Australians take an alarming 90 million sick days every year, citing workplace stress, colds and flu as the main causes.[i] Dr Joe shares his advice on how to stay healthy – mentally and physically, all year round.
Health problem: Repetitive colds
Solution: Adults catch around two to four colds every year.[ii] These viral illnesses are contagious, so if you’re suffering it’s best that you stay home. In reality, if you’re dealing with work, family and day-to-day demands, it is not always possible to take the time needed to recover fully.
You may reduce the length of your illness by getting enough vitamin A, D ,C, zinc and citrus bioflavonoids. These are cold-fighting nutrients which may help provide relief from colds and mild upper respiratory tract infections.[iii] A balanced diet of fruit and vegetables, lean protein and plenty of water will also help support your immune system.
Health problem: Feeling stressed
Solution: When you’re stressed you’re more susceptible to illness, energy lows and poor sleep. Some researchers say that Vitamin C should be an integral part of stress management, as your body uses your stores to produce the cortisol needed to help deal with stress.[iv] You can increase your vitamin C amounts through a diet rich in citrus fruits, dark green leafy vegetables, tomatoes and pomegranates. You can also add a daily vitamin C supplement when your diet is inadequate to give you an added boost.
Health problem: Insomnia
Solution: Around one in three people suffer from insomnia, caused, it’s believed, from work stress, financial worries, family pressures and in some cases, illness.[v] And it’s a vicious circle, as research shows that continual insomnia can reduce your ability to fight off illness.[vi] Adopting good bedtime habits can help. Reducing screen time, going to bed at the same time every night, and keeping your room dark, may all help reduce the amount of times you wake up during the night. Mindfulness may also help you fall asleep or go back to sleep if you find yourself staring at the ceiling at 3am.[vii] Certain herbs can help manage insomnia, especially if you’re suffering from stress: consider including withania, kava and lavender in your lifestyle plan.[viii], , [ix][x]
Health problem: inability to bounce back
Solution: take some time out for you
If you’re constantly getting ill, or don’t feel that you fully recovered from that last bout of cold or flu, then some gentle exercise such as yoga or meditation may be the key to regaining good health.[xi] It is also a good idea to consult your healthcare practitioner.
Sleep disturbances may be caused by serious medical conditions and you should consult your healthcare practitioner to discuss your particular needs to optimise your health.
It demonstrates balance and control over your body, something we happen to put great importance upon here at Nerd Fitness. It’s also one HELL of a party trick, something you can work on without a single piece of equipment, builds functional strength and muscular endurance, and it’s a skill you can work on in just a few minutes every single day.
How do I know this? Because I’m typing this while in a handstand RIGHT NOW. Okay, I can’t do that. But Jim, Master of the NF Fitness Universe, and our lead trainer for our 1-on-1 coaching program) can:
I love working with gymnastic rings, because they have such a great tutorial level. Handstands are exactly the same way: it’s a great skill to work on as a beginner, but also is infinitely challenging depending on your skill level.
Plus, in addition to Jim, Luke Skywalker does them. It’s time to stop looking at other people doing cool things and start today saying “hey, I can do that too!”
Why handstands are awesome
Team Nerd Fitness member Jim Bathurst has been training and working on handstands for years.
From humble beginnings, he taught himself a standard handstand and eventually worked his way up to one-handed tricks like the photo above.
Fun fact: I can’t say the word inverted without thinking of Top Gun’s line “because we were inverted,” but that’s only because I used to watch that movie with my brother every day from ages 3 to 5.
I’ve fallen in love with handstands for a few reasons:
Like other bodyweight training, there’s no excuse. If you have room to stand up, you have room to practice handstands.
It recruits DOZENS of muscles in your body. From arm strength to wrist mobility to core strength to shoulder mobility and muscular endurance, handstands do it all. When you are trying to balance, it makes your body work as one complete unit.
It scares you – yes, that’s a positive. We grow outside our comfort zone and for many people, just the thought of a handstand is enough to make their palms sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. Vomi… nevermind. The point is that the handstand is just as much of a mental challenge as it is a physical one.
How scared do you think this guy gets on a regular basis?
The biggest challenge with handstands isn’t what you think
Sure, we need to build strength to support ourselves upside-down, but even that hurdle is overblown.
