Episode 303 of the Tom Rowland Podcast is my conversation with Ross Enamait, the professional boxing coach and author behind two of the most influential training books I have ever read: Never Gymless and Infinite Intensity. Ross is the king of training hard anywhere — a hotel room, a park, a garage — with little or no equipment. His whole philosophy is built on simplicity and intensity instead of fancy gear. We get into where that approach came from, why most people overcomplicate fitness, and how he became a world-class corner man.
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Ross Enamait is a professional boxing coach and the author of several highly regarded training books, including Never Gymless and Infinite Intensity. He came up as a fighter himself, transitioned to coaching after repeated hand injuries, and now works almost exclusively with professional boxers, including a world-class undisputed lightweight female champion. He is widely known for his old-school, equipment-minimal, high-intensity approach to conditioning.
Never Gymless is a guide to building strength and conditioning without a traditional gym — using bodyweight, homemade equipment, and your surroundings to train anywhere in the world. Infinite Intensity is his book on hard, simple, high-output training for fighters and anyone who wants real work capacity. Both were written back in 2006 and remain, in my opinion, two of the best books on physical training ever published.
Ross's philosophy is simplicity and intensity. He grew up training in bare-bones gyms — at one point a gym in the basement of a housing project — and learned that wrestlers, boxers, and martial artists have always gotten in tremendous shape without much equipment. He believes most people try too hard to make training complicated. The work itself is simple; the difference is how hard you are willing to do it.
Ross came up as a successful amateur boxer, but repeated hand injuries — partly from boxing and partly, he admits, from being a knucklehead as a teenager — kept derailing his attempts to keep fighting. That eventually pushed him from fighter to coach. He started working with amateur kids in the gym, progressed to the pros, and now coaching professional fighters is essentially all he does.
Yes, and Ross is the proof. His entire body of work is built around training without a traditional gym — which became especially relevant when gyms closed and equipment like dumbbells sold out everywhere. Never Gymless helped me build workouts in hotels all over the world and stop feeling like I needed a gym to train hard. Ross shows that bodyweight work, homemade equipment, and intensity are enough.
Ross works with professional boxers, including a fighter he describes as the undisputed lightweight female boxing champion. When I first reached out to record this episode, he was in the middle of training camp for a title fight that was being rescheduled around the COVID shutdown.
Ross is one of my favorite trainers in the world, and that is not a casual statement. His book Never Gymless had a tremendous impact on me — it is the reason I can get a real workout in anywhere, in a hotel, in a park, with nothing but my body and whatever is lying around. Infinite Intensity is right there next to it on my shelf. When equipment everywhere was selling out and everyone was suddenly trying to figure out how to train at home, I knew the person to talk to was the guy who had been preaching exactly that for years. I wanted to hear his philosophy straight from him.
Ross grew up in gyms where they really did not have anything — at one point, a gym in the basement of a housing project. His takeaway is that anyone who came up wrestling, boxing, or doing martial arts already knows you can get in tremendous shape without much at all. He told me he sees a lot of the home-workout content out there and thinks people are trying too hard to make stuff up. The work, in his world, is simple. You bust your ass, but the movements are not complicated. Hear him break down the philosophy in the episode.
Ross now works almost exclusively with professional fighters, including a champion he was deep in camp with when we recorded. What struck me is how he separates the talent and skill of a great fighter from the physical training side — and how simple he keeps the conditioning even at the highest level. He studied the journals and the research, and at one point thought maybe he needed to get more scientific, but kept coming back to hard, simple work. Press play to hear how he prepares world-class athletes.
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One of my favorite parts of Ross's legacy is the old training forum he ran, which he says had more than 200 homemade equipment ideas posted by avid members — the best resource on the internet for that kind of thing. We talk about how those forums shaped a generation of self-reliant trainers before social media took over, and how the do-it-yourself ethos still applies when you cannot get to a gym or buy gear. If you have ever wanted to build serious training tools out of what is around you, this section is gold.
The day after this conversation, what stuck with me was how calm Ross is about the whole thing. While the rest of the world was panic-buying dumbbells, he was the guy who had already written the manual on needing none of it.
The deeper lesson, for me, is that simplicity is a discipline. It is easy to chase the next gadget or the next complicated program. It is much harder to do the simple, brutal work consistently. Ross has built a career and coached champions on exactly that principle, and it applies far beyond the gym.
Listen to the whole thing, then go pick up Never Gymless. Few conversations have changed how I approach my own training the way this one did.
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Ross Enamait is a professional boxing coach and author widely respected for his old-school, no-frills approach to strength and conditioning. A former amateur fighter who turned to coaching after recurring hand injuries, he now works with professional boxers at the highest level, including a world-class undisputed lightweight female champion. He is the author of Never Gymless and Infinite Intensity, two books that have influenced countless athletes and coaches by proving that simple, high-intensity training with minimal equipment is enough to build elite conditioning. Through his books, his website RossTraining.com, and his coaching, Ross has spent decades championing the idea that you do not need a fancy gym to get in tremendous shape — you need hard work done consistently.
Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 303 with Ross Enamait.
Tom Rowland: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show today. I've got one of my favorite trainers in the world. When I say trainer, this guy, well, let's just say he wrote the book on it. He wrote the book on intensity in training, a book called Infinite Intensity, and he also wrote the book on how to get a workout in anywhere, at your home, out in a park, anywhere. Never Gymless. Never Gymless is a book that had a tremendous amount of impact on me. It helped me to create and do workouts all around the world as I've gone to hotels and just feel like I don't have to have a gym. I don't need a gym. I can do everything I need to stay in shape by using old-school methods and techniques like push-ups and handstand push-ups and running and sprinting and hill sprints and stairs and all the other things that we've talked about on this show. Much of that inspiration comes from Ross Enamait. He's a great dude, and he's with us right now. Ross, how you doing, man?
Ross Enamait: Good. Hanging in there.
Tom Rowland: All right, man. Long time no see.
Ross Enamait: I know.
