wellness - The Fit Ethos

Your First Day In The Weight Room

The weight room is my happy place. I like to think that it will welcome anyone who has any inkling of interest in lifting.

But… I often forget that for the uninitiated, it can be a bit scary and intimidating. You can feel very vulnerable… You’re doing big movements on display in front of everyone!

This can feel even worse if you feel like you’re unsure of what you’re doing.

So let’s go over some basics to get you through your first day in the weight room.

One Cheap Hack To Do Every Morning This Winter

With winter fast approaching, the weather is getting colder and wetter. The sun is in the sky for less and less time, and with that, there are some problems that we can anticipate will happen.

Lack of sunlight causes a wide variety of problems. Our circadian rhythm is synchronized to the rising and setting of the sun. When we do not get enough exposure to the sun, it can throw off our natural sleep-wake cycle, affect our mood, and overall health.

The One Thing To Transform Your Training Program Design

There is literally just one question you need to ask yourself when deciding how to design a fitness or strength program:

What is the ultimate goal of the program?

I know, I know. This is probably the most cliche and overused advice in the book but cliches exist for a reason. Let me illustrate this point with a story…

5 Ways to Hack and Instantly Improve Your Sleep

Modern society has gifted us with many miraculous advancements. We can instantly send messages across the world, access an unprecedented amount of information (and misinformation), and darkness is no longer a large part of our natural selection.

However, this modernity has robbed us of a vital part of our health…

Sleep.

5 ways to naturally boost your testosterone levels

Testosterone is known as the chief male hormone. It’s usually associated with “being a man”, muscle gain, and general… manliness?

I often struggle to talk about testosterone in conventional ways and in terms of machismo because my interest and concern usually has to do with optimizing health and performance. While some woke-minded folks may say that testosterone is fueling machismo and ruining society, low levels of testosterone is associated with a plethora of health problems ranging from poor sexual health, decreased lean body mass (and an increase in fat), low energy levels, and even cognitive issues.

The 1 Shoulder Exercise I Refuse to Do or Prescribe

One of the great things about strength training and lifting is the amount of variation that you can find in exercise, programming, philosophy, and culture. Things almost never get stale and people fall in love with this world all of the time. However, in all of that variation, a mediocre idea or two will inevitably sneak in. Or thousands, as seen daily on Instagram.

Such is the case with this one shoulder exercise. It is considered a bodybuilding staple and has torn the lifting community apart since physical therapists and strength coaches alike have discussed (or fought about) the potential harm and misgivings of the movement.

How I Split and Structure Workouts

If you spend enough time in the gym or the fitness realm, you’ll find that there are a lot of things to spend your time doing. Strength, mobility, plyometrics, conditioning… but never cardio. F*** that shit (calm down, this is a joke, people).

You may also figure out that there are a lot of muscles to work. How on earth are we supposed to even begin exercising everything in a feasible and practical way?

One day, you’ll stumble upon training splits. This is essentially the answer to the given problem: How do you address all of the things that a training program is supposed to address?

If You Had to Pick One Muscle to Train… The Glutes

Physical therapists often have trouble getting their patients and clients to perform all of the exercises that they prescribe. Whatever the excuse, this is a good reason to keep any exercise program as short and concise as possible. If you can keep it to less than 3-5 exercises per day, this is plenty. To keep it concise, you need to know what is important and which exercises will give you the most bang for the buck.

Also, if you’re a therapist and your home exercise programs are 20 exercises on average, then you don’t know how to efficiently prescribe exercises.

A Simple Workout For Anyone To Try That Doesn’t Require Equipment

A common topic that my dad brings up are the physical problems that his friends are having.

“Bill is having some trouble standing up from a chair. Is there anything he can do?”

“Jack is having some shoulder problems. It’s bad. Can you take a look at him?”

“My friend fell. This is the second time he fell. Are there any exercises you can show him?”

“You were easily the most popular kid in high school. Way more popular than that one captain of the baseball team.”

This is the REAL Foundation of Your Health and Fitness…

Look at any fitness magazine, blog, Instagram influencer, and you will be inundated with dozens of new “discoveries” that claim to be the next best thing, promising to bolster your health and “optimizing” your wellness with gimmicks and hacks.

It might be a new diet trend, soft tissue gun, apparel, supplement, or god forbid, another shake weight.

Remember that the old cliche is true: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. There is no way to replace a foundation of good habits and behaviors with gimmicks.

If you don’t do this ONE thing, you can say goodbye to a majority of the gains from all of your efforts…

That one thing… is…