A proper handstand actually starts to feel easy. That’s because once you’re balanced and aligned, it becomes uber efficient. Just as you don’t exert yourself much if you stand straight with good posture, a good efficient handstand is the same way… it will soon start to feel effortless.
Actually, the biggest hurdle to overcome – especially at the beginning – is the mental fear. The voice/feeling in the back of your head that says “you could get hurt doing this!” SCARY!
And I won’t sugar-coat things, you can hurt yourself working these skills… but it’s no different than if you walked into the gym first day, slapped 315 lbs on the bench press and gave it a go. Or went out and tried to run 13 miles without training. The exercise itself isn’t dangerous. Only if you approach it too fast.
If you wouldn’t load up a bar to 500 lbs your first day, why do so many people just kick and fling themselves up into a handstand, failing repeatedly, hoping one day they’ll “get” it? There’s a smarter way!
How do we overcome this fear and keep ourselves safe? Just like learning any other fitness skill: slow, easy, successful steps! These small victories accumulate over time to bring us to our goals safely while having a lot of fun.
Are you ready to learn?
Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Read on for ways to safely progress to handstand mastery!
The Safe Way To Start: Wrist and Shoulder Handstand Warm-up
For any handstand exercise, there is going to be a significant amount of stress on the hands and wrists… you’re not Cap! So, it’s important you stretch and warm things up.
Here is a video from our NF Handstands course going over some of our favorite wrist stretches to prepare to get upside-down. Go through each stretch about 10 times.
The shoulders are another stressed area in the handstand. There are several ways we can prepare them for work, but a few rounds of jumping jacks or even just arm circles will get the blood moving and the area ready.
Beginning Handstand Progression: Start Small and Level Up As You Get Stronger & More Confident
For the first two weeks of your handstand journey, we’ll have you work with some balance drills and some positional drills.
Nothing too crazy, and in fact some of these might seem TOO EASY. That’s fine! That’s what we want, remember?
We’re using small victories to motivate us. Dropping you on your head in the quest for a handstand is not a way to motivate anyone. Well, maybe this guy.
We recommend you focus on four exercises: the wall walk, hollow body, quadruped rock, and crow pose:
Wall walks
In this drill, we’ll get started right away working toward something that actually looks like a handstand! If you’re like me, you’ll probably get excited and start to overreach a bit at this point. But I believe in you: don’t let the enthusiasm and suspense get the best of you!
All we’re trying to do with this exercise is support our bodyweight on our straightened arms (just like the front plank or pushup).
So, the first level of this exercise is to simply get yourself up into the top of a pushup and hold. If that’s too hard,put your hands up on an elevated surface and/or rest on your knees and hands instead.
Once this is mastered, level up by simply lifting your hips in the air into a down dog position!
From here, it’ll be a matter of getting your feet onto a higher and higher surface. Note: putting your feet up something (I like bumper plates) even a few inches off the floor counts – small steps! As you progress, add more bumper plates (or whatever you’re using) so your feet are higher and higher.
Once you are supporting yourself with your feet on a high box, try walking your feet up the wall. (Think of it like a really tall box!)
Be careful at this step: Be sure you have enough energy to walk back down safely and second, and that you don’t walk too close to the wall and risk flipping onto your back!
See the part below on Pirouettes to safely exit these wall walks if you happen to “go over!”
With each of these variations, we’re looking to build up to a solid 15 seconds under control before moving forward.
Hollow body
The hollow body is one of the best ways to to engage the midsection and stabilize the body. It will help to give your handstand a good shape. Do you need to master the hollow body to master the handstand? Not necessarily, as there are plenty of handstands out there that are a bit banana-shaped. But the hollow body will help you create a more efficient position.
Start by laying down a yoga or exercise mat on the ground and laying on the ground face up. Think about pressing your lower back down into the ground and engaging your midsection like you’re coughing. You should still be able to breath!
Once the midsection is set, tuck your knees to your chest and hold your shins like you’re getting ready for a wicked cannonball. Holding the shins will help you maintain that lower back and midsection position.
Still feeling good? Then try rocking! Rock your body forward and back slightly from the upper back to the lower back, like a rocking chair. Head and feet stay off the ground. If you are stable then you should move as one unit.
