Hidden Gems: Meet Jacob Fields of Jacob Fields Performance

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacob Fields. 

Hi Jacob, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
My name is Jacob Fields and I’m a 29-year-old Personal Trainer born and raised in Dunbar, WV, a small suburb of the capital city Charleston, WV. I was always the skinny kid growing up. I played sports but wasn’t the best and was often made fun of for how skinny I was. My junior year of high school some friends and I decided we wanted to try to start lifting weights, each of us for various reasons, and ever since then it has been a regular part of my life and something I can honestly say has helped me become the person I am today. In 2016, I graduated with my undergraduate degree from Marshall University (yes, the same as the football movie) where I studied exercise science, interned with various Olympic sports, worked in the Exercise Physiology Lab where I got to learn more about the research side of fitness and got my first Personal Training job at the Campus Recreation Center. I always enjoyed exercise and working out, but through this job I realized that I wanted to make this into a career, it was my passion. I was blessed with the opportunity to train people from many different walks of life; professors, students, local high school basketball teams, I was even lucky enough to get to fill in for my boss and train an elite basketball prep school in the area who happened to be housing the current NBA star Andrew Wiggins. This was my first taste of what it would be like to help change peoples’ lives, and it was like dinner at a 5-star restaurant. 

I wasn’t always the most enthusiastic learner, but through studying the body, how it works, and all that exercise can do for an individual on a physical, mental, and emotional level I found a burning passion to learn as much as possible and help as many people as I can to see how great of a thing it can be. This is why I decided to apply for graduate school and continue my education. In 2017, I was lucky enough to earn a Graduate Assistantship at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) where I was to manage and oversee the Personal Training staff with the University’s Recreational Sports Department while obtaining my Master’s Degree. I also had the opportunity to work with VCU Basketball as an Intern Strength Coach. 

In 2019 I moved to Nashville on somewhat of a whim after graduating from VCU to continue to pursue my career in fitness. I began working in a small personal training/physical therapy hybrid studio, where I got the opportunity to polish my skills as a trainer. This experience substantially grew my knowledge and expertise in working with clients with chronic injuries and physical limitations or those who had just finished with physical therapy, which only grew my love for my career. These clients were a challenge because of the modifications necessary for the vast amount of injuries and conditions they were dealing with, that made the progress they were seeing even more rewarding.

Currently, I run my own fitness coaching business and work part-time at Title Nash Boxing Club coaching their crossfit-style F-Series classes. As most trainers can attest, the pandemic created an influx of need for remote and virtual fitness coaching. I had always wanted to start my own business and this was when I decided to turn that dream into a reality in 2021, I launched my LLC, Jacob Fields Performance (JF Performance). The goal was to establish something that embodies who I am as a person and coach. I wanted to show people that exercise doesn’t have to just be about changing a number on the scale, but something that can be utilized as a tool to create a more empowered, inspired life physically, mentally, and emotionally. I wanted to show that it doesn’t matter how out of shape, old, or injured you are there’s a way to improve your situation through movement and lifestyle change without hating every second of it. Through the various Online and In-Person services we offer, I can say that I am only getting started sharing this vision with the clients I serve, have served, and will continue to serve for the rest of my life. 

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
My mother lost her leg in a trampoline accident when she was younger so it was something my dad was happy doing to make her life a little easier. I was also an only child so there weren’t a lot of expenses for us growing up, especially living in West Virginia. However, when the housing market crashed in 2008 my dad lost his job and everything changed. We no longer had the financial ability to do and have a lot of the things we planned or wanted to do, which includes me going to college. I ended up having to take out loans for my undergraduate and work a lot through college just to make ends meet. While this was quite difficult to maintain while being full-time in college, I believe that it fueled my fire to be the most successful version of myself I could be and made me do whatever it took to get there. Even after undergrad, I still wanted to continue my education but still didn’t have the financial capability to do it on my own and didn’t want to take out more loans. I received a graduate assistantship which helped with tuition and some costs, but I knew it wasn’t going to be enough. This was when I decided to join the Air Force Reserves to help with the financial burden. My parents weren’t the happiest about this decision, but they supported me in doing what I needed to do to get where I want in life. 

A couple years ago I started experiencing some hip pain while I worked at my first job after moving to Nashville. The pain was so bad that I had a hard time even walking around without limping. It’s definitely not an easy thing being a personal trainer with an injury. The job requires spending long hours on your feet and being active for motivating and teaching clients proper form for exercises. The good news was I worked every day with physical therapists who were more than happy to help figure out what was going on, the bad news was that I had torn the labrum in my right hip (the cartilage that cushions and stabilizes the hip joint). This was devastating for me. The options were either try to manage the pain with physical therapy or have surgery which would put me on crutches for up to 6 months. I decided to try physical therapy. I was very pessimistic about this whole process because I didn’t think I would be able to do any of the things I loved to do anymore. However, with the help of my physical therapist coworkers, we were able to completely eliminate the pain and I am still able to do all the things I love to do. Although this injury is something I wish wouldn’t have happened because of the stress and anxiety it caused, it taught me a great deal about not only the anatomy and process of rehabbing an injury so I can better relate to my clients, it also taught me the importance of “prehabbing” in order to prevent these types of things from ever occurring, a lesson that I implement with all of my clients. 

