Warrior mentality

Dan Holguin, the exuberant, confident, dreadlocked, heart-on-his-sleeve, 31-year-old Kalispell fitness instructor was not always this way.

Not long ago, when he discovered his best friend’s dead body, when his job, relationship and self-confidence disappeared, when he withdrew from his friends and family, and when his mind retreated to the bleakest of dark corners, Holguin was none of those things.

Then a phone call, and a purpose, and a run in the park, and a video. And slowly Holguin says he changed his life. Now he wants to do the same for others. A whole bunch of others.

“By coming out of all that and going through everything I’ve been through,” he said. “The result has been me wanting to help 100 million people. I’ve dedicated my life to helping 100 million people lead a more meaningful, healthy minded, physically fit lifestyle.”

Why 100 million people?

“Because it’s crazy,” he deadpanned. “Ten million people? OK, that’s easy. 100 million to me sounds crazy, super crazy.”

Next up on the way to 100 million people? A shot at becoming an “American Ninja Warrior.”

HOLGUIN has already had one turn on the popular NBC TV show, competing in a regional qualifier two years ago and finishing 28th out of 150.

He is going back to a regional qualifier this month, leaving for Denver in less than two weeks to get ready for two days of competition, May 23-24. To claim one of the top 15 spots and advance to the championship rounds in Las Vegas, he’s altered his training regime based on his “American Ninja Warrior” experience.

The bigger change, Holguin believes, has stemmed from his life experience since then. It’s from his climb out of darkness, the Mastery in Transformational Training (MITT) courses he took in California last year, and the so-called emotional intelligence he’s gained.

“Now I feel like I’m deserving of it,” Holguin said. “I deserve to be there. I deserve people to know my story because my story can change peoples’ lives. I have this message of what I’ve been through and I want to share it with the world.”

MITT is a descendant of Lifespring, a now-defunct New Age training company with a dubious history profiled in a 1987 Washington Post article titled “I Cried Enough to Fill a Glass,” and while Holguin said he cried plenty during his MITT training, he came out the other end stronger.

“It changed my life,” he said. “It sounds kind of hokey when I’m telling you but it changed my life and I would recommend it to anybody. I just don’t push it because, you know, some people don’t want to hear it.”

HOLGUIN’S MOTHER, Tricia Geary, describes her eldest son as a “happy-go-lucky kid,” at least for the first 13 years of his life.

The family was living in Santa Maria, California when then 13-year-old Holguin was run over by a car in a violent, nearly fatal accident.

“That’s when I saw a change in him,” Geary recalled. “He was more focused after that. He knew that he had to do something with that chance.”

“I didn’t die that night but I could have,” Holguin remembers. “I tried to figure out what I was spared for.”

The first thing Holguin tried was sitting on top of a bull after he came to his mother with a proclamation at age 15 that he was going to become a rodeo cowboy. Holguin’s parents divorced shortly after the accident and his father, Art, had been a longtime rodeo professional, so the choice was not completely out of the blue. But the energy and attention the teenager put into becoming a bull rider was uncommon.

Geary moved with her sons to Kalispell before Dan’s senior year of high school, and when he graduated from Flathead in 2004 he was riding rough stock well enough to earn a spot on the rodeo team at Lamar (Colorado) Community College. Eventually, he was competing nearly every weekend in professional rodeos around the country.

When he decided he couldn’t picture himself as a cowboy the rest of his life, Holguin turned to a different athletic pursuit, this time on the gridiron.

It was through football that he met the man he called Coach C, Dave Cervantes, a former SWAT officer with the Los Angeles Police Department who had retired to Kalispell. Holguin credited Cervantes with helping him secure a football scholarship at Cerritos College, where he played in 2008, and the two became extremely close.

“My best friend, my coach, my mentor,” is how Holguin describes Cervantes.

Around the same time, Holguin was dating the woman who would become his fiancée and the pair had a daughter, Dacia. So when football didn’t work out as a full-time job, Holguin settled down and took a job in construction. The work took him on the road and away from his family more than he wanted, but he was making good money and on what seemed like a steady, peaceful path. But something was still missing.

“I was just really unfulfilled, man,” Holguin said. “I was hating my job. I was just a number to a company that didn’t really care about anything.”

