That’s the question Daniel Fajardo—a doctor, husband, and father in St. Simons Island, Georgia—found himself asking a few years ago, after years of heavy lifting left him too sore and stiff to play with his kids. The answer he found was Onnit. The Onnit 6 programs’ focus on mobility and longevity helped Fajardo reframe what fitness means, and restore the body he thought had given out on him.

Fajardo tells his tale to Shane Heins, Onnit’s Director of Community Engagement, in this week’s Onnit Story—part of our ongoing series of live video interviews with people who have made great life improvements with Onnit’s help. See the video below, along with an edited transcript of the highlights, time-stamped so you can easily find them in the video. Stay up to date with Onnit Stories by following Onnit’s Instagram TV (IGTV).

Daniel Fajardo Show Notes

4:20 – How Daniel Got Onnit

Daniel Fajardo: It was kind of a happy accident. I was just scrolling through Facebook and an Onnit ad came up, asking if I wanted a free workout. I had been working out for several years, but things weren’t right. I always felt sore. I was very stiff. That got me looking a lot into mobility. I tried different mobility programs and had some results, but I still wasn’t satisfied. I wasn’t enjoying doing them.

So when I saw the Onnit ad, I just clicked on it, entered my email address, and I got this free workout with some guy that was jumping up and down screaming, “I’m a beautiful butterfly.” [Shane Heins, who coaches several of the Onnit in 30 workouts, likes to make them entertaining.] I got into it. I thought, “Well, this guy is a little strange, but he’s got a lot of energy.”

The workout was short, but I enjoyed it, and I felt like I got a lot of benefit from it. I was just doing mobility, but my heart rate was up, and I felt good. I noticed that, the next day, Onnit was offering an Onnit 6 Challenge.

I had a lot of workout tools already. I had kettlebells, but I wasn’t really using them. I even had a five-pound steel club that I’d bought for a different program. I contacted Onnit and asked what kind of workout to do for the Challenge. I said, “I’m very stiff. I have a lot of neck, back, and shoulder soreness, and hip stiffness.” The rep I spoke to said, “You need to try Durability.” I said, “I’ll trust the process and do it.” The rep also told me to join the Onnit Tribe—the Facebook group where Challenge participants can talk to each other.

I joined the Tribe thinking, “Oh, here’s my competition.” But very shortly afterwards I didn’t see them as that. The members came from different walks of life, but we all had the same goal of improving ourselves. I found a lot of support in there. Everybody was very positive, and I saw that even though some people were going through some real struggles, they were very open about it. I’m not usually that open, so that was a big deal to me. People weren’t afraid to be vulnerable in the Tribe. That’s pretty unusual in the world of social media.

Over the course of the Durability program during the Challenge, a lot of the stiffness got better. The pain started going away. The workouts were different from what I had been doing. They were challenging for different reasons. There are three levels of difficulty with each workout in Onnit 6, and in the beginning, I thought I’d never get to Level 3. But the workouts showed me how to modify the exercises so I could go at my own pace. By the end of six weeks, I was doing Level 3 movements.

I’ve always had problems with my hips. I had hip surgery when I was in my early 40s. I liked the hip exercises in Durability so much that, sometimes, after I finished a workout, I would do them for an extra few minutes, and I noticed a lot of benefit from that. 

I became a father late in life. I have three young boys—ages nine, six, and four. Last year, when I started with the Onnit 6 Challenge, it was February 2021. I remember one day my boys wanted to go play soccer. I had to say to them, “You have to give me about an hour to get my body ready.” I would have to stretch first, and do a certain amount of warming up, just so I could play with them. By the time I was ready to take them to the park, we could only play for about an hour. By then, it was my three year-old’s nap time. Well, fast forward to about halfway through the Durability Challenge, and I noticed that I only had to warm up about five minutes before I could go out and play with the kids. So Durability gave me back quality time with my children.

I used to feel like I couldn’t do a lot of things. I was just like, “Yeah, I can’t lift you up. My back is killing me.” Or, “my shoulders are really bothering me.” Now, over a year later, my stiffness is never to the point where I can’t play with my kids. Now I do yoga. I never liked it before because it was very hard for me, but now I can do the poses, or modify them as I need to.  

That brings me back to the Tribe. If I say I’m having trouble doing something, they say, “Well, maybe you should try this other thing first, and then, as time progresses, you’ll be able to reach your goal.” They showed me that if I put the time in, I will get to that point. I’m still not super limber, but I am miles ahead from where I was when I first started, and it’s showing.

13:40 – On Flexibility

I’ve noticed the mobility I’ve gained helping with other things I do, like jiu-jitsu. You have to be able to move in jiu-jitsu. I used to get trapped in submission holds and before the other guy had even sunk in the technique yet I was already tapping. Now I usually feel like I have a little more range, which buys me some time. 

One of the first things I noticed about the Challenge was how the people in the Tribe don’t shame you for the things you can’t do. We had a family emergency come up, and I wasn’t able to do the workout one day. I thought, “Man, I’ve already messed up on this Challenge.” I posted about it, but the Tribe members said, “Don’t worry about it. Things come up.” Now I see problems as just a speed bump. They slow you down, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop. I think it’s important, sometimes, to slow down, just to make sure you don’t stop completely.

16:10 – Daniel’s Background

I was born in Peru and came to the United States when I was 10. I moved around the US a lot and now I’m in St. Simons Island, Georgia. My job requires a lot of sitting because I spend all day on a microscope. I think that’s why my neck started hurting in the first place. It’s a very sedentary job, so I always tried to work out a lot. For me, that usually meant heavy weights, but that’s not the smartest thing at my age. I was getting injured. I tore my rotator cuff. I had to ask myself, “What’s important? Moving this heavy weight, or being able to move myself?” I actually haven’t even touched a heavy weight in months because I’ve been doing the Onnit 6 HydroCore program.

I’m not against lifting weights now, and I’ll probably go back to it in some form, but I’m glad I’ve found other ways to work out. I don’t push through injuries like I used to. Onnit taught me discipline, and true discipline isn’t just working out when you don’t feel like it. It’s not working out when you SHOULDN’T work out.

24:00 – Abandoning The All-or-Nothing Approach

The Tribe encourages reflection, and tries to help you understand your why. “Why are you doing this?” My first why with Onnit was because I wanted to win the Challenge, but then I started to ask myself why I really wanted to work out. I realized I wanted to play with my kids. I wanted to move around and not be in pain.

Then I started to think about how I would reach that goal. I knew that the kind of training I had been doing couldn’t be a part of it, because I had torn my rotator cuff. I had six months where I couldn’t lift my arm above my head. Did I want that again? So my goal was not about just working out but working out smarter. 

It’s easy to get hooked on the negatives. You have these goals, and when you don’t reach them, you feel like you failed. But you don’t really fail. You only fail when you quit. Things come up in everybody’s life. So you may not reach your goal in the time you allotted yourself, but you definitely will never reach it if you completely stop.

The Tribe never tells you to just “suck it up and do your workout.” Or, “push through the pain.” That’s so different from what I’m used to—going all in or going out of it entirely. I finished the last Onnit 6 Challenge a week late due to illness, but I finished it. I’m behind in this Challenge, but I’ll finish it. And the Tribe members are still encouraging me all the way.

Here’s another example. I had a trip planned for Costa Rica. I was so excited, but then I ended up getting COVID-19 and I couldn’t go. I even infected my three year-old, and I had to quarantine with him. I felt miserable. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had never had that much uninterrupted time with my son before. My son had some mild symptoms, but he was fine, so we could play together and I could read him books. So I may have missed out on Costa Rica, but I had a whole week where I got to spend time with my son. And then, earlier this year, I got to go to Costa Rica anyway, and I enjoyed it—but I look back on that week I had with my son even more fondly.

33:15 – Becoming A Tribe Moderator

It was very humbling, when I was asked. It was about a year ago and the other moderators said, “We value you as a Tribe member. Join our team.” It felt really nice. I said, “Oh, OK.” I was just posting because I enjoyed interacting with the other people. But they said, “We feel you’d add a lot of value to the Tribe as a moderator.” So here I am.

36:20 – Daniel’s Go-To Supplements

I take Total Human^® every day. It’s basically a mix of supplements organized into night and daytime packets. It includes Alpha BRAIN^® and ShroomTech SPORT^® and a greens formula, among other things. I use it every day. I noticed I feel a lot better, sleep a lot better, and have more energy. I do like Alpha BRAIN on its own too. I’ve tried the different versions, from the capsules to the different flavored Instant mixes, and I think the peach one is my favorite. I also like to eat the Protein Bites, but I have learned to slow down because I can scarf quite a few in one time. The S’mores ones are really, really good.  

I take creatine as well. I think the science behind protein and creatine is pretty solid. Creatine has been found to help with cognitive function as well as the muscles. With Alpha BRAIN and Total Human, I just go by the way I feel. I think they help me focus, which is very important in my job. If I forget to take a packet, I do notice the difference without it. 

39:20 – Daniel’s Favorite Fitness Equipment and Workouts

Right now, it’s the HydroCore bag. I was fortunate enough to participate in the beta-testing of the new Onnit 6 HydroCore program. Like I said, I had an injury, but I didn’t have trouble training with the bag. It’s done wonders for my shoulder. I feel like I get a workout with it, but I never feel like I’m wrecked afterward. I also like steel clubs quite a bit. The steel clubs from Onnit are excellent. Third on my list would be kettlebells.

The Onnit in 30 workout programs, I think, are probably some of the best $10 you can spend. The amount of training you get for that is amazing. I do the Move & Groove and Morning Mobility very often. Juan Leija’s My Warmup, Your Workout is brutal, but I like it because it’s very specific. It really gets your heart rate up. For a while, I was using that for my warmup and then the Mobilized Strength for my workout. Then, for the cool down, I would use Decompress To Defy. So that’s three programs. For those three Onnit in 30 programs, you get 30 workouts for $30. That’s a great deal. 

The Onnit 6 Steel Club program has yoga workouts in it, like all the Onnit 6’s. But the Steel Club ones are my favorite. I was someone who hated yoga, but the Onnit 6 program makes it fun, and my body feels great afterward.

Of all the Onnit 6 programs, the Bodyweight is probably the most challenging. I had to learn to start at Level 1 until I got comfortable. Then you can increase the difficulty to Level 2, or increase your reps, or go faster. It has a lot of modifications too. If you can’t do a pushup on the floor, you can start by doing one on a chair. 

43:20 – Shane Sums Up Daniel’s Journey

Shane Heins: For people who don’t know, Daniel is a strong, strong man. He’s got muscle on him, and he used to refer to himself as a rock. Watching him move now, you wouldn’t know he has a history of things he’s gone through with his shoulders, wrists, and hips. 

Daniel Fajardo: Yeah, and just to clarify, I used to refer to myself as a rock because I was so stiff, not because I thought I was jacked [laughs].

Shane: To see the way you move now is a testament to not just all of the effort that you’ve put in, but the shift in the mindset that you created for yourself. You’re a lot like [Onnit Chief Fitness Officer John Wolf]. When people see him they’re like, “Big dude. How does he move like that?” Well, it’s because he takes care of himself and continues to practice mobility.

The post “Problems Are Just A Speed Bump”: Daniel Fajardo’s Onnit Story appeared first on Onnit Academy.

October 10^th marks the 30^th anniversary of World Mental Health Day, a date established by the World Federation for Mental Health—a partner of the World Health Organization (WHO)—to create awareness around mental health issues and promote self-care. This year’s theme is making mental health and well-being a global priority for all. As a health and wellness brand with a worldwide reach, Onnit is proud to recognize World Mental Health Day, and, in honor of the event, offer some education on mental health challenges and ways to manage them. Read on to see why mental health is so important, and what you can do to help yourself and others—no matter what life throws at you next.

What Is Mental Health?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), mental health encompasses one’s emotional, psychological, and social well-being, affecting thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It determines how you handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. Your mental health is closely linked to your physical health. Depression, for example, is known to increase the risk for diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. By the same token, physical conditions can increase the risk of mental illness. 

With that said, it’s important to understand that poor mental health and mental illness are not synonymous terms. Mental illnesses are specific conditions that affect a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, or behavior—such as depression, anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). A person can experience poor mental health and not be diagnosed with a mental illness, and one who is mentally ill can still have bouts of physical, mental, and social well being.

