Tisho’s Story

Who is Tihomir Stefanov?

Hey people!

My name is Tihomir Stefanov (Shortly, Tisho) and I am a qualified personal trainer from Bulgaria. My main goal with this website is to provide you with the most updated, evidence-based information to apply in your day to day life.

For this article however, I’ll give you a glimpse into my life and how I actually ended up on my journey to educate myself and people.

Backstory

About 10 years ago, I was your average skinny kid who had no significant goals or ambitions in life.

I liked riding my bike, enjoying time with friends and mostly, playing computer games.

Besides riding my bike and expressing my hyperactivity in numerous other ways, I was not really paying attention to my physical appearance and performance.

Well, that was up until the 8th grade when I realized that at a weight of 43 kilograms, I was inferior to my peers, who already had 1-2 years of training experience and were proud to show off their progress & capabilities.

This was exactly the point where I told myself I should step my game up.

I knew I had it. At that time, I could do 17 half-repped chin-ups.

Wasn’t much, but for a guy who never stepped in the gym or on the monkey bars, it was something to be proud of.

And so, on 7th of October 2011, I stepped in a gym for the first time.

Just like anyone else, I didn’t know what I was doing and all I wanted was some good abs.

But with some guidance from the local trainees, progress was there.

I saw good results and I remained motivated.

Now, the only downside was that I had to force-feed myself at the beginning, but I have now developed a romantic relationship with food & cooking in general.

Fast forward…

Fast-forwarding to 2019 and 8 years of training, I’m in the best physical and mental shape of my life.

Here’s how my main physical parameters changed over the course of the past 8 years:

Before stats

1. Height – 173 cm
2. Weight – 43 kilograms
3. Age- 14

After stats

1. Height – 184 cm
2. Weight – 75 kilograms
3. Age – 22

Needless to say, I am not the most massive guy, but I have improved on my main vision:

Becoming my own, biological sculptor.

Qualifications

When it came to the point where I was about to graduate 12th grade, I was asking myself “Alright Tisho, what are you going to do with your life from now on?”.

Well, I knew that most of my peers’ parents were pushing them to study certain subjects which were of their liking, but that was not the case with me.

My parents always told me that “They knew I would find my own path in life” and that is something I really appreciated – They were never pushy.

I took some time off of studying after the 12th grade and at one point I realised that training and eating right really was my passion for the past 5 years.

It came to the point where I would have people in the gym ask me for advice and I noticed how well I was able to present information to them.

There was something about communicating knowledge to people which appealed to me.

This is exactly when I got targeted with a facebook ad that was promoting a personal trainer certificate in Bulgaria’s National Sports Academy “Vasil Levski”. (Coincidence? I think not 🙂

At that moment it clicked. I did not have much money at the time, but with the support of my parents I was able to sign up for this intense course, which had both theoretical and practical sides to it.

Now, of course, a certificate is not like a PhD but my knowledge skyrocketed for the 5 weeks I was there.

5 weeks and nearly 300 hours of lectures later, I took my final exam with a 6/6 rating, with a perfect diploma score.

Though I learned many new things, I also learned how much there is to know when it comes to health, training and fitness in general.

Since 2016 I’ve been adding more and more information to my “Biological database”, by reading books, watching lectures and videos of the best people in the industry.

Real-life experience

Now of course, it’s not just about having the knowledge in theory.

I started working with people 1:1 one year prior to getting my certificate – That was just for fun and to start building up my expertise, I was not charging people.

Since getting my certificate however, I’ve helped dozens of people from every age group, achieve their fitness goals – Be it to get really fit or just maintain good health.

Client success

On the picture above you can see one of my clients’ progress for just 3 months.

This was the point where I thought to myself “Wow, helping people be the best version of themselves really is satisfying.”.

Writing

Besides working with people on establishing sustainable lifestyle habits, I also started creating content.

This started way back in time, when I was writing some papers just for myself, in a text document on my desktop.

Back then I had no intention of becoming a writer – I just liked writing on the topics I was studying about.

Perhaps, that was something my brain figured out would be good to re-affirm the knowledge and make it easier to remember.

Nevertheless, in 2017 I started looking for ways to monetize my knowledge and make a living out of it.

Since that moment, I’ve been producing written content for a variety of fitness platforms.

Hobbies

To be honest, even though I knew it was important to develop a career, I also always knew that it is important to have fun in life.

Why?

Well, because each and every one of us has won the galactic lottery – You have the chance to be a CONSCIOUS BEING, on a floating speck of dust in space, that is orbiting a star at a perfect distance to maintain life.

Cool, huh?

That is exactly why I have never been 100% centred on becoming a “Serious persona”, but rather being a decent human being and enjoying life while it lasts.

I have had many hobbies come and go, but the things that have lasted in my life, which I use regularly to enrich my experience, are the following:

1. Photography
2. Music (Mainly guitar)
3. Fire dancing
4. Cooking (Pretty functional with training)
5. Fictional writing

And, well, that’s that.

If you’ve reached this part of the article, thank you for reading!

You now have a better idea about the guy who will be providing tons of content to this awesome platform, so stay tuned for that!

Peace out.

Check out Tisho’s Instagram here.