Fit But Miserable: How a Triathlete Found What His Training Was Missing

A year ago, nobody would have looked at Gardner Burg and thought he needed to fix his fitness.

He’d spent years as a competitive triathlete, all the way through college. Lean, muscular build. Could outrun, out-cycle, and out-swim most people without much effort. On paper, he was in great shape.

Under the surface, things were falling apart.

“I was sore all the time,” Gardner said. “And I just did not have a functional body outside of those specific sports of running and cycling and swimming.”

But the real problem went deeper than sore joints. “I recognized that I didn’t even like what I was doing. I felt like it was something I had dedicated myself to and I just felt like that’s what I should do.”

Sound familiar? You’ve been training a certain way for so long that the habit is running you instead of the other way around. The results stopped being worth the trade-offs a while ago, but you keep going because you don’t know what else to do.

Gardner tried everything. CrossFit, yoga, traditional bodybuilding, resistance bands. “But my approach to fitness was still: How many calories am I burning? Is this going to build muscles? Is this going to keep me lean?”

Nothing stuck. Nothing addressed what was actually missing.

Then he came back to Elements, a program he’d bookmarked months earlier and ignored. “They keep recommending Elements no matter who you are when you’re getting back into this style of training. Just do Elements. Trust us, you’re gonna be glad you did.”

He committed to it. Here’s what happened.

The Part Where the “Easy” Movements Turned Out to Matter

Gardner’s first reaction to the early weeks of Elements was that the movements looked too simple for someone at his level. A-frame, floating tabletop — he could already do that stuff.

“And one of the ways that I’ve really sabotaged myself in the past is by jumping ahead.”

This time he didn’t jump. He slowed down, watched every video, listened to every cue, and actually paid attention to what his body was doing in positions he thought he’d already mastered.

“There are cues in those early assessments that become invaluable down the road. One of my major breakthroughs to sticking a tuck handstand for the first time ever towards the end of Elements related to the floating tabletop that was discussed in week one. And I never would have gotten that if I hadn’t watched those videos all the way through, listened to the cues, and actually paid attention to what I was doing, as opposed to just kind of going through the motions.”

That’s the thing about progressive skill training. The early movements aren’t filler to keep beginners busy while advanced athletes wait for the hard stuff. They’re building the specific motor patterns and body awareness that more complex movements require. Skip them and you build on sand. Do them with full attention and you’re laying foundation that compounds for months.

From Claustrophobic Squat to “Silky Smooth Magic”

Gardner’s tightest spot was his deep squat. Bound-up hips made the bottom position uncomfortable, and the Frogger movement — which transitions through the squat repeatedly — felt claustrophobic at first.

“But through sheer, mindful repetition, it slowly got better. And then to sit at the bottom in a deep squat and realize that your chest is fully up and you’re not hunched around over your knees — it was pretty amazing. And it just did it on its own. All I did was show up when I was supposed to and did the best that I could on that day, and it took care of itself.”

Then the Frogger progression started opening up new territory. The High Frogger brings your hips above your shoulders and back down. Gardner found himself jumping into tuck handstand positions — but sloppily, maybe once in four or five tries.

Instead of celebrating the sloppy version, he pulled back. Focused on control. And found something better:

“I discovered that if I lifted up just 5 or 10 degrees short of being fully vertical, even though it didn’t hold in the top position, I was super under control the whole way through. And then I could slow motion bring everything down into the squat with my feet right behind my hands.

“And let me tell you what, that feels like magic.

“Wrists feel solid over hands, shoulders feel solid over wrists, hips feel solid over shoulders, and just all the way down. It’s pretty remarkable.”

One of our Trainers saw a video of Gardner’s High Frogger and commented: “Silky smooth.”

That progression — uncomfortable squat to controlled near-handstand in a matter of weeks — didn’t come from grinding reps or pushing through pain. It came from paying attention to the basics, building control through each stage, and letting the complexity increase as his body was ready for it.

The Shift That Changed Everything

Before Elements, Gardner had never completed a training program start to finish. “I get into it a couple weeks, I get bored, I get distracted by the next shiny thing, and I jump to that.”

He hit the last day of Elements and was disappointed it was over.

The strength gains and mobility improvements were real. But the thing that actually changed Gardner’s life was a complete reframe of what training is for.

“This was what I needed to finally banish the whole: How many calories does this burn? Which muscles does this work? Is this going to work my biceps? All the crazy things that I was so preoccupied with for so long.

“It reaffirmed for me what I want out of my training. I want to be able to run around the playground for two hours with my nephew and wear him out. That’s the kind of capacity and functionality that I want for myself now and for forever. And if I hadn’t gone through Elements and really immersed myself in that, I’m not sure I ever would have gotten to that place.”

That new awareness is showing up everywhere. He learns new movements faster because he knows how to pay attention to what his body is actually doing. He finds himself practicing on the floor while waiting for the oven to preheat. His nephew gets shown new ways to move around on the ground — stuff an eight-year-old can do without thinking but hadn’t thought of before.

“The whole world becomes a playground,” Gardner said. “And I don’t know if I would have ever developed that appreciation had I not come back to Elements and really embraced it.”

His advice for people like him — athletes with high fitness who feel like something’s missing:

“You’ll feel such a profound shift in what you appreciate about this sort of a movement practice that everything else will just seem linear and predictable. You will feel stronger. You will improve your mobility. But what’s really going to change is the way that you perceive what your body is for and what the world around you presents in terms of opportunities for moving that body.

“You’re not going to get that anywhere else. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll never go back.”