Aaron Raney

I grew up in Fort Lupton, Colorado. I didn’t come up through a gym. I spent 14 years as a traveling pipeline welder, grinding, away from home, and quietly building a lifestyle that was breaking me down. The work was hard. Being away from my family was even harder. Over time I developed a serious drinking problem and an unhealthy relationship with food. I was overweight, dealing with chronic back pain, knee pain, a blown-out shoulder, and I was stuck in a cycle I couldn’t seem to break.

I tried to change. More than once. I’d lose the weight, start making progress, feel like a different person, and then slip right back into the same identity that had been holding me down. It wasn’t a lack of effort. I had good intentions every time. We all do. What I lacked was the right system and the right support.

In 2008, a job brought me to Great Bend, Kansas. That job is also where I met Ashley, the woman who would become my wife and the mother of our kids. What started as a stop along the way became home.

And looking back, I don’t think that was an accident. I believe I was brought here for a reason.

Eventually I made the decision that changed everything. I went to therapy and hired a coach. I started seeing real results for the first time. But I also saw the gaps. Some of the exercises I couldn’t do because of the pain I was in. It was a one-size-fits-all approach that didn’t account for where I actually was. The nutrition piece wasn’t there. The corrective work wasn’t there. Nothing was tied together. I needed all of it, and it didn’t exist in one place.

So I built it myself.

I became a NASM Certified Personal Trainer, a Nutrition Coach, and a Corrective Exercise Specialist, not because it looked good on paper, but because I was the person who needed all three. I created the MAC Method, Mindset, Accountability, Complete Structured Programs, a system built around the real obstacles people face: chronic pain, broken identity, no time, no nutrition plan, and the mental weight of starting over again.

I’m a husband and a father of four. I know what it means to be a busy working professional with a full life and a long list of reasons to put yourself last. I also know what it feels like to battle addiction. To be at your absolute lowest. And I know what it feels like to come out the other side.

Iron Therapy Training exists because this community needed it and I was built to create it. Our mission is simple: to help as many busy working professionals 45 and older get their health and their life back through a complete body transformation, while elevating the standard of health in Great Bend and the surrounding area. This place was created for that exact reason. I built the system. You bring the commitment.