Monsieur Autio

I have to admit, this isn’t my first foray in blogging. In 2022 I started an Instagram account that chronicled my fitness journey with the handle @jacked.maestrojake as a way to blog my experience with fitness and how it related to my learning as an educator and life. I explored several principles that I share in this blog but in the context of fitness and my bodybuilding transformation. Here, I’d like to highlight some of them as the lessons I’ve learned through bodybuilding and how I take them into the classroom. 

Trepidation to Start 

At the beginning, I was deeply insecure and scared what people would say about me admitting I wanted to get into bodybuilding let alone actually doing it.  I worried that people would say I was vain and self-centered in addition to the fact that perhaps I didn’t belong in the world as artsy gay boy who never liked team sports. Up until I was 32 years old, my sense of identity had always lived in music and teaching. The life of a bodybuilding felt like a “bro” terrain where I would not be welcomed. 

I always lived an active lifestyle as a swimmer/lifeguard and then to general wellness fitness, to start bodybuilding required confronting long-held inner narratives about who I was and truly admit to myself that I actually wanted to be a part of that world and lead that lifestyle. Over time I became more and more comfortable with myself and finally had the courge and financial means to hire a coach who specialized in bodybuilding, Matt Law (Instagram: @st.mattlaw). 

I found Matt on Instagram, impressed by his physique and the location of his gym in relation to my house was an added bonus. I reached out and initially the gym said he was not taking on clients. He took me on anyway and for that I still feel eternally grateful. Little did I know then the impact he would have on my life. Now, about five years later, I still work with Matt online and we have become good friends who train together regularly and encourage one another. 

This serves as a reminder that our students often will have their own trepidations when they meet us and join our learning communities. They each have their own inner life they are navigating and many will not have the choice to be in our learning communities.

Embodied Learning

When Matt and I first started in-person in 2021, I had a good baseline of knowledge about lifting from working with other trainers, going to boot camp style classes, and from general learning and going to the gym on my own. What I wanted from him was to take me to my next level and truly start living the bodybuilding lifestyle. I wanted to know how bodybuilders trained and lived in order to, well, look like Matt! 

Matt impressed me right away with his professionalism and his planning and programming abilities. He was a great teacher who used a lot of teaching techniques that I have also picked up over the years: documenting growth over time with progress photos; keeping logs of data (on a very elaborate self-made Google Sheet); co-creating SMART goals; using a “demo-describe-do”-type teaching strategy; asking reflection questions; and general encouragement and establishing a connection with students. As a teacher it was fun to be a student again with a meta awareness of his strategies. 

I was a very keen student. One time another client of his said “You talk a lot with Jake” and Matt replied “It’s because he asks lots of questions.”  I knew I needed to maximize my time with him and learn as much as I could. As our sessions were wrapping up, I even attempted my own programming to try to keep my momentum. He graciously gave me feedback on my plan and then that he offered to be my online coach, an opportunity I continue to benefit from to this day. 

My transformation from our first five months together were exciting to say the least. We then worked towards a photo shoot for June 2022 as a stepping stone towards my first body building competition in June 2023. This was an example of good teaching again, ensuring I could complete mock preparation phrases before doing a full competition. In other words, scaffolding. 

Over the first two years I was in the process of also practicing mantras as a way to shift my mindset.  Matt was the first to introduce me to the idea of not working out for purely aesthetics but to “become a better version of yourself.” This lesson became a big part of my teaching that year and aligned with what I was learning from Katz & Lamoureux’s Ensouling Our Schools (2018) idea of self-acutalization. 

My Instagram fitness blog has several reflections under posters of “I am…” that reflect on the different words and what I came to realize through my process. Looking back now, I can really see that what matters is how the learner shows up to the process.  I realized that bodybuilding is a different expression of art,  both require discipline, creativity, attention to detail, and above all, support from a community. They both invite us to show up to life more fully and require presence. 

The connection here is that when the teacher is prepared and an embodiment of the learning itself then students are more likely to be inspired to go the distance we hope they can go. Not only did I learn form Matt but he lives the life he was teaching. Teachers do the same as life-long learners – we teach people to learn. This aligns with Parker Palmer and my idea that “we teach who we are.”

Routine, Routine, Routine

What has sustained me through the years of bodybuilding is my love of routine. All elementary teachers know the power and necessity of a good routine. I already had a set routine to work out in the morning before work that I had established many years before and I’ve luckily always been someone who prioritizes sleep. When I started to pay much more attention to my diet I fell in love with the meal prep routine and realized that I actually saved so much time and mental energy. I even told my first student teacher, Madame Froese, that meal prep is teaching prep for not having to stress about scrambling together a lunch every morning! 

