Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Bradley.
Hi alex, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
How I started and how I got where I am today
When I was very young, I had the opportunity to go through several injuries in my life, ranging from a shattered ankle and a broken growth plate, a broken arm, and several other issues, such as two broken vertebrae and three herniated discs. From all these injuries, including blowing out my knee my senior year, I was well adapted to start navigating how people are injured. I stepped into the world of physical therapy to become a physical therapist assistant.
After graduating, I proceeded to be in the medical field for over the past nine years, as well as stepping into being a trainer around the same time. Through all this, I was able to navigate much of my passion and discipline with movement and fitness, not only from getting from A to B but everything in between, such as decreasing injury, improving mobility, and getting stronger overall so that we can do this for the long haul.
Through training my clients at Orange Theory through classes and having the opportunity to become a head coach there, I also became a physical therapist assistant in a skilled nursing facility. This dual view of what the world actually looks like at the end of your life and at the start of our fitness journeys allowed me to build a lot of my belief systems in how I train people. This brought me to a burning passion to go to various different places in life. I worked in a hunting lodge for several years with my brother, who was operating that at Crash Landing Outdoors in Oklahoma, and then took a head coaching job after watching my sister’s dogs and visiting Austin, Texas. I took this head coaching job in Lakeway, Orange Theory, and then found my way into Onnit Gym, which became one of the most pivotal places to help me train in so many different ways and modalities.
This has led me to realize that sometimes you have to play before you know the way. This led me to then step into such a good community that built not only my physical body and ability to train others but also allowed me to take my next step, which built this thing called the Next Step Movement.
I sadly lost my friend to suicide, from him walking off a bridge in Oregon City, my friend AJ. Through these years of struggling with this, I always wanted to know how to pay my respects to this dark and consuming time in most people’s lives, or at least an apparent marker in most people’s lives of not wanting to be here. I made this thing called the Next Step Movement based upon the community and built these five pillars. I will add those below.
These pillars are as follows:
1. Movement as medicine. Making a journey to walk 2,560 miles was a daily reminder for me that the progression is built one step at a time. Movement heals, grounds, and pushes us forward, body, mind, and spirit.
2. Nature as therapy. Walking through mountains, deserts, rivers, and towns is about reconnecting with the land. Nature slows us down, clears our heads, and reminds us that we belong to something bigger. At the end of the day, you’re far less of a jerk when you look at a tree versus anything else.
3. Seeing yourself fully. Mental health begins with honesty, facing your own reflection, the pain, the struggle, and the hope. This is the first step of healing.
4. Seeing others fully. That equals community and connection. We don’t heal alone. The walk was about meeting people where they are, listening, and reminding each other that connection saves lives above all else. That our purpose and evolution can change as quickly as either of them do.
The journey was to honor AJ, but it also speaks to anyone carrying heavy burdens. It’s a call to walk with courage, faith, and intention to live aligned with what we truly believe matters. I did this walk August 31, 2025, through December 14th2025.
This walk spanned over Austin, Texas, through West Texas, into New Mexico, and then Arizona, Nevada, parts of California, and finally into Oregon, and finished in Oregon City, Oregon, where my friend took his last steps. It taught me so much in the midst of doing something that you said you were going to do: doing something that was extremely hard and finding a way to make it through, even if it is just simply a next step.
Our goal is to raise $100,000 for mental health and suicide prevention, and we will discreetly make around $60,000 total, covering most of the cost in order to take on this immense challenge.
I stepped back into training at Correct Fitness, which is now the name of the gym where I am currently the PT, or personal training experience supervisor. This has allowed me to step up in my leadership and guide the team in the mission of where to go next with our impact in community and camaraderie.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Through the midst of the walk, there was a ton of pitfalls or moments of learning where the van wasn’t secured, the route wasn’t even official, and most of the time, I didn’t know if the road that I was on would even have been legal. There were some pitfalls in the documentary phase of wanting to make this thing something bigger than it was and the inability to amount that much money in that amount of time.
Still, with all these things of saying no, all I could hear was go. I had some bone bruises in my feet near the end and malnutrition due to the lack of finances to adequately feed oneself on the walk. I was down to only having one person in the van vs. a multitude of a care team. Still, with my community and the small little bits of posting, we found a way to rag tag and make this thing actually happen.
The other struggles were just mental. Most of the time, I didn’t even want to do it. Most of my injuries plagued me to limit my ability to do this eloquently, but I still was able to do it thoroughly. There is much of my life that felt like obstacles/challenges that have led me to realize that they were exactly what I needed to get through things.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am a community builder and a personal trainer at Correct Fitness and Austin in general. I specialize in making sure that people know how they move so they can move as long as they can, as well as they can, with the least amount of pain and the highest level of function. I’m known for my undeniable joy, enthusiasm, and passion when I coach and train others and facilitate a community or an experience. What sets me apart is the fact that you will very rarely see anyone in the room having as much fun as I am and able to raise the communal energy to meet that wave and allow others to forget where they are so they can move really far.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
I like listening to several different blogs, podcasts, and posts. Particularly:
– The Huberman Lab Podcast is a great one for protocols and procedures and different points of view to scientifically and practically utilize healthy benefits or habits in your life.
– Alan Watts is one of my favorite philosophers, and one of his books, “Get Out of Your Mind,” is an audio recording of multitudes of his lectures, which are very helpful to get you out of your mind and more into real life.
– “The Power of Habit,” “Atomic Habits,” and various other books that I try to read, mainly leaning into self-help but limiting an overabundance of voices so I can find a clear direction myself, seem to be where I’m navigating now.
Pricing:
- personal coaching online $350+
- korrect onsite coaching -$180 al a carte
- Korrect optimized -$499
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thenextstepmovement.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/walking_with_ab/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alex.bradley.948011
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-bradley-6893a4105/
