Meet Markus Reinhardt

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Markus Reinhardt a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Markus, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

Where do I get my resilience from?

I built my resilience the same way I built my body: under load, under pressure, and under situations most people would’ve quit on long before I did.

For me, it goes all the way back to being a young guy stepping into Gold’s Gym Venice, standing next to Mike Mentzer — a man who didn’t just redefine training, he redefined how you face life. Mike drilled one idea into me that never left: recovery determines your progress in everything. Not just muscle. Life. Stress. Setbacks. All of it.

That mindset carried me through every stage of my life — the wins, the losses, the days driving a limo in Las Vegas on no sleep, the days building my business from nothing, the days creating content when nobody was watching, and still showing up again the next morning. Resilience became less of a heroic trait and more of a habit: do the thing anyway. Adapt. Recover. Repeat.

Every challenge that hit me became another Heavy Duty set — brief, intense, and an opportunity to get better if I refused to walk away from it. That’s really where my resilience comes from: the decision, made thousands of times, that I wasn’t going to fold just because something got heavy.

I treat life the way I teach training — with precision, intensity, and the willingness to push through the sticking point. And somehow, every time, on the other side of that sticking point, I come out sharper, stronger, and more dangerous in the best way possible.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I help people transform their bodies and their lives using a style of training that isn’t mainstream, isn’t trendy, and definitely isn’t easy — High Intensity Training. My entire brand is built around the philosophy I learned firsthand from Mike Mentzer at Gold’s Gym Venice: train hard, train brief, recover deeply, and live with purpose. That mentorship shaped everything I’ve created since.

Today I run HighIntensityCoach.com, where I coach clients around the world and publish my training manuals, programs and transformation systems. What excites me most about my work is how fast people’s lives change when they finally stop doing the endless “gym hamster wheel” routine and switch to strategic, all-out effort paired with real recovery. The lightbulb goes on — and everything shifts.

I’m also expanding my brand with live training experiences. I recently launched HITCAMP Las Vegas, a hands-on intensive where I take people through true Heavy Duty training, step by step, inside some of the most impressive gyms in Las Vegas. It’s part mentorship, part training evolution, and part personal reset for people who want something beyond the typical fitness retreat.

My focus right now is simple:
Build a global community of people who want to train with reason, intensity and discipline — not trends. Between YouTube, my books, my online coaching, and the Heavy Duty Nation community, I’m creating a space where anyone can learn High Intensity Training the way it was meant to be practiced.

Everything I’m doing is centered on one mission: bring Heavy Duty back to life and modernize it for the next generation.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1. Relentless Discipline
The biggest advantage I’ve ever had wasn’t talent — it was consistency. Discipline is what kept me walking into Gold’s Gym Venice day after day, pushing through brutally hard HIT workouts under Mentzer, and later building my entire brand from scratch. Most people wait to “feel motivated.” I learned early on that motivation is unreliable, but discipline is a machine.
Advice: Build routines you can execute even on your worst days. That’s where your confidence grows.

2. The Ability to Recover
This is something Mike Mentzer drilled into me: progress only happens when you recover. That applies to training, business and life. I’ve gone through setbacks that would wipe most people out, but I learned to step back, reset, and come back smarter instead of fighting the same wall with the same strategy.
Advice: Don’t fear stepping back. Strategic recovery is a weapon, not a weakness.

3. Independent Thinking
The fitness world is full of noise, trends and “gurus” who want you to copy whatever’s hot this month. I learned early to question everything, study the logic behind it and build my own path. That mindset shaped my training, my coaching, and my business.
Advice: Develop the courage to think for yourself. When you stop copying the crowd, your real potential shows up.

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

If I only had a decade left, I’d spend it doubling down on the things that actually matter. I’d keep training, keep creating, and keep teaching people the principles that changed my life — intensity, discipline and the courage to think for yourself. That’s the part of my work that feels like legacy, and I’d spend every year sharpening it.

I’d use that time to expand what I’ve built: more books, more training camps, more videos, and more people discovering what true High Intensity Training can do for their lives. I’d want to leave behind a body of work that makes someone stronger long after I’m gone.

And outside of that, I’d keep it simple. I’d spend more time around people who energize me, travel a bit, drive my cars through the desert, lift heavy, eat good food, and stay curious. Ten years is enough time to do something meaningful — as long as you stop wasting it.

In short, I’d spend that decade the same way I try to live now: with purpose, intensity and zero regret.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.highintensitycoach.com
• Instagram: @mrhitcoach
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mrhitcoach
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Highintensitylife
• Other: https://www.hitmanuals.com