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
JF Performance is a Fitness and Lifestyle based company focused on improving the lives of others through performance-based coaching. Our specific mission is to educate and empower via sustainable fitness, nutrition, and lifestyle strategies that can be implemented long after working with us to build a stronger, smarter, healthier, and more inspired world. More specifically, the primary service we offer is a 90-day program that is tailored specifically to where the individual currently stands in their fitness journey. The goal of this program is not to just provide cookie-cutter workout and diet plans. The goal is to educate and equip each person with the tools necessary for living a healthy an active lifestyle for long after the 90 days they work with us. We want to empower people to be able to think for themself and be able to manage the many curveballs life throws at us. That is why we focus on conceptual learning to teach the fundamentals of what it takes to be healthy, manage stress, and perform in anything they want to do in life to the best of their ability. First, we assess each client on a very basic level to determine where he or she falls on the fitness spectrum and any specific problem areas they may need more help in. We then work with the client to develop realistic goals based on what we find from the assessment. This allows us to better gauge where to start with our program and how to progress them through the 90 days. This makes each person’s experience very different because every person is very different and what works for some might not work for others. Our job is to figure out what works best for each individual 

As our name implies, we are a performance-based company. Our belief is that just because you’re getting older doesn’t mean that you should feel like you’re getting older. A lot of the things we loved to do in our younger years should not be lost simply to the aging process. We strive to help our clients perform to the best of their abilities in anything they do, not just in the weight room, but being able to play with their kids, compete in sport at any level (from professional to recreational), and manage the stresses of work life. Exercise, nutrition, and healthy lifestyle strategies are amazing tools that can help turn back the clock and help you be able to do all of the things you used to be able to do and give you ability to try and do all the things you want to. 

What sets us apart and what I’m most proud of brand-wise is our slogan of “Train Like an Athlete” and what it means. Just because you’re not competing in a structured sport doesn’t mean that training like an athlete isn’t something that can help improve your quality of life. As we age, we lose a lot of the ability to move quick, to jump, to sprint, etc. All of these are very important qualities of a training program that are often neglected due to the bodybuilding style of training we see take over almost every gym in all over the world. From my experience working with athletes, I’ve learned that a lot of the same strategies used for them can be implemented to everyday people to help them feel, move, and perform in life better. Everything can be regressed to fit the capabilities of any client we work with. This in conjunction with my vast experience with injured populations allows me to program this same principle to people with chronic injuries and pain of all different types. As we get older, we hear a lot of the same excuses when it comes to why people aren’t active: “my knees hurt so I can’t jump or run”, “my back hurts so I can’t deadlift”, etc. It is my belief that our fear of and lack of incorporating these exact things into exercise in an appropriate and safe manner are what causes these problems in the first place, generally speaking. 

I would want readers to know that it doesn’t matter where you are or what issues you’re dealing with physically, mentally, or emotionally; there is always somewhere you can start and a way to improve from that starting point. Our job is to help guide you along that journey. 

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Growing up I loved playing sports and being outdoors. I was always somewhere playing basketball, baseball, riding bikes, rollerblading, or simply just exploring. You could always find me with my friends. My house was the hang-out spot for everyone, so there were always a bunch of bikes laying in the front yard. We grew up in a small suburb, so it was a generally safe place for kids and our parents let us do a lot of things on our own. One of our favorite activities to do as a group was play airsoft. If you’re not familiar, it’s basically paintball with smaller plastic pellets. We would dress up in camo and play various different game scenarios; think Call of Duty but in real life. We would play in the woods behind the baseball field we all grew up playing on. While I loved hanging out with my friends, I also was an only child so I enjoyed my alone time playing video games and watching movies. I wasn’t much of a reader when I was younger but that changed once I got to college and realized the benefit of reading. It was a way that I could escape into my own world and learn about anything I wanted to. I was a really shy kid, at least until I got to know you. 

I was a smart kid as well but didn’t really strongly apply myself until I got to college. Although I was in honors classes throughout middle school and high school, I typically did enough to get decent grades and sometimes great ones, but thinking back I definitely could have tried harder. This is one of the bigger regrets from my childhood, but all in all, I think it’s safe to say it really allowed me to enjoy my childhood. 

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.jacobfieldsperformance.com
• Instagram: @RJ_ThePT
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/jacobfieldsperformance

Image Credits
Rachel Deeb
Tyler Barksdale