If you need more of a challenge, reach your arms by your ears, keep the knees tucked, and rock some more. Without the hands holding the shins, the midsection really has to keep engaged in order to give you a smooth rock.
Again, with any of these positions, build up to be able to rock for a full 15 seconds under control.
Quadruped Rock
You may be thinking that feeling the balance of a handstand is going to be brutally difficult. Not so! We can start quite easily on our hands and knees in the quadruped position.
From here, we will simply rock forwards and backwards on our hands. Seem familiar? If you did the wrist mobility we described above, it’s the same motion! Isn’t that handy?
As you are rocking back and forth, feel where the weight rests in your hands. When you rock back, it sits more in the heel of your hands. When you rock forward, you’ll feel it in your knuckles and fingertips.
Where do we want it in the handstand? Right around the knuckles. This is a balanced spot – similar to the balance you find when standing. You don’t sit all your weight on your heels, and you don’t lean all your weight forward, gripping your toes hard into the ground, do you? Find and feel that balance when you rock.
Ready for the next step? Try Crow Pose.
Crow Pose
To enter Crow Pose, move forward from the Quadruped Rock position so that your knees are on the outside of your arms. You can even bend the elbows a little and rest your legs on them.
Rock forward in the same manner as before, putting a little more weight on the hands and a little less weight on the feet.
Important: this isn’t Assassin’s Creed… We are not making a leap of faith here! Don’t jump!! We are simply looking for less and less weight on the feet.
Take things slow and easy – rising up on the toes when you can. When you are ready to pick the feet up and hold yourself off the ground on just your hands, it should come naturally.
Be sure to grab into the ground hard to hold and control yourself, and feel free to put down a pile of pillows or mats in front of you if you should fall!
All these rocking and balance drills can be done for several sets of 5-10 reps. Listen to your wrists and give things a rest as needed.
Wall Walks, Learn to Bail Safely!
As you start to get better with Wall Walks, and you practice getting closer and closer to completely vertical while upside down, there’s going to be instances where you start to “tip over.”
In order to safely return your feet to the ground, you’re going to want to do what we call a pirouette. Jim and I demonstrate how to do so here:
This is one of the most important skills you can learn as you develop your handstand practice, as it will allow you to safely exit any handstand without any risk of injury as you develop your balance!
Tips and Tricks
Nothing beats patience and hard work, but there are a few tips and tricks we can provide that will allow you the best chance for success.
Make sure you go through a proper warm-up: We’ve given you several options for the wrists and shoulders. Not only will a warm-up help prevent injury, but it will get the muscles and joints properly prepared to get the most out of your training.
Prioritize Your Handstand: You can work the skill on its own time, and it won’t interfere or be interfered by anything else, but what if you’re doing other exercises during your workout? When do you handstand?
The best time to work the balancing drills is at the beginning of your workout, after you’ve warmed up. These skills require concentration and a fresh focus to really benefit and progress with them. Trying to balance after you’ve exhausted yourself with a tough cardio session is an exercise in futility (pun intended).
The best time to work the positional drills would be sometime during your strength session, and before your cardio. These drills are not as dependent on completely fresh muscles, but we still don’t want to try and hold ourselves upside-down after a grueling workout.
Too much, too soon.
We’ve mentioned this a million times because it’s so important. Taking on too much too soon is a way to develop bad habits and possibly injure yourself. Take your time! Enjoy and really master each step!
Take it Easy: In the same vein, we want to look for success.
What do I usually see when people practice handstands: Someone kicking up 100 times and kinda getting a handstand once or twice. How much sense does that make?
While we might not be batting 1,000 with all our attempts, but we should be looking to successfully complete around 8 out of 10 attempts. If we’re not? Then we might have taken on too much, too soon!
The 5-Minute Rule: Practice Handstands Every Day and Be Amazed at What Happens
Commit to 5 minutes a day. That’s it. But do it every day.
If you want more instruction, a skill-tree leveling system, and exact directions on what to do, for how long, and when to advance, check out our course, NF Handstands.
