Community Highlights: Meet Justin Vetters of Alinea Coaching

Today we’d like to introduce you to Justin Vetters.

Hi Justin, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Absolutely – I’ve always been an active and relatively driven person. When I was younger I was an avid skier, rock climber, and cyclist, and played soccer for many years, some of them competitively. Like many others, I went through college using student loans, and any grant I could get accepted for. Midway through my senior year, I had a job waiting for me in the professional world and jumped on both feet.

Eager to advance and grow, I threw myself fully into my work for many years, and for many years I loved it. Then one day I stopped and looked in the mirror, and for the second time in my life ( I’ll describe the first later in the interview), I found myself on the wrong side of my health. My mental well-being wasn’t in a much better state. Those busy working years had gone by in the blink of an eye and there I was obese, depressed, and generally unwell.

My poor mindset and health had created a negative home environment so the relationship I was in at the time was also failing. Had I known what was to come in the next couple of years, I would’ve seat-belted myself in because the ride was just getting started. More on that later, but at this point in the story, I decided that it was time to change.

When I say I made the decision, I mean that I committed, just as I had with my professional life. Burn the boat and learn to swim. I was not spending one more day in this way of being. It started with exercises at home in my living room. Plyometrics, calisthenics, cardio, and very mild resistance training led by a virtual trainer.

Next was my diet because I was quickly learning that you cannot out-train a bad diet. For all the hard work I was doing, the results were marginal at best. Cue the virtual trainer. I was provided resources that taught me the basics of how to measure and track my intake, as well as make better food choices. Fast forward 90 days and I had dropped about 20 lbs, now we’re talking. Not only was I elated that I had dropped so much weight, but there was a sense of fulfillment that came from knowing that I was taking care of myself.

This was breathing new life into me, and I knew I wanted others to experience the same. I spent some time thinking about what the next chapter of this personal journey would look like, and eventually found my way to bodybuilding. The structure, discipline, and persistent personal challenge were appealing to me, so I hired a more appropriate coach and off I went for the next six years.

Along the way, I invested in education and additional resources to feed my ever-growing knowledge base. In addition to my job and bodybuilding hobby, I studied and received certifications in nutrition, coaching, and personal training. Eventually, coaching became a source of income for me, and a company was born to finally start helping others walk the same road that I had. As my energy and drive skewed disproportionately toward coaching and bodybuilding, I decided to finally step away from the career field I was in to pursue bodybuilding and entrepreneurship full-time.

A year later, I earned my Professional status in the International Federation of Bodybuilding ( IFBB ), by winning my weight class at the USA Bodybuilding Championships. That happened on my birthday of all days, and it was a symbolic turning of the page to the most challenging time of my life to date that had spanned a previous couple of years, and forever changed who I am as a human.

I experienced some of the hardest days of my life during this period, and the structure of bodybuilding was my stable platform to operate from. It was one of the only consistent things that were within my control so it became a non-negotiable element of my life. Another investment into myself. Not everything was doom and gloom during this time though.

There were very high moments that punctuated the difficult stretches. I mentioned formerly that a new business was born, I earned my IFBB Pro card, and I also met my wife Amy during this time. She is now my business partner also and a heck of a good coach herself. I truly believe that I had to become the version of myself that I needed to become, to then attract the person I would marry, and I was forged through difficult experiences.

Now, we are both full-time entrepreneurs who coach full-time and operate a brick-and-mortar business called Nova Tans in Winsdor. We live and operate by the mantra “life by design”. There will always be elements of life that are beyond our control, but we invest significantly into controlling our controllability, meaning that we are proactive about the direction of our life.

Collectively we have helped many hundreds of people regain their health, reshape their mindset, make healthier choices, conquer difficult hurdles, and for those that choose to do it, take the competitive stage. We do so under the brand of Alinea Coaching and our approach is holistic, encompassing the mind, body, and soul.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
There have certainly been challenges. I’m going to do my best to share the condensed form of a long story. Previously in the interview, I had mentioned that there were two periods in my life when I had been on the wrong side of my health. The first was in my teenage years, just before I went to college. I developed a substance abuse problem and landed myself in the hospital after going on a multi-day binge of party drugs and amphetamines.

Wake up and call number 1 to do life differently. Jumping ahead now, to the other time I was on the wrong side of my health. This is the place in my story where I was still obese, depressed, and generally unwell. I mentioned that my relationship at the time was failing, and eventually it did. We had lived together for about a year, and she finally reached a breaking point with the state that I had gotten to.

The only relevance that it has to this story, is that this was the first in a series of events that was difficult for me, that would transpire over a relatively short timeframe. In hindsight, I have a lot of respect for the fact that she removed herself from a detrimental situation. This was also the time I committed to my health and decided to change my way of being.

During this period of my life, I was working as a consultant in the energy sector and had been for a few years. It was a great role, but not long after the relationship ended I found myself in a precarious spot professionally, and my position was terminated. When you’re young and relatively financially irresponsible, being terminated is like having the rug pulled out from under your feet. Before too long I was behind on my bills in a big way.

My former job was very specialized, so finding a replacement did not come easily. I delivered boxes to earn what I could. Several months later, and 2 months behind on the mortgage, I finally caught a break. I accepted a position in southern California in a similar role to the one I had been in. I packed up the essentials and moved a week later. Armed with my newly minted financial experience, and a new salary, I immediately went to work on correcting my mistakes.