Tom Rowland: I have an interesting picture I wanna show you right here.
Ross Enamait: Oh, wow.
Tom Rowland: And that one, that is a...
Ross Enamait: 2008, probably.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. 2008. You came down, tried to film an episode of Saltwater Experience, and we got weathered out. It was not our best shoot, but it was fun to get down there with you and get to know you a little bit.
Ross Enamait: Definitely.
Tom Rowland: That was awesome. So since then, what have you been up to?
Ross Enamait: Just busy with boxing, working as a boxing coach, and still have the website. I think that's where I first met you, online through the old training forums.
Tom Rowland: I know. That thing was awesome. I went back to look at it last night, and the forum's gone.
Ross Enamait: Yeah. No, I shut it down, actually. It was only a couple weeks ago. I just didn't really have time to maintain it. There's only so many things you can keep going at once.
Tom Rowland: That forum, I mean, that is something that's kind of like a dinosaur these days, the forums, because I had a forum, kind of inspired by yours, how much back and forth you had between all the people that were following your books and everything like that. And I thought, well, that'd be pretty cool. So I started one myself, and then it just got overrun with spam. It just was so hard to maintain. Is that one of the things that made you decide to close it down?
Ross Enamait: Yeah, partly, but I think just even go back, social media wasn't as prevalent. Now everyone's on it. When they go out and get on their phone, they're on social media. So the forum's relevancy, I don't think it's what it was prior to Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and all these different media forms where you can get in touch with anybody. You don't need to go to a forum.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, but still, though, you had so much information on there. All those DIY links and everything that you had on there, that stuff was just amazing.
Ross Enamait: I'm gonna actually recreate that list. I'll just put it on the blog because I've had a lot of people asking, because there was probably 200-plus homemade equipment ideas on the forum. So I'm gonna try to put them all in one place on the blog so people can at least access them still.
Tom Rowland: It was the best resource on the internet for sure of homemade equipment stuff. You had a couple of guys that were really into it, and they would just make everything. I would love to see what their garages looked like, because you had a couple of really, really avid posters there.
Ross Enamait: Yeah, yeah.
Tom Rowland: So when I first made contact with you for this, you were in training camp. And what camp was that?
Ross Enamait: Well, actually, I was with Katie Taylor. She's the undisputed lightweight female boxing champion. We were supposed to be initially fighting on May 2nd in England, and that date got pushed back to July 4th. And I'm guessing that's probably gonna get pushed back as well. We're still training, but just kind of waiting to hear any day now. It's probably gonna be pushed towards July or August. Who knows the way the world's going?
Tom Rowland: Right. And we went into lockdown kind of while you were in camp, right?
Ross Enamait: Yeah. It went to some private gyms of its own. We're the only ones there. So now all the gyms are closed, obviously.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, man...
Ross Enamait: I was talking to John Ackerman a few days ago, and he had a couple guys on the UFC card that just got canceled. And all this stuff's gonna be behind closed doors for now until who knows when they're gonna actually be able to have a crowd back in, which is terrible.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. What do you think about Fight Island?
Ross Enamait: Yeah, it's unfortunate to lose the atmosphere of the crowd. But at the same time, you want to have the sport keep going. Fighters need to fight, and that's how you get paid ultimately. And people who are locked down, they want to have something to watch. So I kind of get all aspects, but it would be a big difference not having a lively crowd there, silence in the arena.
Tom Rowland: Right. That would be... I can remember back in my wrestling days when we would go into an empty gym and there would be no one there except your parents or whatever. And it is a different feeling.
Ross Enamait: Yeah, seven people there. You know?
Tom Rowland: And it's kind of a weird deal. Like, there's no sound, and then you get slammed to the mat or something, and you're kinda like, wow, this is like the real deal even though this whole other element is missing. You know? Those are some of the most intense matches.
Ross Enamait: The match itself, you don't really notice it. Once it's on, it's on. But it's just the buildup to the fight, the publicity, the press conferences, that's all gone. So it loses some of the appeal, I think, to the rest of the world.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, what do you think is gonna have to happen for us to have these events again and feel comfortable with opening things up?
Ross Enamait: I don't know. I don't know if it's, is there gonna be a vaccine or is there gonna be... I don't know what it's gonna take. I think once it does settle down, the world's still gonna need some time before they're comfortable just gathering in crowds and groups. Whether the virus is here or not, I'm not quite sure.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. That's a weird time. It's such a weird time. I don't think... you could say it over and over again. Nobody could have predicted this. You just see some things coming, but I didn't see this coming at all. Not to this level.
Ross Enamait: And it was quick too. We were sparring, and it was three or four days before everything kind of got crazy. Guys were kind of joking, but they didn't really think it was coming. Then three days later, oh, my gym's closed, can't go anywhere. It's just out of nowhere, the whole world's shut down.
Tom Rowland: Right. And it happened super fast. So one of the things that's happened since then is I know that most equipment manufacturers are completely sold out of dumbbells, of anything that would be for home use. It's just all been sold out because people are needing to train at home, which is one of the most interesting things about talking to you. You're the king of training at home, or training anywhere.
Tom Rowland: One of the things that I liked the most about your stuff was the books. I've got your book right here, Never Gymless. This is probably one of the best books I've ever read on how to exercise and get your workout in outside of a gym. His other book is Infinite Intensity, which is right here. And both of these books, I've talked about a number of times on the podcast because they are really a huge reason that I went down the path to fitness that I went down, mostly thanks to you. But what was the inspiration for writing those books back in 2006?
Ross Enamait: I think in both cases, it was just to kind of fulfill a need of those who might not have access to all the resources that they either want or think that they need. Coming up as a boxer, I grew up in gyms where we really didn't have anything. At one point, I was in a gym which was the basement of a housing project. We didn't have a ring. It was just a crude basement, and everybody there could fight, everybody was in shape. So you can do a lot. I think a lot of the world doesn't know that. Maybe they're starting to realize it now that everybody's kind of forced to be a little bit more creative and make the most of what they have, because you really don't need anything. The equipment manufacturers don't want you to know that. A lot of the fitness gurus, whatever you wanna call it, they don't want you to know it because they want you to rely on them having the answers to all the complexities. But the reality is that most people, if you grew up wrestling or boxing or martial arts, you did pretty well without too much.