I’ll see a lot of people go all in for a single handstand session, and then not touch the skill for a week or more. Dan Gable once said, “If it’s important, do it every day.” Now this is a simplification, but with handstands, this is ESPECIALLY important.
When you first start out, your arms and shoulder may only be able to do 5 minutes before they are DONE.
Doing them for a short time each day is the best strategy to improve strength, endurance, and balance.
Have you ever tried to kick up into a handstand?
What’s the one thing holding you back?
What questions can I answer?
-Steve
PS: In addition to our handstands course, we do also offer 1-on-1 instruction through our Online Coaching Program. Here you’ll get paired with a coach that will build a workout program and nutritional strategy with your specific goals in mind, like handstands, deadlifting, becoming more flexible, or all of the above!
You can schedule a free call with our team at the bottom of our Coaching Page to learn more about the program and we can see if we’re a good fit for each other!
“I wanna be a strong princess, like Wonder Woman!”
“I wanna be able to run really fast, like the Flash!”
“I wanna climb all the monkey bars like Tarzan! ”
“I should lose a few pounds off my love handles.”
One of these things is not like the others…
When we’re little kids, we swing from monkey bars and run up multiple flights of stairs and climb trees and chase imaginary bad guys and crawl through mud and we love every second of it.
We try new things because they seem fun (and nobody is telling us that we can’t). We never once think “oh I wonder if my body is capable of such a thing.” We just…DO. We fall down and pick ourselves back up and laugh it off and each day learn more and more about how we interact with the world around us. It’s awesome. And fun.
But then…over the next 15-20 years, life happens.
Schoolwork. A job. Chores. Bills. Mortgage. Responsibilities. Kids! Late nights at the office. More and more meals from a drive through window.
As our responsibilities (and the scale) goes higher and higher, we set our sights lower and lower:
Instead of wanting to run fast like the Flash, we just want to not get winded going up the stairs.
Instead of being strong like Wonder Woman, we just want to not be sore after don’t want our arms to hurt from carrying in the groceries.
Instead of swinging like Tarzan, we avoid activities that are new because we don’t think we can, and we don’t want to look foolish.
Instead of wanting to climb mountain or run a 5k, we instead set the goal of “winning a solo Fortnite battle” or getting more instagram followers because the first goal seems entirely unrealistic.
It’s no wonder our expectations continue to wither as we age: growing up can suck. Sure we had dreams and goals and hobbies as a kid, but now that we’re adults, our goal has been minimized into a single sentence:
“Lose weight and don’t hate what I see in the mirror.”
Brutal? Yup.
Honest? Yup.
And that’s okay.
Not liking what I saw in the mirror is why I started exercising, and the reason I started Nerd Fitness 10 years ago. After all, wanting to look better and feel better is a powerful motivator, and that usually involves weight loss.
All of these thoughts above sprung from a conversation I had recently with our head of Coaching, Lauren – who I’ve known for like 13 years and I was a bridesboy in her wedding, but that’s besides the point.
I asked her about success stories we’ve had from people who have been in our NF Coaching program for 6, 9, or 12+ months and actually kept the weight off, and I started to see a pattern:
They all set out to lose weight as an initial goal, and many of them DID lose weight.
But a recent study showed: “The chance of returning to a normal weight after becoming obese is only one in 210 for men and one in 124 for women over a year.” [1]
So what was different with these clients?
Why are they having success with losing weight and KEEPING it off!?
Although they all succeeded in their own unique way, they did have a common element to each of their origin stories:
It started weight weight loss, but as they started to lose the weight, they got back to trying new activities they could do and feel as a result of that weight loss:
Doing pull-ups.
Going on hikes.
Getting back to martial arts.
Dunking a basketball (video proof below)!
In other words, these people reclaimed a childhood sense of joy and wonder that comes from asking “what can I try to learn today?” and “what can I do today that I couldn’t do yesterday?”
And in many instances, they all had activities they thought they could NEVER do. And six months later, they had already done it and were setting even bigger goals!
Like a superpower laying dormant in somebody until they discovered they were were “the chosen one,” these people all discovered they had the power within them all along that just needed to be unlocked.
You’re damn straight I’m proud these people are all coaching clients of Nerd Fitness, but I don’t care if you ever spend a dollar with us.
