There are businesses built on spreadsheets and market research. There are brands built on gaps in the market and five-year plans. Crazy Strength was built on none of those things.
It was built on people. On experience. On a cancer diagnosis at 26 that quietly rewired everything. And on a snowball of passion that started rolling so gradually I barely noticed it moving — until it was already unstoppable.
This is that story. Follow along at @craig.spicer where I share the unfiltered reality of building something that actually means something.
It Started at 17 — Long Before I Had a Name For It
I’ve been in the fitness industry since I was 17. And if I’m honest, the seed of wanting something of my own — my own vision, my own community, my own way of doing things — has been there almost as long.
I just didn’t believe it was possible for a long time. And back then, it wasn’t really a thing in the way it is now.
Before the PTI role, I was already working as a civil servant — as a contracts officer. I enjoyed it. But I wasn’t built for an office. So when an internal opportunity came up for a Physical Training Instructor role at Middle Wallop — about 15 minutes from home — I went for it. Flew through the fitness assessment. Went through the interview process. And started a chapter that would shape everything that came after.
I want to be clear about something: I was never in the army. I was a civilian PTI working within the military environment. That distinction matters — because it also shaped how I eventually saw what was missing on the civilian side.
15 Years of Loving a Job That Didn’t Pay Enough — And Not Caring
I did that PTI role for somewhere between 15 and 17 years. And I loved every single minute of it.
It was never about the money. I don’t think we were particularly well paid for what we did. But when you genuinely love what you’re doing — taking out tabs, running steady state sessions, setting up strength and conditioning programmes, working with Army Sport, helping run the gym, organising competitions and events — the pay becomes almost irrelevant.
What I didn’t expect was how many skills I’d develop through that experience. Skills I assumed I’d never need outside of that world.
- Leadership
- Organisation and structure
- Programme design
- Event management
- Building things from scratch with limited resources and high expectations
Every single one of those skills is in Crazy Strength today.
Building Army Weightlifting From Scratch
The weightlifting piece grew out of ten years as head coach for powerlifting and sitting on the committee — seeing from the inside everything that goes into running a sport, not just coaching within it.
A couple of colleagues jumped on board when the idea of establishing Army Weightlifting started to take shape. What we had to prove — and this took between two and four years — was that it was a viable sport. That there was enough support, enough commitment, and enough of a roadmap to not just run the sport from a committee level but to facilitate competitions and show where the whole thing was going.
Two names that stand out from that period are James Hollis and Chris Williams — both instrumental in the policy and committee work. I genuinely enjoyed working alongside them and learned a lot through that process.
Building something from nothing, with people who believe in it as much as you do — that experience never leaves you.
The Cancer Diagnosis
I was 26. Playing football at a relatively good level at the time. We were three days into an Army Air Corps Cup competition — three 90-minute games on consecutive days, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Something I’d done for three or four years without issue.
On the Thursday, I couldn’t get out of bed.
What followed was a period of time where I genuinely didn’t understand how ill I was. I had always been the rock. The strong one. The person people leaned on. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel infallible. That’s a strange and unsettling thing to sit with when your entire identity is built around strength and resilience.
Cancer had already touched my life before my own diagnosis. My mum had been through it when I was younger. My wife had very recently been through her own experience with it. So I wasn’t naïve about what it meant.
But something shifted after my own diagnosis. I became driven — in a very deliberate, very focused way — to get as far from that cancer as I possibly could. Not just physically. But in terms of how I lived, how I showed up, and how I affected the people around me.
The springboard, if you want to call it that, was already under my feet.
From Team Crazy to Crazy Strength
The name didn’t come from a branding exercise. It came from the people.
I had three or four lifters I was working closely with across powerlifting and weightlifting at the time. And if I’m being honest, most people deep in barbell sports aren’t what you’d call conventional. Short attention spans. Obsessive tendencies. Boundless energy. They fall within certain spectrums. They’re wired differently — and that’s exactly what makes them extraordinary.
They’d started referring to themselves, half-jokingly, as Team Crazy.
As that group evolved — the people I was programming for, mentoring, developing — Team Crazy quietly became Crazy Strength. Which, as it happens, shares the same initials as mine. That wasn’t planned. But it felt right.
And from there, it snowballed.
What I Brought Across From the Military World
When I think about what the military environment gave me that I wanted to carry into civilian life, it comes down to structure and organisation.
I’ll be straight with you — structure and consistency have always been things I’ve had to work at. They don’t come naturally to me. The military environment complemented that gap perfectly. It taught me what it looks like when things are built properly, run properly, and held to a standard. And it made me want to replicate that on the civilian side, where those things are often missing.
Be a Good Human — Where It Really Came From
The original phrase wasn’t “Be a Good Human.”
It was, and I’ll be diplomatic here, something considerably less printable. The sentiment was the same. The language needed work.
Be a Good Human emerged as the version that actually said what I meant — without the parts that would get me in trouble.
But here’s what it actually means, because people often misread it as a soft, feel-good sentiment. It isn’t.
Being a good human is about doing the right thing at the right time. Most people will tell you they do that. But the reality is that doing the right thing at the right time is almost always the harder choice. It’s sacrificial. It costs you something. And most people, when the moment comes, quietly choose the easier option instead.
That’s the standard. Not perfection. Not performance. Just the willingness to make the harder, more honest, more human choice — consistently.
What Crazy Strength Stands For Today
When I started, I couldn’t have told you what this would become. I was just following the passion and the people.
What it stands for today is the people who stayed. The ones who bought into happy, humble, hungry. The ones who give their time — the most precious thing any of us have — without a second thought, to support something bigger than themselves and integrate their own dreams with it.
This industry doesn’t pay what it should. It never will — because genuine care and genuine service can’t be fully compensated financially. But the people who show up anyway, who keep showing up, who make Crazy Strength what it actually is — they’re the answer to what this stands for.
Who This Is For
This post is for the person who needs to hear that a short life is still long enough to chase something real.
It’s so easy to get trapped in a downward spiral. To let negative patterns calcify into a version of yourself you didn’t choose. This is for the one person reading this who knows they need to change that reflection. Who has a thing they really want to do but keeps finding reasons not to.
Yes — you have to be smart about it. You have to manage risk. You have to make considered decisions. But within all of that, you can still chase your dream. And be happy. And be positive. Those things are not mutually exclusive with being responsible.
What I’d Say to 26-Year-Old Craig
Don’t change.
Which sounds strange, given what I was going through at the time. But I mean it.
Use this as a springboard. Show people who you can be. Affect as many people as positively as you possibly can.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
Your Move
If any part of this resonates — if you’re sitting on something you’ve been putting off, or you’ve been waiting for the right moment to start — this is me telling you the moment is now.
Head over to the Crazy Strength blog for more, and come and find me at @craig.spicer. I’d genuinely like to hear your story.