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Join Ben Todd, student pilot and competitive bodybuilder, as he documents the journey from flight training to professional aviation, while pursuing peak physical and mental performance.
Each episode of The Performance Pilot dives into the parallels between flying and fitness: discipline, precision, mindset, and continuous improvement. Through personal stories and conversations with industry professionals, Ben explores what it really takes to perform at the highest level — in the cockpit, in the gym, and in life.
Ben Todd (00:00)
But as we go into 2026, I want you to reflect on what is something in your life that you can get uncomfortable with doing to bring yourself towards achieving a goal or accomplishing something that you wanna do.
And that's kind of what I want this podcast to embody is chasing your dreams, pushing your limits, doing things outside of the norm to make your life worthwhile. We only have one life. It only happens one time. Let's make it worthwhile.
Ben Todd (00:51)
Hello everyone and welcome to the Performance Pilot Podcast, where aviation meets athletic ambition. I'm your host Ben Todd, student pilot, competitive bodybuilder, and lifelong learner, sharing my journey from the gym to the sky. Each episode will explore the habits, discipline, and mindset that it takes to perform at your best, both in and out of the cockpit. Let's get airborne.
All right. Episode number one of the Performance Pilot podcast. I'm so happy to be here with you guys. This is actually my third podcast that I have started over the course of time, and I'm really making an effort to stick with this one and to be consistent and to just really build a brand for myself with this podcast and this show specifically. So I'm really excited to be here.
you might ask yourself, Ben, what makes you qualified to host a podcast? And the answer is that I'm not. I am just a regular guy who really loves airplanes, really loves working out. And I just want a platform to be able to sit and talk about this and share my passion and share my journey that I'll get into here in just a minute. So this will be this will provide a real in depth, real time look.
at both my upcoming flight training that I'll be starting here in a few weeks, as well as my bodybuilding journey, which I've been on for multiple years now. And finally, it will come to fruition this year with me competing in my first bodybuilding show. So the show is going to encompass these themes of aviation fitness. We're gonna weave some mindset in here at various points.
and just really just sitting and talking about my passions, my journey, and my day-to-day experiences with both flight training and bodybuilding. This is going to provide a real and authentic look at the experiences that I'm having in real time. And I think in some of the previous shows and episodes that I've recorded over time, I think I was...
in being reflective. think I was trying to be too much of an influencer and too much of somebody who I'm not. And this is just really going to just be me real raw and authentic. just going to be myself and just sit and have a conversation about what's happening, what I'm experiencing, what I'm going through, the highs, the lows and everything in between. The goal is also at various points to bring on guests.
both in the aviation and in the fitness space to have in-depth conversations about each discipline. I've got multiple contacts, multiple friends, multiple mentors in both the fitness space and the aviation space who I think can provide really good insights, really good perspectives on both disciplines. And I'm excited to start doing some interviews, start bringing out some guests. And I think
that they will be able to provide a lot of different value to the audience in terms of the specific discipline that we're talking about.
So that's a little bit of an overview. Let's get into kind of an introduction about me and why I decided to start this podcast and what we're going to be discussing throughout. So in terms of fitness, we'll start with fitness. So I began working out shortly after enlisting in the Air Force. I enlisted in the Air Force in 2011. Didn't really work out prior to that. Didn't really, didn't have any real athletic.