Instead, I want you to learn from their stories and remind yourself WHY you’re here working hard to better yourself!
If you can shift your mentality from “when I lose the weight, then I’m done” to “I’ve been building this new body, what is it capable of? Let’s find out,” that’s how you find long term, permanently improved healthy success.
And that’s when you become a superhero.
Mark loses 50 pounds and Falls in love with Gymnastic Rings.
No, Mark isn’t levitating in that second photo, he’s jumping rope.
But damn that would be really cool if he discovered his hidden superpower was levitation.
In his words, here’s how Mark’s mentality shifted over the past 6 months and 50 pounds of weight loss:
“Success to me was just about losing weight when I started. I also wanted to get to a place where just standing wasn’t painful. I joined the Coaching program because I needed to be held accountable, to make sure I didn’t lose momentum and slip back into my bad habits.
Since I started losing weight (now down 50 pounds and showing no signs of slowing down), there are so many things I’m capable of now: Deadlifting over 200 lbs (90kg), farmer walks of 80 pounds (36kg), PUSH UPS!
I NEVER thought I would be so consistent in going to the gym and eating healthy food. I’m also really enjoying using the gymnastic rings in my workouts.
They add so much variety to workouts, which brings new challenges all the time and keeps things interesting.”
Narayan lost 50 pounds and Now crushes pull-ups
Narayan has overcome some mental hang-ups he’s had since a kid about both the gym and exercise. It only took 44 years, but it’s ALWAYS better late than never.
In his words, success to him started with weight loss:
“I was really into the Nerd Fitness Academy and had great success with it, but I knew I needed something extra and additional 1-on-1 help to maintain my weight loss and get stronger.
I was thinking of hiring a trainer in my local area but I loved Nerd Fitness and wanted to stay active with that community. So I was really excited when I learned about the coaching program.
I have very vivid memories in grade school and on up of never being able to do a chin up.
I just sort of assumed it was something I was not capable of, like running a 4 minute mile.
And yet, after a few weeks in the Coaching program, I was able to do my first chin up with decent form.
It was exhilarating.
I was 49 years old and doing something I never thought I could do. When I got home from the gym that night I thought maybe I should keep working and try to do 5 chin ups in a row.
Coach Jim reviewed my videos of gave me some tips and was very encouraging.
Eventually I was able to do 5 chin ups in a row in 2 sets!”
And now Narayan LOVES the gym. How the HELL did that happen!?
“Another mental hurdle I overcame: I never imagined myself as a regular visitor to the gym. Ever.
I thought that was for other people who had the physiques of bodybuilders. Now I go 3 times week and it’s something I really look forward to.
I was invited this week to go out for Happy Hour but it was when I had planned on going to the gym so I declined the invite. I didn’t really reflect on it until the next morning when I realized that was something I never would have done just a few months ago.
There are definitely times where I am not feeling it but I go to workout anyway just because it is so ingrained. I have never left the gym regretting that I went.”
Heather earns her black belt And inspires her teenage sons.
When Heather started her hero’s journey, she wasn’t even sure what success looked like:
“I really liked the idea of being a person who makes good choices when nutritionally and rarely misses a gym day. And getting in shape would help with that.
I grew up here in the South and now I’m raising boys here: It’s pretty old fashioned in a lot of ways and gender roles are a few decades behind.
It’s important to me that my kids see women as strong and capable all by themselves and that women have every right to be where they damned well please: the weight room, or the office, or the home, or in the great outdoors.”
Like many superheroes, Heather has learned to embrace the great responsibility that comes with her great superpowers, inspiring those around her:
“I get to be a role model to all the girls where I teach karate.
I’m the only female instructor at our location and I want those girls to see a grown woman who can be a black belt and be strong. It’s also a good lesson for mouthy teenaged boys from time to time. The best compliment ever was when one of my teenage boys said that he joins me at the gym because he wants to be strong like his mom.”
And she’s still uncovering more super powers every week:
“What superpowers have I discovered? Hitting a 200 lb. deadlift is up there. Chin up progress – it’s slower than I had hoped, but there was also a part of me that never thought I’d get this close.”
Oh, and she’s proven the adage “appearance is a consequence of fitness:”
“Here’s a interesting side effect I hadn’t even considered until it happened: buying a size Medium shirt AND wearing it in public without feeling self conscious.”
