost 83 pounds over 14 months and then spent the following months learning exactly what it takes to rebuild lean muscle after significant weight loss — preserving strength, managing the metabolic adaptation that follows major weight loss, and rebuilding a body that performs rather than just weighs less.

Without proper resistance training during GLP-1 weight loss, up to 30 percent of the weight lost can come from muscle tissue. With the right program — the right caloric strategy, the right protein targets, the right progressive loading — that number drops to 5-10 percent. I know this because I have done it, measured it, and applied it to clients going through the same process.

Middle-Aged Adults Ready to Take Their Bodies Seriously

My core client is 35-60 years old, has some combination of injury history, significant weight loss goals, or decades of sedentary work undoing their posture and strength, and is done accepting that this is just how it is now. They are motivated, they are intelligent, and they have been failed by programs that were not designed for them.

They come here and find out what is actually possible.

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The Philosophy

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One trainer. One client. Every session.

No junior trainers. No delegating. No sharing your hour with someone else's program. When you train at Eppinger Fitness you work directly with me — every session, for as long as you are a client.

I keep my client roster deliberately small because the level of attention this work requires cannot be scaled without compromising it. Every program I write is built from scratch for that specific person's injury history, goals, movement patterns, and life constraints. No templates. No group programming dressed up as individualized training.

The private studio environment matters too. No crowd. No waiting for equipment. No performing for strangers. Many of my clients have never been comfortable in a commercial gym — either because of their size, their injury, their introversion, or simply because they have never had a space that felt designed for them rather than for the revenue model.

This space was built for the client. Everything else followed from that.

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The Facility

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319 Marrett Road Lexington MA is a private fully equipped training studio with everything needed for serious strength and rehabilitation work. Equipment selected specifically for the populations I serve. Private changing rooms. A space that feels nothing like a commercial gym because it was not designed to be one.

If your physician provides a doctor's note, payments can be processed through your insurance flex spending account.