#114 - From D1 Football to Training Hollywood: John Damon on Elite Coaching For High Performers
Choose Hard with Cody McBroom
Cody McBroom
4.9 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2026
⏱️ 61 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What does it actually take to coach the people who can't afford to fail — Hollywood talent, elite athletes, executives whose bodies and schedules are under constant pressure?
In this episode of the Choose Hard Podcast, Cody McBroom sits down with John Damon — former Division I football player at Boston College, celebrity trainer, performance coach, and founder of The Cave — to break down the journey from athlete, to coach, to gym owner, to builder of one of the most talked-about private training spaces in the industry.
John has spent his career inside rooms most coaches never get access to — The Sports Club/LA, Equinox, and now his own premium gym-design business — and this conversation goes deep into what actually separates good coaching from elite coaching.
What's covered in this episode:
✅ The athlete-to-coach transition — What John's D1 football career at Boston College taught him that still shapes how he coaches today, and how that competitive background changed his relationship with discomfort and standards.
✅ From trainer to owner — What pushed John to stop just training people and start building gyms, brands, and businesses around performance.
✅ Coaching high performers and celebrities — How John broke into coaching talent and executives, and what high performers actually need from a coach that most trainers get completely wrong.
✅ Training under pressure — What changes when your client's body, schedule, and public reputation are all on the line at once.
✅ Why the environment matters as much as the training — John's philosophy on why the room, the equipment, and the culture around a client can matter just as much as the program itself — and how that thinking led him to build The Cave.
✅ What it takes to build a long career in this industry — John's advice for young trainers and entrepreneurs on what to obsess over, what to ignore, and what separates a good coach from a great one.
If you're a coach trying to level up your standards, a gym owner thinking about environment and experience, or just someone who wants to hear how elite performance actually gets built — this episode is for you.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I trained everyone on the hills. |
| 0:01.2 | I trained from Spencer Pratt, his wife, Heidi, to Kristen Cavalry. I trained for over 10 years. Her husband, Jay Cutler, who played for the Bears, Benjamin Bratt, his wife, the head of Universal, Casey Silver, all over the place. David Du Coveney, Tom Brady, you name it. I trained Jessica Alba once at Sports Cabalais. It was a terrible experience, you know, she just wanted me to count |
| 0:20.9 | reps. |
| 0:27.9 | All right, John Damon. |
| 0:29.4 | I'm excited to have you here, man. |
| 0:30.6 | I don't know much about you, so I'm excited to learn because when I started trying to |
| 0:36.0 | search more info about you, it felt to me like I was discovering |
| 0:40.8 | a strength coach that I should have learned from a long time ago. I joke with some of my |
| 0:46.0 | friends in the industry. I was the youngest in the room always. So I learned from people, |
| 0:52.5 | Dan John, Great Cook, Michael Boyle, like just way back Charlie Weingroff, my mentor for a long time, Luca Hosevar, and just all these people that were, it was pre-social media. |
| 1:01.5 | It was just real strength conditioning. |
| 1:03.4 | I was watching DVDs to learn about this stuff. |
| 1:06.4 | And so there are certain names that I feel like every once in a while will pop up that I've never heard of. |
| 1:11.5 | And I start digging. |
| 1:12.3 | And I'm like, man, how have I never talked to this person before? I feel like you're just probably a wealth of knowledge. So I'm really excited to have you. And I'm really excited to dig into your story, man. Well, I'm super excited to be here. I love all that. A lot of those guys, you know, Michael Boyle, we're both Boston guys. |
| 1:27.1 | So much respect to Michael, you know, Michael Boyle, we're both Boston guys. So much respect to Michael, |
| 1:30.6 | you know, and I think that this is what's such a great part about our industry is that we, |
| 1:36.5 | I think once you realize you don't know everything or that even that science doesn't know everything, |
| 1:41.8 | then we can come from a great place of curiosity as opposed to just like quick judgment. |
| 1:47.2 | Like, oh, I'm a Paul Chek guy or I'm a this guy, you know. |
| 1:50.7 | And, you know, it's funny. |
| 1:52.3 | So I in the strength and conditioning world, right, I ran super high end health clubs dealt with. |
... |
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