Jason Harrison

How To Coach Change

November 11, 2015 By Jason Harrison

I’ve been thinking a lot about change lately because when you boil my job down to its essence that’s really what I’m supposed to help people do. They come to me because they want to feel better–physically and emotionally–and usually what they think they’re going to get by hiring a coach is a prescription. Eat this. Lift that. Don’t eat this. Don’t do that.

Instead I ask questions like:

“Why are you here?”

“What has your best experience with fitness been?”

“What do you value?”

I never get around to prescribing a diet of any sort. And rather than yelling or cajoling the way a celebrity trainer on The Biggest Loser might, I constantly remind them of their already demonstrated capacity for greatness.

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Am I just a big softy? No, not really. It’s just that I’ve learned a thing or two about change. Believe it or not, we know a lot about human behavior, what allows people to change, and how to develop sustainability. The name for my coaching approach is motivational interviewing, and the technique grew out of psychologists’ work with addiction. The most important aspects of motivational interviewing in the context of fitness are empathy from me and a client-centered approach that assumes varying levels of readiness to change.

How does this play out in practice? Someone who’s resistant to change might hate going to the gym. So in talking to that person about their goals, I might develop with them a weekly goal to put together their gym clothes the evening before a work day. And…

And that’s it. That’s the goal. Simply put your gym clothes in a place where you can see them. Prepare gym shoes, clothes, and bag as if you’re going to the gym on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Demonstrate to yourself that you can do this, experience victory, and create a habit around fitness.

Next week’s goals might be putting those clothes on.

And the week after that the goal might be getting to the gym.

If you’re counting at home, that took about three weeks to get the person who hates the gym to get into the gym. Slow? Yes. Deliberative? Sure. Effective?

Absolutely.

By demonstrating empathy with this person and recognizing their readiness to change, I didn’t front load their fitness with things that they cannot do. I met this person where she was and built success into her program.

I do versions of this deliberative process with clients every week. For some people we work together to develop a goal around reading about fitness. For others we make a goal about grocery shopping. The goals vary from person to person–which is why prescriptions in fitness aren’t often the best way to coach change. The cool thing about this process is that you can do the very same thing for yourself!

Change can feel like an uphill climb.

Think about a change you’ve been wanting to make. Maybe you’re eating too much fast food. But if you say to yourself, “stop eating fast food,” you’ve set yourself up for failure.

Instead, think about why you eat fast food when you do, and develop an incremental strategy for eliminating it from your diet. Hint: Usually one of the first steps toward eliminating fast food from one’s diet is learning how to shop at the grocery store. With that in mind, maybe your goal for the week might be to think about your schedule for the week and to make a grocery list. That’s step one. Step two for next week might be to make a grocery list and actually go to the grocery store. Step three might be list, grocery shopping, and trying ONE new recipe. The key is you can’t judge yourself (“why can’t I just stop eating fast food?”) and you have to acknowledge your own reticence to change. Change is hard, remember? So acknowledge that.

Not everyone can afford to hire a coach, but everyone can learn to practice more empathy and to troubleshoot their least healthy behaviors. There’s no need to wait until New Year’s resolution season.

So You Wanna “Work Out.” Now What?

November 4, 2015 By Jason Harrison

I was at a local gym yesterday and saw a man walking around with a piece of paper on which his “program” was written. He was clinically obese, didn’t move well, but he was committed to working out. Problem was, this gym had given him a program without teaching him what to do, how to do it, or why he was doing it. He ambled about from one station to the next, working his biceps on a seated machine here, his triceps over there. I tried to find a trainer to help him but no one was on duty, so I stepped in and gently corrected his form. I would have liked to have given the man my card and asked him to contact me, but this gym isn’t my space and I try to respect other businesses by not prospecting for clients when I’m there as a guest.

The episode made me a bit sad because I fear that I can project what’s going to happen with this man who has a real medical need to get in shape. What he’s doing, what’s on that piece of paper, isn’t going to work. He’ll continue to be obese, and what’s more he’ll likely tell people that he tried “working out” only to give up because it didn’t work. I hope I’m wrong, but I’ve seen it too many times before to think that I am. This is an example of the fitness industry failing in every aspect of its objectives—all the while collecting fees from a monthly gym membership that’s about as useful as banging one’s head against the wall.

The older version of you will thank you for exercising today.

If you’re not currently working out and you’d like to begin, or if you ARE working out but not seeing results, here is one man’s opinion for what you ought to be doing.