In many ways, bodybuilding didn’t require me to become someone else, it has become an opportunity to honour what the best parts of myself. I realized that routines and consistency are less of a moral trait and more of a skill—one that is nurtured through thoughtful planning, habit formation, and small changes over time. 

Our students come to us with many gifts and we are not there to change them but to help them leverage their strengths as they progress in their stretches and skills through consistency. They will discover things that make their lives better and then share it with others. 

Learning Builds Relationships

I’ve been incredibly lucky to become friends with Matt, who accepted me, never laughed when I would be vulnerable, and never pushed me into becoming someone else, but instead guided me into becoming more fully myself. Our work together has been deeply relational and so has his influence on my circle of friends. Through him I was able to learn the lingo of the gym and become a part of the culture; by being “Matt’s client” that I met new people and know how to talk “gym” and feel more comfortable being my full self in the “adult playground.” My network now has a a fantastic team consisting of Matt, a now mutual friend who is my physio therapist, a massage therapist, and  a chiropractor who are all gym “bros” in addition to other guys I see around the gym and regular training partners who also help me learn more about anatomy, physiology, posing and most of all encourage, accept, and support me. 

I can only hope that I can offer the same to students by establishing a learning environment where they feel fully accepted and guided and where they find a network in our class.

From that point I can teach them the “lingo” needed to think and act in different capacities (historian, mathematician, scientist, linguist, etc.). 

Identity Beyond Results

Now, four years of my bodybuilding journey and two years after my first show (coming in 7/8 contestants!), I’m proud of the skills and confidence I’ve built. But I’m also learning to hold pride lightly. To celebrate the effort, yes, but also to stay unattached to outcome. As I move through the seasons of cutting, “reverse dieting” (a new concept for me) and bulking I gain more comfort in the long-term process and lifestyle. Before, I would get frustrated with my weight. Through working with Matt, I have learned to look at the averages for a week and then the trends over time. This is why data is so important when we look at assessment for growth over time. I also know now that my physique will shift and if I cling to a single self-image, I risk falling into old thinking patterns as these patterns emerge as my diet seasons cycle. 

To help me reframe my mindset, I do my best to root myself in process: in gratitude and in learning. I’m not just transforming physically; I’m transforming emotionally. My most poignant self-talk is “I must be here before I can be there” and when I compare myself to others to remind myself that their success does not mean I am not succeeding and to be inspired by them rather than torn down. One day when I was in a comparison mindset I remember coming to the realization “This is supposed to be fun! So, have fun!”

This journey has helped me be kinder to myself, more patient with setbacks, and more accepting of imperfection. It helped me too realize I am capable of anything – though I have help from others I am the one lifting, eating, reflecting, and  following through with my goal. These are the same things I want for my students – not just achievement, but self-compassion, humility, and persistence and a hard work ethic. 

These are the gifts I know I impart on my students with our routines and expectations that learning belongs to the individual and that we are each responsible for our own learning – intrinsic motivation rather than external validation – and that the community is here to help them and they the community. It was mentally uncomfortable and it will be for students, too. It is difficult to have reframe what society engrains in us when it comes to competition and worthiness. 

Final Thoughts

This journey has made me more alive and whole, not because of exercise endorphins but because I think I finally am living true to who I always wanted to be. And perhaps that’s the ultimate goal of education—not just to know more but to become more true to ourselves.

On my Instagram I shared a paraphrase often attributed to Dewey “We do not learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience” (paraphrasing Dewey, 1922, p. 78). I realize now that by curating small insights I’m able to see that my philosophy of education is very much rooted in my personal values that I try to live every day outside of school. This process has reminded me that transformation is always internal to external and that no one ever does anything alone. 

Teachers can be influencers, in the real world. 

Where do you see yourself in my story?

Do you have a hobby outside of work that informs your practice?

Have you ever started something you always wanted to do?

How do you get over the comparison game?

Autios! À la prochaine!

Bibliography 

Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. D.C. Heath.

Katz, J., & Lamoureux, K. (2018). Ensouling our schools: A universal design for learning approach to supporting mental health in all classrooms. Portage & Main Press.

Palmer, P. (1998). The courage to teach: exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. Ed. 1. Jossey-bass. San Francisco, CA.