ambition or gifts or talents. My genetics aren't great. So it's really, I was just very skinny, very skinny, not a lot of self-confidence growing up. And so I joined the military. And one thing I noticed when I joined the military was I was very small in comparison to a lot of the other people who I was serving with. The military is a melting pot, people from all different backgrounds, all different walks of life. And
fitness is something that the military expects you to be proficient at. And while I was semi-proficient, I didn't was not near remotely near where I wanted to be physically. So I knew that I had to begin to do something about that. So I began weight training shortly after enlisting. But that kind of went on and off for a while. And I wouldn't say that I took it seriously until
January of 2020. That was when I really decided to buckle down. I decided that I wanted to try to do a bodybuilding show at some point in the future. I kind of laugh at myself when I look back at myself from back in those days, because I had this delusional thought that I could be competitive in a bodybuilding competition within one to two years of me beginning this
real serious journey of fitness. I don't know if you guys have ever been to a bodybuilding show. I'm sure multiple people have who are listening to this because you guys are bodybuilders, but bodybuilding is, it's interesting. And I think when you go to a show and you see other people, you're like, dang, these people are really fit. They're really big. They got a lot of muscle mass. And I had this delusional thought that
little me, very little back in, back in 2020 that I would be able to be competitive with these really big giant guys on stage. And that's really funny to look back on because that is absolutely not true. And it's been a lot longer of a journey than I anticipated it would be. But we began in 2020. I hired my first coach. His name was Matt. He was a trainer at one of the local gyms that I was a member at. He was a former competitor himself. So he had a bodybuilding background.
which gravitated me towards him and towards wanting to work with him. And so we began working together in January, 2020. Obviously we all know what happened in March of 2020. COVID happened, shut the world down, gyms were closed, everything was closed. And so because of that, I was really disappointed. was like, man, I'm two and a half, three months, four months into this bodybuilding thing. And I was feeling good, but then it got,
derailed for a little while with not being able to go to a gym, with having to be creative with different workout varieties and styles. So I made do with what I could at the time. Got creative, did some outdoor workouts, got some resistance bands, started doing a bunch of running, just whatever I could do outdoors to make it work. That's kind of what I did during that time. So over the last six years, I have had
three different bodybuilding coaches. was with Matt for about two and a half years. I began working with another coach, ⁓ virtually online. that lasted about eight or nine months. And then I've been with my current coach, Tyler for almost three years. And I'm going to feature Tyler as a future guest on a future episode. I think Tyler brings a lot of really interesting perspectives.
about fitness to the broader audience. He's got a great social media following. And so I think he would be a great person to have on and talk about fitness, bodybuilding, coaching, all of the above. So Tyler has pushed me in ways that I've never been pushed before in terms of my physical progression. I can say very confidently that my physique has experienced the most amount of growth and development.
Under his leadership over these last three years. I've been on a rigid diet plan and my family and friends can attest to that. I have really pushed myself in terms of my training intensity and training volume ⁓ more than I ever had in the past. My volume has it's been steadily high for the entire course of time that I've been with Tyler and the philosophy behind that was
Because I was very small in stature, I needed to be able to put on a significant amount of muscle mass, which my body I've determined and he's determined my body responds most well to higher volume training sessions. So we're talking 22 to 25 working sets, really intense working sets per training session.
So usually my training sessions, pair my cardio with my training sessions. So generally speaking, I'm training for usually two to two and a half hours, which for most people, ⁓ that's a long time for me. That's a long time, but I'm used to it now. And I have seen and experienced the growth that has come from.
Being in the gym for that amount of time consistently, five days a week. There's people who will argue that that is too long to spend in the gym. There's people who will argue that less is more and you don't need 25 working sets to see growth. And while I do agree sometimes with those sentiments, I think it's also dependent on the individual, right? And I think based on the individual's physiology, their ability to put on muscle.
how easy or difficult it is for them to put on muscle and what their body can tolerate in terms of training volume. think all of those factors need to be kind of put together to come up with a real solution on how long ⁓ somebody should be training in the gym, how long their sessions should be. I don't think there's a one size fits all approach to that, but we'll get into my thoughts and philosophy on training down the road.