In October 2013, still working construction, Holguin stopped by Cervantes’ house, where he lived alone.

“I was knocking at the door, didn’t hear anything. Knocked some more, didn’t hear anything,” he said. “So I ended up going into the garage and kicking the door in to figure out what was going on in the house.”

Holguin went downstairs to Cervantes’ bedroom, pulled back the sheets and found his best friend dead. He’d been in bed, lifeless, for four days when Holguin found him.

“It was terrible, man, absolutely,” Holguin said. “And that was what spiraled me into my rock bottom, which obviously was the worst time of my life. And so shortly after his death I lost everything.”

IN THE ensuing months, Holguin lost his construction job, was in serious debt, had been kicked out of his house by his fiancée, had put on 30 pounds and had “no control of my body, my thoughts, emotions. It was gone.”

Holguin said he did not turn to drugs or alcohol during the months that followed, but he did take a plunge into a severely unhealthy lifestyle, especially psychologically.

“I just sulked,” he said. “And I just sat in myself. I didn’t share. That’s why my relationship went downhill, because I didn’t share anything with how I was feeling.”

Holguin kept his pain so deeply hidden that even those closest to him had no idea what he was going through, all the way until late last year when he finally opened up and shared what he called “his struggle.”

“He hid a lot from me,” Geary said. “He didn’t want mom to worry about what road he was going down.”

“When he told me the story it beats me up because I had no idea,” Ryan Caughlan, one of Holguin’s closest friends, said. “I was concerned, of course, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was that dark.

“I knew he was going through some stuff but he’s one of those guys where when he’s going through some stuff he goes and figures it out.”

When it became clearer that Holguin wasn’t going to figure it out himself this time, Caughlan starting thinking about how he could help. He had been around during Holguin’s rodeo and football careers, and also knew his friend had worked as a personal trainer for a stint, although not for almost 10 years. Without a better idea, Caughlan picked up the phone.

“I’m going to call him and tell him I’ve got a (personal training) client in mind,” Caughlan said. “I was like, ‘Dan, I have a client, what will you charge?’”

That client Caughlan recommended? It was Ryan Caughlan.

“When he called that was one moment where I’m like, ‘OK, let’s do it,’” Holguin said. “And that was it. I knew I wasn’t going to get any lower and I knew I needed to do something different.”

Holguin hung up the phone, drove to Lone Pine State Park, and channeled his inner Forrest Gump.

“I just started running,” he said. “I went that same day and just started running to get in better shape and just, like, every day from that point I just started dedicating myself to doing more and more to get me out of this hole.

“So I was running, I was smiling more, I was thinking better, and slowly started digging myself out.”

Something else happened, too. On one of those runs, Holguin was shooting a video of himself selfie-style, and started talking. He posted the video online. The man Caughlan called “shy” and “super bashful” was suddenly pouring his heart out for the world to see.

TODAY, APART from preparing for his turn on “American Ninja Warrior,” Holguin is sharing all the time. He posts videos to his Facebook and YouTube pages regularly and is available as a motivational speaker. His plan next is to grow a part of his personal training business that focuses on over-the-phone consultations, and to try to impact other peoples’ lives through his videos. He’s reconnected with his family, particularly his daughter, Dacia. She, along with Holguin’s mom, dad, brother and a number of friends, will be with him in Denver later this month to watch him compete.

To help cover the expenses of that trip — the show does not pay for travel or accommodations during the qualifying rounds — Fatt Boys Bar and Grill in Kalispell will be hosting a fundraiser Friday from 5 to 9 p.m. Holguin will be cooking chicken and steak fajitas for purchase, with the proceeds helping pay for his travel.

Then, when he gets back from Denver, it’s back to tackling that “super crazy” goal and getting closer to helping those 100 million people.

Those who know him best have little doubt he can do it.

“Definitely,” Geary said. “That’s my Daniel. And he’s already doing it. A few at a time, all the time. I can’t tell you how many people I run into who say ‘wow, he’s so inspirational.’

“He turned it all around for the great,” she added. “Not just for the good but for the great.”

Entertainment editor Andy Viano can be reached at (406) 758-4439 or aviano@dailyinterlake.com.