Tom Rowland: Almost nothing. And that's one of the funniest things about the success that you've had. If you really read through, I mean, you have some incredible information in here that came from a lot of study, but the majority of it is that message. You don't need anything. I'm not trying to sell you anything. You don't have to look for the newest exercise. You can look back into the past, to history, and get everything that you need. And you've had a tremendous amount of success not selling anything, basically.
Ross Enamait: Yeah. I mean, if you find anybody who's done, throughout their life, some dips, squats, lunges, maybe they run some hills, skip some rope, they're probably in better shape than most of the world, and that's with nothing. You can't argue with that. There's no argument against it. Even some of the home workout stuff I'm seeing now, I was like, people are trying too hard almost to make stuff up. Some of this choreographed crazy stuff, where it's like, just drop down and knock out some pull-ups or dips, and you're gonna be better than most.
Tom Rowland: Right. So what's your story? You start out working out in boxing gyms at the bottom of... not homeless shelters. What did you say? Housing projects.
Ross Enamait: Housing projects.
Tom Rowland: So take me from there to how that ended up where you are now.
Ross Enamait: Well, my aspiration, I came up as a fighter, and I was a successful amateur. I had a lot of hand injuries, partly from boxing, but as a teenager I was a bit of a knucklehead. I had some issues outside the ring, but I broke my right hand four times. And eventually, every time I kept trying to come back to fight, I was having hand injuries, which eventually is what transitioned me from fighter to coach. So at the time, I started working with some of the amateur kids in the gym, and then eventually, just being around the gym, progressed to working with the pros. And now that's pretty much all I do now, work with the pros as a boxing coach.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. But somewhere along the line, you got a pretty good education.
Ross Enamait: Yeah. I went to school. I went to UConn. I went through the educational side of things, and I think that's where, even from a training standpoint, I kind of know both ends. I studied all the journals and the research, and at one point was almost thinking, okay, maybe I need to get a little more scientific with the training. But eventually I kind of realized, going back to my roots, that it really isn't that complicated. I've tried everything. I've done the weights, the odd objects, the body weight, the combination of everything. And at the end of the day, as much as we wanna try to make it out to be more sophisticated, it's really not. If you have a work ethic like a Dan Gable, you're gonna probably do better than 99% of people out there. And even as a coach, I've been fortunate to work with some world-class fighters, but when you take away the talent and the skill from the act of physical training, it's pretty simple. We bust our ass, but the work is pretty simple. I think a lot of people maybe don't realize that on the outside. They're kind of like, oh, there's a secret here. It's gotta be something more fancy than that, when it's really not.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. I mean, everybody's looking for the secret. Also, in just overall health, in the outside world, not as a professional athlete, not even necessarily as a competitive athlete, but just somebody that has kind of lost it a little bit and wants to get back in shape, or to get in shape for the first time in their life. Like, what's the secret? Who do I need to pay? What do I need to do? And there is a learning curve there where some people don't know how to do a push-up or a pull-up or anything. They've never been an athlete at all. But for the most part, that's where your books are really incredible.
Ross Enamait: Well, at the same time, I think for me, the goal is always to kind of help people become self-sufficient. So it's like, okay, I'll get you started, but now you've gotta take the ball and run with it. It's up to you. Whereas I think the fitness industry, which I don't even like to consider myself part of, they like to create dependencies. They want you to rely on them and keep coming back. That's where the complexity serves them. If it's complex, then we need to answer the complexity, and that's the guru. Where I'm just trying to say, look, it's really actually pretty simple. So you know what to do now, and now it's up to you. Because I think we all are capable of doing more at anything. A little better, pushing a little harder, doing a little more. And it's true for myself, it's true for you, it's true for everybody. Some people maybe don't wanna face that reality. But if you push yourself with the basics, one, you can always push yourself a little more. You're never gonna get too good for the basics. You can always take a simple exercise, make it a little bit more difficult. There's a lot of ways to increase the difficulty, so you never outgrow it. It's probably not the best sales pitch, but that's why I got into it.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. So the interesting thing right now is that you take a business model, like the Globo Gym type model, where you can create this complexity. You really need this trainer. This equipment is dangerous. You really need somebody to hold your hand through this deal, and we're here for you. And we're gonna run a New Year's special, and we're gonna sell way more than we could possibly ever host in this location, but we're expecting 90% of you not to show up in a month. So that's the model, right? And it's worked very well for them because they build these huge gyms all over the place. There's gotta be a lot of money coming in. But now, that was one of the first targets of this shutdown. Where do people gather? Where do they breathe on one another?
Ross Enamait: And sweat.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. It's like gyms were almost immediately targeted. Okay, close down all gyms, close down all massage places, close down all acupuncturists, all of that type of stuff. Do you see... just in your opinion, you're not an expert in that type of business, but just as a person that likes to train, what do you think is gonna happen with big gyms?
Ross Enamait: I don't know. There'll always be, I think, certain guys... there's always gonna be a business for certain people. It's almost a social hour for them as much as it's training. So it's just part of the daily routine. There'll always be someone that's gonna go to a commercial gym. But at the same time, I think there's a lot of people that might be saying, well, do I really need it? Because it's not just the work at the gym, but maybe you're driving twenty minutes after work, you're stuck in traffic coming back, where maybe I don't need to waste that time. Maybe I actually could do something at home, because they've kind of been forced to now. So it'll be interesting to see where the world goes. I think the world's gonna change in a lot of ways, not just the gyms. Between schooling, there's a lot of changes that are gonna happen just because of this.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. I'm wondering about school already. My boys are in college in Montana, at Montana State. Both of them are home. My daughter's in eleventh grade. I'm wondering if she's gonna go back next fall. I mean, really.