1.) Strength training that incorporates basic movement patterns, full-body function, and progressive overload.

Basic movement patterns – squat, hip hinge, push things away from you (horizontally and vertically), and pull things toward you (horizontally and vertically).
Full-body function – No isolating muscle groups like “arms” until and unless you’ve done the basic movement patterns OR if you’ve been prescribed something specific by a physical therapist or sports medicine professional. Remember the obese man I saw yesterday at the gym? He’s simply not going to bicep curl away the 70 pounds he needs to lose in order to stay healthy.
Progressive overload – You have to lift something heavier next month than you’re lifting right now or your body will cease adapting to the stimulus that working out should be providing. Now, this isn’t always linear; sometimes you need to lift less today in order to be able to lift more tomorrow. But generally your aim should be adding to the amount of resistance working against you so your body can react by building more muscle, denser bone, and stronger joints.

2.) Cardiovascular health.

Sit less, walk more, preferably every single day. This is not so much about “burning calories” or “losing weight” as it is about keeping your human body active and in motion the way it was built to be. If your goal is to be a runner, then you should run, or better yet, learn how to run well with a great coach like Sarah Scozzaro, a former Daytonian who works with clients all over the country. But if you’re goal isn’t to be a runner, then you don’t need to run.

Go for a walk!

You can row. You can bike. You can dance. You can swim. Just get your heart rate up a few times a week and try to sit less. Those things COUPLED with a well-rounded strength training regimen will help you achieve the body you want. What do I mean by that? You’re not going to Zumba your way to a great body–but you can incorporate Zumba into a well-rounded training schedule.

Combining Exercise Types

The key is to be mindful about how it all fits together. If yoga is your primary exercise, then think about how you might supplement some strength training to ensure, for example, that you’re getting in the horizontal and vertical pulling needed to build a strong back. If strength training is your primary form of exercise, then think about what you’re doing to ensure that you’re getting in some form of cardiovascular exercise. Jen Sinkler would say you can simply “lift weights faster,” which is true. Whatever you do, just make sure you’re purposefully elevating your heart rate during some aspect of your training.

There is no one perfect way of going about fitness, and I urge you to be cautious with anyone who pushes exercise dogma. I can tell you this with confidence, however: most of you reading this ought to walk right on by the rows of Nautilus machines at the local rec center. Learn how to move instead. The 70-year-old version of yourself will thank you.

A Dispatch from New York

October 28, 2015 By Jason Harrison

I’m filing this column today from New York, a city I’ve always loved and that has always welcomed me as if it were my home. As I sit down to write this for my actual hometown of Dayton, I can’t stop thinking about what the two cities could learn from one another in the area of fitness.

It won’t surprise you to learn that New Yorkers in my training experience are ultra-competitive. Take a yoga class in New York and you’ll see people falling all over themselves to be the “best in the class.” Take a spinning class and you’ll see fights (literally sometimes) over bike assignments and noise. And there’s a nefarious drive for women to be able to wear high-fashion clothes—few of which are designed for people who squat regularly. A number of my female clients told me when I trained here that they wanted me to help them be skinny without any hint of muscle tone.

But the thing New York does have that I’d like to see more of in Dayton is a baseline assumption among working professionals that fitness is a fundamental aspect of life in which it is worth investing both precious time and money. As I suggested above, this isn’t necessarily altogether for positive reasons; people are competing for mates, attention, and status in a city of more than 8 million people. But whatever the reason, I spent less time as a trainer in New York convincing people of the utility of staying fit than I have to in Ohio.

At first glance, this seems strange because our state is a bit of a fitness capital in this country. Just an hour down the road, Columbus hosts the annual Arnold Sports Festival, a fitness-centered exhibition, competition, and learning conference. Columbus also is home to the legendary Louie Simmons Westside Barbell gym. And right here in the Dayton area we have a number of serious facilities like The Dirty Gym on East Second Street. Given our training roots, we seem primed in Dayton to infuse a culture of fitness into the fiber of Gem City culture. But we’re not there yet. Why?

New York City, October 2015

I went to a benefit recently in which I was giving away a free personal training session for people who donated to a worthy cause. The conversations I had that night were fascinating, because most of them centered on the idea that strength training was some mythical thing that bodybuilders and professional athletes do, but not “merely” regular folk with jobs and kids and responsibilities. One person even referred to me as a bodybuilder, which I can only assure you is not a mistake that anyone who knows what a dedicated bodybuilder looks like would ever make.