So after these six years, I started January of 2020. It's now New Year's Eve, 2025. So we're about to enter into 2026. After six years of hard training and strict dieting, I finally feel like I'm in a place to be competitive in an NPC bodybuilding show based on historical shows I've gone to and kind of mentally matched myself up with
competitors who are in my division and in my height class, kind of just mentally mapping out where I may fit in. And I think this is finally the year and Tyler agrees, this is finally the year that I can be competitive in a show. And so the plan is for me to finally compete in my first NPC bodybuilding show in the men's physique division sometime in 2026. There has been no
date determination, no show determination. I'll be going out to Texas where not only my family lives, but Tyler is based out of, lived in Texas for five years before I moved out here to Arizona. So very familiar with shows in Texas. And so most likely we'll be going to Texas to compete sometime in 2026. It's going to depend largely on my flight training schedule, which I'll get into here shortly and kind of what the show
⁓ what the shows look like in terms of dates and locations for Texas. They haven't released the schedule yet for this year. So that is the goal. I'm really excited for this opportunity to compete as this has been a goal that I have been feverishly working towards and chasing after for the last six years. And if you know me personally, you know that this has been something that I have been working towards diligently for that amount of time. So
Ben Todd (13:39)
It's very exciting and I'm certainly looking forward to it.
So let's move on and discuss aviation. So we've got the fitness down. Let's move on to aviation. How did I become an airplane nerd? Essentially, so I developed an interest, both an interest and a passion for aviation very early on in my childhood. My dad, when I was probably six or seven years old, I think my dad worked for an airline.
Which is no longer around it was absorbed into many different mergers and acquisitions over the years, but ⁓ When I was six or seven my dad worked for an airline for a couple years because he had a passion for aviation So I had an exposure to it from a young age And I absolutely fell in love with it. It was something I was enamored by ever since I was a little kid. I remember vividly I don't remember how old I was I was definitely
less than probably eight, but I had an opportunity, my brother and I had an opportunity to go into the cockpit of a 737 and sit down, meet the pilots, get to look at all the knobs and buttons and all the things. And it was like one of the coolest experiences of my childhood. It was awesome. Um, and so taking that experience, uh,
I just kind of fell in love with aviation. And since my dad was an airline employee, we were fortunate to have the opportunity to take a lot of vacations when I was growing up because airline employees, for those of you who don't know airline employees get ⁓ basically non revenue permission to go get a flight wherever they want, whenever they want, as long as there's space available on the flight. ⁓ You pay basically nothing. You just pay the taxes on the ticket. You don't actually pay for the airfare.
And so there's a really big incentive to work for airlines, whether you're a ramp agent, whether you're a flight attendant, a pilot, um, working in like corporate, any airline employee gets these benefits. So since my dad was an employee, we got to go travel all over the place. Uh, and it was awesome. And the nerd in me, I think being at the airport and being on the airplane itself,
were usually the highlights of any trip that we went on. Yes, the vacations were cool. We went to Arizona a lot, which is kind of one of the reasons why I ended up here. But I had the most fun, I think, and I enjoyed the experience the most being in the airport, which is funny because a lot of people get anxiety about being in airports, but I, for some reason, love it. Being in the airport and then being on the airplane itself. ⁓ Absolutely just loved it. Loved every bit of it.
And so as I got older and started getting into high school and things like that, I began looking into college, right? And I was primarily focused on at the time, pursuing an aviation bachelor's degree from a well-known flight university program, which for those of you in the aviation space, none of these are going to be a surprise, but ⁓ I went and toured Embry-Riddle in Prescott.
⁓ Arizona state, which is the school that I wanted to go to ever since I think I could breathe. ⁓ Purdue university in West Lafayette and then UND university, North Dakota in Grand Forks. and the idea, the idea of moving to Grand Forks, North Dakota, I grew up in Wisconsin. So the movie, the idea of moving to Grand Forks, North Dakota out of high school, when I was trying to move South and leave the North.
Not a super appealing idea, although I really did heavily consider UND back in high school. ⁓ However, ⁓ after seeing how much money these programs cost, my parents, I grew up in a decently affluent family. My parents made decent money. And so with that, ⁓ I didn't get
any, hardly any financial aid from the government, right? FAFSA, kind of nothing, nothing happened in there. ⁓ So if I remember right, I think these programs generally range somewhere between 80 and a hundred-ish thousand dollars per year. And I looked at that and my parents looked at that and we were like, well, ⁓ no, we got to make a different decision here because that it's not going to work for us. So ⁓
I had to pivot. And so I pivoted into enlisting in the Air Force, which is that was kind of the second thing I'd wanted to do. I was, you know, always kind of fascinated by the military and really respected the military. So I decided that I was going to enlist in the Air Force instead after high school instead of going to college. ⁓ However, I was unable to be an Air Force aviator, ⁓ even though I had wanted to be.
