Igor Krasnoperov
I was the slowest kid in my class,
and every time we ran,
I was the one at the back.
I was ten years old, and physical education had just been added as
a class that year. We did all kinds of things in it, and one of the tests was a 400 meter run. I was the chubby kid, and I was also the slow one. The stopwatch just made it official. Last, or second to last, every single time.
Before any of it started.
There was an older boy in my building named Vitaliy. He was
already in high school, and he was a real runner. One day I asked him what I was doing wrong.
He asked me my strategy. I told him I held back at the start, then tried to push at the end. He said: in a 400 meter run, there is no pacing. You go all out from the first step. And if you're not running every day, you'll never have the engine to do it.
Nobody had told me that. I wasn't lazy. I was running the wrong strategy.
So I ran. Every morning. The next time we were tested, I finished second, close enough to touch the boy in first. The teacher couldn't believe it.
That was the first time I learned the lesson I now build my
work around: the problem usually isn't effort. It's the system
underneath it.
The quiet years
From that point on, being fit was simply who I was. Through school. Through the military. Through college. I was one of the fittest guys in every room I walked into, and I never had to think about it.
Then, at 23, adult life took over. Work, responsibility, everything that comes with it.
It doesn't happen dramatically. There's no single day you quit. The career takes priority, then life settles in around it, and the version of you who trained every morning just quietly stops showing up. That went on for twenty years.
At 43, I weighed 200 pounds and I was running on empty.
43. Successful on paper. Empty in the tank.
The turn
It didn't start with a doctor or a diagnosis. One morning in January 2013, my wife looked at me and said my belly was getting big.
I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, and I remember thinking: what happened to you? The kid who was one of the fittest guys in every room was gone.
So I joined a gym. But training on my own got stale fast. I had no real plan — just the same handful of things I already knew how to do, over and over. So I hired a coach there, someone to hold me accountable for showing up and to keep changing what I was doing.
Then I came across a post from a friend on Facebook. She had raced an Ironman and missed the cutoff, but she didn't leave the course. She kept going, on her own, long after the finish line had closed, because she wanted to finish it for herself.
That stopped me cold. Here was something that would challenge me for years, not weeks. I told my coach, and he started building triathlon work into my training. In August 2013 I raced my first one.
After that I was on my own again. Swimming, biking and running are not things you learn in a gym, so I kept going, kept meeting people, and kept getting deeper into that world. In 2014 I found Mike Ricci and he has been my coach ever since. Twelve years, same coach.
I'm 57 now. I podium in nearly every local race I enter, and I'm training to qualify for the Ironman World Championship.
57. Still going.
The part most people leave out
Last year, doing everything I thought was right, I crashed. My energy fell off a cliff, and it took over a month to come back. I was sleeping eleven hours a night. I was eating well. It made no difference. Nothing I knew how to do was working.
That's when I stopped guessing and started testing. I looked at my genetics and found out what my body actually needed, which turned out to be different from what the internet, the supplement aisle and my own assumptions had told me for years.
That's the work I do now. I help men 45+ find out why their energy is disappearing and what to do about it.
Be Limitless Human
Powered by Wealth With No Limits, Inc.
Igor Krasnoperov
I was the slowest kid in my class, and every time we ran, I was the
one at the back.
I was ten years old, and physical education had just been added as a class that year. We did all kinds of things in it, and one of the tests was a 400 meter run. I was the chubby kid, and I was also the slow one. The stopwatch just made it official. Last, or second to last, every single time.
Before any of it started.
There was an older boy in my building named Vitaliy. He was already in high school, and he was a real runner. One day Iasked him what I was doing wrong.
He asked me my strategy. I told him I held back at the start, then tried to push at the end. He said: in a 400 meter run, there is no pacing. You go all out from the first step. And if you're not running every day, you'll never have the engine to do it.
Nobody had told me that. I wasn't lazy. I was running the wrong strategy.
So I ran. Every morning. The next time we were tested, I finished second, close enough to touch the boy in first. The teacher couldn't believe it.
That was the first time I learned the lesson I now build my work around: the problem usually isn't effort. It's the system underneath it.
The quiet years
From that point on, being fit was simply who I was. Through school. Through the military. Through college. I was one of the fittest guys in every room I walked into, and I never had to think about it.
Then, at 23, adult life took over. Work, responsibility, everything that comes with it.
It doesn't happen dramatically. There's no single day you quit. The career takes priority, then life settles in around it, and the version of you who trained every morning just quietly stops showing up. That went on for twenty years.
At 43, I weighed 200 pounds and I was running on empty.
43. Successful on paper. Empty in the tank.
The turn
It didn't start with a doctor or a diagnosis. One morning in January 2013, my wife looked at me and said my belly was getting big.
I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, and I remember thinking: what happened to you? The kid who was one of the fittest guys in every room was gone.
So I joined a gym. But training on my own got stale fast. I had no real plan — just the same handful of things I already knew how to do, over and over. So I hired a coach there, someone to hold me accountable for showing up and to keep changing what I was doing.
Then I came across a post from a friend on Facebook. She had raced an Ironman and missed the cutoff, but she didn't leave the course. She kept going, on her own, long after the finish line had closed, because she wanted to finish it for herself.
That stopped me cold. Here was something that would challenge me for years, not weeks. I told my coach, and he started building triathlon work into my training. In August 2013 I raced my first one.
After that I was on my own again. Swimming, biking and running are not things you learn in a gym, so I kept going, kept meeting people, and kept getting deeper into that world. In 2014 I found Mike Ricci and he has been my coach ever since. Twelve years, same coach.
I'm 57 now. I podium in nearly every local race I enter, and I'm training to qualify for the Ironman World Championship.
57. Still going.
The part most people leave out
Last year, doing everything I thought was right, I crashed. My energy fell off a cliff, and it took over a month to come back. I was sleeping eleven hours a night. I was eating well. It made no difference. Nothing I knew how to do was working.
That's when I stopped guessing and started testing. I looked at my genetics and found out what my body actually needed, which turned out to be different from what the internet, the supplement aisle and my own assumptions had told me for years.
That's the work I do now. I help men 45+ find out why their energy is disappearing and what to do about it.
Be Limitless Human
Powered by Wealth With No Limits, Inc.