Ross Enamait: For the year, I'm assuming. Right?
Tom Rowland: Oh, yeah. Both of them have just said we're virtual for the rest of the year, and they said that maybe three weeks ago. There was a slight little kind of hope that maybe they would go back sometime this spring, but there's just no way. They're just not gonna do it. Nobody understands how to deal with this thing or what's the right thing. And I keep asking all my friends, what do you think that one piece of information is that comes out that kind of breaks things open a little bit? I've kind of thought, well, as far as parks go or something, what if some research came out that the coronavirus was killed in ultraviolet sunlight in ten minutes, or something like that? Wouldn't that help to open some outdoor things back up and make people feel a little bit better? I'm sure the testing and all of that is gonna be something, but I don't know. It's such a weird time. Anything that we say right now, even next week, could be like, do you hear what he said?
Ross Enamait: So you wonder, obviously the testing is limited, so you don't know how many people have actually really had it. Maybe they didn't show symptoms. So maybe the fatality rates are a lot lower than you would think, because there's people walking around who had it and didn't even know. We don't know. Nobody knows.
Tom Rowland: I tell you what, man. I have a number of friends that feel like they had it back in December.
Ross Enamait: I have it as well. Yeah.
Tom Rowland: You're hearing, okay, dry cough, really just felt this certain way.
Ross Enamait: Weeks of coughing. They don't know what it was.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. And I have one friend. He went to the doctor, got tested for the flu. No, you don't have the flu. We don't know what this is. I'm sorry you don't feel good. You're probably just working too hard. Just take a little break. And he lived in his basement away from his family for like thirteen days, and that was back in December. And he says, man, it's exactly what they're saying the symptoms are right now. He was very sick. Other people aren't getting sick at all. I had another guy on, Lane Norton. He's like a scientist guy. You know him? BioLayne. You've probably seen him on the internet. We were talking about the immune system and strengthening the immune system. And his feeling was it's always beneficial to have a good immune system, but we just don't know what's up with this thing. And then he talked about the Spanish flu. He was explaining how the Spanish flu actually took out strong, healthy, young men more so than anyone else, because it had this weird inflammatory response that really got athletic people, took them down. So you never know what's going on with it.
Ross Enamait: Whereas this seems to be more of people who've had immune issues, elderly. But again, I've also heard of some athletes in their thirties that are getting crushed. So it's not the common side, but there's been people that weren't supposed to be the ideal case, and they're getting destroyed by something. A lot of uncertainties out there.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. I don't know what's gonna happen.
Tom Rowland: Well, let's get back to your books and your writing. How did you decide that you were going to self-publish? These are self-published books, right? How did you decide that you were gonna do that? Because back in 2006, it was really a different business model than it is today. It's much easier to self-publish a book today than it would be back then. How did you decide to do that instead of going through a publisher?
Ross Enamait: Well, part of it was more to have full control over the book, whereas my assumption back then was that if I went through a publisher, I might lose some of the editorial aspects. There were certain things I wanted to not be touched. And I was fortunate that there was kind of an up-and-coming small publisher in my area who was getting going when I was getting going. And we basically teamed up and helped each other build each other's businesses. So I think I just got in at the right time. Years later now, I don't have hard copies of the books. Everything's kind of going digital now.
Tom Rowland: Really?
Ross Enamait: Yeah. It's fifteen years later, right? If I ever get to writing another book, I will have a print run. But after fifteen years, I just kind of thought that if somebody wants it, the Kindles are so popular now, everyone wants to download things. I myself do like to have a physical book, but I think the world's changing. To put up all the money to buy all this inventory... for who? Most people are asking, well, do you have it digitally? Can I download it? So I went to it and said, all right, that's what everybody wants. It seems like 85-plus percent of the people wanted digital, so it makes it a lot easier for me.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. The world has changed so much like that. I like a physical book too, because you gave me... you gave me these. When you were down, you gave me these, signed by Ross right there. Look here, says right there, signed. So this is like a collector's item then, because you don't even make them anymore. But I've got two copies of both of those books. The interesting thing is that one is completely dog-eared and torn up, and then I saved these other two. I just put them in the bookshelf after you gave them to me, and I don't really mess with those. But the other ones, I went through those so many times.
Ross Enamait: I can do it with the book. It's not a novel. I wanna go through it, highlight it, put some notes. Maybe I'm gonna change something in a routine, and I can go back and reference it with a sticky note. I like that for a training program.
Tom Rowland: That's what I do too. And the way that you had it, spiral bound, I thought was good too, because you could lay it flat, and it's just kind of in the gym all the time. But if you had it to do over again today writing those books, do you think you would choose a book format, or would you shoot videos?
Ross Enamait: I don't know. Because I'm actually kind of toying with the idea of maybe doing, like, a Never Gymless 2 at some point. But I don't know that people want a 200-page book, or is it more convenient now to almost have some type of digital platform where there's demonstrations of the exercise on video and progressions, where sometimes some of the progressions might be a little bit more difficult to capture in paper form. Whereas if you have videos, it's a lot easier to explain certain things and then maybe just have the routines either printed or available digitally. I'm not sure.
Tom Rowland: Maybe it's an app. You thought about an app?
Ross Enamait: I know. Do an app.
Tom Rowland: That'd be pretty cool. I was just looking at your book, going through it this morning. It's got all these nice pictures that are like each step of the exercise, and it's well done. But it's also 2006. Digital photography was nothing like it is today. Like what we're doing right now, I've got one, two, three, four cameras going. We've got Skype going. I've got all this stuff controlling it all on iPad. It just seems like we've come so far, and it opens up the opportunity for different platforms. The app would be the most logical for that platform for you.
Ross Enamait: I've seen all sorts of things that were just, like, an online terminal almost, where you could have, say, a hundred videos of different exercises. I've never worked on creating an app, so I'm not sure how it would all get pieced together. It just kind of lingers in the back of my head here.
