MEET YOUR COACH
Your Goals. Your Body. Your Plan.
I’m Dave Downey, Strength & Conditioning Coach and Health Coach at Regenerate Health Medical Center.
I help people build strength and fitness around their goals, their abilities, and the life they actually live.
Because I don't believe a coach's job is to decide what fitness should look like for you.
My job is to understand what you want your body to be able to do—and help you build it.
Individualized Coaching • Santa Barbara • In-Person + Remote
MEET DAVE
Dave Downey
Strength + Conditioning Coach • Health Coach • Founder, Regenerate Strength
I’ve spent years helping people build strength, improve fitness, and create training that actually fits their life.
My role is simple: understand what matters to you, figure out what your body needs, and help you build a plan you can actually use.
I’m not here to make you fit my idea of fitness. I’m here to help you build yours.
WHY I COACH THIS WAY
Fitness Should Make Your Life Better — Not Take It Over.
I didn't always train this way.
Like a lot of people, my own fitness journey started with the idea that more was better. More intensity. Harder workouts. Push a little further.
Over the years, I moved through bootcamps, CrossFit, and different approaches to training. I got fitter. I learned a lot. But I also started asking a better question:
Is the way I'm training actually sustainable—and is it helping me build the life I want outside the gym?
That question eventually changed the way I trained. And later, it changed the way I coached.
I stopped thinking about fitness as a collection of hard workouts and started looking at the entire person—their goals, movement, capabilities, nutrition, recovery, stress, schedule, and life outside the gym.
Because the best training plan isn't the one that looks the most impressive on paper.
It's the one that works for the person doing it.
HOW I COACH
Coaching Is More Than Writing Workouts.
A program can tell you what exercises to do.
A coach should understand why you're doing them, how you're responding, and when something needs to change.
That means I'm paying attention to more than sets, reps, and weight on the bar.
I'm looking at how you move. What you're capable of today. How you recover. What's happening with your nutrition, sleep, stress, and schedule. Where you're making progress—and where something keeps getting in the way.
Sometimes good coaching means pushing a little harder.
Sometimes it means pulling back.
Sometimes it means changing the plan entirely.
The program serves the person. The person doesn't serve the program.
01 — PAY ATTENTION
Your body gives us information.
How you move, perform, recover, and respond helps me decide what belongs in your training next.
02 — ADJUST
The plan isn't sacred.
If something isn't working—or your life, abilities, or goals change—we change the plan.
03 — TEACH
You should understand what we're doing.
I want you to know why something is in your program, what we're trying to accomplish, and what you're learning about your own body along the way.
My job isn't just to give you a plan. It's to keep making your plan better.
THE WEIGHTS ARE THE TOOL
Your Life Is the Reason.
I love strength training. But getting better at lifting weights isn't the end goal for most of the people I coach.
The strength we build in the gym is supposed to give you more options outside of it.
Maybe that's staying competitive in a sport. Hiking without wondering whether your body can handle it. Picking up your kids or grandkids. Traveling. Recovering from a setback. Staying independent as you get older. Or simply feeling more capable in your own body.
Your reason doesn't have to look like anyone else's.
That's why your goals matter so much to me.
I'm not here to hand you my definition of fitness and convince you to chase it.
I'm here to understand what you want your body to be capable of—and then use training to help you build toward it.
Build strength in the gym. Use it everywhere else.
THE COACH BEHIND THE COACHING
Experience Gives Me More Ways to Help You.
Good coaching requires more than knowing exercises.
It requires understanding movement, programming, nutrition, recovery, behavior change, and—maybe most importantly—how all of those things interact with the person standing in front of you.
I’ve spent years studying those pieces and learning how to bring them together.
But credentials aren't the end goal.
They're tools that give me more ways to understand what you need and make better coaching decisions.
STRENGTH & CONDITIONING
OPEX CCP Level 1
Individualized program design, assessment, movement, work capacity, and long-term coaching.
NUTRITION
Precision Nutrition Level 1
Practical nutrition coaching built around your goals, habits, lifestyle, and the work you're asking your body to do.
HEALTH COACHING
Regenerate Health Medical Center
Strength and fitness don't exist separately from sleep, stress, recovery, nutrition, health, and the rest of your life.
I don't expect my credentials to impress you.
I expect what I've learned from them to make me a better coach for you.
WHEN FITNESS ISN'T THE WHOLE STORY
Sometimes the Answer Isn't Another Exercise.
There are times when something affecting your training goes beyond programming.
Maybe you're doing the right things but recovery still isn't where it should be. Energy is consistently low. Sleep is getting in the way. An old injury keeps resurfacing. Hormones, nutrition, body composition, or another health concern may be affecting your ability to make progress.
That's where being part of Regenerate Health Medical Center matters.
Regenerate Strength is the strength and conditioning arm of RHMC. I work within a team that looks at health from a much broader perspective than fitness alone.
That doesn't mean every client needs medical care.
It means when your needs extend beyond my scope as a coach, we don't have to pretend the answer is another set of squats.
01 — KNOW MY ROLE
I coach strength, conditioning, nutrition, habits, and the lifestyle factors that fall within my scope.
02 — RECOGNIZE WHEN THERE'S MORE
Good coaching also means recognizing when something may need a different set of eyes.
03 — CONNECT THE DOTS
When appropriate, I can connect you with the doctors and broader resources at RHMC so your fitness doesn't have to be treated separately from your health.
Your training is part of your health. It shouldn't exist in isolation from it.
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM ME
I’ll Meet You Where You Are. Then We’ll Build From There.
You don’t need a coach yelling at you, judging what you ate last weekend, or trying to turn every workout into a test of how tough you are.
You need someone who pays attention.
Someone who will challenge you when you’re capable of more, pull things back when your body is telling us something different, and explain why we’re doing what we’re doing.
I’ll expect you to put in the work.
But I also understand that you have a job, a family, responsibilities, vacations, stressful weeks, great weeks, and occasionally a life that has absolutely no interest in cooperating with your training plan.
That’s not something your program should ignore.
It’s something good coaching should account for.
01 — I’LL LISTEN
Your goals come first. We’re building your version of fitness, not mine.
02 — I’LL BE STRAIGHT WITH YOU
If something needs to change, I’ll tell you. If you're capable of more, I'll tell you that too.
03 — WE’LL ADJUST
Your program isn’t precious. If life, your body, or your goals change, we change the plan.
Serious about the work.
Not interested in making fitness more complicated than it needs to be.
LET’S TALK
Enough About Me. What Do You Want Your Body to Be Able to Do?
You don’t need to have the right program figured out.
You don’t need to know how often you should train.
And you definitely don’t need to get in shape before we talk.
Just tell me where you are, where you want to go, and what’s been getting in the way.
We’ll start with a conversation and figure out the rest from there.
Free • No obligation • No workout required