Um, for two different reasons. Number one is the color vision requirements, um, for your eyesight that the military held at one point. don't know now I've been so far removed from it. I don't know if they've changed or if they're the same, but at the time when I went through all of my initial medical evaluations at MEPs, um, I found out I was colorblind, which I actually knew I was colorblind when I was 10 or 11 years old.
partially colorblind ⁓ in different shades of reds and greens. And so with that, ⁓ that was an automatic disqualifier for like 80 % of the jobs in the Air Force because for some reason you got to be able to see colors, which makes a lot of sense because colors are important. So ⁓ that was one reason why I couldn't fly. And the other reason was due to not being a commissioned officer. So generally military aviators
be our officers, right? So they have a four year college degree. They go to either any of the service academies ⁓ or they go to an ROTC program at most any university has an ROTC program as well as you can commission through their officer training course, right? So, you know, you're older, you already have your degree, you submit a package, they review you and they select you to become an officer. So those are the three routes usually that you can become an officer.
I did not meet any of those criteria. I was just enlisted, so I couldn't fly.
So once I got out of the military, ⁓ I just kind of got wrapped up in normal life, just kind of started doing things, ⁓ started a career. I've got a great career right now in the tech industry that I've been in for the last four years. Before that, I was working in the service industry for another four years and kind of just got lost in life. ⁓ Never really lost the desire or the
passion for aviation. just kind of got put towards the back of my mind. Obviously you start making money, you got bills, just life hits you, right? And which happens for a lot of people. It's very normal, but I never really lost this. Passion or this itch for aviation. It was always kind of there, just not at the forefront of my mind for a long time. Well, in the early part of 2024.
I started to investigate this flight training thing. saw a very vivid memory for me is I was watching ⁓ the NFL playoffs at the time in 2024. And for some reason there was a, an advertisement during one of the commercials for the United Aviate Academy, which is out here in Arizona. It's in a good year and it's United's proprietary flight training program. Most of the major airlines have.
their own, they call cadet programs, their own flight training programs. And so there was an ad that I saw for United aviate and I was like, huh, interesting. So I kind of just got the wheels turned into my head and started to some research and some investigation. had really not done a lot of researching back in the, you know, my high school days. I was really just like, Hey, I want to fly airplanes, but
⁓ I didn't have, I didn't take on the initiative to myself to like actually do the research and start reading things and start figuring things out. So, ⁓ so I decided to do that this time. I really kind of dug in, dove down some rabbit holes, ⁓ and really tried to gather as much information as I could. And there's a lot of information out, especially on the internet. It's a ton. but so I took about six months and I researched and I.
weighed out pros and cons of which way do I go? What do I do? Do I do this? Do I not do this? And if I do it, how am going to do it? There's a couple of different routes you can take. Um, and so that went on for about a year or give or take a year. And then in early 2025, so earlier this year, um, I actually began training, uh, with an independent flight instructor. part 61, and I'll do a whole episode.
on the differences, but there are two different flavors of flight training. There is what's called part 61 flight training and there's part 141 flight training. And these pertain to specific sections in the ⁓ code of federal federal regulations ⁓ regarding flight training. And so this was, I elected at the time to train with an independent flight instructor. So
I belonged to a flying club out of a local airport, paid some membership dues to the flying club, got access to ⁓ four different Piper Cherokee aircraft, really only flew one, but got access to four different aircraft, paid an hourly rate for the aircraft, and then paid an hourly rate on top of that for my instructor. ⁓ And I did that for about
four months. At the time, I accumulated 54 total flight hours and I completed my first solo flight in June of 2025, so about six months ago, which was a huge deal. Your first solo is a really big deal. It's really something to be celebrated because it basically certifies that your instructor, you've met one, you've met a bunch of different criteria.