The issue for Dayton when it comes to fitness, then, despite Ohio’s well-earned reputation for excellence in strength, is that too many of us see fitness as something that other people do. Only fitness “freaks” like bodybuilders would waste time in the gym and paying attention to what they eat. Only a self-centered narcissist would bother hiring a coach to help her achieve her fitness goals.

Fitness isn’t just for freaks and selfish people or fancy pants New Yorkers. It’s for all of us. Gay, straight, young, old, fat, thin. I promise you that your quality of life, the way you feel when you get out of bed every morning, the way you see yourself, the way your lover sees you, all of these things will improve if you get stronger, leaner, and more mobile.

How many hours a week are you currently dedicating to fitness? The data say too many of the people reading this column might be able to answer zero. If you’re one of those people, how would you improve your quality of life measurably if you—

were stronger.
were leaner.
were more mobile.
had better bone density.
had better stamina (including in the bedroom)?

So the real question might just be this: why don’t you think you deserve to feel better than you do now?

Want Better Relationships? Get Better At Solitude.

October 21, 2015 By Jason Harrison

I read a great Jane Porter piece this week about the importance of solitude that I suspect will have a big impact on the way I talk to my clients about their health. You should read the entire article published in Fast Company online right here.

Before diving into the relevancy of Porter’s argument, a quick reminder about the positive health effect of strong social ties. Researcher, writer, and speaker Kelly McGonigal argues persuasively that we can dramatically alter the negative effects of stress in our lives by simply thinking about it differently. Beyond just thinking about stress differently, however, McGonigal sites research which states that strong social ties can act as a sort of steroid for our resilience.

No music, no radio. Just your thoughts on the open road. No motorcycle? No problem. Just turn off the noise on your next drive.

“…when you reach out to others under stress, either to seek support or to help someone else, you release more of this hormone, your stress response becomes healthier, and you actually recover faster from stress. I find this amazing, that your stress response has a built-in mechanism for stress resilience, and that mechanism is human connection.”

This is profound. And when I first heard this, I immediately began thinking differently about how to make my personal training clients stronger. I talked a lot more about calling friends, writing letters to important people, and taking time to cultivate relationships. And you know what? My success rate at helping people transform their bodies rocketed upward.

Enter Porter’s Fast Company article. Perhaps you’re wondering what a piece about solitude has to do with strong social ties, and thus, our health. Let’s take a look at Porter’s reporting.

She quotes Sherry Turkle, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher, on the link between solitude and human connection.

“How do you get from connection to isolation? You end up isolated if you don’t cultivate the capacity for solitude, the ability to be separate, to gather yourself. Solitude is where you find yourself so that you can reach out to other people and form real attachments. When we don’t have the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people in order to feel less anxious or in order to feel alive. When this happens, we’re not able to appreciate who they are. It’s as though we’re using them as spare parts to support our fragile sense of self.”

My thinking soundtrack for a recent Seattle trip.

As I rapidly approach the age of forty, I find myself valuing “real attachments” with people who share my values. A younger, more insecure version of me sought out relationships with people who allowed me to feel cooler but didn’t share my values. These proved to be empty, and sometimes painful personal experiences. Now that I take more time to understand who I am and what I value, I find myself forming more real attachments. Not coincidentally, I’m also stronger and healthier than I was at any point in my twenties.

This isn’t hocus pocus. It’s not an episode of Oprah. There’s no prize under your seat. This is the softer side of strength and we ignore it to our own detriment.

If the benefits of solitude are real, then what are some concrete measures we can enact to make the most of it?

If you travel for work, listen or read instead of watch. I traveled to Seattle this week and came home with a notebook full of ideas for my own business. I resisted the urge to kill time with a movie, and instead let my mind wander along with John Coltrane. Planes are ideal for this type of pondering because we don’t often have the chance to just sit with our own thoughts.
Take a walk. Busy people often ignore one of the best exercises they can because they don’t view it as intense. But walking–especially outside–has a whole host of benefits for mind and body.
Don’t be afraid of silence. On your next drive to work, don’t turn on the radio. Don’t plug in your iPhone. Just drive. Pay attention to what you’re doing of course, but be alone with your thoughts.
“Make an artist date.” This is directly from the Porter piece itself (which again, you should read in its entirety). Essentially this is scheduled time for yourself once a week when you are alone at a museum, on a scenic walk, or anywhere you can experience something new or interesting. I’ve recommended a version of this to executives that I coach who often resist because they view it as a waste of time. Those who have made the time for their version of an artist date, however, report having more space in their brains for strategic, deep thinking. This is something all of us could use, from homemaker to C-Suite mover and shaker.

