Fitness For Mental Health
Fitness is one of the most powerful tools in your toolkit for managing mental health - when used properly. Here, I examine some of the science behind the use of fitness for managing mental health, as well as some of the under-discussed benefits.
Fitness Is Boring
Contrary to expectations, a good fitness approach is actually pretty boring. It’s not about pushing hard and being intense - it’s about finding a slow, sustainable approach that you can stick to for many years consistently. Over time, small incremental changes add up to bigger results.
The Secret to Success is Obsession
The secret to true success is that you have to truly enjoy what you’re doing - and if you do, you’ll sort out everything else along the way. If you want to succeed, finding the enjoyment in the things that you do is often more important than perfectly optimizing your approach, and will result in better results in the long run.
You Shouldn’t Care About Your Bodyfat Percentage
Body composition is a popular metric for measuring overall fitness and physique, but it has significant drawbacks to its use. There are no publicly available and reliable methods for measuring body composition, which means that the metric itself is less useful (and often more discouraging) than it should be. While it may “seem” less scientific or data-focused, in reality, ditching or de-emphasizing body composition in favor of other methods can generally produce better results.
How Do I Build As Much Muscle As Possible?
Building muscle is a lot simpler than you think, if you know how to focus your energy. Here are the (shockingly simple) methods I’ve used to build elite levels of muscle mass, both for myself and my clients, over the past 20 years.