“Many people who have just broken up with a boyfriend or girlfriend will meet the criteria for major depression,” said Ronald C. Kessler, PhD, a mental health expert and the McNeil Family Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School (in an article for Brigham Health Magazine). “Does it mean they need psychotherapy? No. Would psychotherapy help? Maybe.” The point Kessler makes is that while some people develop severe conditions, we all suffer poor mental health and some point.

The CDC reports that poor mental health can result whenever demands placed on a person exceed their resources and coping abilities. This can come from working long hours, caring for others, financial challenges, and many other common problems. If poor mental health isn’t addressed, it can potentially lead to diagnosable mental illness. Abuse and trauma in early life, battling chronic medical conditions, chemical imbalances in the brain, drug and alcohol use, and feelings of loneliness and isolation can all contribute to the risk for mental illness.

Is Mental Illness Common?

For decades, mental illnesses carried a stigma. They often weren’t reported or diagnosed. But health authorities are beginning to compile some powerful statistics, showing that they’re not only common but also a clear and present danger to overall health and wellness.

Look at these numbers:

– More than 50% of Americans will be diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder at some point in their lifetime, and 1 in 5 will experience a mental illness in a given year

– 1 in 25 Americans lives with a serious mental illness, which may include bipolar disorder and schizophrenia

– People with depression have a 40% higher risk of developing cardiovascular and metabolic diseases

– 32.1% of U.S. adults with mental illness also experienced a substance use disorder in 2020 

– Depression and anxiety disorders cost the global economy $1 trillion in lost productivity annually 

“The most commonly-diagnosed mental illnesses are anxiety disorders, which affect around 19% of adults,” says Darrick Nicholas, Director of Communications and Engagement for Integral Care, an Austin-based mental health community center and support service. Depressive disorders and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are also widespread. “These statistics are not mutually exclusive,” says Nicholas, “since people may be diagnosed with multiple conditions.”

How To Tell If You (or Someone You Care About) Is Suffering

Nicholas says you can begin to identify mental health problems by paying attention to the following signs.

– Thoughts of suicide or other self-harming behaviors

– Feelings of sadness that last several weeks

– Loss of interest in activities that were once enjoyable

– Intrusive thoughts that cause distress

– Excessive worry or fear, or persistent feelings of extreme guilt

– Social withdrawal

– Extreme mood changes

– Confusion or inability to concentrate

– Developing strong beliefs, or seeing and hearing things that others do not experience or believe.

If you or a loved one experience any of the above, consider looking for mental health treatment. “In general, there is not a wrong first place to ask for help,” says Nicholas, “since a trained mental health professional can help determine what the most effective type of treatment may be. Though some types of symptoms may require medical treatment from a psychiatrist, such as persistent depression, thought disorder—including paranoid thinking and delusional belief systems—and major mood swings, many symptoms may respond to therapy.”

Ways To Care For Your Mental Health

While the stats around mental illness are daunting, there are many ways one can care for one’s self that are practical, easy to implement, and may go a long way toward managing any current problems you have, as well as warding off future illness.

The National Institute of Mental Health recommends the following:

Exercise

It’s one of the healthiest things you can possibly do in a day. Apart from the muscular, cardiovascular, and weight-management benefits you already know about, exercise has been shown to have positive impacts on the brain again and again. An article in the Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry explains that several forms of exercise—including favorites like jogging, swimming, cycling, walking, dancing, and even gardening—have been proven to reduce anxiety and depression. (Scientists think it’s because they boost circulation to the brain and influence the adrenal system, thereby promoting our ability to manage stress. It’s also been proposed that exercise serves as a distraction from our problems, and that the social component that often accompanies working out plays a role too.)

The piece goes on to say that exercise has also been shown to improve self-esteem and cognitive function. Fortunately, the authors note, a little movement goes a long way. “Thirty minutes of exercise of moderate intensity, such as brisk walking for three days a week, is sufficient for these health benefits. Moreover, these 30 minutes need not to be continuous; three 10-minute walks are believed to be as equally useful as one 30-minute walk.”

Eat Healthy

While many people think of caffeine and alcohol as ways to feel energized or relaxed, they can have the opposite effect—especially if over-consumed. A 2021 review explains that both chemicals, along with artificial sweeteners, can promote feelings of anxiety. Meanwhile, research in Nutrients showed that college students who added fruits and vegetables to their diets saw improved mental health and well being.

Interestingly, a review in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry noted that “Many of the easily noticeable food patterns that precede depression are the same as those that occur during depression. These may include poor appetite, skipping meals, and a dominant desire for sweet foods.” The authors continue that depressed people “make poor food choices, selecting foods that might actually contribute to depression.”

Sleep

Have one sleepless night and you’re bound to feel lousy the next day. But if you sleep badly on the regular your whole life could suffer—and that’s not an exaggeration. A review in Psychological Bulletin explains that sleep helps to regulate emotions and stabilize mood, so a lack of shuteye can actually amplify negative emotions while simultaneously blunting the positive feelings associated with rewarding experiences. In other words, if you don’t sleep well, you’ll never fully enjoy life!

The Sleep Foundation recommends setting habits that help establish consistent, restful sleep. These include maintaining a regular bedtime, dimming the lights and avoiding electronics in the evening, and maximizing natural light exposure during the day (i.e., get outside in the sun).

Relax

Sometimes you just gotta chill, and there are plenty of science-backed ways to do it that don’t involve Netflix. The National Institutes of Health suggest several relaxation techniques, including progressive muscle relaxation (tensing different muscles in the body and then releasing the tension to induce greater relaxation); visualization (picturing images that relax you); self-hypnosis; and breathing exercises.

One review found that diaphragmatic breathing helped to lower stress, as shown by both subjects’ self-reported feedback and physiological markers. 

Get Organized

Getting your sh*t together—even in the simplest ways—can really put your mind at ease. The National Institutes of Health recommend organizing your daily tasks and setting priorities (hint: try “to-do” lists). Get comfortable with saying no to requests or favors that you don’t have time for and that make you feel overwhelmed. You should also spend the end of the day focusing on what you have accomplished, rather than dwelling on what may be unfinished. 

Practice Gratitude

Just as you shouldn’t think about what tasks remain undone, you shouldn’t brood over what you don’t have. In fact, doing just the opposite—showing gratitude for all the good things in your life—is enormously uplifting. Research collected by UC Berkeley indicates that gratitude practice improves mood, self-esteem, relationships, and can even ward off depression and suicidal thoughts.

Keep a journal where you list all the things you’re grateful for each day, and make a point of telling the people you care about that you appreciate them. Make time to talk with friends about what you’re both happy with in your lives.

Stay Connected

“I am a rock; I am an iiiiisland” may make for good song lyrics, but it’s not healthy for the mind or the body. Research cited in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine shows that maintaining social relationships doesn’t just give you plans on Saturday nights—it helps you stay alive.

The authors write, “It is evident that social connection has substantial impacts in many categories of health, from weight management, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and depression. Some psychiatrists go so far as comparing social connection to vitamins: ’just as we need vitamin C each day, we also need a dose of the human moment—positive contact with other people.’” They go on to argue that social connection should be considered as vital to human survival as the obvious essentials like food, water, vitamins, and minerals. 

The researchers recommend socializing with friends and family on a daily basis—or at least one per week. (Note: they specify that these should be people you actually like and feel connected to: not your creepy uncle or the neighbor who steals your morning paper.) You can connect face-to-face, or via phone or Skype/Facetime. 

For more help supporting mental health, check out Integral Care’s Mental Health Toolkit, co-created with the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The kit contains guides on self-care and gratitude practices, mental health podcasts to listen to, and more. See also their resources page and helpine. 

And on October 10th, use social media to show us how you stay balanced. Post about how you’re changing your diet, adjusting your sleep routine, going to therapy, taking a walk, etc. See our Instagram giveaway on World Mental Health Day for more.

The post 7 Ways To Support Mental Health When Life Gets Overwhelming appeared first on Onnit Academy.

In this interview, Brandon reveals how he survived life on the street, quit drugs cold turkey, and why the Onnit 6 Challenge is really a contest without a competition.

Onnit: Tell us about life before you found Onnit.

Jake Brandon: I joined the Army as soon as I was 18, and still a senior in high school. I felt like serving my country was just something I had to do. The 9/11 attacks happened two days before I graduated basic training, and I wanted to go to Afghanistan, but I had already been assigned to a reserve unit in Omaha.

I was trained to be a helicopter mechanic, but there never seemed to be a helicopter for me to work on, so I went over my head to an officer that I shouldn’t have, asking to get deployed. Instead, I got reprimanded, and was eventually let go from the Army with a less than honorable discharge—just because I broke rank.

That experience left a hole in me somewhere. There was also a death in my family around that time, and it sent me on a downward spiral. Health was not remotely a concern of mine.

I got married, and my wife and I had my first son. Four years later, we had another boy, but I was gaining a lot of weight. I started a job that had me working on wind turbines, and that’s when I started to see the value in keeping myself healthy. I had to climb towers that were 300 feet in the air, and doing that multiple times a day is a workout. That made me start paying attention to what I was eating.

I got the job weighing 268 pounds, but 265 was the weight limit for my position, so I promised that I would lose it. Over the next year and a half, I got down to 215.

Something tells us it’s too early for a happy ending…

You got it. In 2015, my marriage ended in a nasty divorce. My wife took my son away, and he was everything to me. I got depressed, moved back to my hometown, and lost track of fitness again altogether. I was too ashamed, or too prideful, to reach out to family for help, so I ended up staying with a friend of mine—and I use that term lightly. I knew he had done drugs in the past, but I didn’t anticipate it rubbing off on me the way it did. Staying with him in the mindset that I was in at the time made me the perfect victim.

I started doing a lot of hard drugs, and it didn’t take long for me to find myself on the street. I was surviving any way I could, sleeping in the woods or an alley, and occasionally crashing at someone’s place. I made sure that wherever I slept, no one else could see me. I wasn’t proud of where I was at, and I continued using drugs.

In one of the lowest moments of my life, I slept in an abandoned house with no windows. It was the middle of winter. I managed to scrounge up enough money to buy a Marlboro sleeping bag from a pawn shop, so I had that for warmth, and a few blankets, but I woke up in near hypothermia, urinating on myself.

After about a year and a half of being homeless, I had had enough, so I reached out to my brother. He told my mom everything and, even though my mom and I didn’t have a great relationship at that time, she offered me a place to stay. From there, I was able to get myself clean. I never went to rehab—I just stopped using.

The first couple weeks were the hardest. Head to toe pain, body aches, and chills. But I was motivated by my boys. My oldest was four and a half, and my youngest was six months, and I didn’t want them to discover that this was their dad. When my head was clear, I developed a plan to start life over again.

What was the first step?

I started a new career in HVAC. I wanted to do heating and air replacement and repair, and I had to show the court that I was rebuilding my life before I could get joint custody of my boys. The HVAC company had their own apprenticeship program, so I didn’t have to go back to college to get another degree. I could go through the apprenticeship while I was working. Of course, it raised some red flags when I applied, but I told them I would be the best hire they ever had if they took a chance on me. As it turned out, I became their top apprentice for the next three and a half years, and I was made lead of a division in the company.

About a year into the job, I was talking to a coworker, and I found that we shared a love of mixed martial arts. That evolved to us talking about fitness, and he asked if I ever used kettlebells, and showed me the Onnit 6 Kettlebell program. In 2019, I started working out on my own with it. I didn’t want to commit to any Onnit 6 Challenge yet; I just wanted to see if I could do the workouts, because, at that point, my weight was up to 299 pounds.

I was pretty disgusted with myself and I didn’t know if I could handle the workouts. My friend showed me another workout program, RUSHFIT, from Georges St-Pierre, who was one of my favorite UFC fighters. RUSHFIT was more cardio-based, and I used it to help melt some of the fat off and prepare me to do Onnit 6. The more fat I lost, the more comfortable I felt doing the kettlebell exercises I saw from Onnit, and that’s when I decided to join the Onnit Tribe and do my first Onnit 6 Challenge.

By the way, I got joint custody of my kids a year and a half after I started the new job. I want to say that I couldn’t have done it without my Mom, Grandpa, and God in my life.

What were your first impressions of the Tribe?

