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Justin Thacker
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Carl Hoffsten resuming his training 4 weeks into chemo and radiation therapy for brain cancer:

”This place is a paradise!”

Carl Hoffsten, Contractor, RIP 2008, St. Louis



“The premium membership has worked wonders for me to keep me in shape and motivated. I no longer have to worry about designing my own workouts or worry if I am performing the exercises correctly. Not to mention I am saving a TON of time, money, and frustration!“

Gerhardt Gern, Waiter, St. Louis



“Training for the 2008 Olympic Weightlifting Team I was at college and had all sorts of distractions in the weight room. I missed the 2008 Olympic Games by 1 lift. 2012 will be different. Now that I am at home, and training at The Lab 2012 is in the bank!”
Jeff Wittmer, National Champion and Olympic Hopeful-Weightlifting, St. Louis


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St Louis Fitness Articles:
The Power of One

By Gabriel Shapiro
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2007

one-imageRegulars at Northwest Coffee Roasting might be forgiven for thinking there are earthquakes in the Central West End. Customers at the café and coffee-roasting business on Laclede Avenue have gotten used to sudden seat jolts and vibrating laptops. It’s not the New Madrid faultline slipping but intense goings on next door at The Lab. One of the top-rated weightlifters in the country has to do something with the hundreds of pounds he has just jerked above his head. After the Olympic-style lift, the load crashes the last foot or so to the floor.

Justin Thacker, 26, has had the good fortune to train at weight-lifting meccas such as the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., and has been under the tutelage of famous lifting coaches. But now he prefers to lift in the CWE, under his own guidance, at his newly opened fitness and health center. “There’s a lot of good energy in the Central West End — such a variety of interesting people doing interesting things,” he says.

Thacker says he also likes “the chaos of an urban environment.” “When I was lifting at the Olympic Training Center, everybody had to do pretty much the same things in a very controlled environment. All you do there is lift and eat, lift and eat.”

There are people who would see Thacker’s current life as chaotic. He is pursuing many goals at once: Thacker is not only operating a business while working as a dietician but he is working toward a doctorate and maintaining a serious personal-training regimen. Yes, it does “sound exhausting,” he says, “but, mostly, I find my lifestyle invigorating.”

Boutique gyms and ‘lifting dungeons’

Many who walk by The Lab view it as a boutique workout center, an intimate one that caters to the specific needs of dedicated lifters. “That’s true to an extent, but it’s so much more than that,” Thacker says. In fact, when patrons of The Lab, 4253 Laclede Ave., enter its doors, they first pass offices used by dieticians, physical therapists, massage therapists and other health experts, before getting to the tons of weights housed in the back half of the facility. “The front half of The Lab is meant to be soothing and inviting, while the back part is sort of the lifting dungeon.” But everything that is done at The Lab is “based on hard science,” Thacker says.

“This is a place where we bring together the main components of well-being: diet, exercise and psychology,” Thacker says. “I work individually with every person that comes here, whether it be for weight- training, insight into diet … even if they need a boot-camp approach. I’ll use whatever works best to meet each client’s specific goals.”

Although Thacker is dedicated to using holistic approaches when helping his clients, he says he will always incorporate the expertise of physicians and other health professionals when necessary. “Just because I am a strong proponent of making sure that people eat and exercise properly doesn’t mean I don’t see the need for mainstream medicine. But if I can work with doctors to get their patients off drugs, avoid surgery and stay out of the hospital, that is even better.”

Right now, Thacker has a bachelor’s of science degree in nutrition and dietetics, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology; he is working on his master’s degree in nutrition and physical performance with the goal of attaining a doctorate in nutrition or exercise physiology. All of Thacker’s degree work is being done at St. Louis University.

Many do not view someone who could simultaneously lift all the furniture in your house as an academic type. But Thacker says, “I love school. I want to learn everything about nutrition, psychology and exercise physiology. My goal is to be the best health and performance coach possible.”

At The Lab

On a recent Thursday afternoon at The Lab, a man in his 60s with serious brain cancer was working out with 95-pound weights. He looked robust and focused. Thacker stood to his left, coaching him on proper lifting technique.

Thacker also trains a formerly insulin-dependent diabetic. “When he first started working with me eight months ago, he weighed 294 pounds, was insulin-dependent and had to take blood pressure medicines every day. By training with me, he’s dropped 115 pounds, been able to cut his blood pressure medicines and he no longer needs insulin.” Thacker created a new diet for him and increased his exercise intensity.

“I speak with Thacker every day,” says the client, who wishes to remain anonymous. “I’m very high on Thacker, as are all the friends that I hooked up with him…. All Thacker wants from you is the commitment — and then he’ll do everything he possibly can to help you.”