And two, your instructor is basically signing off on the liability saying, yes, like this person is proficient in all of these different areas and I certified them to be able to fly this plane by themselves. So it was really neat. It was really fun. was awesome experience. Really cool. ⁓ but then shortly after that, I had to pause my flight training. this was a
couple of different reasons kind of all fused together. Number one was lack of funding. So flight training is expensive. There's no way around it. It's just everybody knows it. Everybody goes through it. Flight training is an expensive endeavor. And so I had tried my best to plan and prepare ⁓ as much as I could financially. ⁓ And what I had tried to prepare for was to complete my private pilot license, my private pilot certificate.
And I had allocated what I thought was enough money to complete my private pilot certificate. And then once I got that completed, then I was going to worry about the next rating after that. Unfortunately, I did not complete my private pilot certificate within the budgeted amount of money that I gave myself. And so I didn't have any more. And on top of that, I was also still working my full time job in the IT industry.
And I found very quickly. That for me personally, it was extremely challenging to try to balance. Two mentally demanding tasks at one time. IT is I'm in a technical real technical IT role, so there's a lot of nuance that happens. There's a lot of. ⁓ Really in depth technical knowledge.
that I have to exhibit on a day-to-day basis, just in my job duties and, you know, work a full day. And by the end of it, there's some mental exhaustion just due to troubleshooting, problem solving, just constantly having your brain working all day. Right. And then I would not every day, but I was trying as much as possible. Usually at least two to three times a week, I would try to go fly after work. And
based on weather and a couple other factors. But if I was able to go fly, those flight lessons from start to finish were about three hours. You'd spend anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, usually about 30 minutes before the flight. You do your pre-flight brief, you walk around the airplane, check some things out, ⁓ brief with your instructor, figure out what we're gonna do, go out. Usually the flight was, generally speaking, anywhere from an hour
to an hour and a half usually, maybe sometimes a little bit longer, sometimes a little shorter depending on the day. And then you get back and then you debrief, clean some things up. And so the whole process takes usually about two to half to three hours. And by the time I had completed that, ⁓ along with working, you know, during the day, I was exhausted, just mentally taxed and it was tough.
And especially learning a brand new concept like flying. Some people think it's like driving and there's some similarities. There's a lot of differences. But it was I found it particularly challenging to try to learn this brand new thing. Very unfamiliar and also have to pair it with working a full time job. So I found it challenging. So I made the decision to pull back on flying. So I have not flown
since the end of June. So we're about six months since I've last flown, gotten logged any flight time. And I miss it terribly. I miss it. So with that in mind after, so I took the last six ish months, right? And I really tried to determine is aviation something I actually want to pursue? I have a great career in IT. I work from home. I make good money. Is aviation something I want to do?
Yes or no. And if yes, how am I going to do it? What process am I going to employ to get this done? Because the way I was doing it was not working. So after months of consideration, I decided to fully commit full time to flight training. And that will be happening starting in three weeks, a little under three weeks. Uh, I will be going to a very well known flight program.
flight school out here in the Phoenix area, UND aerospace. Great reviews, great atmosphere, just very well prepared pilots for the industry. And so I decided that if I'm going to go through training, if I'm going to commit full time to this, I want to go to a school that's going to get done right. So that's the decision I made. Again, future episode, we can talk about how to pick a flight school.
If to pick a flight school, should you do a flight school? Should you do a college program? Should you do an independent instructor? Should you do something else? ⁓ that's a discussion for a later time, all kinds of ways to skin that cat. But for me personally, I elected to quit my full-time job in the IT industry, which was a huge leap of faith and pursue this full-time. And so that will be starting soon.
⁓ And I'm very excited one just to get back to flying but two to actually make actionable progress towards this goal and and really making this this career change that I've been wanting to do for such a long time So depending upon
kind of how things go. I foresee this taking roughly 18 to 24 months and I'm gonna see if I can shorten it down but we'll see. I wanna make sure I do it right. So I don't wanna rush it. I don't want to cause myself any unnecessary stress. So with all that in mind, everything should be done within 24 months if not sooner. So that's the projected timeline.