Tom Rowland: Well, I think now, just like the evolution of the printing and publishing business where it's really easy... you could probably Google how to publish a book and come up with 50 different sites where you just put in the manuscript, and it formats it for you and does everything, and off you go. You can probably have it on Amazon in a day or so. The app building is like that. We built some apps this year. And there's some services where you just... it's kind of like it's got a template, and you just put it in there. And it's almost like Squarespace for building websites, compared to back in the day where you needed a coder and all this other stuff. It's gotten a lot easier. I think you would do really well with it.
Ross Enamait: I started my website with HTML. I downloaded a Notepad myself.
Tom Rowland: When did you start your website?
Ross Enamait: 2001 was when it first went up as RossBoxing, and then eventually I branched out to Ross Training. Notepad, I had the Dummies Guide to web design, and I kind of taught myself how to put a website together.
Tom Rowland: And did you teach yourself how to code that forum?
Ross Enamait: Yeah, for the most part. The forum initially was on a different platform, EasyBoard, I think, the old EasyBoards. And initially I had... eventually I switched over. I did have to get help. Some of the guys on the forum actually were techies, so I had some good helpers there, a couple of guys in Germany.
Tom Rowland: Wow.
Ross Enamait: I don't know if Lenny used to be... I forget what his name used to be on the forum. He used to be on there all the time.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, I used to go to the forum all the time. It was a great resource, and it was like social media before there was social media. If you're into training or whatever, you could meet these guys that were from Germany or anywhere all over the world, and you're doing the same workout, and it was just really cool. I thought it was an awesome resource. I was sorry to see that it wasn't there, but I hope that you're gonna revive it somehow. Because there's a community there.
Ross Enamait: On Facebook too, because I have a large Facebook page, I could have a group where people could actively post themselves. I don't know. Before, I really pulled the plug. It was only a couple weeks ago. So now I'm almost regretting the decision, but I've gotta just see what's going on going forward. I just don't have the manpower to keep an eye on the forum, because you could be gone for a week and the forum just gets spammed out and it's, like, blown up.
Tom Rowland: So is that the way you run your business? You don't have anybody helping you with your business?
Ross Enamait: No. Just, yeah, it's me.
Tom Rowland: Really? Wow. That's... I mean, you've got a lot going on. That forum, the website, writing the books. How many books have you written?
Ross Enamait: Well, right now, there's Never Gymless, Infinite Intensity, and Untapped Strength, which is predominantly grip, forearm, hands. Those are the three books, and I still have the old DVDs. They're still there as digital downloads. And prior to writing Never Gymless, I did have other books, like 2002 or 2003. That's why I wrote Never Gymless. Infinite Intensity and Never Gymless were somewhat revised versions of the real early stuff, going back like twenty years now.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. That's cool. So if you were to write another book, you think it's Never Gymless kind of thing, that training on your own, training anywhere, no equipment kind of deal?
Ross Enamait: Yeah. Because I've got fifteen more years of experience kind of doing that type of thing than I already had when I first wrote the book. I was happy with Never Gymless, but I know for myself that I could make a lot better book if I was to start over from scratch. It's just a big investment in time to sit down and create something, especially if we're kind of traveling and getting ready for fights. So I don't know when it would happen. I'd like to say I will eventually, though.
Tom Rowland: How would you do that? You've got a family, right? So you've got your family. You've got your boxing business. You've got the other obligations of shipping and other things that you're doing now for your website. And then you're gonna write a book, and you've already done this three times. So where do you find that time?
Ross Enamait: I don't sleep a lot. But with a book, I always feel like it seems like a monumental task if you're just thinking about the end product. But if you wake up and say, all right, every day I'm gonna wake up and put in sixty or maybe ninety minutes. Just turn off the phone and write. Or maybe it's research or it's outline. And that's all you do. After the first day, you probably don't have anything done. After the first week, you might hardly have anything done. But if you keep doing that, sixty minutes here, sixty minutes there, three months down the line it's like, okay, I actually have something in place that's getting me started. You can't do it if you're trying to do everything at once. You can't just be singular, I'm just gonna work on the book, because it'll take over and you won't be able to do anything else. But if you have sixty minutes, you just say, I'm going all in for sixty minutes. And then, hey, if I have more time later today, maybe I'll get back on. But as long as I get my sixty in, after a couple months, you got a lot done. That's how I wrote the first books. I was busy then. I would block time out early in the day before I got distracted, and I made sure I put the work in. And then I went off and trained and did whatever else I had to do.
Tom Rowland: Right. And what about your own personal training? Where do you find time for your own training?
Ross Enamait: Well, a lot of times when I'm in the boxing gym, I'm the coach, but I do a lot of stuff in the gym as well. And I have a garage gym here. I make time for it. Just like working on a book, I like to train early in the day, because again, if I've already gotten it in, no matter what happens, if I have to put out fires or get busy, whatever's going on, I already got the session. It's done. Whereas if I put it off till later and I get busy, I'm not gonna have the same focus I would have if I just got it out of the way early in the morning before I started the rest of my day.
Tom Rowland: Right. That's how I feel exactly. And it always seems like when my kids were little, there would always be something. I'd be like, I'm gonna train at five o'clock this afternoon when I get off the water. And then there would always be a wrestling match or a soccer game or a parent conference or something. There was always something. And the next thing you know, you've missed three days, and you feel bad and you're not at your best. And so I just moved to that morning thing. That's my time. And everybody knows that. It doesn't matter anyway, because none of them are up. They're all sleeping. So it works perfect.
Ross Enamait: That's the best way to do it. A lot of people say, well, I'm not a morning person. I don't know if anybody is, but it's a habit. First, you make your habits, then your habits make you. So when you start doing it consistently, it just becomes part of the routine. I don't even think about it. I could be half out of it, barely slept, but I get to work. And then I just go on with the day.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. I feel the same way. That's awesome.
Tom Rowland: So one of the things that I was most interested in when I came across your material, your website, your forum, and all of that, was the mindset that you have. I'm sure you're familiar with the book Mindset by Carol Dweck, a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. And you epitomize the growth mindset as much as anybody I've ever talked to, been around, read their material, or anything. Where did you develop that in your life?
