StansellFit

This is the home page of Atlanta-based personal trainer, Bo Stansell. I have a decade of experience in the strength and conditioning and fitness community.

04/21/2026

Very few people struggle with results in the gym because they’re oversimplifying their training. It’s almost always a lack of action.

Are you showing up? Are you training with high effort? Are you doing more over time as you adapt? If you can answer yes to all of these, congratulations, you’re in the top 10% of gymgoers. Maybe 1-5%.

Your s**t doesn’t need to be perfect. Just do it. You’ll figure out what isn’t working over time. But only if you’re collecting enough real feedback through repeated action.

04/15/2026

Look, obviously there are exceptions to this. If you genuinely are sick, have a serious injury, or any number of other things that reduce performance, fair.

But the relationship between how you feel pre workout and how you feel during the workout isn’t as tight as most people think.

I’ve had some of my best lifting days on 2-3 hours of sleep and some of my worst on 8 or 9.

I’ve been hungover and felt like the Hulk and woken up as right as rain and had the strength of a small child. The opposite has also happened, which is further proof that it’s unpredictable.

So before you throw in the towel or decide you’re not up for a particular exercise, TRY IT. Be smart of course and don’t push it if you don’t have it. But don’t assume you don’t have it.

04/14/2026

This isn’t meant to be some kind of hot take, because I think many of the PTs I know would agree with me here.

There are absolutely times where we need expert support, but it’s not every time something goes wrong with our bodies.

Our bodies are very good at handling things that go wrong without outside intervention the majority of the time.

Getting to a point where you feel like you can’t “heal” without someone doing something to you instills fragility and removes autonomy.

To reiterate in case I haven’t made the point clearly enough, there are unequivocally times where you need to see someone.

But you do not need to set up an appointment for every ache, pain, or ni**le.

04/06/2026

Connective tissue issues are the worst because they take significantly longer to heal compared to muscles.

Which is why I take special care to avoid them by:

- Progressing more slowly
- Taking action to modify as soon as possible if a tendon is complaining
- Dialing back a bit after a layoff even though I’m technically strong enough to handle the load
- Adjusting my technique to limit as much “collateral” connective tissue involvement.
- Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, if you do experience connective tissue issues, dial back as much as you need to to get it to calm down first. But then try to slowly add stress that you can tolerate to that same tissue to get it used to handling it again. Many people make the mistake of removing ALL stress from the tissue in perpetuity, which often leads the tissue to decondition like crazy and become more sensitive to everything.

In my experience, load is the most important or causative variable in connective tissue issues. And I do have a little less leeway as I’ve gotten older.

Moral of the story: Progress as slowly as you need to, make adjustments if you feel tendon funkiness, keep ACTIVE and get back to stressing the tissue in a way that you can tolerate as quickly as possible.

And as always, be smart. Always live to fight another day if you experience connective tissue pain in a workout. It’s not worth it.

04/05/2026

It takes some time for many of my new clients to get used to the pace of resistance training. Especially if they come from group fitness.

Not everything is about getting torched. In fact, that’s often counterproductive when training for strength or muscle growth.

That’s not to say that an intense resistance training session won’t leave you fatigued, but rather that’s not the goal.

The rest allows more reps to be performed across all the sets, which ultimately creates a better stimulus for growth/strength.

And if there is no drop-off in reps despite short rest periods, you are massively undershooting the weight.

Most folks do best anywhere between 2-4 minutes of rest depending on whether they’re focusing on muscle growth or strength. Some isolation exercises may only require 60 to 90 seconds and that’s fine. Much less than that and you’re losing the plot.

Bottom line, the bigger the movements (I.e. more muscles involved) and the greater the focus on strength, the bigger the rest periods need to be.

03/30/2026

Another half marathon in the books and got to spend the weekend with some of my favorite people .lambert, , and of course.

Beautiful race course (aside from a couple diabolical hills) and would definitely come back for another race here.

✌️ 🏃‍♂️

03/26/2026

First meeting of The Coaching Standard. I’ve been wanting a way to connect with other trainers in Atlanta for a long time, and delivered.

Fantastic first meeting and can’t wait for the next one. If you’re a trainer/coach in ATL and looking for like-minded people to talk shop with about health and fitness coaching, this is the place.

Super excited to learn from these smart and hardworking coaches.

03/11/2026

If I could describe my personal training career succinctly, I would say it’s been the slow loosening of my dogmatism around damn near everything.

One of the most valuable qualities anyone can have is perspective. What’s important, what’s not, and why everything is somewhere in between.

I realized at some point that I’m nowhere near strong enough or muscular enough to need to worry about optimization of any kind in my training.

I know what generally makes people strong and muscular and as long as I can pick exercises that get me within a stone’s throw of achieving either of those goals in the way that I want, I’m gucci.

Hyper-obsessing about whether or not I’m maximally stimulating the long head of the tricep just doesn’t matter to me that much.

The extent of my training is now “pick exercise that makes this muscle spicy” and “train with enough effort in said exercise to make muscle spicy”.

Obviously that’s simplified for effect, but you get what I mean. Stop overthinking your training. Train hard, train often, and keep progressing, and you’ll get where you want to go.

03/02/2026

Ran my first marathon. It was just as terrible as I thought it would be. But I’m also glad I did it.

Most likely due to the fading affect bias, I am already forgetting the misery and wondering when my next one is going to be 😂. Maybe one with slightly fewer hills.

Big thanks to for making sure I didn’t die after the race and also to .r and .ryan for making the last couple days a pleasant distraction.

Now after a little downtime, I gotta figure out what my next race is gonna be 🤔.

02/27/2026

This is a subtle but important part of any great and lasting change. You must believe you are the type of person who CAN change.

If you’re working out but never truly see yourself as someone who works out, it won’t stick.

If you try to meal prep but never see yourself as the type of person who has their nutrition locked down, it won’t stick.

The change in identity spurs action and the action reinforces that identity. You need both.

Address

Atlanta, GA

Website

https://www.stansellfit.com/

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