Chris lost 50+ pounds and can now dunk a basketball!
Chris came to the program with a vague goal of wanting to dunk a basketball but wasn’t quite sure how to get there. He was a big guy and moving around that much weight makes many bodyweight achievements difficult:
“When I joined coaching, success was achieving my specific goals that I was unable to achieve by myself (one chin-up, one pull-up, and dunk a basketball which I hadn’t been able to do since high school). If I could meet those goals, then I would consider coaching a success.”
As he started losing weight, his vague dreams became concrete realities:
“I am now capable of doing a chin-up and a pull-up. Honestly, I never thought I would reach it, even when I was a teenager I couldn’t do a chin-up or a pull-up. Now I can. I love that I can.
Oh, and now I can dunk a basketball:
As he lost the weight, Chris’s mentality changed about prioritizing his own development as a real life superhero:
“I love taking the time to work on myself. With having a wife, kids, family, work, etc. it’s hard to take the time to work on yourself. It is awesome to set personalized goals that I wanted and work with my coach to get there.”
Henry Completes a Tough Mudder Like a Badass
Henry started out wanting to actually enjoy the outdoors, something he didn’t do at all at the beginning:
“For me success was just the ability to be more active and have fun outside without getting too winded very easily. The goal was to obviously lose weight which I have done, and I’m comfortable with where I’m at right now.
I’m more active and far more knowledgeable about what I put in my body.”
He then discovered something interesting about himself through the journey:
“I never thought I would be capable of managing my diet so well in terms of what I ate, when I ate, and how much I ate.
I have a self discipline I never knew I had, especially when it comes to eating out and not giving in to every single craving.
What makes me so happy: Henry discovered a mental fortitude and confidence inside himself that that led to one of the most difficult obstacle races out there:
“I never ever thought I would be capable of doing an event such as the Tough Mudder but I did it and saying it was awesome is pretty much an understatement and now I want to do more OCRs. What a feeling!”
Sandra Summited Kilimanjaro
Sandra spent months building her new superhero physique and then set out to conquer one of the tallest mountains in the world, Kilimanjaro!
It started with overcoming some mental hurdles too:
“I had been working my way through the NF Academy bodyweight workouts for about 5 months. I was pretty consistent about doing the body weight work outs 3 days a week.
As for my goals, my expectations were low: I thought being able to do more than a couple of push ups with good form and not on my knees was great. My pie in the sky goal was an unassisted chin up.
The problem was that I was afraid to start REALLY strength training: I had a squat rack still in boxes in my garage for someday. I wanted to learn to lift, eventually, but had no idea where to start. I had been in coaching for 6 months, gotten a lot stronger and more confident, before I actually told my coach about this! She helped me overcome that fear, finally build the rack, and get started.”
As she became more confident, she started setting her sights on a goal that still seemed far fetched but plausible: summiting Mount Kilimanjaro:
“I like to challenge myself to big things when I am in the mood to try to get myself out of whatever rut I invariably find myself when I take stock after going through weeks, months, years of default living. Years ago, I biked 100 miles, and ran a marathon.
Then life happened, and I was back to being VERY sedentary and just trying to get through the day.
Over my time with Nerd Fitness, Kilimanjaro became less and less “outrageous” and more “possible.” I believed I could do it because at the time I signed up I had been consistently training for a year I had seen myself become a lot stronger and I knew I could continue to be consistent.
I looked at the recommended training schedule and it was stuff that I could already do, just more of it. I also knew that my awesome coach (Staci!) would help me work it into the training I was already doing and it was a goal we could reach together.”
3 Lessons you Can Learn from These Real Life SuperHeroes.
#1 YOU’RE CAPABLE OF MORE THAN YOU REALIZE
Whatever got you here to Nerd Fitness and this article, GREAT!
Weight loss as a goal is a fantastic place to start.
Now, what’s going to help you succeed and stay successful is having a good reason why you’re doing all of this.
Every success story above features people who end up doing wayyyy more than they ever thought they could. From dunking basketballs to completing Tough Mudders and even climbing mountains.