Ross Enamait: I don't know. It's hard to say. I think we're all just kind of a product of our environments, and coaches I've had over the years, and my own successes and failures, aspirations to do more. I don't think you could pinpoint a mindset on any single activity or experience. I think it's just an accumulation of constantly trying to evolve and get better. And I guess trying to take that then to my athletes, trying to help them evolve and get better. Like I said, we can all do a little more, a little better, whatever it is, whether it's writing or training. It doesn't matter what it is. We all have room for growth.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, but it seems like there's gotta be some situation where you kind of learn that. For me, it would be like there was plenty of failure, but then there was plenty of success. And there was some success in places where it looked like it wasn't gonna happen. Like, you just don't look like you have the potential to make it to whatever you wanna do. You wanna win that tournament. Man, those guys are so much better than you. You'll never make it that far. And then you do. And it's like, man, if I had listened to those other people, I'd be stuck believing that I can only make it so far. Do you think that it's more success or failure that helps you to create that mindset?
Ross Enamait: I think it's competitive. And maybe some of that is innate, I don't know. But I wanna win. It's not that... if someone tells me I can't do something, I might not say anything, but in my mind, I wanna show them. I'll show you what I can do. And you gotta have not a cockiness, but a little bit of attitude. You don't have to display it, but it's inside. Believe in yourself, and you're gonna show people. Whether it's sports or business or school, I'm gonna win. I'm gonna come out on top. I'm not gonna let someone else's opinion of what they think I can do dictate what I actually do. Because everybody's got dream snatchers around them. Sometimes it's people that are friends or family. Oh, they don't want you to take the risk. You can't do... you're not gonna do this. I've always felt like, if I put my mind to something, I'm gonna get it done. And even if I fail, I probably did more than I would have done by just not trying at all. So I'm gonna bet on myself, because I'm competitive. It doesn't matter if we're playing tic-tac-toe or thumb wrestling. I'm coming in. But I think some people, they don't have that drive, that competitiveness, and they give up on themselves. It's okay to lose or to fail, but you gotta go for it. You gotta try. You gotta bet on yourself.
Tom Rowland: So do you work with some young fighters that battle with those kind of demons, like they don't really believe in themselves? And if so, how do you handle it?
Ross Enamait: A bunch of kids. I've coached a baseball team, I've coached all ages. You're always gonna have kids that, whether it's the environment that they go back home to, maybe they're not getting any support, there's always gonna be kids that are down on themselves. They struggled maybe before. And to be honest, not everybody is maybe blessed with what it takes, obviously, to get to certain levels. That's just the reality. But everyone can get better. As a coach, you have to be a little realistic, especially in a sport like boxing where you can get someone's head punched. There's gonna be times where, for a certain fighter, it makes sense to hang the gloves up, or, hey, maybe you should go play the piano. You have to have a sense of realism, but at the same time, you want them to do more than what they've done. But again, boxing is a tricky thing. There are levels. I'm all for defying the odds, but at the same time, I'm probably not gonna ever run 100 meters in less than ten seconds. I'm aware of that. So you gotta be realistic in certain ways, but at the same time, you also gotta be willing to defy some odds. Just a balance there somewhere. I don't know, I'm probably not describing it the best way.
Tom Rowland: No, I think you are. I think it's really good. When you get to the highest level, like the boxers that you're training, Olympic champions, this female boxer that you're training with right now, what's her mindset like?
Ross Enamait: It's very similar in a sense, very competitive at everything, whether it's the training. When you have success and you've reached that level, you start to expect it, you demand it. So every day you show up. It's like Eric Thomas: you win the day. Win today's session. Then win the roadwork tonight. Win everything. And then eventually, that's just your mentality going in. You're on another level with everybody. It's not fun losing. It's not fun losing anything. And everyone's tasted that before. I don't care how good of an athlete you are, at some point as an amateur, you've lost. And they're really competitive people. You don't want to taste it again. You'll do everything you can to avoid being there. I have fights I lost twenty years ago, close decisions that I thought... it still bothers me. So I don't think you ever get over it. But you do what you can to avoid being in that situation again.
Tom Rowland: Right. In that book Mindset that I referenced, it's an interesting book because one of the things that she talks about are kids with a fixed mindset. Like you were talking about athletes that have lost hundreds of times, and that creates kind of a risky... you're not afraid to take risk. You've already lost. What's another loss gonna be? What if I win? Think about how good it'll be if I win. So somebody that's lost a bunch, they have a tendency to take more risks, to go fight the best fighter in the gym or wrestle the best wrestler in the gym. What if he beats me? I've already lost a hundred times before. No big deal. Whereas a kid with a fixed mindset is like, they tell me that I'm the best. And if I wrestle that guy or fight that guy and get knocked out, then obviously I'm not gonna be the best. Or, she says, taking it into a classroom setting, they're afraid to take a hard test or a really hard class because everybody's told them they're smart their entire life. And they're afraid to take that risk because they're afraid they're going to get exposed. And the growth mindset is, whatever, man. You can't beat me any worse than the other guys already beat me, and I might win. And I'm gonna get better.
Ross Enamait: The thing, though, is that with certain individuals, as they lose, they can become accustomed to losing almost to the point where they expect it, and they stop expecting that they can do it. They probably have more that they could give, but, I've been here before, here we go, I'm gonna lose this one again. That's where the people around you, the support system you have, whether it's your friends, family, or coaches, they're the ones that kind of have to help lift you, to let you know, listen, you can beat this guy. You've lost before, but you can go get it. Because sometimes when you're on your own, self-doubt creeps in, and it's just familiar territory. I lost the last one, here we go, I'll lose again.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, I see that, man. That's interesting that you bring that up, because you can get in that familiar territory of, I don't have anything to lose, but I'm not gonna win.
