About Todd Smith

The driving force behind my motivation to help other’s improve their health stems from a childhood surrounded by family members who struggled with obesity. As a very young child I watched my family try every fad diet and workout program that hit the market, only to fail miserably. I could see the pain in their eyes and sense the anxiety they felt when they were placed in social circumstances. Some members of my family were so overwhelmed by self-consciousness, that they avoided certain people and places because they felt inferior for being unhealthy and over weight. I felt terrible and wanted to do something about it. I decided to learn everything I could about about exercise and nutrition so I could teach my family to be healthy, strong, and confident. Once I started researching, I developed a burning passion to learn everything I could about the human body, and how it reacted to exercise and nutrition. My desire to learn took me all over the world. I wasn’t satisfied by just reading text books, I wanted to personally meet all the greatest minds who shared my love for transforming bodies and helping people achieve their dreams. “My Mount Rushmore” of body transformation mentors are the following:

1. Arthur Jones: He developed the Nautilus line of workout equipment, and was the first person to understand the role of muscle in stimulating the metabolic rate. I read all of his books and spent a week with him in Florida training under his guidance. I learned more in one week with Arthur Jones than I had in my previous 22 years on earth. Arthur was a true genius, but also the craziest person I have ever met.

2. Vince Gironda (The Iron Guru): A true pioneer. Vince understood bio-mechanics and the role exercise has in sculpting the human body. Vince owned a gym in North Hollywood for over 40 years and helped all the movie stars transform their bodies. I read all Vince’s books and spent a month training with him at his gym. While his training style is very unorthodox, the results he delivered were unprecedented. His philosophies remain very impactful on me to this day.

3. Bill Pearl: One of the wisest and most sincere individual’s I have ever had the pleasure to meet. Bill was the greatest bodybuilder in the world during the 1950’s and 1960’s. I read all Bill’s books and had the honor to speak at length with Bill on many occasions. Bill shared with me all his nutritional nuances and his incredible ability to overcome adversity in pursuit of his dreams.

4. Larry Scott: The first man to win bodybuilding’s biggest title; Mr. Olympia. Larry was a disciple of Vince Gironda’s but he was also a master in the science of nutrition. Larry understood the glycemic index and taught me the importance of supplementation to attain optimal results. I spent two weeks training with Larry in Utah, and utilized him as an advisor for many years.

The reason I go to such lengths telling you about my mentors is that their wisdom helped form the basis of all my current philosophies. My thoughts pertaining to body transformation are the amalgamation of those mentioned above (and countless others), and my personal experience working with individuals over the last 25 years.

Armed with all my knowledge, and bursting at the seams with motivation to help people, ther was only one logical thing for me to do once I finished school; open my own fitness center. Since I was terribly undercapitalized, I determined that the only way I could succeed in business was to personally commit to delivering results to each and every person who chose to become a member of my gym. My uncompromising commitment to each individual reaped enormous rewards. Memberships grew every month, word of the radical changes my members were realizing spread like wild fire. I was forced to move and expand three times in the first five years! Ultimately, I built a state of the art facility that could accomodate all my members and allow me to teach my principles to thousands of customers. I was very fortunate, I created a vision, worked like hell, and made it a reality. The next chapter of my life began when 24 Hour Fitness (an international fitness club operator) came to me with an offer I could’t refuse. They purchased my business and let me chase a whole new set of dreams.

Once I was free of my daily responsibilities at the fitness center, I was able to devote all my time to learning, and perfecting my own exercise and nutrition system. After spending two years of additional research, I came up with Todd Smith’s “I Can Do It” a total lifestyle program. I created my own info-mercial and successfully sold my total lifestyle program to over 70,000 participants. During the same time span, I won the National Steroid Free Bodybuilding Championship in Venice Beach, California and became a contributing author to Ironman Magazine. For the next few years I traveled extensively as a management consultant for the health club industry. I took a tremendous amount of satisfaction from helping club owners improve their bottom line, while assisting personal trainers all over the country to create better and more effective fitness and nutrition programs for their customers. Even though I jumped out of bed everyday exited by my life’s calling, I knew something was missing.

In 2002, I met and married my wife Carmen. A year later we were blessed with my first child, a daughter named Katie. Eighteen months ago we had an addition to our family, a baby boy named J.T. For the lasr few years I have been able to reach out and touch people with my online training courses. I love the interaction I get from people and I will never stray from helping people achieve their dreams. Everyday I get to hear the exitement in someone’s voice as they tell me of their accomplishments. It is equally as exhilerating t guide someone past a barrier they never crossed before. Along with my online training courses, I have a small fitness training studio I share with a fantastic trainer and person Bill Esch. The studio is named Smith & Esch.