At this point, I had been bodybuilding for a few years, and the structure had served as my foundation. Controlling my controllable. Wake up call number 2 to do life differently. Things were good for about a year. I had caught up on my debt, picked up my first few clients as a fitness coach and things had pretty much stabilized. It was late 2016 when I got a phone call that I will never forget. Sitting in my office, my sister explained to me that she had flown a red-eye from Texas to Colorado the night before.

Our mother had been delivered to the hospital by some of her friends who thought she was having a stroke. After extensive testing, she was diagnosed with a high-grade brain tumor called a glioblastoma. News like that will short-circuit your nervous system. I heard it, but I struggled to process the words. I sat in a state of numb disbelief for a few minutes as she shared the prognosis and the extremely low chance of recovery. I can’t imagine how difficult that message was for her to deliver.

For context, we grew up in a single-parent household from the time we were very young. As well, our mother was an only child and her parents had already passed away years earlier. We have a very small family and the decision was made that I would return to Colorado to be her full-time caregiver. I am forever grateful for the small Birmingham-based startup that sent me CA for work and allowed me to return to CO to care for our mom while working remotely.

So, I packed my things and moved back into my childhood bedroom at our mother’s house. As her condition advanced, we began living on a 24-hour cycle. When she was awake, I was awake. She would sleep for 3-4 hours at a time, so while she was sleeping I was doing one of several things. Working, building a fledgling coaching business, sleeping myself, or trying to do the one thing I could to keep my center, training.

I continued to find my center in the lifestyle I had been leading while doing my best to provide for her needs. She needed a lot of help with even basic functions of living; walking, eating, hygiene, etc. On April 14, 2017, approximately 5 months after I returned to CO, she passed peacefully while in hospice. This was the point where I paused to reflect, and made the decision to pursue entrepreneurship and coaching full-time.

Not to sound morbid, but when you experience something like that with someone that close to you, and you are that close to our inevitable human mortality, it shifts your perspective. It will abruptly align you with reality, and wake up call number three to do life differently. So once again I burned the boat, and I went all in on my business, coaching, and bodybuilding.

On July 27, 2018, I earned my IFBB Pro card on my 33rd birthday and celebrated my first year as a full-time entrepreneur & coach. I also met my wife Amy while prepping for that show. I truly believe that it’s the most difficult times that create the most growth in our lives. I came away from the most difficult stretch of my life more aligned with myself than I had ever been before. I came away as a (future) husband, a coach, an IFBB Pro, and an entirely new person.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Alinea Coaching is a health and fitness coaching brand that takes a holistic approach to create results. Drawing from our past experiences, we are keenly aware of the intertwined nature of physical well-being, mindset & mental well-being, and a person’s environment. While the latter elements are often overlooked by individuals and many other coaches; the four main components (exercise, food, water, rest) are relatively obvious when it comes to reclaiming a person’s health, or meeting any fitness goal, and that’s generally all that gets attention.

That’s one big thing that sets us apart. The other is what we would call our client experience. We pride ourselves on being thorough, demonstrating follow-through, and strong communication. If I had a dollar for every client that said to me that their previous coach would take a week to respond, or would only talk to them on their check-in day, or would sometimes ghost them entirely. You’re paying for a service, and that type of thing is not ok in the slightest.

My wife Amy and I have had the privilege to coach over a thousand adults on their journey and can say with confidence that we produce results. If someone is willing to follow the guidance, get outside of their comfort zone, be open and communicate, and can be open to new ways of doing, their likelihood for success is high.

Our Health and Wellness coaching is very comprehensive and focuses on individuals who are looking to lose weight, change their body composition, or just generally be healthier. Through our program, we can help address the root cause of many metabolic-related health conditions like Type II diabetes, pre-diabetes, gout, hypertension, obesity, and others. We can address issues like poor hormone health, and gut health. One little know fact is that most of the hormone that controls our mood is made in the gut, so it’s important it’s healthy.

For those who are looking for a challenge, and a way to exercise their competitive spirit, we also coach for contest prep. Contest prep is an involved process that typically includes a period of tissue growth, tailored to a specific division in the sport, followed by a period of leaning down and reducing body fat as the show date nears. We teach posing for all men’s and women’s divisions, and help with all of the show day planning items like selecting a suit. Just like our Health and Wellness coaching, it is a very compressive package.

We’d love to hear what you think about risk-taking.
This is a great question. I am certainly not what you would call a risk-averse individual. Earlier in the interview, I used the expression “burn the boat”, and I use that expression to describe the act of trying something new, and perhaps even risky. When I finally left my professional job, that was a substantial risk, starting a business is a risk, and investing in your business is a risk.

In my experience, people tend to perform better when there is some level of risk involved, and when the safety net is smaller. Truth is, there is an inherent level of risk in everything we do. When it comes to taking larger risks, with larger consequences, it’s wise to take calculated risks. Understand the risk you’re taking, know your outs if there are any, and then it’s up to you to decide if the level of risk is something you are comfortable with.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.alineacoaching.com
• Instagram: @justinvetters
• Other: @amers_lildyno

Image Credits
Bob Younger Photography and Tony Rocco Photography