I joined the Tribe out of curiosity. But I was also skeptical. I had it in my head that it was going to be just fitness enthusiasts with years of experience in there. I thought I wouldn’t fit in. To my shock, the Tribe turned out to be made up of everyday people. No matter your fitness, financial, or social status, you were welcome. But I didn’t open up to the members right away because I felt I didn’t belong. After my drug history, I felt like a fraud being a part of a fitness group.

I kept pretty quiet for the first Challenge I did—the kettlebell one. There was one couple in the Tribe that I did go back and forth with in conversation, and they hounded me about opening up to the whole group. They just said, “You’ll get more out of this if you share more.”

Talking to [Onnit Chief Fitness Officer] John Wolf helped too. He shared details about his past, which included drug use, and that inspired me. Here I was thinking that I was the only one in the Tribe with a story like that, but I wasn’t. The Tribe became the most important people in my life. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t doing another workout, diet, or fitness fad. I was beginning a whole new lifestyle.

How did you like the Onnit 6 workouts?

When I started using the kettlebells, it was awkward at first. There are three tiers of exercises you can choose from when you do the Onnit 6 workouts, and I stayed at Level 1, instead of jumping ahead, and that made all the difference. I have herniated discs in my back from when I was in the service, but the way the program is designed, I was able to build up strength in my back without aggravating it. Now I don’t have low-back pain anymore.

Doing the Onnit and RUSHFIT workouts got my bodyweight down to a healthy 175. I think by now I’ve done every one of the Onnit 6’s. The programs Onnit offers, with or without the Tribe, are on a whole other level from others I’ve tried. Other fitness programs have their benefits, but they’re laser-focused on just one thing—fitness. My whole outlook on fitness now is that it’s a lifestyle. I’m getting my mom and my boys into it too. I want to show them what you can do if you put your mind to it.

My six year-old son is eating more whole grains now. He had been living on white bread with ketchup and eggs, but I prepared meals in front of him so he could see what I’m eating, and he learned to try new foods. I ask him if he wants to try what I’m having. Sometimes he turns his nose up at it, but sometimes he’ll try it. I have him two weekends a month, so I do my best to lead by example.

In spite of all the kind things you’ve said about the Challenges, you took a step back from them for a while. What was that about?

I’m a competitive person, and that can be a bad thing. When I compete for something and don’t win or get noticed, it can have an effect on me. About four Challenges ago, I wanted to stop participating. I was putting everything I had into these contests, but I hadn’t been named as a finalist.

I was getting up at 5 a.m., getting back from work at 4 p.m., and my life was all about Onnit after that. I really didn’t have a life because I was so focused on this new fitness lifestyle. There wasn’t room for anything else anymore but work and fitness. I thought that if I stayed very regimented with training and eating, that that discipline would keep me from going back to drugs.

Once again, the Tribe helped me through it. Tim Sibley said I shouldn’t view the Onnit 6 Challenges as competitions in the sense of one person against another. They’re supposed to be about all of us working together, competing against our former selves. Tim said that you can’t compare one person’s progress to another person’s, “because we’re all on a different point in our journey.” There’s no standard to measure up against.

That helped me to let go a little and have fun with the Challenges again, like I did in the beginning. When it started to feel like fun again, I was able to look at where other people were at and help them do better. I could see myself in some of the other Tribe members and knew what they were struggling with, and that allowed me to support them. 

Interestingly, I ended up being a finalist in that Onnit 6 Challenge, using the Onnit 6 Barbell program, last August. So, looking back at the process, it isn’t just a fitness journey I’m on. It’s been about building my character.

Are you a fan of any supplements?

I’ve taken Total GUT HEALTH™. I’m studying right now for my journeyman license in heating and air, and you can bet that I’ll take Alpha BRAIN^® Black Label before I take that test [laughs]. I also like New MOOD^® for when I’m going to sleep. But for the most part, I do well on what I eat. I used to take supplements for a kick in the butt, but now I find I have the energy from a healthy diet, so I don’t need supplements for that anymore.

What’s your advice to people who may be considering joining an Onnit 6 Challenge, or the Onnit Tribe?

Have fun with fitness. Don’t take it too seriously. Yes, it’s about your health, and you need to be consistent with it, but don’t let it consume you to where you don’t enjoy life. Fitness should be a way to make friends, and you can find a lot of amazing people in the Onnit Tribe on Facebook and on Discord. I got away from Facebook for a while because of their politics, but I’m back on now so I can be in the Tribe. It’s important to me to give back to a place that I got so much support from.

The post “It’s About Building Character”: Q&A With Onnit Tribe Member Jake Brandon appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Sean Hyson, Editor-in-Chief of this blog, speaks to Onnit Chief Fitness Officer John Wolf about how he integrated unconventional training with old-school strength work for greater longevity. See the video of Sean’s interview below, along with an edited transcript of the highlights, time-stamped so you can find those moments in the video, and stay up to date with Onnit Stories by following Onnit’s Instagram TV (IGTV), where a new one appears every other week.

Sean Hyson Show Notes

3:45 – What Sean Does at Onnit

I was brought on in 2016 to run the Onnit blog. I’ve been writing and editing fitness, nutrition, health, and lifestyle content for almost 20 years now, and the latest, greatest stuff is on our blog, so check it out at onnit.com/academy. I’ve evolved from that role to where I’m doing a lot of the copywriting as well—landing pages for our products, including the new Alpha BRAIN^® Black Label and Focus Shot, and our fitness equipment. A lot of the stuff you see up on the main Onnit site now has been written or edited by me. I also do emails, social media copy, and whatever else needs to be written around here, as needed. The Onnit team usually rings me up to do it. [Laughs]

It’s been an honor to work here, and it’s been a lot of fun. I like that Onnit allows you to use a voice that has some humor and lightheartedness to it, so it’s not just straight science all the time. Onnit as a brand has a lot of personality—and a lot of personalities behind it—and it’s great to be able to bring those to the forefront with articles and interviews.

6:05 – How Sean Found Onnit

I was the fitness editor and then the training director for Men’s Fitness and Muscle & Fitness magazines for many years, overseeing all the fitness content, and living in New York City. I was in the magazine world for a long time and wrote a book for the Men’s Fitness brand—101 Best Workouts Of All Time. I’d been a fan of the Onnit brand for a while, having found it through Joe Rogan, of course, and some of the UFC fighters that Onnit sponsored at the time. In the summer of 2015, I was attending a fitness conference, and I happened to meet you, John, and a lot of the other people at Onnit—Aubrey Marcus was at that conference too. We started a connection there, and about a year later, I spoke to Aubrey again.

I was writing an article for Men’s Fitness about up and coming supplement companies to look out for, and I said to my editors, “Let me write about Onnit. I know some of the guys over there, and I like what they’re doing. They have a different take on supplementation. Their products are clean, well-sourced, and they work. This is something that people should know about.”

I ended up interviewing Aubrey for that article over the phone. I guess we hit it off, because he practically offered me a job right there. He was talking about how well Onnit takes care of its employees, and how happy everybody is there. They have a gym on site and all these great amenities and perks. I said, “Well, if you need any help, if you have an extra seat around the office, I’d love to come down.” He said I should come interview for a new position as blog editor, and, very shortly after that, I showed up in Austin, Texas.

7:45 – How the Jerky Boys Brought Sean and Onnit Together

John: I remember hanging out with you at the conference where you first met the Onnit team. I remember you and some of the other guys who were attending quoting The Jerky Boys comedy prank phone calls all night.

Sean: [Laughs] Well, that’s always a strategy I use to make a good impression on people when I meet them for the first time. I try to bring up obscure 90s comedy sketches, and if they can talk about that, I figure we can talk about anything.

John: I think I liked your guys’ version of the phone calls better than the original recordings.

Sean:  I’m still available to do Sol Rosenberg impressions upon request.

10:10 – Did Onnit Live Up to the Hype?

I can honestly sit here and tell you that everything that I was promised about Onnit came true. The work/life balance was great. The amenities were great. I remember walking into the building the first time and seeing all the women wearing yoga pants. Everybody was in gym clothes—not just in the gym, but at their desks, too. It was just such a casual, friendly environment. Coming from New York and the very formal world of publishing, to see people just being themselves and dressing casually and living that workout lifestyle was really exciting.

Most of the staff at the fitness magazines I worked for were just professional journalists. They were just there to do a job. They didn’t care what magazine they worked for, and most of them had no passion for fitness or health. We used to kid around by saying, “How many packs a day does the average Men’s Fitness employee smoke?” Because many of them were smokers as well. Here, these people were writing articles about how to be healthier, but virtually none of them were really living by those guidelines.

At Onnit, everybody was living the lifestyle they were promoting, and they were also having a great time, too. We had a massage room, and kombucha on tap. Some of those perks have morphed a little bit since the pandemic hit and many people are working remotely now, but I still think it’s the best job I’ve ever had and the best office environment I’ve ever been a part of.

We’ve had so many brilliant people coming in there to offer services—whether it’s dry needling therapy, massage, or seminars or workshops—and these people became part of the Onnit community, too. They got absorbed into our world, and we all became friends. This enormous community has developed so naturally from the unique kind of office that Onnit created. 

15:25 – Sean’s Best Interviews

How many times have I interviewed you, John? I’ve done articles with you and Shane Heins [Onnit Director of Education], Juan Leija [former Director of Fitness Programming], and Eric Leija. I’ve interviewed a bunch of our influencers and sponsored athletes, including Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone and Tim Kennedy. That’s been the best part of my job, probably—the networking and the ability to have these conversations with interesting people and learn something new from them. I can remember tips I got from coaches that I interviewed many, many years ago that I still use in my own workouts today—diet tips and general health stuff, and life advice as well. It’s amazing what you pick up being a journalist for so many years. Although I wish I remembered more of it than I do [laughs]. But what I have retained has been life-changing.

For anybody who doesn’t know, go to our blog and check out Angi Sanders’ story. She’s works in our customer service department and is a moderator for our Onnit Tribe now on Facebook and Discord. She’s come that far along. She has an amazing story. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll walk away with a new perspective on life. She’s just one of many people I met through Onnit that has been amazing to talk to.

18:40 – How Sean is Helping to Change the Public’s Perception of Onnit

I think when I started, the perception most people had of Onnit then was that it was a brand for hardcore MMA fans and Joe Rogan listeners—something that was just for guys who wanted to swing the mace and the kettlebells around. I think we’ve done a lot with these Onnit Stories to break down that stereotype and make it clear that Onnit can be for everyone. Or at least for a lot more people than it had been serving. Onnit can be for women, for men, younger people, older people, people with injuries, people who are lifelong athletes, and people who are not athletic at all.

I think we can all improve with the information that Onnit is putting out. Being able to meet so many people and talk to them, I found out that one person is just as interesting as the next. Somebody who may not seem super flashy on social media, may not have a great body or a bunch of followers, that person can be just as fascinating to talk to as the classic fitness influencer. You can learn as much or more from that kind of person.

When you talk to enough people, you find out that we’re all basically the same. It’s a shared human experience. To find out that you have something in common with somebody who, on the surface, you would think you could never relate to creates a very human moment. It really makes you feel connected to other people in the world, and it reminds you not to take people on face value or be judgemental.

23:10 – Sean’s Other Writing

​​I’ve done two print books—one for the Men’s Fitness brand, called 101 Best Workouts of All Time, which is just what it sounds like, and one for Men’s Health, called The Encyclopedia of Muscle, which is about all the different training techniques that have been handed down for generations. I’ve done a couple of e-books on my own as well, including The Truth About Strength Training, which includes a 12-week workout program, and I’m working now on a fitness business book with a co-author. 

One of the things I love about Onnit is that they respect the individual. We’re all cogs in a wheel to an extent, trying to serve the greater good of Onnit and the community, but we’re also still individual people with our own needs and interests in things that might lie well outside of what is being sold at Onnit. The top brass at Onnit doesn’t give you a hard time about that. You’re allowed to be yourself and do your own projects as long as they don’t conflict with work, which I think is just common sense. It’s been amazing to see so many people in the gym create these online training businesses using Onnit as a platform. They might go on and do other things, but most of them, to my knowledge, have remained loyal to Onnit. They still show up at Onnit. They still maybe train clients or teach classes at Onnit, and that relationship is maintained. It’s not like we’re all using this place as a springboard and then leaving it behind. It’s more like bringing other things in to coexist with it.

