Hey! The name is William.
Growing up in my small town in northern Minnesota, I was pretty overweight the majority of my younger years. In that period of my life at my heaviest I was 5’3″ and 183lbs! I did not play any sports, I was not that physically active, just a kid who liked to eat…and eat a LOT. For almost all of my childhood I was “the fat kid” and of course I played it off like I didn’t care, but to be honest it really bothered me.
Eventually, I finally started to get fed up with my situation and realized that I should do something about it. I knew why I was overweight, I just had to make that choice to change it. I decided to get into running and trying to eat “healthy” foods which brought me eventually to the point where believe it or not, Was the picture you see below (155lbs) but I was what you might call “skinny fat”… I had little to no muscle on me and still a decent amount of fat, but I had definitely made a LOT of progress! However, I didn’t enjoy running…I just did it because I was tired of being the fat kid.
This was the point when I decided to start my first weight training program. It was an at home video workout because I didn’t want to go to my school gym so I bought some equipment and got to work. It definitely wasn’t optimal but it was a start in the right direction. Ever since day 1 I was HOOKED! I got the iron fever! Haha.
I continued to drop down weight as I started this program to my lowest body weight at 135lbs. At this point I was happy with my body fat levels but was really skinny. So from there, I began to gradually gain weight and I have slowly built up to where I am today!
Of course those many years of the process was in NO WAY linear…There were a lot of ups and downs, there were setbacks and I made plenty of mistakes along the way… Not to mention all the useless pointless supplements I wasted money on and subpar programs I followed because someone who was bigger than me was promoting it…But the key is I always kept pushing no matter what.
Every time I look back at where I started, I am absolutely blown away by how far I have come! There is no way in hell I would have thought for a second.. a single second, that I could come this far when I started.
Like I said, there has been so many ups and downs along the way, like last new years when I broke my leg… that was a huge setback but that’s part of the journey! The take away point from that is that it doesn’t matter where you start! If you have the drive, dedication, and you’re willing to put in the work, you can accomplish so much more than you think.
For everyone looking to transform themselves/their bodies… I know how hard the process can be, but it’s well worth the work. I have been through the process of being overweight, being skinny, having a major injury, and struggling with overeating, and that is why I am so passionate about helping others on their journey! This is the reason why I chose to become a coach.
I am passionate about teaching people how to love the journey and enjoy the process! Not to get too fixated and hung up on the end result because of all you focus on is some end goal you’ll NEVER be happy with the progress you make. I teach people to train and eat right because they love their body, not because they hate it, setting people up for long term success.
But that’s enough about fitness Will, a little bit more about myself. I was born and raised in a town of about 400 people in northern Minnesota. I grew up loving hunting, fishing and everything outdoors and that was my true passion before getting into fitness. My family owned a seasonal restaurant in Minnesota so we would snowbird to Maui in the winter time where I would transfer schools, so I actually spent a decent chunk of my childhood growing up in Maui which was hard transferring schools so much as a kid but left me with a lot of great experiences!
Spending my college winters in the brutal cold of Duluth Minnesota, I knew after college I wanted to move out of Minnesota. I did my internship at a gym I always trained at and loved in Maui after graduation (unfortunately this whole time I was recovering from breaking my leg on New Year’s Eve) and after completing my internship and getting myself in order back in Minnesota I decided to take a jump and move out of the state. I Moved to Northern Virginia where I worked at a gym as a coach, Virginia was a draw for me because it was close to the Legion Athletics HQ and doing a lot of work with them I figured it would be as good of a place as any to move to!
After working for about 8 months at the gym, my online coaching was starting to take off and I wanted to be able to dedicate my full time to my clients, so I made the leap and transitioned into making WKemp Fitness Coaching my full time job! And with the experiences I have had, people I have gotten to know, and lives I have changed, I couldn’t be happier. I absolutely love what I do and wouldn’t change it for anything!
The next step in my life was moving myself and my business to Austin Texas where not only did I meet my new adorable member of the WKemp Fitness family, Tito but I also met the love of my life who is now my wife, Breanna Kempnich. Austin had always been a place I wanted to move to so that was the next leg of my journey.
After a year and a half in Austin we moved to Fort Worth Texas where we rented a home and lived for a year. We loved that city but we knew it wasn’t right for us long term as we wanted to live more in the country with land. We began to look for a home and in the beginning of 2022 we settled on our forever home in rural Oklahoma where we now live. We have 45 acres of beautiful land out in the middle of nowhere where I grow our food, raise chickens, hunt and work to make the land a long lasting productive resource. We also have two new additions to the family, Titus the cat who we found wandering outside our house when we moved in, severely underfed and skinny but we got him in good health, and Maverick who we found outside of the gym the day before we left for our wedding. Maverick was starving and sick with parvo when we found him, he had been dumped in a park with 5 other dogs a week beforehand, but we got him the treatment he needed and they are both doing great!
We plan to continue to grow our family and build a more self-sufficient life out here in rural Oklahoma while helping others take control of their health, well-being and physical fitness.