Some of these goals were unexpected, or seemed so far off that they didn’t even seem realistic for the people above. But with each tiny victory, a small amount of confidence and momentum gets built.
And amazing things can happen.
I promise you, regardless of your thoughts on exercise or certain activities right NOW, if you can stick with this journey you will be capable of amazing things.
The weight loss is a goal, but it’s what you get to DO with your new body after the weight loss that will drive permanent progress.
#2 QUESTION YOUR ASSUMPTIONS
Narayan thought that gyms were just for bodybuilders and not people like him. Then he got over his insecurities, acknowledged how to make the gym work for him, and now says no to happy hours to make sure he doesn’t miss his workouts
Heather loves martial arts and is teaching young women that they can be strong badasses.
When you build a frame that’s capable of anything, it gives you a chance to try everything!
You no longer have to say no due to your size or lack of fitness: you get to say “yes” and try new activities.
It’s time to question the long held beliefs you had as a kid about exercise. Or the self-imposed limitations you’ve put on yourself for the past decade.
Go back and reread the words of these super heroes. Every single one of them has a thing that they “never ever thought” they could do.
And 6 months later, they blew past that limitation and had to set new goals!
Once you start doing things you never thought you were capable of, this attitude becomes contagious and you start to question every other assumption in your life too.
#3 ENJOY YOUR HERO’S JOURNEY
Our goal with Nerd Fitness is to not help you lose weight as fast as possible.
Our goal is to get you healthy and happy in a sustainable way, and make sure you have fun along the way.
That’s the ONLY way this progress you make will stick.
I have no doubt every story above will succeed in the long term, because they have the right mentality: it’s about more than just a number on a scale for each of them.
These 6 superheroes know they don’t get to be done, and they never get to go back to how they used to live. And none of them would WANT to.
For the first time in a long time, they have come back to life.
Ben Franklin said it best: Most people die at 25, but aren’t buried until 75.
As the heroes above started to lose weight, they started exploring and asking the question “what am I capable of?” They picked activities that seemed challenging and exciting, not just because it would shred another pound of body fat.
Counterintuitively, by focusing on getting better at these activities, it actually helped them lose more weight and do so in a sustainable fashion. WIN.
Success looks different to every single person
You can’t get where you need to go if you don’t take that first step, so why not take your first step today?
I’m proud to be able to share these stories, because they show you can be any size, be any age, fall in love with any type of activity, and become a superhero in a way that brings you to life.
Every superhero has a different superpower, and that’s what makes them interesting. They also have insecurities and flaws and obstacles to overcome, and that’s what makes them relatable.
Above, we have 6 real life superheroes from all walks of life, who have found a path to their own superpower that fits THEIR life.
Some people love the gym, while others will never set foot in one. That’s great.
We’re all on a journey, just like the six people above, and we are all writing our own story. OWN IT.
Yes, I’m proud to share that these are stories from our 1-on-1 coaching program, but they’re also people who live and breathe the Nerd Fitness lifestyle:
Having fun.
Developing functional strength.
Trying and finding new activities.
I know how tough it is to figure this stuff out on your own (I’ve actually had my own online coach for the past 4 years!), and it’s tough trying to figure out which activities to try (or how to start!).
That’s where a coaching program can really come in handy.
We speak on the phone with every potential client to learn their story and make sure we’re a great fit for each other, and you can schedule your call by clicking on the image below!
Regardless of whether or not you check out the program, I want Nerd Fitness to be the community that helps you realize:
You’re capable of more than you realize.
Trying new things is amazing.
If you don’t get to be done, you gotta enjoy the journey.
I’d love to hear from you below:
What’s something you currently think you’d NEVER be able to do, but it would be cool if you could?
What does success mean for you BESIDES just weight loss?
I can’t wait to hear your answers!
-Steve
PS: I remember talking to Narayan (the 2nd story above) back in January when he called to learn about the Coaching Program. It was really fun to hear his story and it makes me so damn happy to be able to share his story in this article.
If you’re looking to build your own hero’s journey, want to learn how to become a real life superhero, I’d be honored if you scheduled a free call with us to see if our coaching program is a good fit to help you reach those goals!
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Footnotes ( returns to text)
you can read my thoughts on that study = don’t give up hope!