26:15 – What Sean Has Learned From Onnit About Training

One of the first things I learned, and I’m still learning it, is just how to move. The simplest concept ever, right? You’d think it would be the foundation of all fitness education, but so many other places, other authorities in the fitness world, don’t talk about it. How to stand, how to breathe, how to move. These are things that we really should be learning in gym class when we’re kids, but they don’t teach them.

I remember you, John, giving me cues like “level pelvis,” “proud chest.” These are great cues that you have to be mindful of all the time when you’re sitting, when you’re walking around, when you’re exercising. These little things make a big difference as far as the alignment of your body, and they go a long way toward preventing an injury.

I used to take Durability classes at Onnit Gym. A lot of the people who went at that particular hour were bound up, muscular guys who didn’t move so well. I’ve been missing that so much since the pandemic, but I’ve found through the Onnit In 30 programs that are on the website now that I’ve been able to rekindle that fire. I’ve gotten back into the mobility in such a hardcore way, and it makes such a difference. Learning to improve movement skills and range of motion is such a great complement to all the hard strength training that I’ve done over the years.

I’m very bound up in my hips from years of sitting at a desk and writing articles. All the hip series stuff John used to take us through, and that is available in the Morning Mobility and the Move and Groove programs we have in Onnit In 30, can absolutely be like strength training. You’ll be sweating, you’ll be sore, you’ll feel it burning while you’re doing it.

For some people, those exercises very well could be a strength workout all on their own, and that’s totally fine. If that’s challenging you to the point where it feels like a weight workout, that means you need to get stronger there. Once you do, it’s amazing how much better everything else you do feels.

If I can sum up Onnit, it’s that the holistic way is the only way. If you’re in this fitness world long enough, you’re going to find out that you can’t just do the stuff that you like. You can’t just eat the foods you like or do the one or two exercises or workouts that you like. You have to take a little bit of everything and really come at it from a more well-rounded perspective. It’s the only way you’ll be able to sustain it over time. So learn from everybody, take a little bit of this and that, and blend it in a way that works for you.

37:00 – Sean’s Favorite Unconventional Training Equipment 

Being an editor at Muscle & Fitness for years, I was a very conventional trainer doing weightlifting, bodybuilding, and powerlifting. That was my background, and that’s what I trusted. When I got to Onnit, I found that they do all that stuff too at Onnit Gym, but they also do this whole other world of unconventional training. I was kind of reluctant to embrace it at first, since I didn’t really understand it, but I’ve come to respect it. I see all the different gaps it fills that conventional training leaves, and the way that it improves stability and grip strength and, again, movement skills.

I remember when we were beta testing the Onnit 6 Kettlebell program. I was in that first group of people who tried that program, and found that the rotational aspect of moving with the kettlebell was something I really hadn’t done before. I’ve carried that with me to this day. I still throw some kettlebell moves into my training here and there.

The steel club is another one. You meatheads out there like me, if you have tight wrists or a tight back and shoulders from years of pressing exercises, pull out the steel club. Get a light club and do wrist rotations with it. That really helps open up the forearm, the wrist flexor muscles. Pullovers with the club really helps open up the shoulder and the lat. These are things that you don’t have to be a full-blown, die-hard steel club or unconventional training enthusiast to just incorporate into what you’re doing, and they’ll help you get more out of what you’ve been doing. They might open up a whole new path for you, too.

Going back to that pullover with the club, when I learned that exercise, I was like, “Alright, I can use this as a warmup. I can use this as part of a cool-down. I can use this in place of another back exercise on my back or pull day.” Not only is it opening up these muscles, but it’s also teaching me how to move overhead properly. The “ribs down” cue comes into play with that exercise, and it’s such an important one, and something that I really didn’t fully grasp until I got to Onnit. Driving the ribs down, tucking the pelvis under, engaging the core, keeping the whole torso a solid column. That’s so valuable for protecting the lower back and protecting the shoulders, especially when you’re doing any kind of hinge movement or overhead pressing movement.

These are things that you don’t fully learn when you first get into lifting, or nobody really clues you into, but you learn from mistakes—and through pain over time—what not to do. If Onnit helps save you that trouble by teaching you those things with the unconventional equipment, then that’s great. You’ve done yourself a world of good.

44:00 – Sean’s Favorite Article to Write

Angi Sanders’ story is one. This is a woman who had a weight problem for years, and she was very unhealthy and unhappy. She, totally on her own, got into fitness and lost a bunch of weight and has transformed her life to the point where now she’s a fitness coach and a full-time Onnit employee—which had been a longtime goal of hers. She’s just found her niche and has transformed herself so amazingly. You couldn’t help but be inspired by that, no matter how much of a hard-hearted cynic you might be. She’s a great one.

Tim Kennedy was another great interview. MMA fighter, TV star, patriot. I’ll tell you one thing I learned from Kennedy. I asked him, “How are you able to step up and do these UFC fights and go into battle and all these incredibly intense things that you do? Things that most people can’t bear?” He said, “It begins and ends with these little decisions you make every day.” Like going to bed 10 minutes earlier tonight. Drinking water when you first get up in the morning. Deciding not to drink alcohol today. Getting your workout in no matter what. These things seem kind of minuscule and unimportant at the time, but they will add up to massive results over the course of your life, and prepare you to do things that seem impossible.

The post “The Holistic Way Is The Only Way”: Sean Hyson’s Onnit Story appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Kaysee spoke to Shane Heins, Onnit’s Director of Education, to tell her Onnit Story—part of our ongoing series of interviews with people who have made inspiring life changes with Onnit’s support. See the video of Kaysee’s interview below, along with an edited transcript of the highlights, time-stamped so you can find those moments in the video, and stay up to date with Onnit Stories by following Onnit’s Instagram TV (IGTV), where a new one appears every other week.

Kaysee Brooks Show Notes

2:50 – Finding Onnit

I found Onnit through Instagram. Onnit was doing a giveaway, and somebody I follow shared it in their Instagram Story. At that time in my life, I was looking for a new workout program to do, because I was getting burned out on what I had been doing at that time. I looked up Onnit’s website, and I signed up for Onnit 6 Bodyweight. That was in the fall of 2020, and I joined the Onnit Tribe in January 2021.

I wasn’t really big on joining Facebook groups at that time, mostly because I didn’t know anything about them. I wanted to do the workout program by myself and just do it at home, but I lacked a community. When people go to the gym, they have a community—they make friends that way. Because of the pandemic, I couldn’t go to the gym, so I said, “Screw it. Why not just join the Tribe and let’s see where it goes?”

So, I did the Onnit 6 Challenge, Steel Club, with the Tribe that January. In the beginning, I wasn’t that active in the Tribe, because I wanted to get a feel for what the Tribe was. At that time, I didn’t believe that you could find authentic people online, but I’ve learned that you can definitely find authentic people in the Tribe [laughs].

5:45 – What the Onnit Tribe Is Really Like

What you give you get back. I found that the more I engaged with the Tribe, and the more attention I paid to each member that posted, the more they would engage with me right back. When I posted something and people responded to it, it made me realize, “Oh, I can be seen on here. People are reading my posts.” That felt really good, because we were all isolated, stuck at home. Going online to the Tribe gave me the social interaction I couldn’t get anywhere else. After the six weeks of Steel Club, I went back and did the Bodyweight Challenge again and was super engaged this time. I wished these people were in the same city as me, so we could go and do the program out in the backyard and I could meet them in person. 

9:30 – Kaysee’s Evolution Through the Onnit 6 Programs

I started with Bodyweight, and that gave me a foundation for the other workout programs. At the time, I didn’t have the money to buy equipment, so bodyweight training was perfect for me. I’d also never touched a steel club, steel mace, kettlebell, or barbell before. They all seemed exotic to me, so I thought I would just keep doing Bodyweight over and over. But I had a change of heart from seeing the other Tribe members doing the other Onnit programs.

Seeing the movements everybody else was doing with the steel club made me want to try it. It looked so powerful. Eventually, I wanted to use kettlebells, and then the most exotic tool for me, the steel mace. After I did the Kettlebell Challenge, I thought, “I can try new equipment and it won’t hurt” [laughs]. As I progressed through the programs, I found that I became more open and braver about trying different equipment and realizing how each tool changes the way we build our strength. Now I’m doing the Onnit 6 Barbell and I love it. I don’t think I’ll ever pick a dumbbell up again [laughs]. 

14:30 – The Tool Kaysee Learned the Most From

The kettlebell for sure. It isn’t just that I connect with that tool, it’s that it makes me realize that each time I do a workout, I’m in this for the long haul. What I do each day isn’t just to make me look better; it’s for my health. It’s to set a foundation from which to grow stronger. When I understood that, that’s when I started to really fall in love with the process. I basically stopped setting goals. I stopped weighing myself. I stopped counting my calories. I stopped looking in the mirror and downgrading myself. I don’t pick out parts of my body and say, “I want to change this.” When I follow a workout program, I just accept it for what it is and keep going. I just want to get stronger. I’m in it for a lifetime.  

18:50 – Life Before Onnit

I did the Beachbody program, but I wanted something more. I wanted something that explained more about what I was doing with the equipment I was using. I didn’t want to just keep doing biceps curls. I wanted to know, “What am I working? What am I supposed to feel?” I wanted to know that the work I was doing was effective. I love the explanations Onnit gives for every workout. The coaches tell you what cues to pay attention to, what muscle groups you’re working, and ways to connect to the muscles you’re training to make sure your form is correct. If you’re not feeling it where you’re supposed to feel it, they tell you how to fix that. If you’re not going to train seriously, then what’s the point? You’re just going to hurt yourself.

I started being more active about a year before I got pregnant. I was doing Orangetheory then, and I worked out throughout my pregnancy until the seventh month. After my pregnancy, the pandemic had shut the gyms down, so I had to find something to do online. That’s how I found Beachbody, and then Onnit. 

Initially, I just wanted to be healthy. I didn’t want to be overweight, and at that time, I was reaching that line. But I just wanted to move.

21:30 – Kaysee’s Non-Onnit Workouts

I really want to strengthen my knees. I want young knees, so I bought a sled. I’ll do medicine-ball slams for three sets of eight, and then push and pull the sled. I’ve also picked up rucking, which I’ve heard is a more joint-friendly alternative to running [you wear a weighted backpack and walk briskly]. I can do one mile in under 17 minutes now. I’ll do these workouts on the weekends when I’m not doing my Onnit training.

25:30 – How Kaysee’s Workouts are Making her Daughter Fitter

My husband exercises too, and my daughter sees us working out and she comes out to us and says, “I want to exercise.” I’ll say, “Oh, OK. What are you going to do?” She saw me doing medicine-ball slams with a 20-pound ball, and she was upset because she couldn’t pick it up. So I decided to get her a four-pound ball, and now she’s rolling it, she’s slamming it, she’s pushing it. We enrolled her in an exercise class for kids—it’s basically CrossFit for kids—and she loves it. Plus, it’s a great way to get her to fall asleep right after.

I never thought that I would ever be a parent, or that I would be good at it if I were. She’s a reflection of everything her parents do and say, and it doesn’t take her long to catch on. She’s about to be three in two weeks. It’s a privilege to be able to raise another human being that can make an impact of her own in our world. And… gosh, dang it, Shane, you’re making me cry…

I know that whatever lessons or wisdom she’s received from my husband and me, she’s still going to be her own person. Knowing that is heartbreaking and heart-filling at the same time.

30:45 – How She’s Helping her Daughter Adopt a Positive Mindset

I used to downgrade myself all the time. I would look in the mirror and be like, “Ugh.” Then I made a promise that I would never do that in front of my daughter. That she would never hear me say that. I also never wanted her to hear me complain about doing the dishes, or other things that are mundane around the house. Now, when she sees me doing those things, she wants to do them too. She doesn’t complain about herself in the mirror either. Our kids pick up our negativity as well as our positivity, so we have to watch both. 

38:10 – Kaysee’s Favorite Supplement

Total Human^®. You get it all in that little bundle. I seem to get better sleep when I take the night pack. When I wake up, I’m ready to go. I don’t hit the snooze button.

39:50 – Her Favorite Snack Foods

The Chocolate Cookie Dough Protein Bites. I love them. Put them in my Easter basket [laughs].

40:50 – Favorite Digital Workout Programs

I love the Barbell Onnit 6, which I’m doing now, and I love the Kettlebell Onnit 6. For the Onnit in 30s, I like Decompress To Defy.

