Anthony Trucks: An unfiltered look at one Duck’s life journey
Former UO and NFL football standout reinvents himself as an identity coach
When Anthony Trucks played football for the Ducks, he wasn’t aware that life coaching and public speaking were a career.
Now an author, coach, speaker and podcaster, Trucks, BS ’08 (general science), quickly moved his enterprise online when he saw the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down travel. Trucks saw it as an opportunity to grow his business and to release his book, Identity Shift: Upgrade How You Operate to Elevate Your Life, which encapsulates what he’s learned about overcoming obstacles and reaching goals.
“I have a voice,” Trucks says. “It’s never, in human history, been as accessible to have one.”
Trucks’s passion for helping others create their own success has taken him from his lowest point to a joyous, fulfilled life that he created using what he now calls “The Shift Method.”
The Shift Method teaches people how to expand their capacity to "become" like the person who has what they desire so that they can their reach their goals. His website and social media offer many freebies, but the book includes activities and worksheets for determining the actions required to create the life that one desires.
For someone whose biological mother abandoned him when he was three, was abused in foster care, and did not join organized sports until he was 14, he was the first in his family to graduate from college. He beat the odds again by making it to the National Football League.
As a late-starting teen, Trucks was not an instant football talent. He describes having a horrible freshman year in high school and often thought about quitting the sport. But using his background as a reason to accept failure was not an option - and he wanted to be great.
Trucks poured himself into training for football. He ran routes every day, hit the weight room whenever it was open, and lying on his back, threw and caught 500 footballs per day.
He became a standout prep athlete out of California and was part of the 2002-03 Ducks recruiting class with a full scholarship.
Former UO athlete Don Pellum, who graduated with a master of science in telecommunication and film in 1987 and coached for the Ducks from 1993 to 2016, recruited Trucks as a linebacker.
“I really liked him from the very beginning,” said Pellum, who now coaches at UCLA. “I know he had a lot going on in his background, but he was always a very self-assured person and he carried himself that way. He’s always shown an inner strength. It's no surprise to me that he's doing well.”
In 2006, when he left the university for NFL training camp on the East Coast, Trucks was a father, and engaged to his high school sweetheart, Christina Trucks, BEd ’06 (family and human services), MS ’07 (special education). He finished his classes in 2008, just weeks before his first and only NFL game.
Trucks with (from left to right) the Washington Redskins, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
In 2008, after spending time with two other NFL teams, Trucks tore his shoulder playing defense for the Pittsburg Steelers. The injury itself did not end his career, but he missed the season. When he moved back to Antioch and opened a gym, Trucks Training, his NFL dream was still alive. However, in 2009, his agent called him with an offer from the Buffalo Bills with a waiver on his shoulder. This new contract meant there would be no financial or medical protection if he was injured again.
Trucks had to make the difficult decision between gambling his health and financial wellbeing or ending the dream. He decided to retire from the NFL. “I lost that thing that made me, me,” Trucks says.
Angry and full of blame, he sunk his time and energy into the failing gym, neglecting his wife and baby twins at home. This was the darkest era of his adult life. In the heartbreaking first chapter of his latest book, he details feeling so low he wanted to die.
“If this is what my life was going to be I want zero part of it anymore,” he wrote. He texted his friends and wife, “Please tell my children who their father was.”
Loved ones called police, who tracked his GPS and found Trucks safe. When he got home more than 30 people who had been looking for him were there.
Once he returned to work, Richie, a trainer at his gym planted a seed he later nurtured into his current business and brand. Richie shared with Trucks that he almost lost a hero, and that everyone knew how much overcome during his life.
“I started thinking to myself, what if instead of inspiring people by accident, I did it on purpose?”
Finding a path forward
After a brush with suicide, divorce, financial distress, and the death of his mother in 2014 - Trucks had hit rock bottom. But once again, his desire to be great came alive inside him, as it had as a teenager. He wanted his life to honor his mother's memory.
He credits God for sending a mentor to help him figure out how to transform his “mess” into a “beacon of hope for the world,” he writes. “Without knowing it at the time, I shifted my actions, thoughts, beliefs, mindset, habits, and ego.”
The process he went through to change who he was is what he now teaches.
“I will never stop learning. I may find that I'm wrong a year from now, two years from now and it’s just like, hey, I was wrong but I'm gonna keep developing.”
He has published two books, amassed hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, and is paid to travel the world and give motivational speeches. He releases podcast episodes on most days with “The Shift Starter” and “Aww Shift.”
“There’s just such a gratefulness and appreciation for the joy I have in my life now,” he says. “The struggle was a necessary evil, I think, to be able to even do the work I do. I will never stop learning. I may find that I’m wrong a year from now, two years from now and it’s just like, hey, I was wrong but I'm gonna keep developing.”
The books, the podcasts, the Facebook and Instagram live videos, and personal brand are centered on Trucks being transparent about his private life with his wife and three kids.
His most viewed content features a re-enactment of a conflict with his son and a letter he writes to apologize for how he handled himself. His apology resonates with a lot of people striving to be better parents and has almost 10 million views on Facebook.
The video gives insight into a key component of how he coaches people to have different outcomes in their lives—personal responsibility, or as he calls it “owning your shift.”
This shift that Trucks made in his life led to him reconciling with his wife Christina after being divorced for three years.
Christina, who operates residential care facilities for adults and children with disabilities and a home for the elderly in California, shares that even though she’s more private than her husband, she doesn’t mind sharing their story so that others can learn from it. They are coming up on their 21st anniversary together, and she talks about it playfully as “20 minus three” for those years they were divorced. She also points to growing in her Christian faith as key to their reconciliation. “Once I found God everything else seemed easier,” she said. “Anthony could really see that I changed, or he wouldn’t be here.”
The family returns to Eugene a few times per year, and their eldest son, Anthony, was recently accepted to the UO. They like to show their kids their old stomping grounds, see the new facilities, and explore.
Trucks often talks about “full circle” moments, and his own child attending UO would be one of those.
His kids may not have to craft an identity and sense of belonging like he did, but he shares key lessons with them so that they are able to adapt to any situation.
“You gotta make shift happen,” he says. “It’s all about shifting the way we see and view experiences. That’s the goal for life.”
- By Serena Markstrom, BA ’03 (magazine), freelancer for the UO Alumni Association