Heavy history

Thacker has been a serious weight-lifter for more than half his life. “I always idolized my naturally big and strong brother who excelled at sports. Although I was also a good athlete,I was on the smaller side.

I had an uncle who was a competitive powerlifter and body-builder. He was sort of my hero. One day when I was 10 years old, he took me into his garage and I did my first lift.” That first lift was a squat, which, Thacker says, proved to be significant because it “is the most important strength movement for the only sport I actively pursue now, Olympic weightlifting.”

Thacker says shortly thereafter he began “training hard, knocking out 100 push-ups and sit-ups at every commercial break while watching television.” Even while participating in team sports in his birthplace of Beckymeyer, Ill., and for the rest of his youth while living in Belleville, Ill., he was dedicated to weightlifting, lifting for hours before most team practices and competitions. “I never had blazing speed or was very tall but my strength and intense work ethic helped me succeed in all the sports — from baseball to basketball, from wrestling to rugby — that I pursued.”

At 16, Thacker competed in his first powerlifting meet. Essentially, powerlifters try to lift as much weight as possible, focusing much less on proper form than Olympic lifters. Thacker placed first in his weight class and set an Indiana state dead-lift record of 429 pounds for a 148-pound lifter. In deadlifting, the weight is lifted from the floor to the level of the hips and then lowered by controlled effort back to the floor.

For the next two years, he won first place in all the weighlifting competitions he entered.

At 17, Thacker’s football coach at Althoff Catholic High School, Pat Hayes, introduced him to the sport of Olympic weightlifting.

“Pat was the most intense and motivating person I have ever worked with, and he has truly shaped my coaching philosophy. Pat introduced me to Olympic weightlifting, which requires speed, balance, coordination, grace — and a little divine intervention. You can teach a monkey to powerlift, but you need athleticism and patience to learn how to do Olympic lifts.”

Although powerlifting did help Thacker develop a great deal of physical strength, he was repulsed by the rampant drug abuse in the sport. “What I do now has very clear rules and all Olympic lifters are drug- tested properly.” Making it to the top in Olympic lifting became Thacker’s life mission.

When he was 19, he became the Junior Olympic national champion and won the USA Weightlifting Junior National Championships. “[It] was the all-time high of my life at that point. The feeling of having the title of being the strongest 187-pound 19 year old in the United States definitely solidified where my life was going.

“That summer, I lifted for Team USA in Mexico City, winning two silver medals and a bronze at the Junior Pan American Games.”

Because of his success in the Pan American Games, he was invited to train at the Olympic Training Center. There, he met “some of the best lifters and coaches in the world, and took that energy and knowledge home with me to St. Louis,” where he became a full-time student who worked full time while weight-training six days per week.

The problem with the competitive-weightlifting lifestyle is that it pushes everything aside, making it hard to complete even a bachelors degree, Thacker says. “Many times, people give their whole lives to this dream and come out in the end with nothing more than bad knees from overtraining. I knew I would have to build something else for myself if I wanted to keep this lifestyle and to keep it balanced.”

Using his mind to build bodies

Once back in St. Louis, Thacker increased his study of nutrition, training and psychology, and how these three areas best work together. He had always dreamed of owning his own gym. He now had the experience and knowledge to create an excellent environment for his own training and to train those with specific health and lifestyle goals.

When athletes do serious training, they also do serious eating. Thacker has worked at several area gyms, and as team dietician for several SLU teams, “to pay my tremendous grocery bills.” All of this professional experience led him to start an internet-based company, Human Health and Performance Laboratories, which can be found at www.hhplabs.com, where he posts articles, creates individualized training programs and sells nutritional supplements. “HHP Labs has evolved into The Lab, where I bring the internet concept into the real world.” The gym’s website is www.labgym.com.

In addition to lifestyle coaching and exercise training, Thacker is working with a chef and his neighbor, Northwest Coffee Roasting, to offer clients of both businesses organic meals. “I spend as much time training as I do eating, so it’s a natural fit,” he says.

“I’m very motivated to add great food to The Lab. As a trainer for eight years and a dietician, I have worked with patients and clients with diabetes, HIV, cancer, renal disease, psychotic disorder, you name it.” Thacker has also worked with Olympic athletes, swimsuit models and entire teams, and “all of these people have been greatly helped by diet and exercise.”

Thacker says that The Lab, which officially opened in early July, “already has enough clients to keep it going for a full year — but we have room for plenty more.”

Because of his many goals, Thacker has temporarily reduced the number of weightlifting events he competes in. He intends to re-enter serious Olympic competition within a year and will be grunting away in December during the American Open, one of the top qualifying events for the 2008 Olympics.



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