Meet Alex Folacci

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alex Folacci. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alex below.

Hi Alex, so great to have you on the platform. There’s so much we want to ask you, but let’s start with the topic of self-care. Do you do anything for self-care and if so, do you think it’s had a meaningful impact on your effectiveness?

I used to never really take care of myself until I hit 30, then I realized I needed to work harder, do maintenance on my body, and start taking care of myself otherwise I would have become bald, fat, inflamed, crippled by injuries, low self esteem and no energy.

As an elite Personal Trainer for men in New York City, I need to hold myself to very high standards and show that I practice what I preach. I realized that my ego will never tolerate comments from others saying “wow you aren’t in good shape anymore, you gained weight” so for that reason, I work hard to keep myself to high standards.
My clients are very successful in their own lives, that’s why they seek my expertise to bring them to the level of standards they aspire in their health, fitness, and longevity.

Sometimes I ask myself what my life would look like if I wasn’t as competitive and if I had low standards. I would probably still be in my hometown Tours, in France, working in a store or at my track and field club, making minimum wage… I am very happy of the dream life I have created for myself, by helping New Yorkers with very high standards achieve their full potential in health, fitness, and longevity in a natural and holistic way.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I come from France, and was two time National Champion in the Decathlon, 6 years in the National team of France, and international medalist.
I came to America in 2014 to do my masters degree and train for the Rio Olympics, but in 2015 I broke my back, almost ended up in a wheel chair, and lost my athletic scholarship… That’s when I decided to start coaching people, by using the skills I developed when I coached myself to become National champion. Yes I didn’t have a coach, and I was making my own research, my own programs, my own analysis, and recalibrating everything based on my feedback analysis and my feelings. Many thought I would never succeed on my own, but I proved them all wrong!
This very particular set of skills that I developed then, gave me a very unique way of coaching my clients, by challenging them safely to beat their personal best in many exercises every week, teaching them a very wide variety of movements and skills (powerlifting, stretching, 6 pack abs, mixed martial arts, Crossfit, running, Hyrox, calisthenics, bodybuilding,…).
I have now coached over 500 clients, developed a stellar 5 stars reputation, built a team of multiple affordable and certified personal trainers under me, received the New York Award 3 times, and coached many VIPs.
My goal is to keep expanding my coaching company in order to help as many people as possible in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, with their health, fitness, and longevity, in a holistic and safe way.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1) My analytical skills are definitely one of my greatest advantages:

I always try to understand every situations, the context, find patterns to predict future, understand the probability of each outcome, and all the parameters involved in order to calculate and make the right decision.
Staying objective, rational, logical and unbiased is extremely important if you want to be right and have success in life. That is how I became the best athlete in my country and the best personal trainer in New York City. Of course I can be wrong sometimes, but if the average of the people are right in 70% of their analysis/decisions, and I’m right 95% of the time, I will clearly outperform most people.

2) I truly care about helping people and raising everyone around me:

I love helping people who deserve and have the same values of hard work and integrity as me. It truly brings me a lot of happiness to see my clients losing a lot of weight, becoming much stronger, feeling better in their body and their mind. They are motivated and fully trust me, because they know I have their best interest at heart, and will call them out if they aren’t consistent or start giving me excuses.
There is no short cuts in life, you need to have a plan based on your goals, your personality and physical abilities, then you need to work hard and stick to the plan.

3) My competitive spirit and will to learn everyday:

I understand we only have one life, and I never planned on living it like a bum and below my full potential, that’s why I work everyday and can achieve so much. I study people who are achieving greatness, and reverse engineer their success. Then I learn and develop my skills everyday until I can beat my competition and become the best!
It is important to note that I don’t step on the competitors to put them down, I raise other people around me in order to win together.

I am also the only personal trainer in NYC to offer longevity and biohacking integration in the lifestyle of my clients in order to make them live longer and age slower.

How would you describe your ideal client?

I am specialized in coaching highly successful men over 35 in New York City.
My ideal client is a self made millionaire, hard worker, that needs to optimize his health, fitness, and longevity, and be sharp physically and mentally.
He needs to also tolerate my wicked sense of humor, because I love telling funny and ridiculous stories to keep my clients entertained and have fun during the sessions.
Regarding their fitness goals, I can literally help anyone coming to me, from someone morbidly obese to an Olympic champion World Record holder. My coaching expertise is based on principles that can be applied to anyone.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Ylva Erevall

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