Stay Well on the Road

October 14, 2015 By Jason Harrison

Traveling for work can be among the most disruptive factors to staying fit because it can introduce variables for which even the most disciplined and organized find it difficult to account. So let’s walk through how to stay well on the road with an eye toward nutrition, fitness, and wellness.

Nutrition

Good — I trained a client in D.C. who traveled often to the middle of Indiana. Her food options were limited mostly to fast food and a Super Walmart twenty minutes away. I coached her to do the best she could with what was available. That meant approximating to the extent possible a mix of protein, healthy fats, and vegetables at every meal—even using McDonald’s in a pinch. (Think Egg McMuffin with a side salad or fruit cup). Her travel wasn’t ideal, but she was able to do just enough to stay healthy.

Better — If you’re traveling in a bigger city, your options for food even if you don’t have access to a grocery are often better. Fast food chains like Sweetgreen (D.C., Boston, L.A., New York, Philly) are thriving precisely because they offer health-conscious people affordable, fast, and convenient ways of eating well.

Best — You’re able to identify a grocery store near where you’re working or staying that has a good selection of fresh fruits, vegetables, and delicatessen. Using a grocery on the road can allow you to mainly stick with a nutrition plan consisting of primarily whole foods and fresh ingredients. Even if your work travel involves command performance dinners, you’ll be able to control your breakfast and lunch by shopping for your food daily.

Stay well even if you have to spend time in the air.

Fitness

Good — If you’re stuck in a hotel that doesn’t have even a modest gym, you can still maintain some mobility and strength on the road. Search YouTube for videos from people like Neghar Fonooni and Jen Sinkler for bodyweight routines. Another great option on the road that would complement your wellness goals would be downloading a good yoga app and doing some sort of practice daily.

Better — One of the things about the fittest people you know is that they think about their fitness when planning trips. So, for example, they’ll identify a favorite hotel by how good the gym is. This might take some trial and error, but you too can figure out which hotels have the best gyms for your fitness needs. Stay at those places when you can, use the gym, and maintain or even enhance your fitness on the road.

Best — Find a local gym convenient to where you’re staying or working. If you belong to a national chain, you often can work out for free when you’re on the road. (I’ve found that even if you’re not a member, many clubs will allow you to work out for free if you just tell them that you’re visiting). You might even treat yourself to a personal training session when you’re traveling. Some folks even have a roster of trainers around the country in the different cities to which they travel.

Wellness

Good — You’re mindful of how you’re feeling and you do your best to get to bed at a reasonable hour. Just as you might have chosen your hotel for the gym accommodations, you might also be aware of which dwelling on the road has the best blackout shades and temperature controls to allow you to sleep in a cool, dark room. You limit caffeine consumption to the morning, and you don’t drink too late into the evening because alcohol can act as a sleep disrupting stimulant.

Better — You make it a point not only to sleep well, but to have some experience outside of work during your travel. Given the tight schedules often associated with being on the road for work, this can be difficult. But you can try things like walking a few extra blocks to your first meeting so the route takes you by an interesting building, popping into a photography exhibit for 15 minutes, or researching an interesting restaurant that we don’t have here in Dayton.

Best — In addition to the above, you develop a wellness friendly routine, or ritual even, that allows you to maximize relaxation and sleep, while also minimizing anxiety and stress. You have a “go bag” ready at all times that you take with you on your business trips. It consists of tea from home, your favorite soaps, and guilty pleasure magazines that you can read to relax before bed. You’ve come to grips with the fact that travel is a part of your professional way of life, so you’ve developed patterns specifically designed to maximize your wellness on the road. Work travel becomes a way of recharging, giving you a welcomed opportunity to do strategic thinking.

One of the mistakes I see often is working professionals pretending that travel is not fundamental to their work life. If you’re on the road every month, then you ought to take some time today to figure out how to stay healthy in hotels, airports, and train stations. Your nutrition, fitness, and wellness options might not be optimal, but with a little planning you can maintain or even enhance your health with travel.

Find the Right Coach for You

October 7, 2015 By Jason Harrison

There’s a gulf between what serious fitness coaches want for people and what people want from fitness coaches.