42:30 – What Inspires Kaysee

I’m on Instagram a lot. So, I make sure that people that I follow are people that motivate me, inspire me, and offer something that puts positivity into my life and helps me keep going. I follow a lot of women that are fit and use different workout tools. My daughter inspires me, obviously. I want to become better at everything. I just make sure that whatever I’m reading, whatever is in front of my eyes, is making me better. If it doesn’t make me better, I don’t partake in it.

43:35 – On Not Over-Dieting

In the past, when I would be in a calorie deficit, I was also losing muscle, and I didn’t want to lose muscle, because I wanted to get stronger. One day, a coworker told me, “You’re about to blow away.” I didn’t want that [laughs], so I decided to bring my calories back to a maintenance level, and that’s where I mostly stay now. That’s how I learned how powerful food and nutrition are. If I don’t eat, or eat crap, my workouts are crap. I feel weak, lethargic, unmotivated. But when my eating is on point, I can move all day. Let’s go!

45:45 – Her Nickname in the Tribe

The Tribe has given me two nicknames: “Butterfly Brooks,” and “Wonder Brooks.” Butterfly refers to my metamorphosis over the years, and Wonder is from Wonder Woman.

48:15 – Surviving a Hurricane

I’ve lived in southern Louisiana all my life. So being around hurricanes as much as I have has taught me to kind of party at the same time. You can’t be inside when there’s no A/C and no power—it’s hotter inside than it is outside. So, we take our lounge chairs and go outside and put cookies or pizza on a barbeque pit and eat that way. It’s like camping. I grew up like that and it never really fazed me. I thought, “We have everything we need. It’s not going to last forever. And we’ll be just fine. We’ll make do with what we’ve got and just keep going.” I will say, I can tolerate the southern heat much better now than when I was not working out.

51:08 – Kaysee’s Book Recommendations

The Untethered Soul [by Michael Alan Singer]. The cover is light blue; it’s got a horse on it. John Wolf recommended that book to me, and it’s helped me tremendously—enough to where I recommended it to my sister who’s a police officer. It’s about escaping your boundaries and finding inner peace. Also, I recommend Breath [by James Nestor]. It really teaches you everything about the power of breathing. It goes into detail and it gets scientific, but I promise you, it’s very interesting. That book got me to try going to sleep with tape on my mouth so I have to breathe through my nose, and it makes a big difference. 

53:05 – Her Favorite Exercise

I love the kettlebell swing. If I had to be consistent with one tool and one movement, I’d choose the kettlebell swing. It builds power in the legs, once you realize that it’s not just swinging with your arms. I am not perfect at it. I still get some crappy reps here and there. But I’ll get some good ones too. I’m still trying to make that mind-body connection and make it consistent. It’s a great feeling of power to lift a kettlebell without using your arms.

54:00 – What To Do on Your First Day in the Gym

Definitely warm up, but not just for five minutes or 10 minutes. Take 15 minutes, doing breathwork at the same time. Avoid the treadmill and go to the weights. One thing that makes the Onnit programs different is the emphasis they put on the warmup. It makes the workout so much more effective, and gives you more range of motion. And don’t go by how sore you are to gauge how the workout was. I thought being sore was the ticket, but that’s not true.

The post “I Made A Promise To My Daughter”: Kaysee Brooks’ Onnit Story appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Daniel Morrow, 34, of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, was one of those. He was so much the opposite of a health and fitness enthusiast, in fact, that he nearly died in his early 20s from kidney and liver damage brought on by drug abuse. But discovering Onnit turned him onto the steel mace, and then to bodyweight training, and now he’s so into the fit life that he gets paid to teach others how to adopt it.

We interviewed Morrow about the Onnit 6 Challenge that started it all, and how the Onnit Tribe—our private support group, available on both Facebook and Discord—helps keep it going.

Onnit: What was life like before you found Onnit?

Daniel Morrow: I was not taking good care of myself. When I was 14, I started drinking and smoking. My first job out of high school was in a restaurant, and my manager spiked my drinks with Ecstasy—MDMA—the whole time I was employed there. My girlfriend caught him doing it. He said the reason he was drugging me was to give me more energy to help me perform my job better. The craziest thing is, when I found out, I didn’t care.

I actually went out and found a drug dealer and started purchasing so much from this guy that he thought I was distributing at parties and raves. He started giving me wholesale prices [laughs]. When he found out I was buying all those drugs just for myself, and buying more every week, even he said, “How are you not dead yet?” I said, “I don’t care. I’m having fun. Leave me alone.”

When I was around 20, I worked as an insurance adviser. I believe that you can’t really promote something if you don’t believe in it enough to use it yourself, so I applied for my company’s insurance. I got declined, but I didn’t even look into why. I just didn’t care. Pretty soon afterward, though, I stopped using drugs. Then, about a decade later, I was working as a financial adviser, and I reapplied for insurance and again got declined, mainly because I had been declined 10 years earlier. This time, I asked to see the files from that first rejection. My physical evaluation showed that, in my early 20s, I was borderline for kidney and liver failure. Bile had been secreting into my bloodstream.

That was a wakeup call to me. I felt like I had been living on borrowed time for the past decade, and that there must be a reason I was still here. I had gotten off drugs, but I still wasn’t taking great care of my health, and now I was finally ready to take it seriously. I knew I had to make some lasting changes if I wanted to live long enough to accomplish my goals in life.

Why do you think you were so self-destructive at such a young age? Did you go through some terrible trauma as a kid?

I really don’t know. I was always a scrawny kid—I weighed only 115 pounds into my mid 20s—and I got bullied all through school. But I don’t think that fully explains why I acted the way I did. I was very nihilistic when I was young. My attitude was, “Nothing matters. What’s the point? Who even cares?” I never bothered to sort through the why behind that thinking.

But I started to make changes when I was 21. I was still partying and using drugs, and one day I woke up and I was massively hungover. I was living at my dad’s, and we had a garden. I found a lot of joy in doing the gardening. So I got up, went out and sat in a lawnchair by the garden, and sparked up a cigarette. I was looking at the garden and the smell of my cigarette smoke suddenly upset my stomach. That’s when I broke down crying and everything came out. “What am I doing with my life? I’m putting all this crap into my body. I’m not going anywhere. Here I am, putting all of this effort into this garden… Why can’t I make my life as beautiful as I can make this garden?”

I went out that day to my cell-phone provider and asked them to change my number, so the negative people I dealt with couldn’t reach me anymore. I packed up my stuff and moved out. I went to my ex-girlfriend’s house and stayed in her spare bedroom in Vancouver. As soon as I got out of my hometown, I didn’t have the cravings anymore. Leaving and not looking back was the jolt I needed to quit everything cold turkey.

So when and how did you find Onnit?

Like I said, after that second decline on the insurance, I got more curious about health and fitness. I found Aubrey Marcus’ book, Own The Day, and I really liked it, along with what his company, Onnit, seemed to be about. A few months later, in the spring of 2020, I decided to sign on for the very first Onnit 6 Challenge, and I chose the Steel Mace program. 

Why did the steel mace appeal to you, and what was your experience with that Challenge?

I chose the steel mace because it looked bad ass! One of the things I liked in Aubrey’s book was the idea that working out can be about playing and having fun. I knew I wouldn’t be consistent with any kind of training until I could gamefy it in some way.

I tend to do a lot of things impulsively, but if I don’t have something to look forward to, and people to hold me accountable, I probably won’t keep doing it. That’s why doing conventional workouts in a gym does nothing for me. I wanted some kind of activity that I could do on my time, anytime, anywhere, on my terms. The Onnit 6 Challenge looked like the right fit, and my goal was to use it to establish a consistent habit of being active, and to get to know myself better as a result.

One of the things I learned about myself during the Challenge is that I’m my own worst enemy. In the beginning, I thought I had to power through every workout and keep up with what Coach John Wolf was doing. But going hard wasn’t getting me any results. It taught me that I could push myself hard for 20 minutes at a time, but I wasn’t learning to use the steel mace properly. Wolf spent most of the Challenge trying to get me to slow down and realize that the steel mace is a very technical tool. You’re constantly pushing and pulling and trying to bend it to activate lines of tension in your body. I started with a 15-pound mace, but I should have been using a 10 or seven-pounder. I didn’t make any true progress until the Challenge was over, but I learned from that mistake. I got a 10-pound mace and did the whole Challenge again, this time really taking the time to master each movement.

Since then, I’ve done almost every Onnit 6 Challenge that has been offered. I’ve gained a lot of definition in my body—I no longer have that dad-bod look. The biggest physical improvement I’ve noticed—and this was my biggest weakness before I found Onnit—is my mobility. My hips are looser now. I can get deeper in my squat, and I don’t struggle to do overhead presses anymore. I can get my arms behind my head to do mace swings. 

Onnit 6 Challenge participants are encouraged to join the Onnit Tribe, where they can get moral support from the other members, as well as socialize. What has your experience been with the Tribe?

At first, I thought it would be the meathead stereotype. I thought it would be people only talking about their workouts and they might be very judgmental, so I stayed behind the scenes. I was very reserved in what I would say in posts. But then I saw how great John was leading the Tribe. I thought, “If this is the kind of guy who’s running the community, I’m pretty sure all of those biases and fears I have are non-existent.” Everyone was warm and supportive all the time, and I was amazed at how much they shared about their own lives. Seeing other people put themselves out on the ledge helps you do the same yourself. It’s easier to share when others are sharing. So I thought, “Maybe I should be experiencing this instead of running from it.”

As I got more comfortable sharing my story, I made friends in the Tribe. Tim Sibley is now a good friend of mine, and we talk almost every day. I found that sharing my journey helped other people get going when they were stuck, and it did the same for me. I had never been consistent with physical activity before, but the Tribe kept me going with it. I realized that if I were to drop out, I wouldn’t just be letting myself down, I’d be letting these other people down too. I’d be letting the whole team down. Doing something just for myself is not a big enough reason to motivate me. I need something bigger.

I’ll tell you how I got comfortable with the idea of posting in the Tribe. I would make a post, and then abandon social media for hours. I didn’t want to think about what people might be commenting on it. I’d come back maybe eight hours later, long enough so that I had pretty much forgotten what I even wrote. That’s when I’d see that it wasn’t as bad as I thought. No matter what I said, everyone responded positively. That made me want to stick around and engage in real-time conversations. We all fear being vulnerable with people because we don’t know the response we’ll get, but in the Tribe, it will always be encouraging.

Like I said, I was always scrawny. I’m only 123 pounds now. One of my nicknames in high school was Sasquatch, because I’m so hairy [laughs]. I’ve always been self-conscious, so I never cared for muscle shirts or tank tops that showed too much. A lot of people post pictures of themselves in the Tribe working out in muscle shirts, so I finally did too, and people told me I looked good! Now muscle shirts are my favorite type of shirt. I wear them all the time in the summer, or at least for the two months of the year that it’s warm enough in Canada [laughs].

What is your lifestyle like now that you’re a fit guy?

Before Onnit, I would go to bed as late as 3:00 a.m. and sleep till 3:00 in the afternoon. Now I’m in bed by nine or 10 every night [laughs]. I’m so regimented that it’s almost turned into a bad habit. Every morning I have a greens drink, meditate, and do my workout, and now if I don’t do them all in that order, it throws off my whole day. I’m too consistent! So now I’m working on being more fluid. 

Has Onnit helped you in any other areas of life?

It’s helped me start a new career. When the pandemic hit, I had been working doing traditional business loans. When all the businesses suddenly shut down, no one was giving out money, so I was basically out of work. I was really getting into fitness through Onnit, so I studied and got a nutrition certification, and also got certified in Animal Flow. I wanted my next move to be coaching other people to get healthier.

I was trying to figure out who my audience was for coaching, and I got into crypto currencies at the same time. I realized there was a whole ecosystem of people who do nothing but sit in front of their computers for up to 20 hours a day coding and building stuff online. They’re not healthy; they’re not mobile. So I thought there could be an opportunity for me there in helping them.

I learned how to network in the Tribe, and I started doing the same on Discord, a social media platform where a lot of crypto people hang out. I started putting what I was learning about fitness into that community. Soon, the founders of crypto companies started reaching out to me, saying, “We need to focus on health within our organization. Can you run some fitness classes for us?” Next thing you know, I was brought on as a community manager. Now I’m able to codify my values into the organization for these businesses.

