Meet Wesley Glouchkov, TikTok’s Most Devoted Fitfluencer

Meet Wesley Glouchkov, a devout Texas boy whose love of lifting and clean eating fueled a booming personal training business and an unexpected rise as a fitfluencer. To get to the core of what pumps Wesley up, we got the podcaster, writer, and fitness fiend Chris Black to ask him some heavy questions.

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MONDAY 2 PM JAN. 6, 2025 TOMBALL, TX

CHRIS BLACK: Where are we at right now? Home?

WESLEY GLOUCHKOV: Yeah, I’m in my room.

BLACK: Where do you live?

GLOUCHKOV: In Houston.

BLACK: Houston’s one of my favorite cities, low key. I don’t think people realize how great it is.

GLOUCHKOV: What do you like about Houston?

BLACK: There’s amazing art. The food is really good.

GLOUCHKOV: Yeah, there’s a lot of problems with Houston, too.

BLACK: Are you from there?

GLOUCHKOV: Yeah. I know a lot of celebrities are moving here, too.

BLACK: Really? For the tax break?

GLOUCHKOV: I guess. Everyone’s moving to Austin. Drake just moved here.

BLACK: Oh, yeah. Maybe you can pick up Drake as a client. That’s not out of the question.

GLOUCHKOV: Yeah, maybe. He’s got plenty of money.

BLACK: Okay, so you’ve been working out forever, but when did you become a trainer?

GLOUCHKOV: Right out of high school. I started training people out of my garage. My friend’s parents were my first clients and they were awesome. And then from there, I got a few more in my garage, but I also worked as a waiter.

BLACK: You were working as a waiter at night and training people during the day?

GLOUCHKOV: I’d wake up pretty early, train a few people, and then I’d go to work. I used to do plumbing, then I worked at T-Mobile for a bit.

BLACK: Yeah.

GLOUCHKOV: But now, I’m a full-time trainer.

BLACK: I’m sure that feels good.

GLOUCHKOV: It’s definitely a lot easier on the body.

BLACK: So how are you getting clients? Is it a lot through TikTok and social media? Is it virtual? Are people coming to the garage?

GLOUCHKOV: I don’t like doing virtual training sessions because part of being a personal trainer is being personal.

BLACK: I agree. I don’t like virtual training. It’s not the same.

GLOUCHKOV: It doesn’t feel comfortable for me. I train out of an actual gym in the Woodlands, right outside of Houston. It’s where a lot of people with money live. I work over there, but I also train some people in my garage.

BLACK: For sure, because your methods are pretty simple, from what I’ve seen. We don’t need a ton of equipment. It’s straightforward, classic lifting.

GLOUCHKOV: Exactly. I hate that people think you need so many different things to get a good-looking body; you don’t. You just have to be good at the simple things, eat a good diet, and work out constantly.

BLACK: Because you eat super clean.

GLOUCHKOV: I eat pretty clean. I was literally just eating pork with cabbage.

BLACK: Bro, that looks like a damn casserole.

GLOUCHKOV: [Laughs] I came home from my grandma’s and this is what she sent me home with.

BLACK: That looks like something that would come from a Southern grandma. Okay, so you eat protein-heavy, no carbs?

GLOUCHKOV: Yeah, it’s definitely protein-heavy. I eat carbs, but usually in the morning and cold.

BLACK: What’s a cold carb, if you don’t mind me asking?

GLOUCHKOV: Starches—rice and cold potatoes. It changes the molecules so they’re more compact and your body doesn’t digest it the same way. It doesn’t just zoom into your bloodstream and spike your blood sugar.

BLACK: But you allow yourself to get a fucking piece of chocolate cake occasionally, or are you super strict?

GLOUCHKOV: I don’t like cake.

BLACK: You don’t like cake? Well, do you like cookies, ice cream, something?

GLOUCHKOV: I guess I’ll drink.

BLACK: Okay, you’ll have a couple of negronis or whatever.

GLOUCHKOV: Exactly, an old-fashioned or something. That’s my guilty pleasure.

BLACK: As long as you have something. I work out every day. I’m pretty strict with my diet too, but I have a sweet tooth and it’s tough to shake that. I’ve been sober for eight years, so alcohol and drugs are easy, but the sweets haunt me.

GLOUCHKOV: Wow. Congratulations, by the way. But yeah, I used to have a really bad sweet tooth. I used to go to McDonald’s every single day and have two spicy McChickens with a large strawberry milkshake and large fries. I’d get that literally every single day.

BLACK: Wow.

GLOUCHKOV: But once I stopped eating sweets, I didn’t crave them as much.

BLACK: That’s the thing. What are your go-to lifts?

GLOUCHKOV: Most of the time, we stay in one spot. I know a lot of trainers, they take people around the entire gym. I really like compound movements, so we usually stick to that. Usually with beginners, I just stay at a squat rack and figure out what they need. Are they lacking legs or do they want to build the upper body? And then, I take them through a squat rack workout with either upper or lower body.

BLACK: That makes sense. I think people are intimidated by the gym if they’re new to it, because there’s so much shit in there. They don’t realize you don’t really need all that.

GLOUCHKOV: Yeah.

BLACK: That’s why you can have a gym in your garage. That’s all the space you need.

GLOUCHKOV: Exactly. Most trainers where I work, they have their own little area, right? They stay in one spot because that’s how they learned to train themselves. People get in and think, “I got to go upstairs, I got to go downstairs, and get this in and get this in.” And really, they just overcomplicate things.

BLACK: I totally agree. There’s too many toys. You can just do calisthenics and be good. It’s not that serious.