A good coach wants to help make someone stronger, more mobile, and better conditioned.

People want to lose weight.

A good coach builds a program progressively, often leaving something in the tank so a client can continue without injury and with proper recovery.

People want to hire someone to “kick their butt.”

A good coach wants to teach you how to eat well for the rest of your life.

People just want a diet to follow.

A good coach wants you to strengthen your trunk.

People just want to be able to see their abs.

There’s usually a divide between coach’s goals and client’s goals.

The difficulty for fitness professionals who want to be the best is that they have to compete with Instagram fitness celebrities posing in booty shorts, Facebook entrepreneurs hawking pyramid-schemey supplements and “cleanses,” and ripped guys at the local gym who are great at training their own bodies but less competent when it comes to working with a 45-year-old mother of three who works full time and has a commute.

And the challenge for consumers is that few people have the time and energy to sift through the noise to get to the signal. So today I want to give you some basic categories you can research when looking for a personal trainer.

1.) Certification: A national certification doesn’t guarantee competence, but it does show a modicum of interest in professional development. This is a VERY low bar.

2.) Equipment: This is a somewhat controversial assertion, but I would argue that the more a trainer uses machines in their work with the general public then the less they probably know about biomechanics—and that’s not a good thing. Run far away from the coach who tells you that they want to “start” you off on machines and then progress to free weights. If you’re not learning how to move, then you’re missing out on half the benefit of working with a coach.

3.) Professionalism: You should never see your trainer’s cell phone during a session. Never. They should be ready for you before you arrive, and they ought to have a plan for your session that builds upon previous sessions and toward future ones. If they can’t answer simple questions about how what you’re doing fits into a larger plan then they’re making it up as they go along.

4.) Focus: I’ve been the personal trainer who’s doing the job to support another career aspiration. And you know what? I wasn’t very good or very focused then. You want a coach whose livelihood depends upon and whose life is fitness. The focused coach is constantly reading, evaluating her own technique, and adding new tools.

5.) They’re willing to say “I don’t know”: A funny thing happens the more experience one gains in fitness—an increased willingness to admit when something is new or foreign or beyond one’s previous experience. The number of times I’ve referred people to other professionals (psychotherapists, physical therapists, certified dietitians, etc.) has increased proportionally with my years of experience. Think about your own work experience. Don’t you trust the people more who are willing to say “I don’t know”? Yeah, me too.

If you don’t ask these questions or pay attention to these cues, you might just find yourself working with a “fitness professional” who views you like an ATM, dumping cash into their pockets week after week irrespective of your progress. They’ll be more than happy to help you “lose weight” before your friend’s wedding with some diet plan they cribbed from the Internet.

The truth is, there ought to be a gulf between what you want and what your coach wants. He knows more about fitness than you do, and so he has a better idea of what’s appropriate, achievable, and sustainable. Whenever I find myself getting a little frustrated by the gulf, I remind myself of this fact: all good coaches are good teachers and view themselves as such. Use the five categories I’ve given you above to help find the right teacher for you.

Let’s Talk About Habits

September 30, 2015 By Jason Harrison

I gave a talk called “Becoming a Wellness Detective,” on Monday at the Whole Foods Market in Centerville. The idea behind the lecture was to help people figure out why they do what they do, replace bad habits with good ones, and provide a sustainable framework for replicating the process.

Getting ready to talk habits at Whole Foods.

The impetus behind me focusing so much on habits was unquestionably Charles Duhigg’s “The Power of Habit,” in which he describes something he calls the habit loop: the cue (the thing, person, place, smell, or memory that prompts us to want to do something); the ritual (the action we take, like eating something we know we shouldn’t or engaging in a behavior that will have negative consequences); and the reward (what emotion or sense of satisfaction we get out of the ritual).

Duhigg’s work radically altered the way I coach my clients to achieve their fitness goals precisely because he gave me an easily digestible framework that clients could learn and replicate on their own. The investigative part of the process—hence the name, “Wellness Detective”—is figuring out the individual pieces of the habit loop. Figuring out the reward for our behaviors is often the most difficult part and can take some trial and error.

I got into fitness to support a fledgling (read: unsuccessful) screenwriting career, and when I lived in Los Angeles I was especially depressed about my professional prospects. My habit loop consisted of training early morning clients, going to McDonald’s and buying multiple breakfast sandwiches, then sitting in my car and listening to Jim Rome’s show.

