Alvaton native named oldest fitness instructor
Published 6:00 am Wednesday, September 24, 2025
Scottsdale, Arizona, resident Chuck Goad lifts a barbell at LA Fitneas in McCormick Ranch. The 86-year-old has been recognized by Guinness World Records as the oldest fitness trainer globally. (Times Media Group)
Crouched onto Alvaton farm soil, 9-year-old Chuck Goad pegs an opening into the ground to add a tobacco plant and water. He moves the peg, water pale and sack of tobacco plants 12 inches down to make another hole with another plant and another portioning of water — when, eventually, multiple rows of tobacco span the farm.
But it’s getting dark, this sweltering summer of ’49. The farmland has no electricity, and lantern batteries are too expensive — so, work may continue tomorrow.
This, Goad described last week, was the farm kid’s way: hard and without complaint.
“I carry that all through my life,” Goad says.
It brought the Scottsdale, Arizona, resident to a new record in his 85th year this summer: The oldest fitness instructor in the world, per Guinness World Records.
“Was always pretty good at most things, but to be the only one in the world — that’s cool,” he said.
At 86, he’s quick to recall the decades.
He grew up 8 miles from Bowling Green, where first and second grade classes were held in a one-room schoolhouse called Rocky Springs; balls of hay sat on the left, while class was held on the right, and when it rained, students would cross a creek for the bus. Then came a school named Mount Victor 5 miles from Bowling Green, followed by Alvaton High.
He worked on the family farm and others’ in Alvaton for $1.25 a day. Many favorite memories come from around that period, Goad added: He, his brothers and stepbrothers would take the 16-mile roundtrip walk to Bowling Green and hit three theaters for 12 cents apiece (50 cents total, with Coke and popcorn), he said. At Alvaton High, they had rifle shooting, and the Junior Conservation Club assembled bales of hay behind school for a shooting contest, he said.
He picked up horseback riding in Texas before moving to Indiana, where he worked on rockets and then in insurance. The 21-year-old Goad began bodybuilding around that time — the same period as Arnold Schwarzenegger — and, with a desire to be in movies, bought a horse to practice stunt riding and trick riding. He performed the stunts for money in old western towns and worked as a stuntman for movies, and picked up professional photography for models before becoming one himself, eventually getting into the GQ magazine.
In 2011, he worked out at LA Fitness and was asked to help other members, and he’s done that since — aiming to be the best trainer possible, he said.
His approach, he added, comes from his days on the farm.
“I knew you had to work hard, you have to do things you don’t like to do,” he said. “I did the best I could at every job I had.”