I help write the rules for these organizations. I design systems and procedures to put an emphasis on health and well-being for their employees. Crypto companies are all international organizations, so we contract with people all over the world. You’ll have people staying up till 3:00 in the morning to stay engaged with another team, and that’s not healthy. So I’ve initiated policies like having a team lead in our US zone, in our Asian zone, and the European zone, so staffers can work more normal hours. Now we don’t have people burning the midnight oil, and burning themselves out as a result. I also set up out-of-office areas and after-hours programs for employees, so when they’re off work, they can socialize with each other, which helps build camaraderie.

Do you use any Onnit supplements?

I take Alpha BRAIN^® in the morning with food. I’ve found that if I don’t eat with it, it bothers my stomach, but as long as I eat I’m fine. I like it for focus and memory. I think it helps me listen more actively on calls.

Do you have any advice for people who may be on the fence about joining the Tribe?

The sooner you get in there, the sooner you’ll get ahead in life. I know it’s human nature to have reservations and biases, but my tip is to put those off to the side and give it a chance.

The post “Doing It For Myself Is Not Enough”: Q&A With Onnit Tribe Member Daniel Morrow appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Zaki Abdul Malik rediscovered his passion for fitness when a late transit bus forced him to walk home one night. Feeling more empowered than angry, Malik made the walk a habit, and it led him back to the sports and martial arts training he enjoyed as a younger man. Now he’s participating in Onnit 6 Challenges, making up his own workouts, and teaching his son to make a habit of exercise that he enjoys.

Malik tells his story, part of our ongoing Onnit Stories series, in a live video interview conducted by Onnit’s Director of Education, Shane Heins. See below for the video, as well as an edited transcript of the highlights, time-stamped so you can find those moments in the video. Stay up to date with Onnit Stories by following Onnit’s Instagram TV (IGTV), where a new one appears every other week. 

Zaki Abdul Malik Show Notes

3:05 – Finding Onnit

I was messing around on YouTube, looking at some motivational videos, and I came across one by Joe Rogan. He was talking about being the hero of your own story, and man, that one really hit home. He started talking about Onnit, and I could see the two had a connection. I went onto the Onnit website, and I saw that you guys were going to have an Onnit 6 Challenge. I said, “Let me just jump in and see what’s going on.” Initially, seeing the monetary gain that could come from winning was definitely one of the motivating factors [Editor’s note: Onnit 6 Challenge finalists are eligible to win $6,000, among other grand prizes]. 

I joined the Onnit Tribe as part of the Challenge, and I went in with the mindset that this is a competition that I needed to win. But I started to notice that while I was being quiet and doing my own thing, everybody in the Tribe seemed to be sharing more. I began to make a few connections there with individuals, and I learned that the Onnit 6 Challenge is a lot different from any other challenge that I’ve ever done. The Tribe is a lot different from every other group that I’ve ever been in. I didn’t win, but I came out of the Onnit 6 Challenge feeling like a part of a community of people that are all going for the same thing that I am.

8:00 – Life Before Onnit

I’m 5’6”, and it got to a point where I was tipping the scale at about 260 pounds. I like to be active with my kids, and I was beginning to feel like I was losing a step when I played with them, and I was too young to feel like that. I carried a lot of weight in my midsection, and I had read an article about that type of fat being linked to heart attacks. My father, bless his soul, that’s how he passed on, and so I didn’t want to be in that number.

But it took me a while before I really got started with fitness. Then one day my car broke down and I was waiting on a bus, and the bus didn’t come at the time that it was supposed to. I just began to walk. My apartment wasn’t really that far from the bus stop, and when I got home, I felt good. I said, “You know what? I’m going to go ahead and start doing that every evening.” I made it a competition to see if I could walk down to my apartment faster than the bus would get there.

That was the jump-start I needed. That tricked my body to get exercise without really thinking of it as exercise. I was able to stop being sedentary all day long. I started to see that belly fat going away, and that got me thinking about fitness stuff that had interested me in my youth. I used to do a little bit of boxing, a little bit of karate, and at one point I even started watching some Billy Blanks Tae Bo^® stuff. So I got back into those things.

12:10 – Zaki and Shane Talk About How To Make Lasting Changes

Zaki Abdul Malik: Everybody thinks change has to be something major, so they set huge goals like losing 30 pounds in a month, or whatever. But that’s extreme, and too hard to maintain. You do better to change small things and stay consistent with them.

Shane Heins: A lot of folks coming into the Onnit 6 Challenge for the first time think they have to make major changes in six weeks, because that’s how long the Challenge runs. I think we do a decent job of helping them make progress in that time, but by the end of the program they recognize that six weeks is just the beginning. If they stay in the Tribe and keep doing more Challenges, I’ve noticed that by around the two-year mark, they have massive revelations, and see where they are now compared to where they were two years ago as night and day. Part of having that success is giving yourself the grace to realize that huge change takes time. Rather than push, push, push all the time, you need to know when to back off.

16:45 – Getting Back to Fitness Like a Kid 

I am a certified workforce development coach, and I love it. A lot of people look at dollar amounts that they can make when they’re trying to decide on a career path, but I always ask, “Is the job anything like what brought you enjoyment when you were a youth?” Because that’s what will make you happy now. I ask the same thing about fitness. I work with my son and his group at school—it’s a special-needs group—doing rec activities. I ask the kids, “What are some fun things that you guys like to do?” If they like to play basketball, I have them do jump shots—just without the ball. If they like to pitch, I have them pitch without the ball. I’m just tieing things that are dear to them back to movement, so they stay active and associate exercise with fun.

19:00 – How to Deal with Adversity

John [Wolf, Onnit’s Chief Fitness Officer] says in one of the Onnit 6 workouts that life is all about ramping up and ramping down. So, when times get tough, I think about that. Sometimes you have to come out of your comfort zone to achieve things. For some of us, being sedentary is our comfort zone. But once you start moving, you won’t be comfortable sitting still anymore. 

23:30 – How to Stop Procrastinating

You really just have to care about that thing that you’re procrastinating about doing. To me, procrastination doesn’t exist. If you keep putting something off, it’s because it is just not that important to you. I found my consistency and drive for exercise again that day when I walked home from the bus stop, and the Onnit Challenges help me keep from putting workouts off again.

24:40 – Fitness and Fatherhood

Being active makes me a lot more jovial around my son, because feeling good on the inside translates to feeling good on the outside. Exercise… it’s an endorphin thing. It just makes you happier. Being more active myself has made him more active too. Kids today live in the reality show and video game world, and that makes me want to set an example that much more. I teach my son that you can like what you like, but you still have to be physical.

Sometimes he’ll do some of the stretches from the Onnit 6 programs, and he’ll say, “Hey, Dad, check me out.” Is it as intense as what we do in the Onnit 6 workouts, or perfect form? No. But he’s doing it, and that’s the number one thing. At the same time, if he catches me working out and I see him looking, I’m like, “Let me go ahead and push these last three reps hard, so he sees.” [Laughs]

36:30 – Zaki’s Favorite Supplements

I’ve tried the Onnit Whey Protein and Plant-Based Protein, and I’m taking fish oil. I was experimenting with ginkgo [biloba], but the Tribe members talk a lot about Alpha BRAIN^®, so I’ve been thinking about giving that a try. As far as the protein powders go, I like the Whey Protein because I think it dissolves a little better than the Plant-Based Protein. It also helps me stay satiated longer. 

41:20 – Zaki’s Favorite Training Tools

I have kettlebell adapters, which are a tool you can use to make a kettlebell out of weight plates. I used that for the Onnit in 30 Kettlebell workouts. The next thing I’m going to get is some steel clubs. 

43:40 – Zaki’s Favorite Digital Exercise Program

The first Onnit 6 I did was Bodyweight, and that was awesome. I also combined the flows from the Onnit in 30 Mobilized Strength workouts with the Onnit in 30 Decompress to Defy workouts. I mixed them together and that was really fun. 

46:00 – How He Stays Disciplined and Focused

A lot of self-talk. For example, in the Onnit 6 workouts, where you have progressions going from Level 1 exercises to Level 2 or Level 3, I might feel like staying on Level 1. But instead of staying there, I’ll tell myself I should try Level 2 and see how it feels. “Zaki, you know you can do it. You’ve got it. You see it. Just do it.” At the same time, I know that discipline doesn’t have to be so strict that I beat myself up about it. 

The post “I Tricked My Body To Exercise”: Zaki Abdul Malik’s Onnit Story appeared first on Onnit Academy.

This week’s Onnit Story, a live interview with someone who’s done something inspiring since discovering our brand, features Sarah Gawron—a New York City trainer. Gawron learned to embrace her dance background to open up a limitless repertoire of movement skills that have her clients not only getting great results but enjoying workouts with a whole new appreciation. See below for Gawron’s interview, conducted by Onnit Chief Fitness Officer John Wolf, as well as an edited transcript of the highlights, time-stamped so you can find those moments in the video.

Stay up to date with Onnit Stories by following Onnit’s Instagram TV (IGTV), where a new one appears every other week. 

Sarah Gawron Show Notes

5:00 – How Sarah Got Onnit

I am a strength coach in New York City, and I’ve always been drawn to a more unconventional type of training. My background is dance, so I’ve always focused on the movement side of things—not breaking the body up into parts to train. I like to train the way we move throughout the day, and explore different ways to move, whether it is running, jumping, crawling, and so on. I also train for longevity, because, like many other people, I want to be moving well into my 70s and beyond.

Years ago, I was teaching at a studio that also did unconventional training—a lot of bodyweight and kettlebells—and one of the trainers there asked me, “Have you ever looked into Onnit?” I was familiar with it, since I had read their articles, but I didn’t want to travel halfway across the country to visit the Onnit Gym. Finally, after a few years, I went out to Austin to take one of Onnit’s certification courses, and the moment I stepped into the facility, I thought, “This is unlike any other experience.”

There was something about the energy within the space, and everyone was very welcoming. Prior to that, I was always the person in the corner of the gym doing these funky kettlebell flows, or flinging around a steel mace, and people were like, “What was that?” Now I was in an environment that spoke a similar language.

Needless to say, I went through the certification course and it truly changed my outlook on how I trained, as well as how I live my life. I love how Onnit’s training isn’t black and white. How it recognizes that every human is built differently and will react differently. I think in the year afterward, I went out to visit Onnit about six times.

12:05 – What Sarah Has Learned About Movement

There were so many times when I would hesitate, or experience doubt, because of how I would approach movement. But it’s OK for movement to just be expressive. You can create many different ways to move—there’s no right or wrong. Onnit’s education system helped me feel comfortable with that. Fast-forwarding to now, it is really refreshing to see how many more people are approaching training in that way. Thinking that it can be creative and it should be expressive.

You can find moments in your training that are true bliss, where you’re being your honest self, and you’re in that flow state. It doesn’t matter what the tool you’re using is. Movement is nourishing. The mental state you get from it is just as important as focusing on the physical aspect of your training. I love finding that balance of not just training your body but your mind. So, for me, Onnit’s education system said, “Yes, Sarah. You can keep doing this.” Going through Onnit’s courses sent the message that I was OK to continue to explore, because that’s how I’ll grow and evolve.

19:40 – How Training Makes You Fit for Life

One of the things you’ll take away from training is how it relates to your work environment and every relationship you have. They’re all connected. Once you realize that, you make different choices. A light bulb goes on and you’re like, “Oh, if I can do this in training, if I can conquer my fear in the gym, then asking for that bonus at work won’t be as scary.” You learn that because you did something really hard in the gym you can do other hard things.

28:00 – Sarah’s Favorite Training Tool

I would say a kettlebell is my tool of choice. It is so versatile, and you can move in many different planes with it. You can do a lot with just one kettlebell. I’ve always trained with the goal of getting the most for my time and energy. So I might deadlift the kettlebell, then bring it up to my chest, squat, and then press overhead. That works the entire body.

I used to do flows like that without even thinking of them as a deadlift, squat, and press. I was just moving because it was fun. That comes from being a dancer. We would court dances and movements, and you would start with one movement and then just add to it. That’s how I used to train… and still do.