So in closing, and to wrap this up.
The overall goal of this show is to share insights and perspectives into both of those journeys, right? Bodybuilding, flight training, and kind of how I'm going through my day-to-day life and attacking these different pursuits. These conversations that I'm going to be having are going to be raw, authentic, and genuine based on my experience. I'm not going to sugarcoat anything.
I'm not going to pretend that everything is all roses and butterflies. It might be, it might not be. ⁓ but I really want to just talk about what my experience is, how it's going, and just to provide some context for anybody else out there who might either want to pursue bodybuilding someday, pursue flight training someday, or just take a leap of faith in their own life and do something outside of their comfort zone.
So I'm excited to share these journeys with you guys, and I'm excited to just really kind of elaborate and articulate what my experience is and how it's going. As I alluded to briefly before, I'm recording this episode sitting here right now at my desk on New Year's Eve, 2025. The show will actually release in the early part of 2026, first week of 26.
So with it being New Year's, we all do this thing where we reflect on our past year and what's been good, what's been not good, and so on. So I've had an opportunity to reflect on the year and also to look forward to 2026.
making this decision to resign from my IT job and pursue flight training full time was a huge risk, is a huge risk. It's a huge leap of faith. lot of people who I've spoken to about this are very supportive, but also you can tell there's like some hesitation, right? That they're like, you're going do that.
Remember when I pitched to my dad my dad listens to all my episodes. He'll probably laugh at this But I remember when I pitched to my dad the first time he was not a fan I don't think he thought that was a solid idea And it took a little while and I was able to kind of explain and give him statistics and metrics and numbers and all kinds of stuff He's a numbers guy. So once I was able to kind of explain everything and here's the pros and cons and here's
what can happen as a result or what will happen as a result. And he was on board, but it's scary, right? Change is scary. Comfort is comfortable, right? Not to use the same word in the definition, but it's true. We humans like comfort. We like to feel secure. We like to have predictability and all these things, right? And so I think when it comes to making any big life change,
There's a lot of uncertainty that comes with that. And that's scary. But on the other side of that growth only comes from putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, nothing that's dangerous or could be harmful or anything like that, but making yourself uncomfortable and pushing your limits, pushing outside of what is normal for you. This, can apply this to both life and the gym, right?
How do you grow in the gym? How do you grow muscle? Progressive overload. So you continuously over time add more load to your muscle to overload it and stimulate growth. That's how your muscles grow. Life is the same way, right? How do you grow personally and professionally? Well, you continue to push yourself outside of what is comfortable for you to be doing. And...
I took some time to really decide. How uncomfortable do I want to get? How uncomfortable do I want to make myself? And what is going to be the long term benefit of doing that? Ultimately, I decided that quitting my job and pursuing aviation full time was what was going to work the best for me. It's not going to work best for everybody, ⁓ but based on my life, my work ethic, my.
level of focus, et cetera, I determined that that's going to be best for me. So as we embark on 2026, I want to challenge all of you to get uncomfortable and go after something that you really want to do that has some kind of personal meaning to you, whatever that might be, whether that's a career change, whether that's moving across the country.
whether that's rekindling a relationship that you thought had died, like whatever that might be for you. It's all gonna be individual, it's all very personal. But as we go into 2026, I want you to reflect on what is something in your life that you can get uncomfortable with doing to bring yourself towards achieving a goal or accomplishing something that you wanna do.
And that's kind of what I want this podcast to embody is chasing your dreams, pushing your limits, doing things outside of the norm to make your life worthwhile. We only have one life. It only happens one time. Let's make it worthwhile. And so with that, thanks for tuning into this week's episode. If it brought you value, share it with someone who's chasing their own version of high performance. And don't forget to follow the show.
so never miss flight. Fly safe everyone. We'll see you next time.