The cue was the time of day and finishing at the gym early.

The ritual was eating the sandwiches and listening to brotastic sports radio.

And the reward—ah, here’s where things get interesting.

You might think the reward was eating the salty and fatty breakfast sandwich. But really the reward for me was the distraction from my crumbling writing prospects.

Now that I have healthier mindset about my place in the world, early morning clients don’t represent the same health obstacle to me. The cue stays the same (early morning), but instead of visiting a fast food restaurant I drink a healthy shake and then work out (the new ritual). The reward is that I continue to get stronger even as I approach 40—and I still get a little bit of a distraction from professional and personal stress.

The important thing about my personal example is that I had to really identify the reward and what was going on with me before I could hope to change the habit. I needed to understand that I was feeling a little depressed about my life, and I only compounded that by treating my body like a veritable trash compactor.

At Whole Foods on Monday someone in the audience asked a question about what happens when we are able to successfully change habits, maybe even for several months, but then we slip back into our old ways. Sometimes this slippage can be prompted by life events or just general fatigue from maintaining our new habits.

This is where mindset matters. If changing habits is the beta version of developing a healthy lifestyle, then the latest software release is full integration of healthy actions (nutrition, fitness, wellness) into our everyday lives. What’s the difference between working on habits and having a healthy mindset?

I would argue that habit transformation or formation necessarily involves purposeful action. For a while I had to actively tell myself not to eat fast food. Now it doesn’t occur to me. The bridge was knowledge: even though I was a so-called “fitness professional,” I never really bothered to think or care about nutrition. Once I learned how thoroughly interrelated what we eat is to how we feel, think, and perform, putting healthier things into my body became easier. And now I’ve nearly automated things like eating vegetables at every meal.

Think about where you are on the continuum of healthy living. If you’re just starting out, I think it’s a great idea to start with Duhigg’s “habit loop” framework.

But if you’re already consciously working on your habits, you might benefit from seeking out and internalizing new information. Choose one area of your lifestyle (fitness, wellness, nutrition) and use your Google machine to find the latest. You might just find that reading one fact about the power of strength training (or sleep or vegetables or healthy fats) changes your life.

Five People in Fitness You Ought to be Reading

September 23, 2015 By Jason Harrison

Jason reading up on healthy living

When I say “fitness writing” to you, what usually comes to mind? For many people it’s the glossy magazines in the grocery checkout featuring sexy abs, impossible tiny bikini bottoms, and provocative poses.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. The smartest, strongest people I know in the fitness game hardly ever read those magazines. That’s not to belittle the glossies or dismiss their function: I’ll grab the ten sexy tips men’s magazine for a long flight just like anyone else. But The general point is that busy people with complicated jobs or lives don’t have time to seek out a broader range of information, so they rely on those periodicals. Allow me then to introduce you to a broader range of information.

I’ve compiled a list of the people whose material I find myself most often sharing with clients or using for my own fitness. My hope is that the list isn’t quite what you’re expecting. Sure, you’ll find some exercise tips, but you’ll also find the intersection of economics and food, empathy, and elite-level powerlifting. Try following some of these experts on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram and see if the way you think about health and fitness doesn’t evolve. Everyone on this list has made me a better coach through the sheer quantity of free, concise, and thoughtful material they’ve given to the public.

For the record, none of these people could pick me out of a lineup, and I’ve never met any of them. But their public personas at least are helpful, practical, and sometimes even a little soulful.

Kelly McGonigal — McGonigal’s 2013 TED Talk called “How to make stress your friend” dramatically shifted the way I coach my clients. The basic premise behind her research and talk is that how we think about stress can alter its impact on our lives. She emphasizes the positive effect of empathy and caring for others on our own lives and health, and makes a strong claim that “the harmful effects of stress on your health are not inevitable.”

Jen Sinkler — What distinguishes Sinkler from a lot of the fitness crowd is not just her national-level rugby experience, her competitive powerlifting experience, or even the fact that she’s helped puncture the stereotypes of what a sexy woman is “supposed” to look like. What distinguishes Sinkler from the rest of the crowd is that she can write her ass off. Sinkler’s approach to fitness is inclusive, fun, and when the time is right–intense. Not a bad combination.

photo from Emile Wamsteker/Bloomberg News

Roberto Ferdman — Ferdman writes about food, culture, and economics for the Washington Post in a way that elevates the discussion surrounding the latest health studies beyond banal attempts at provocation. When he writes about studies—such as in two really fantastic articles about poverty and nutrition here and here—he adds context, nuance, and reporting. You know, journalism. He’s not a “fitness writer,” but if you care about public policy’s impact on health you ought to be reading him.