33:25 – Training as Play

It’s so hard, especially as adults, to trust that exercise can be effective without being so structured. Everyone starts out so worried, like, “Did I execute the move properly? Did I count my reps correctly? Did I do the correct amount of reps?” Yes, it’s important to develop skills and technique. But once you’ve got that down, allow yourself to be completely free of any judgment from yourself. Don’t, worry about what other people might think, and express yourself through your own movement. When you do that, it’s such a beautiful thing to see, because we all move differently.

Once they let their guard down, I see my students enjoy exercise so much more. I see it in their smile. One of my favorite things is to have my students do a free flow, where they just make up their own movements on the spot. I’m like,
“Yes, it might be awkward because you’re used to me telling you what to do, or having another trainer or coach tell you, but fight through it for the first 10 seconds and then you’ll see that your body’s going to move how it wants to move.”

At the end of the day, human beings were meant to move. We get stuck in a regimented structure, and we don’t allow ourselves to just move how we want to naturally. But when we do, it’s a beautiful thing, because how I move is completely different from how you move, and if we can be honest and express ourselves, it’s just a beautiful thing to experience.

37:15 – Sarah’s Favorite Supplements and Foods

I love the Onnit Plant-Based Protein. I am plant-based, and it’s really hard to find a protein powder that has a smooth texture and good taste and is also a clean product. That’s what draws me to Onnit products the most: the quality. Knowing that they’re clean and made from the highest-quality ingredients.

44:05 – If You’re New to Training, What Equipment Should You Buy First?

I’d say get kettlebells. You can do a lot with a light, medium, and heavy kettlebell. That would be an excellent investment. That will allow you to develop your basic movement skills, like your squat, your hinge, push, and pull. Then, if you want to pick up a barbell or another tool, those same skills will translate.

49:25 – Which Onnit Certification Should I Start With?

Foundations is the first one that you should go through, as it sets you up to do all of the other certs. You’ll learn the principles of the Onnit education system. You can take the course virtually now.

55:45 – How to Connect with Sarah 

If you are ever in New York City, in Manhattan, that is where I am. I train a lot of people online, virtually, but also in person, out of Solace New York. You can connect with me on Instagram, @_coach_sarah, or on my website, coach-sarah.com. I love meeting new people. If you are visiting NYC, please reach out and I’d love to flow with you or grab some good, delicious food in the city.

The post “Free Yourself Of Judgment”: Sarah Gawron’s Onnit Story appeared first on Onnit Academy.

We talked to Cairney about his troubled upbringing, battle with alcoholism, and why, at an age when most seem to be playing it safer, he’s still exploring uncharted waters (last one, we promise!).

Onnit: You’re a boat captain, which has to be one of the coolest jobs in the world. Tell us about that line of work.

Jamie Cairney: I used to run a lot of dolphin-sighting and eco boat tours, but when the pandemic hit, that mostly stopped. Now I do a lot of private charters, and I contract out as a captain. So I might go to Maine, Michigan, or California, and sail around those places for a few months at a time. I’ve been able to see the country. I also do boat deliveries for people who want their boats moved. I sail them north in the spring and south in the winter. Cape Cod to Fort Lauderdale is a popular route, since Florida is a springboard to the Bahamas and the Caribbean.

Can you tell us a good fish story?

How about one with a whale? [Laughs] My last job was running whale watch tours in Alaska. Last summer, I was on an 80-foot catamaran with about 50 people, and one of them asked if I ever see the whales breach. I said no, because you usually see that only in warmer climates.

I took the boat to the North Pass, which is usually a pretty good spot to see whales because it’s narrow and there’s a tremendous flow of nutrient-rich water, which makes it like a buffet line for whales. That turned out to be the right move, because it was full of whale activity. We saw orcas and humpbacks, and they were swimming up to the boat and sticking their heads out of the water.

Suddenly, this giant behemoth from the deep shot himself out of the water in front of us. It was a full-grown, adult male humpback, and he breached so close to the boat that I thought his pectoral fin was going to splash onto the deck. For a split second, we were eyeball to eyeball, and his eyeball looked like the size of a Volkswagen! He must have been the size of four tour buses end to end, and there he was, maybe maybe 30 feet in front of me. It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.

How were you living before you found Onnit?

I’ve always been active, but I also used to party like a rock star. I was really into martial arts in my 20s and 30s, but in my mid 40s, I just let it all go and I became a mess. My drinking got really bad—I was going through almost a liter of vodka a day. I started missing work, and when I did go, I could barely get through it. My wife knew what was going on and she’d say things like, “I’m really worried about you.” And I’d say, “Yeah, so am I.” She knows my personality, and that I’m the kind of person that if you tell me not to do something, I’m going to do it even more. So the best thing she could do was not be pushy. My daughter, thankfully, was too young at the time to really know what I was doing.

I remember walking out to my car one day and I just felt like an old man—I was hunched over and frail. I thought, “This is killing me. I’ve got to stop.” But I didn’t… yet. Not too long afterward, I found myself in the emergency room with alcohol poisoning.

At that point, I thought, “I have a wife and kid, this is ridiculous. I need to get my act together.” I quit drinking then and there.

Really? On the spot?

I never really had a physical addiction to alcohol, so I didn’t have to go to AA or anything. Looking at my lifestyle then, a lot of people would say that I was a functional alcoholic, but I never identified as one. When I decided to quit, I told myself, “I’m not a problem drinker, I’m a problem thinker. If I can just get my head straight, everything will take care of itself.” And that’s what happened.

If I told myself I wasn’t going to drink for 30 days, I knew that would seem like too much and I would break down and drink again. But I learned that if I could tell myself that I wasn’t going to drink for the next hour, I could make it. Then, after that hour was up, I’d tell myself to set a goal to not drink for the rest of the afternoon, and then for the rest of the day. After a few days like that, I felt I had momentum, because I didn’t think I could get that far in the beginning. That thin line of sobriety became a thick rope, and then a steel cable. Now we’re coming up on three years that I’ve been sober. I won’t say that I never, ever drink, but these days, I’ve learned to control it. I can have a drink once in a while on special occasions and I don’t go crazy. It’s not like the old days when I’d have one drink and then be like, “It’s off to Vegas!” [Laughs]

Congratulations. Why do you think your drinking became such a problem in your 40s? Did something trigger it?

I had a lot of anger and resentment about things that happened to me when I was a kid. I didn’t realize it when I was younger, but I understand it now. The drinking was just a way to numb myself. 

Everyone says they have a screwed up family, but mine is right up there. My family would give anyone a run for their money as far as dysfunction goes. I had a turbulent childhood, and there was domestic violence. The police were at our house regularly. When I was 12, my parents got divorced, and I am the spitting image of my dad, so staying with my mom was bound to cause trouble.

When I was 15, my mom threw me out of the house. She had been stashing some money in a dresser drawer, and she came home one day and couldn’t find it. She asked me where it was, and I said I have no idea. She said, “Well, it was there, and now it’s gone. You were the only one home, so it must have been you.”

I had just woken up and I was in boxer shorts with nothing else on. She grabbed me by the hair and dragged me to the front door and literally kicked me out. It was January, and we lived in Canada. I was absolutely freezing, but she said, “You’re not getting back into the house.”

Once I realized that she meant it, I ran down the street to a friend’s house. He lived about a mile away. I got there, and as I waited for him to answer the door, I thought, “Their doormat is really warm.” I looked down and saw that my feet were soaked with blood. My friend’s mom answered the door, looked at me, and said, “What in the world…” She knew my mom was nuts and she had almost been waiting for something like this to happen. She let me in and I lived with them until I was 18. 

But just for the record, I didn’t steal any money! My brother later opened the drawer and found it—the cash had been there the whole time, and my mom just hadn’t seen it. Still, she never apologized or admitted she was wrong.

OK, you beat alcohol and exorcized some of your demons… Now how did you find your way to Onnit?

When I quit drinking, I suddenly had all this extra energy. I started rearranging the house, and then I wanted to repaint it [laughs]. I began working out again, and I bought the Insanity^®  program from Beachbody. I liked it, but it was just a workout program—you work out and that’s it. It didn’t connect you with anyone or do anything to change your lifestyle. But I do credit it for introducing me to the concept of training at home, and how effective that can be.

Eventually, I joined a gym, and I was going there until the pandemic hit in spring 2020. That made the gym close, but I didn’t mind, since it wasn’t really my scene anyway. I remembered how much I liked the Insanity^® program, so I thought I would start working out at home again, but I figured there must be something newer and better than Insanity^® out there now, so I went online to look for workouts. That’s when I found Onnit.

The Onnit 6 Bodyweight program intrigued me, but I was intimidated by some of the moves. I thought, “I don’t think I can make my hips do that.” But the workouts looked so cool, I wanted to be able to do them. I did some more research and I found a video of [Onnit Chief Fitness Officer] John Wolf saying that if you want to do Onnit, start with the Onnit 6 Challenge Durability program… and life’s never been the same since.

How did you like Durability?

The workouts almost seemed too easy at first, but I could feel the difference within a few weeks. You don’t know how bad you feel until you feel good again. I became so much more fluid in every way. It wasn’t hard to get out of bed anymore! In fact, everything I did felt easier than I remembered, whether it was crouching down to get something out of a cupboard or reaching up to grab something. I had been getting more slumped over and fragile, and then, after six weeks of Durability, I was standing taller with my shoulders back. I could breathe deeper. 

When I quit drinking, I also lost interest in crap food. Now it actually grosses me out. I am much pickier about what I eat now. I buy more organic, sustainable foods. I buy in-season and local. I’m more aware of what I put in my body because I want to start treating it right. Thanks to better eating, and Onnit, I’ve lost 30 or 40 pounds.

If you had seen me a year before, you would have thought that I was an old man who couldn’t even walk across his driveway. And now here I was, getting honored in a fitness competition: I had improved so much that I was selected as a semi-finalist in that Onnit 6 Challenge.

Onnit 6 Challenge participants are given access to the Onnit Tribe. Did you take advantage of it?

Not at first, because I’m not a big social media person. But every time I posted something in there, I was amazed at how well received it was, immediately. If I just wrote that I did my workout that day, people would say, “That’s awesome that you did your workout! Good for you.” Everyone was so supportive and encouraging and nice.

It’s amazing that the Tribe came into my life when it did. When there was so much social separation due to the pandemic, this group of people came together and  connected through exercise and a desire to be better human beings. My social circle has always been small, but it’s tight. The Tribe expanded it with this nurturing community that is always right there for me. Some of the friends I have made through the Tribe are some of the best friends I have ever had. Tim Sibley and I talk all the time. People in the Tribe have invited me over to their house when I’m in their town.  How could something so virtual and remote connect people so well?

Can you answer that question yourself?

Well, I think part of it is that people in the Tribe don’t talk about any of the stuff you hear all the time everywhere else. There’s no politics, no negativity. It’s the only forum on the internet that I want any part of.

How has Onnit helped your personal development?

I appreciate my family more now. I don’t take them for granted like I did when I was drinking, and I’m glad that I can be in better shape for my daughter, who’s 10. I don’t care that I may be the oldest dad in the schoolyard when I go to pick her up, as long as I’m the fittest [laughs].

In general, Onnit has given me the ability to see what’s possible. If I hadn’t seen, at first, how I could change my body, I never would have known how much more I could get out of life. Since my first Challenge, I’ve written a book! Before, I would have thought, “Why would anyone want to read something I wrote?” But now I think, “Maybe they would.” I used to talk myself out of things all the time, and now I have the confidence to try them.

So my book is called The Fearless Tiki. I used to work in an area that was popular with tourists, and there was a guy who took people out on a boat to drink. It was like a floating tiki hut, and because of that, other boaters didn’t take it seriously. The tiki boat got shunned by the other boats. But when the water was rough, this guy would still take people out, even when cruise ships wouldn’t dare to. So he got a reputation as the “Fearless Tiki.”

Inspired by that, I came up with this children’s story about a little tiki boat that wants to be treated like a real boat. He goes out on the ocean one day to rescue a boy when none of the other boats have the courage to, and he earns a hero’s welcome when he comes back. I got this amazing artist to do watercolor illustrations for it, and I’m going to self-publish the Fearless Tiki next month. I plan to donate what I make on it to a foundation that supplies life jackets to kids.

I also have plans to open an Airstream B&B. Picture this: you’re staying in an Airstream on a secluded beach. There’s a hot tub right outside. A gourmet chef arrives to prepare you a dinner, and then leaves you to eat under the stars. There will be different packages you can choose from, depending on whether you’re celebrating a wedding, a family vacation, or whatever. 

