ABOUT THE CREATOR
Henry Paniccia is a former extremist turned author, coach, and founder of
The Confrontation Gym. With a personal history marked by chaos, addiction, and emotional volatility, Henry learned assertiveness wasn’t grasped in theory; you needed repetitive action.
After over two decades in a wheelchair, years of trauma therapy, and deep shadow work, he created TCG as the program he wished existed. It's not about hype, healing crystals, or performative positivity. It’s about pressure. Real-world resistance. Controlled confrontation designed to strengthen your voice.
Whether you're someone who shuts down under pressure, lashes out and regrets it, or simply can’t find your voice when it matters most, Henry meets you where you are and pushes you further than you thought you could go.
He is also the author of With Lucifer On My Side, a no-frills book on personal transformation and occult philosophy, the creator of Rods and the Axe, a controversial but critically raw 7-part video series confronting his past involvement in extremism, and owner of Virgil Coaching, a life coaching service targeting societal outcasts. All of his work reflects the unfiltered, high-stakes ethos that fuels The Confrontation Gym.
ORIGIN STORY
The Confrontation Gym began with a single question:
How do you train confrontation?
For years, I had no answer.
I knew how to train my body; I wrestled in high school just two years after becoming a bilateral above-knee amputee. I trained until I hit a 345-pound bench press. I knew how to push myself physically, how to live independently, how to endure. But when it came to standing my ground, in arguments, in relationships, in moments that demanded clarity and strength, I collapsed.
No one around me had an answer. I didn’t know how to find it either.
Fast forward to the summer of 2024. I’d spent the past two years watching everything around me fall apart. Relationships, dreams, business partnerships, even my own sense of self. Desperate for answers, I returned to my second bufo (5-MeO-DMT) ceremony.
That’s where it hit me.
I laid back, waiting for transcendence… and felt nothing. Just boredom. Emptiness. A quiet, unbearable stillness. It then struck me… I wanted to die. Not out of fear or agony, but from a hollow, exhausted surrender. I rolled over and cried for twenty minutes.
In my mind, a voice told me:
“You don’t want to die. But if you don’t start living, your death will feel as empty as this moment.”
After the ceremony, I spoke to one of the facilitators about my core issue:
“I don’t know how to handle confrontation and I don’t know how to train for it.”
He looked at me and said,
“You train confrontation by training confrontation.”
I laughed at first; I thought he was being clever.
He wasn’t. He meant it.
Right there on the grass, we reenacted a real fight I’d had with my ex. He picked it apart, not to shame me, but to show me how easy it was for someone to break me. How reactive I was. How much emotional control I lacked. He didn’t just tell me the truth; he trained me in it.
That was the spark. That was the blueprint.
On the ride home, everything changed. I realized I’d spent years avoiding conflict, trapped in a fawn response, desperate to keep the peace, terrified of being hurt, incapable of holding my ground. But now, for the first time, I saw the way forward.
You train confrontation the way you train anything else; with reps, structure, pressure, and guidance.
I already had been training. I’d regularly been in a gym since I was 14. I’d done 18 months of improv. I created Rods and the Axe to publicly dismantle the ideology I once held. I wrote With Lucifer On My Side to give credit to the philosophical paths that created me. None of it was abstract.
This program is not therapy. It’s not scream healing or fluff coaching. It’s confrontation training. We simulate real-life pressure; someone talking over you, cutting you off, undermining you, insulting you, ignoring your “no.” We drill it again and again until your nervous system recalibrates. Until you stop shrinking. Until you stop exploding.
I train my participants the same way a trainer would train you in a gym.
We do not burn your fat. We do not burn your calories. We burn your fears. We burn your weaknesses. We burn the reasons you still hide.
I created this program because no one else had. There are plenty of polished, corporate-friendly “assertiveness” workshops but TCG is for the ones who’ve been silenced, shamed, or made small, and who are ready to stop performing and start confronting.
Make no mistake, I am still a student here.
I wasn’t born assertive. I built it. I trained it. I suffered for it.
Now, I offer it to you.
Join me.
Let’s train.