Ross Enamait: In boxing we call it, like, sparring partner syndrome. They're just used to being the B-side against the A-class guy. And they get in there and they do enough and they compete, but they're the sparring partner. They're not the guy that's getting ready to go win. They're just there to kind of fill their role. Which is a dangerous role to take, though. Especially in a sport like boxing, if you're taking punishment, you only should be there to win. If you get to where you don't care about winning, you're in the wrong sport. You can get hurt and affect the rest of your life.
Tom Rowland: Right. So if you take what we're discussing about the mindset and being in familiar territory of losing, and you take that into just a regular dude that's trying to get in shape. How does that apply to somebody that is just trying to get in shape? Maybe the doctor told them that they're overweight and they really gotta work on it. There would tend to be that same tendency of, well, I've always been overweight my whole life, and this is where I am. How does somebody turn that around?
Ross Enamait: I think at some point they just need to see some progress. Because it's one thing for me to say, listen, you gotta keep at it, keep going, be consistent, bust your ass. But if they don't actually see anything, the novelty wears off. Where it's like, I've been doing this. I tried this guy, and it didn't work. I tried this routine, and it didn't work. I went to the gym and it didn't work. You gotta give them somewhere they can see it. It's one thing for me to tell you, if you keep going, wait till you see next month. But until they actually see it, believe it. Especially in your culture, you gotta keep them uplifting and keep them moving forward until they do see and believe it. If they don't believe it, they're gonna find something else to do or just give up on it.
Tom Rowland: Right. That's one of the things that I liked about a lot of your workouts and some CrossFit workouts and other things: there's a name to that workout. It's a very specific workout. Like, say, your Magic 50. You're gonna swing the dumbbell, you're gonna snatch the dumbbell, you're gonna do ten burpees, you're gonna do that five rounds. And you mark that time down and you mark down, okay, it was with a 45-pound dumbbell, I did it in twelve minutes. And then you come back to that in three weeks after you've been working out, and now you do it in ten minutes. And you're like, did I get better? My pants fit the same, my shirt fits the same, I look the same in the mirror, but I'm actually seeing progress. I think it's really important that people write it down or somehow monitor that progress.
Ross Enamait: Yeah. And it can be simple. It's like, I ran a mile. Well, you just ran it ten seconds faster than last week. The little steps forward, they all count, and as time goes on, they all start to accumulate.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. And that's where they see the progress. But I think a lot of people get off track because they're not paying attention to those details. They just run a mile, and they don't put a time on it at all. It felt a little... I might have felt a little better. They don't know. They knocked 45 seconds off their last mile. That's a lot better.
Ross Enamait: It's like data. You want hard data. You want something you can equate numbers to. I'm faster. And not just, like, what I weigh. We're talking performance numbers. I just lifted ten more pounds. I did ten more reps. I ran it ten seconds fewer than before. I don't think you should drive yourself writing down every statistic in the world, but you gotta have a track or something.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, just something that's trackable. And there's some types of workouts or fitness programs that don't really have any way to track it. You go to the class, and you do the class. And, yeah, how do you feel? Feel a little better than I did last week. And that's kind of the recipe in my mind of getting tired of it and not continuing, where if you can just see any sort of progress, anything. Did you get stronger? Did you get faster? And then, eventually, you're gonna see, oh, okay, well, my pants are looser.
Ross Enamait: So it gives you... we're talking about competitiveness. If I'm working against a number, I'm competing now with myself. So it's like, okay, I ran the mile this fast, I wanna get a little faster. When you have something to compete against yourself, I think it helps you. If you just show up and, okay, I'm at my spinning class, I'm gonna do the same half hour I did yesterday and the day before, what are you working against? It's the same thing.
Tom Rowland: Right. And you've got a good opportunity to get tired of the spinning class. That's one of the things too that I always liked about your books: the variety. And the variety really not necessarily because you need so much variety, but because you don't wanna get tired of it. And you wanna eliminate burnout, or reduce burnout, and keep everything fresh and do a lot of different things. Hit the bag, do pull-ups, push-ups, lift weights sometimes, whatever. And I think that keeps it interesting too.
Ross Enamait: Because variety is another thing. You could be excessive, but sometimes I like to say variety should be subtle. So you might change your grip on the pull-up bar, maybe add weight, maybe do higher reps. Maybe you're doing close-grip push-ups, you're doing wide push-ups, you're doing elevated stuff, you're doing handstand push-ups. There's always a way to switch things up a little bit without straying too far from the fundamentals that you believe in. To repeatedly do the same thing over and over again, it works for some, but most people, they need to have a little bit of variety and spice it up just to avoid the monotony and the boredom. Not because... I enjoy working out. I like my time in the gym, but I understand that not everybody's gonna feel the same way. They're doing it more for how they look, how they feel. Whereas I actually enjoy the same. If I could do the same work, I'm gonna be fine with it. But at the same time, I realize that it's probably not normal. It's nice to mix things up and keep people engaged.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, man, I think you ought to write another book or do an app or something. At least get your forum back together. You've got a big community of people out there that wanna talk to you. So if any of these guys want to... I know that you had a special where you were offering your book for a dollar during this corona.
Ross Enamait: Yeah, I have it up there, man.
Tom Rowland: You do? For Never Gymless?
Ross Enamait: As far as long as this coronavirus goes on, I'm gonna leave it at a dollar. I know people are out of work, and if somebody needs it, it's a 230-page book. It's a dollar.
Tom Rowland: Wow. And that'll be a digital download?
Ross Enamait: Yeah, it's a PDF. You can print it. I never created a full Kindle version, because for me, you can read the PDFs on a Kindle, but I like the fact that you can actually print it. For myself, I would print, say, the workout section so I have it on hand. I don't wanna go reference something on a phone or on a Kindle while I'm training. I wanna have a physical piece of paper.
Tom Rowland: Right. So you could get this book for a dollar. If you go to... what's your website that you get it?
Ross Enamait: Yeah, RossTraining.com.
Tom Rowland: RossTraining.com. You can get Never Gymless for a dollar, and then print it out. That's what he's saying, and then you can just keep it.