One thing I’ve learned from Onnit is that how you make people feel is what matters most. It’s not what they get, but how they feel. That’s why Onnit has such fiercely loyal, rabid fans. Another company might be able to put out a product like Total Human^® for half the price, but I bet no one would buy it. It’s because Onnit makes you feel like you’re being taken care of that it’s products are successful. 

Look at the Onnit 6 programs and Challenge. When I was doing Insanity^®, [program creator] Shaun T never called me up and had a conversation with me about how I was doing, but [Onnit Director of Fitness Education] Shane Heins does when I’m doing Onnit 6. The people at Onnit care about their customers. That’s what helped me get the concept for my Airstream business. I want to sell a feeling in the same way. I want people to show up thinking that they’re going to be staying in a trailer, but walk out feeling like they were on vacation at a five-star hotel. 

Since you mentioned Total Human^®, are there any Onnit supplements you use regularly?

Onnit’s products are the only supplements that, when I take them, I actually feel a difference. I take Total Human^® myself, but the real game-changer for me has been New MOOD^®. I’m happier when I take it. It’s easier for me to dismiss things that would otherwise drive me crazy. If I take New MOOD^®, and someone cuts me off in traffic, I can say it’s no big deal. Of course, it’s not a tranquilizer, but I feel like it gives me much more control over my bad moods.

What would your advice be to someone who’s interested in Onnit, and maybe the Onnit Tribe, but hasn’t pulled the trigger yet to join?

I believe that if you discover Onnit, you’re being presented with that opportunity for a reason, so choose wisely. If you put a little into Onnit, you will get 100-times that back. And the community that Onnit creates with the Tribe is what makes that possible.

I believe that people in general are more connected than we realize. I think that if you checked in with everyone in the Tribe at, say, 7:30 one night, and you asked them what they’re thinking at that exact moment, you’d find that some of them are thinking of the exact same things. When you go to a familiar place every day, with familiar people, it creates an alignment between all of you.

When I was sailing in the Gulf of Alaska, I wouldn’t see another boat for days at a time. You start to feel like you’re the only person on the planet—it’s a feeling of isolation but also oneness with the ocean, the sky, and the stars at the same time. You’re alone but you’re still connected, and I get a similar feeling from being in the Tribe. The Tribe gives you this feeling of connection no matter where you are in life. 

The post “Onnit Helps Me See What’s Possible”: Q&A With Onnit Tribe Member Jamie Cairney appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Through the Onnit 6 fitness transformation Challenges, and the Onnit Tribe—our private Facebook support group—Morales gained self-confidence, improved her health, and embraced a community of kindred spirits. And before long, those changes started showing up in how she looked.

Morales was interviewed live by Shane Heins, Onnit’s Director of Fitness Education, for this week’s Onnit Story—part of an ongoing series where we feature real Onnit community members who have changed their lives with our help. Watch the interview below, or see the edited transcript of the highlights, time-stamped so you can find these moments in the video.

You can stay up to date with Onnit Stories by following Onnit’s Instagram TV (IGTV), where a new one appears every other week. 

Julia Morales Show Notes

4:40 – Getting Onnit

Julia Morales: I’ve always known that I wanted to do something greater—to give back. Standing up for others has always been important to me. But I wasn’t always standing up for myself, and people weren’t receiving my message because I wasn’t taking care of myself. While physical appearance doesn’t equal your worth, I didn’t want my appearance to get in the way of my message. I didn’t want how I was treating myself to be a detriment to reaching other people.

I heard about Onnit in the early days of the Aubrey Marcus podcast. It was during a time where I was really working on myself, and doing some deep diving on what it means to be an adult. I was trying to figure out for myself what it means to stand up and use my voice and be confident. I wanted to work on my mental and emotional self, but also my physical self, so that people could see confidence radiate from me. So when I found Onnit, the first program that I bought was Onnit 6 Steel Mace—because nothing says confidence like wielding a mace around like you just came from a battlefield.

9:15 – Joining the Onnit Tribe

I saw there was this Facebook community right at the start of the pandemic. When I got involved with the Tribe, I was still experiencing a lot of turmoil with my body image. I saw the Tribe as an opportunity to share what I was going through.

I had done tons of diets and exercise programs before, and the common denominator was that I was always doing them all alone—and I would beat myself up when it wasn’t going well. So when I found this tight-knit community of people who didn’t care about the scale, or about your background, or athletic ability, it was a relief to me, because I just wanted to be healthy. I always wanted to be active, loving, joyful, and passionate about my life. But until I found the Tribe, it didn’t feel like there was a place for me to do that.

Coming into the Onnit Tribe, I was able to share my progress on the Steel Mace program, and the fact that I was struggling with myself and my weight. Right away, I had people telling me, “Give yourself grace. Ditch the scale, just keep going.” These people, very lovingly, gave me tips on how to correct things. It was such a relief to find a space where I could just see where I was in my fitness journey with no judgments.

I was able to lean on others when I needed to, and I grew to trust myself more. Slowly, I could feel my judgments about myself dissipate. The Tribe was a space for me to be myself, and that has ultimately given me permission to be myself around other people in my life—not just on the internet.

14:55 – On Body Image

I always felt that I should be smaller. That I should look a certain way. I had this feeling that looking better was the only value that I could bring to the table, and that showed up in a lot of my romantic relationships as well as in my friendships. It was all about being attractive. “It’s how I look, not my value as a person.”

I was so worried about being accepted. All I wanted was to be loved, to be heard, and to have something to say. My diets and workouts were never about nutrition and health—they were me subconsciously punishing myself. Eventually,  what I found is that I am who I am, and I’m worthy of feeding my body. My value as a person is not attached to my size or my presentation.

The Tribe was so helpful when I would post that I was having a bad day. I’d get 70 comments on a post saying, “Ditch the scale. Who cares? You’re doing incredible.” I found a ton of empowerment through the Onnit 6 Challenges. I began to look at my life not as how I could change the way I look, but as how I can slowly add blocks to what I’m doing and build up to a longer-term goal.

I could finally say to myself, “While I’m not where I would like to be in this moment, I’m still incredibly happy, because I’m strong, I’m mobile, and I’m at peace with myself.” I like what I see in the mirror now because I love myself. So my journey with body image has been about acceptance, and having the humility and the grace to understand that I might mess up along the way, and that that’s OK. I can always keep going. I can always add another one percent instead of trying to go from 0 to 100 all the time.

Of course I still care about how I look on the outside, but I don’t let it define me. I’ve discovered this base level of who I am, and then added layers to it—whether that’s through the way I do my hair, or by wearing glitter, or my favorite Onnit shirt while I work out. These things aren’t the base of my self-worth; they’re just outward expressions of what I already feel about myself on the inside. If we all took the time to look at how we choose to express ourselves as amplifiers of who we are deep down, I really feel like the world would be a more colorful, vibrant place.

26:45 – On Moderation

Every time I would diet or exercise really hard, I’d crash and burn. I was tired of starting over. Tired of feeling I had to keep reinventing who I was. Instead of scrapping everything I had been doing, I started to look at what had been working, and slowly began to build on that. 

In the past, I had had my dream body. I lost 100 pounds in a very short amount of time. But when I got to that place, I was miserable. I hated myself. I was in a very toxic relationship. I had achieved this goal, but the person I became to get there was not who I wanted to be.

My journey now is about healing, loving myself, and being strong and fit. Yes, it will be hard, but it doesn’t have to be excruciating. I don’t have to suffer along the way. I want to be proud of my body in a whole different way than I ever thought I could be before. Instead of having that dream body, I would love to be able to squat 300 pounds, because that would be epic.

32:30 – Julia’s Favorite Supplement

I take VIRUTech^® IMMUNE Instant. I push myself really hard in my training sessions, so it’s important that I have that immune system support. Also, the Meyer Lemon flavor tastes really good.

33:30 – Favorite Onnit Foods

The Onnit Protein Bites, Cookie Dough… oh, my God. They’re so good. So good. 

34:10 – Favorite Fitness Equipment

The 10-pound steel mace is my favorite piece of equipment. Right now, I’m outfitting my home gym, and it’s been really hard to find dumbbells. But I’m amazed at how much I can do with the steel clubs. They’re super versatile.

35:15 – Favorite Onnit Fitness Programs

I really love the Move and Groove Onnit in 30 workouts. Right now, I’m doing the Onnit 6 Barbell program, but my heart lies with Onnit 6 Steel Mace, and I always recommend that one to people. If you want to feel awesome, like you just walked off a battlefield, get a steel mace.

36:55 – The Fictional Character She Would Use to Describe Herself… and Shane Heins

There’s a popular anime out now called Demon Slayer, and I’m striving to be like the main character, Tanjiro. He fights the bad guys, but he’s always paying homage to them in the fight by seeing the parallels of how he could have been one of them himself.

I think that is such an interesting take on superheroes. Sometimes, we get caught up in, “Those are the bad guys.” We don’t want to be like so-and-so. But I love that this character pauses to see the path he could have gone down. There’s this level of respect when he fights that really resonates with me.

Shane, you would definitely be… So there’s this cartoon called We Bare Bears, which is an adventure about three bears, and they all have different personalities. I feel like you’re all three of them. One of them is shy. One is very analytical, but always has the best jokes at the most random times. And then there’s one that is just pure joy—silly and goofy. I feel like you are all of the We Bare Bears at the same time.

Shane Heins: I’m going to go look them up…

39:50 – Julia’s Biggest Wins

A big but also unexpected win from the Onnit 6 workouts was fixing my anterior pelvic tilt. I always had lower-back pain as a result. One day, I posted photos in the Tribe of me standing to the side, and I could see that in the before picture, my pelvis was tilted forward. In the after shot, it looked much better. I had a duck butt before, and now, I have zero back pain. I used to be in tears almost every night if I didn’t stretch because it hurt so bad, and now, I can be on my feet all day, or go on a long hike, and my back is not an issue.

But confidence, I would say, is my big overall win.

43:00 – Julia’s Brussels Sprouts Recipe For People Who Hate Brussels Sprouts

Part of my journey has been learning to enjoy eating healthy. For so long, I thought eating healthy meant I have to have a salad for every meal. I have to do a green juice. But in learning to optimize my eating, I fell in love with cooking, and now I’m really having fun with it. So here’s my Brussells sprouts recipe.

You buy some beautiful balsamic vinegar and sea salt. Chop the ends off the sprouts, and then cut them in half, and dress them with the vinegar and salt. Now bake them in the oven for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. They’ll come out crunchy on the outside, but soft in the middle. It is so good. I promise you, you will love vegetables after that.

45:00 – What Happens When You Stop Posting In The Tribe

Something you need to know about the Tribe is that if you’re in there and you haven’t posted your workout in a week, there’s somebody who’s missing you. There’s somebody that is going to message you and say, “Just making sure you’re still doing your workout.” It always brings a smile to my face that someone is noticing my hard work, and also caring about what I have to say.

46:25 – Julia’s Mantra

I tell myself I have everything it takes and more. I tend to doubt what I’m capable of, so whether I’m learning a new fitness move, or figuring out how I’m going to like vegetables, I remind myself I’m going to follow through the whole way. For so long, I doubted myself or I stopped when things got hard. Now I have the self-assurance that it’s going to be OK, and I will figure it out. Whether it takes five minutes to Google something, or a year to find something that works for you, you have to keep following through. 

49:10 – Julia’s Advice On Setting Goals

As I said, my goals were to look a certain way, and now they’re to get stronger, to be an awesome future mom, and to be an awesome community member. Overall, my goal is to keep being more me, whatever that means, in the moment.

For those who have a singular goal in mind, like weight loss, my advice is to keep holding onto that goal, but here’s the thing—do not be rigid about how you’re going to achieve it. Realize that it’s going to take a lot of learning along the way to get there. For example, I have this goal to squat 300 pounds. And I have this bodyweight that I would like to be one day, but I’m flexible on how I’ll achieve these things, because each level that I get to along the way will require a different version of myself. You keep growing and learning on the way to a goal, and that affects the path you take to complete it. I can have this goal and keep the discipline it requires, but I also have to be flexible on how I choose to get there and about how long it will take. Keep that in mind, and you’ll have much more fun achieving your goals.

The post “My Value Is Not Attached To My Size”: Julia Morales’ Onnit Story appeared first on Onnit Academy.