Fitness journey leads to helping others improve their health
Fitness trainer Sam Wick demonstrates a push-up. • Photos Submitted
By Tom Victoria
While many people spent last year idle, Sam Wick continued perfecting his physique and started to help others improve theirs.
Sam, 20, of Portland, Oregon, started Wick Fitness, becoming a personal trainer.
“I believe fitness is the best method of helping people fix their lives by improving not only their physical, but mental health,” he said. “Especially in the midst of a horrible pandemic, I think now more than ever, people need fitness.”
In less than a year, he acquired 25 clients, started a YouTube channel and drew nearly 30,000 Instagram followers.
“I got my first client pretty quickly,” Sam said.
His Instagram account, which was launched in 2020, includes numerous workout tips. Sam went viral with one post boasting 100,000 impressions and gaining 500 followers.
Sam does squats by a waterfall.
He targets various body parts in each clip, ranging from working on bicep peaks to oblique abs. Workouts include such grueling exercises as Hindu push-ups, which entails a sweeping motion, and, drawing on his Scandinavian roots, Nordic curls, lifting the upper body using the hamstrings.
“It’s horrible,” Sam said about the curls’ impact. “It’s purgatory.”
He explained the need for him to engage in more arduous exercise.
“With fitness, especially calisthenics - body weight fitness - you have to continually progress and challenge yourself, which is why I specialize in those harder exercises,” Sam said. “I can’t just do push-ups nowadays.”
Sam offers one-on-one training and developed an eBook: the Wick Workout Plan, which covers 30 days of workouts. He is excited about releasing the third iteration of the eBook.
“Every time I worked on this, I thought of Elon Musk’s business quote: ‘great companies are built on great products,’” Sam said.
He said the need for fitness is critical, citing a recent study that indicated 70 percent of the American population is overweight with a significant portion being obese.
“This is terrifying,” Sam said. “This statistic shows the lack of education and lack of self-discipline taught in the American society. Cardiovascular disease is already one of the biggest killers in the U.S. And if we don’t do something to stop this trend, I really fear for millions of people’s lives.”
Roughly two years ago, Sam decided to enhance his physique.
“I was a lot skinnier back then,” he said. “I was super depressed.”
Since then, Sam packed on more than 20 pounds of muscle and reduced body fat to 10 percent. He said the pain of tough workouts pays off in the end.
“I live for post workout endorphins,” Sam said. “After suffering, there’s bliss.”
He said the devoting time to developing his body also improved his mental outlook.
“If I’m having a bad day, a workout helps,” Sam said.
He learned to not overdo exercise, though. Along with a workout, Sam used to take a bike ride and run.
“One of my biggest mistakes was I thought I had to be a super athlete,” he said.
Sam discovered the body needs time to recover from being taxed so as to come back stronger. He said there is a time to rest.
In preparation for is fitness training, Sam spent thousands of hours researching exercises. He methodically developed his Instagram account and is now working on the YouTube channel.
His clips aren’t restricted to indoors. Sam has been recording workouts in the outdoors, including hiking up a mountain peak to work on bicep peaks and doing pistol squats by a waterfall.
“People like outdoor scenery,” he said.
Sam plans on using his social media platforms for a travel workout vlog.
The link to Sam’s website is: https://wickfitness.com/
The link to Sam’s YouTube channel is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWFZN-OrF55DHld8wuo-Jmg
The link to Sam’s Instagram account is: https://www.instagram.com/thesam_wick/