Ross Enamait: You can read it online, on your computer or tablet, whatever. The options are there for people.
Tom Rowland: That's cool. And then, man, I hope you start working on another book, because I'd love to see what you got going on. But, man, it was great to catch up with you. I just wanna tell you, you have a tremendous impact on a lot of people. I hope you know that, including myself. My story that I've told on the podcast before, but I was a wrestler, and that's how I grew up, without much. We never went to the weight room. The weight room was for football players and basketball players. We weren't even really allowed in there. We had just some dumbbells, a couple bars, maybe a sandbag, and that was it, and each other. And so when we lifted weights, all the wrestlers lifted weights in the wrestling room, and we did things like burpees and squat thrusts, back then is what we called them. And we weren't really allowed in the weight room. And if we went in the weight room, back then it was all bodybuilding stuff. You do three sets of eight and move on, and nobody in there is breaking a sweat whatsoever. So my basis was basically what your books are. And then somewhere along the line, I got off track and forgot all that stuff, and I kind of got out of shape. And then I got back in shape the way that I thought you would get back in shape, and the way I read and everything was, you ran marathons. So I just started running, and it turned out to be fine for me. I just started running marathons, but I did that for about five years, and man, my back was hurting. I was just over running marathons. So I was looking for another way to train, and I started looking around for jump rope workouts because I was traveling a lot at the time. And that's how I ran across your stuff. You had something about jump ropes. And so I started looking at it, and then I found your website and everything and ordered your books. And I was like, this is like what we were doing in high school. I already know kind of this stuff. But it was like this justification. Like, now you already know, and you're right. You should be doing that stuff. Not that marathons are bad or anything, but for the fitness that you're looking for, you already know how to do it. That was super cool. I really liked it very much. And then it sent me down this road of training every day. Probably trained damn near every day since the last time we saw each other, and feel great, man. Just love it. I'm fifty-two.
Ross Enamait: Yeah, awesome.
Tom Rowland: We got a group that meets in my driveway every morning at five-thirty. Well, it's kind of slimmed down now. But that's been a big part of my life, just giving this information to those guys and having this social group around me that revolves around training. And it revolves around fellowship and training, mentally and physically. It's a big part of my life.
Ross Enamait: Yeah, that's great. That's awesome.
Tom Rowland: But a lot of that is thanks to you. So I wanted to definitely thank you for that. And you're humble, but you're putting out some really incredible information. Two of the best training books I've ever read right there. You can get one of them for a dollar if you go to RossTraining.com and check out his stuff, man. He's got some great social media, very motivational. I love the stuff that you do with the old training. Recently, you just did the stuff with Dan Gable and Kimura. Those are incredible videos. The martial arts video where they're doing 600 Hindu push-ups every day. And just the voice-over on that is so awesome. It's like, it's excessive. He got it, we know it.
Ross Enamait: Just the Olympics. He was a Canadian that went to train with Kimura. He won a silver medal in the Olympics. And then he won gold medals in the Pan Am Games twice. The guy that's the one speaking in that video.
Tom Rowland: Wow. So where did that video come from?
Ross Enamait: It's an old documentary that I had saved. I just sliced it to try to fit it into a minute. I put up a link, actually. There's a link on my blog to it. It's like an eighteen-minute documentary. Good stuff, actually. It's worth looking at.
Tom Rowland: You tend to find a lot of those old training videos.
Ross Enamait: A lot of that stuff, I found on the forum. Guys are sharing stuff on the forum. They said, hey, man, check this out, put this on the blog. Could you put this up for me? Or, hey, I just made this, whatever, could you throw that up on your blog for me? Okay.
Tom Rowland: One of the things I remember, somebody posted on your blog... remember that high school in California that had that incredible physical fitness? Wasn't it in California? And they had, like, a documentary on that. And, man, they used to train those kids during school. Hayward.
Ross Enamait: They're jacked, dude.
Tom Rowland: Every one of them, man. You look and there's, like, 60 kids, and even the worst-looking one is, like, jacked to today's standards. And they're doing dips and rope climbs and pull-ups and every different kind of push-up you can imagine, and that was PE class. That's an awesome video, man. I love that video. That is so cool.
Ross Enamait: What I like about that stuff is, a lot of people today, we have this thought that we're the only ones that know what's going on. And if it's old, it's outdated, where it's like, those guys fifty years ago are in better shape than 99% of the world now. We haven't come as far as they think. The stuff that worked then still works now.
Tom Rowland: Right. It almost seems like there's definitely two extremes. I feel like there are a lot of people that are in very, very good shape right now. And then there's a lot of people that are in very, very poor shape. And then when you eliminate PE out of schools... I think it's one thing when your PE class is, like, playing tag on the playground, but at least you're getting some physical activity compared to that documentary that we're talking about where those kids were... I mean, that was like a gymnastics class. It was amazing what they were having those kids do.
Ross Enamait: There are extremes where you have, like, ultimate athletes. We have that now, obviously. It's just the middle ground where the average person comes in. The average person doesn't do much of anything, whereas I think in previous generations, that was different. My grandfather, he could have worked outside all day. We don't have that now. A guy goes outside for twenty minutes, he can't do any labor. He can't do anything if he had to.
Tom Rowland: Right. That's a big change. And that's just a change in the world, because the middle ground, a lot of those people actually did work physical jobs that have been replaced with Walmarts, and the farms have kind of been displaced in a lot of areas, and those people are now working at Walmart instead of tossing hay all day.
Ross Enamait: Or they're automated.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, even more automation with coronavirus. But I kind of have an optimistic view on this coronavirus and the lockdown. I believe that right now, I've seen more people... if I do get out and drive around, or we take a walk with my family or my wife, there are more people walking. There are more kids on bicycles. I haven't seen a kid ride a bicycle in five years, and there's a bunch of them. They found an old rusty bicycle in the garage somewhere and started riding it again. And I just think that people are spending more time with their families. I think people are more interested in their health. It starts with not getting sick and doing things like washing hands, but then I think every one of those little steps carries forward.
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