Today we’d like to introduce you to Derek Tresize.
Hi Derek, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I never expected to be a bodybuilder, a personal trainer, or a vegan; so it’s funny how life works out sometimes. I earned my personal training certification in 2007 and worked at university and commercial gyms while I finished a biology degree at VCU. By age 22, I was running the personal training department at Gold’s Gym in Richmond. I had always assumed I’d go on to an advanced degree in something like biochemistry or genetics, but I loved training people so much I decided to stick with it.
My wife Marcella and I started veganmuscleandfitness.com in 2009 and began coaching people online, which was pretty unheard of in 2009. In 2012, right after our first son was born, we opened Root Force Personal Training in Manchester district. I’d been in commercial gyms long enough and was ready to strike out on my own. We found one small studio space and dove in. When the lease came up we took the studio next door, added another the following year, and in 2017 we bought the building and renovated it into one larger space.
I competed as a natural bodybuilder through all of it, starting in 2011. I earned my WNBF pro card in 2014 and have taken first place in four shows.
I also collected a number of injuries along the way, and that – combined with wanting to do more for clients dealing with their own pain – pushed me into specialty work: Corrective Exercise Specialist, the Plant-Based Nutrition certification through Cornell, and Muscle Activation Techniques. MAT in particular changed how I see a body. When you can identify the specific muscles that have stopped contributing, a lot of what gets written off as a bad knee or a bad back turns out to be something you can actually work on.
Alongside all of that I’ve kept up with the research, and in recent years I’ve gone deep on the biochemistry of aging and on the epidemiology connecting exercise habits to how long and how well people live. That’s what my training looks like now. Instead of chasing one quality, I program around the capacities we lose fastest as we age – strength, muscle mass, muscle power, cardiovascular endurance, and balance – and rotate which one gets the emphasis each training block.
The newest piece is that I’ve spent this year building that system into an app called Stronger. Faster. Younger. I’d been writing the same structure for clients one at a time for years, and this is how it reaches people beyond those who can come into my studio in Richmond.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Mostly smooth, honestly, and I know how fortunate that makes me.
The biggest reason is the clients. Almost everyone who has trained with me came in through word of mouth, and that’s been true since we opened. There have been better years and worse years of course, but the business has been steady the whole way.
The ongoing challenge has been scheduling. We had our daughter in 2015 and our second son in 2021, and a personal training business runs on early mornings and evenings, which are also peak family hours. Working that out took real effort and it’s still something I have to juggle.
The largest challenge by far was the COVID lockdowns. I had to move my entire gym roster to online training, more or less overnight. But we weathered it, and we came out of it a more versatile business than we went in. I can train a client live over Zoom now when they’re traveling or out of town, rather than just online coaching like I’d done in the past, and that’s a capability I probably never would have built if I hadn’t been forced to.
I consider us very lucky that things have gone as well as they have.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Root Force Personal Training?
Root Force is a private personal training studio in Richmond’s Manchester district. It’s one-on-one work, by appointment, in our own space rather than out on a gym floor. Most of our clients are adults in their late thirties through their sixties who want to stay strong and capable as they get older, and a good number come to me with some history of pain or injury.
That’s the part I’ve specialized in. I’m a certified Muscle Activation Techniques practitioner and a Corrective Exercise Specialist, which isn’t a common combination for a personal trainer, and it changes the first conversation. Instead of working around a bad shoulder or a bad knee, we spend time figuring out which muscles have stopped contributing and get them working again. A lot of what people live with turns out to be trainable.
The other thing that sets the training apart is what we’re training for. Most programs chase one quality, usually how you look, losing a few pounds, or how much you can lift. While we do track those things, I program around the five capacities we lose fastest as we age: strength, muscle mass, muscle power, cardiovascular endurance, and balance. Each training block rotates which one gets the emphasis, so nothing gets neglected for long. That structure came out of the research on aging I’ve been reading for years, and it’s what clients tend to notice. They feel different in their regular life, not just in the gym.
We’re also known for plant-based nutrition. I’ve eaten plant-based since 2007 and hold a plant-based nutrition certification through Cornell, and over the years plenty of people have sought us out specifically because they wanted help eating that way, or simply wanted a trainer who already does. Most of our clients aren’t vegan and I don’t ask anyone to be. But it’s a real part of what we do, and there aren’t many trainers in town who can speak to it from experience.
What I’m proudest of are all the clients I’ve helped become stronger, better, and healthier. The best feeling I can get is seeing someone excited about new things they’re able to do or better health markers than they’ve ever seen. I’m also really proud that almost every client has come in through word of mouth.
So: one-on-one training at the studio, live coaching over Zoom for clients who travel or have moved away, and as of this year an app called Stronger. Faster. Younger., which puts the same 22-week program I write for clients into a format anyone can follow. There’s a community that goes with it where I’m personally in the loop. It’s the same method either way – every workout in the app was written by me.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
Quite a bit, and mostly good.
The biggest piece of luck I’ve had was meeting Marcella in 2007. She’s the reason I looked at the plant-based research at all, and that ended up changing both my health and the direction of my career. I wasn’t looking for either of those things at the time.
The bad luck turned out to be useful. I got hurt a number of times competing, and those injuries were just setbacks when they happened. But they’re the reason I went out and got certified in corrective exercise and Muscle Activation Techniques, and that work is now one of the parts of my practice I value most, and the reason a lot of clients come to me in the first place. I wouldn’t have gone looking for that education if my own body hadn’t pushed me into it.
Beyond that, I’ve been lucky in timing and lucky in clients. We started coaching people online in 2009, well before that was a common thing to do, and it turned out to be a useful skill to already have when 2020 came around. And a business that runs on word of mouth depends entirely on people being generous enough to tell their friends. I don’t take that for granted.
Pricing:
- Free initial consultation
- One-on-one training at the studio: $90 per one-hour session
- Muscle Activation Techniques sessions and corrective exercise programming available
- Stronger. Faster. Younger. app: free 7-day trial — current pricing at rootforcept.com
- Skool community: free to join — programming, Q&A, and 45+ plant-based athletes
Contact Info:
- Website: https://rootforcept.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rootforcept/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/strongerfasteryounger
- Twitter: https://x.com/veganmuscle
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@VeganMuscleandFitness