GLOUCHKOV: Yeah.

BLACK: But you’re right, consistency is the main driver. That’s what matters. So how did the TikTok stuff start? Were you just like, “This is fun,” or was it a way to get clients and grow the business?

GLOUCHKOV: First it was just a random video that I guess popped off, and after that—

BLACK: And was your shirt on or off?

GLOUCHKOV: It was off.

BLACK: I knew the answer to the question, I just wanted to make you say it.

GLOUCHKOV: [Laughs] And then people would reach out to me for fitness advice. I was like, “Oh, I can help people through this app.” I feel like most people probably think I’m a douchebag, but that’s alright.

BLACK: It’s okay. People are going to think what they’re going to think. Now, I’m sure you’ve gotten a lot of attention from men and women. Has there been some upside to this beyond career stuff ?

GLOUCHKOV: What do you mean, from women?

BLACK: Yeah. I’m sure chicks are hollering at you. I’m sure you’ve been on some dates, at least.

GLOUCHKOV: Oh yeah, I’ve been on some dates. Attention is fun sometimes. Like I’ll be at the bar and they’re like, “Oh, I know you’re from TikTok.” But dating life, I guess, hasn’t been so great. Part of that is, because of my TikTok they assume that, again, I’m some douchebag. But I’m really just a chill guy.

BLACK: They got to get past the TikTok exterior and get into that gooey inside, is what you’re saying.

GLOUCHKOV: [Laughs] Exactly.

BLACK: Okay. Are you anti-supplement, full natty? What’s your take on that stuff?

GLOUCHKOV: Oh, I hate supplements.

BLACK: I take a lot of supplements, but I’m also 42, so there’s more that could go wrong. I need my recovery to be faster and I probably need to sleep for longer than you do. But I appreciate that, because I think that HGH and testosterone and steroids are really popular with young people. It’s very normalized.

GLOUCHKOV: Yeah, I hate that. A lot of people just want to get rich and famous, and they don’t want to wait. I’m totally against any drug use.

BLACK: Are you religious?

GLOUCHKOV: I’m Christian, yeah.

BLACK: Southern Baptist, Methodist, what are we looking at?

GLOUCHKOV: Nondenominational. I didn’t really grow up religious, but I lived in this house alone for two years and got really close to my neighbor, who’s 74.

BLACK: Oh, wow.

GLOUCHKOV: He was super overweight at the time, 270 pounds. He couldn’t stretch, couldn’t bend over, he just had this gut in his way. But what struck me about him was, he has nothing really going for him, he’s overweight, no money, 73 years old. How is this guy happy? I started talking to him a lot more, and I was like, this guy just knows Jesus. His faith was so strong that no matter what his circumstance was, he found joy.

BLACK: He was good.

GLOUCHKOV: Yeah, he found it. So I started going to church with him and learning more about god and getting closer to him. Ever since then, I guess I gave my life to god, and it was probably the best decision I’ve ever made.

BLACK: That’s so interesting. I was raised Southern Baptist. I’m very familiar with how all this works.

GLOUCHKOV: And with Steve, my neighbor, we started talking more because I started training him more.

BLACK: I was going to ask if he took you to church and you took him to the gym. Is that the trade?

GLOUCHKOV: Yeah, exactly. He got free training sessions. I just wanted to help him out.

BLACK: Is he doing better?

GLOUCHKOV: Yeah, he lost 70 pounds.

BLACK: Holy shit.

GLOUCHKOV: Yeah. He’s on the right track now. I think that was also divine intervention.

BLACK: That’s an amazing story. That’s also neighborly, in a way that things like that don’t happen anymore. Everybody’s in their house and scared of each other.

GLOUCHKOV: Neighborly love.

BLACK: What’s your cardio looking like? Are you walking on the treadmill at an incline? What are we doing?

GLOUCHKOV: I don’t do cardio. I hate running.

BLACK: I had a feeling you were going to say, “I don’t do cardio.” And it pisses people like me off because I’ve always been told you have to do cardio, and then I don’t look like you. I don’t know what the problem is.

GLOUCHKOV: I think a lot of people miss the formula. When you have more muscle, you use more energy. If you start working out and lifting heavy and you start gaining more muscle, but you’re still eating the same amount, your body’s using it. I do intermittent fasting a lot.

BLACK: How long do you go? Like 12, 16?

GLOUCHKOV: Yeah, I do the 8/16 thing. People don’t understand why you lose weight. It’s because first your body goes through autophagy. You know what autophagy is? It’s like your cells, mitochondria, and nucleuses that don’t work properly, they just swallow themselves up. They’re gone. But the ones that do work properly, like your mitochondria, start duplicating on their own, create more mitochondria. And more mitochondria means you need to feed it. So if you got a lot of muscle, you have a lot of mitochondria, and you’re eating the same amount, you’re going to be losing weight at a rapid pace and your body’s going to be more efficient.

BLACK: You’re absolutely right. I know that to be true. Fasting, I think people are just scared of the word. It’s not like you’re doing a 40-day water fast. It’s pretty normal to not eat for 8 hours or 12 hours. That’s doable for most people.

GLOUCHKOV: Exactly. Fasting is so good for you. That’s where lack of discipline comes in. They just don’t have the self-control to be like, “I can’t eat right now.”

BLACK: Self-control is very tough. Have you had any celebrities reach out to you?

GLOUCHKOV: No.

BLACK: That’s going to change after this. Alright bro, that was great.

GLOUCHKOV: Thank you, Chris.

BLACK: Super fun. I’ll keep following the journey. I love what you’re doing.

GLOUCHKOV: Appreciate it.