Chad Wesley Smith

Juggernaut Training Systems — This is where I go when I want to learn how to get stronger. The view I have of my own lane of the road is that I help translate information from guys like Juggernaut founder Chad Wesley Smith—whose carnival-like Instagram feed regularly features him squatting 800 pounds, bench pressing 500 pounds, and deadlifting well over 700 pounds—to regular folks like teachers and lawyers. I borrow heavily from his programming to fuel my own workouts and my efficacy as a coach grew exponentially the day I discovered his material online. If you want to know strong, get to know Juggernaut. You might not get to a 700-pound deadlift, but you can use his training principles nonetheless.

Tony Gentilcore — Like Sinkler, Gentilcore is a strong writer and strong coach with a background in athletic performance. His website regularly features a roundup of solid fitness material he calls “Stuff to Read While You’re Pretending to Work.” His online persona is helpful, detail-oriented, and serious without any of the brotastic bravado you might expect from someone as accomplished and physically strong as he is.

Fitness and Health in Dayton: An Assessment

September 16, 2015 By Jason Harrison

When I think about health strictly from a Dayton, Ohio context, there are specific regional issues about which we should all be aware as we try to build better bodies, fuel those bodies with good food, and manage stress.

My advice for years now has been that we all should be cooking more, whether we live in New York, Los Angeles, or anywhere in between. Subjectively, I think that’s especially true here in Dayton. At the top end of our local restaurant spectrum, you can eat healthy and well at places like Lily’s, Coco’s, Olive, Wheat Penny, Salar, and the Corner Kitchen. It’s easy at these places to eat vegetables, not as an afterthought, but as a primary element of the culinary experience.

But at a great many of the chains around, a salad means a collection of iceberg lettuce, some croutons, and cheese. (Always cheese.) Not only that, but the preponderance of our fast food options remain mostly unhealthy. (Our existing healthier fast food options, like Fusian, stand as proof that there exists a pent up demand for something other than fries and burgers.) Cook more at home then, and when you do indulge in going out, patronize a scratch kitchen with a menu crafted with care.

When you do home cooking, you’ll need easy access to great ingredients—and Dayton offers some diverse options. From Dorothy Lane Market, to Trader Joe’s, to the relatively new Whole Foods Market, to the expanding selection of organic options at Kroger’s, it is possible to cook and eat well at home here in Dayton. I won’t belabor the point about easy access to fresh groceries for downtown residents, other than to say that I wish there were more options closer to the city core. But with careful planning and a shopping list Dayton is a great place to develop home cooking skills.

From a fitness perspective, one would strain to come up with a region better suited to living an active lifestyle. The wide open spaces, hikes, trails, top-notch strength and conditioning facilities, yoga teachers, and affordable YMCA options are diverse and distributed conveniently.

The culture in Dayton also seems conducive to lifelong fitness. The slower pace, the emphasis on family—strong and deep social ties can be instrumental to maintaining a healthy lifestyle—and the shorter work days for many people are all assets to be celebrated, as long as we remember always that not everyone can share equally in these attributes.

Given this portrait, how should you approach getting fit in Dayton? Some ideas:

Make a grocery list. Know what you’re going to eat during the week, and where you’re going to buy the ingredients. Have a plan, because well on-the-go isn’t always easy here.

Start thinking about menu options differently. Shift your thinking to plate composition, and look at whether the balance of protein, carbohydrates, and healthy fats makes sense. If the only vegetable option is an iceberg lettuce salad with cheese and croutons, you might want to spend your dollars elsewhere.

Get outside. We’re lucky to have such easy access to wide open spaces, rivers, and trails. My favorite cardiovascular prescription for people is to get outside and walk. This is a great place to do that!

Join a gym. Chances are in the Dayton region, you’re close to a YMCA or affordable gym chain. And if you’re looking to take your training to a new level of performance, we are lucky to live in an area with great strength and conditioning options.

Support the people closest to you. The more you choose healthy options for food and leisure, the more your friends and family will too. If your social circle insists on fried food and tubs of beer for happy hour, introduce them to one of the many great, local, fresh options around.

On Matching Your Values To Your Time

September 9, 2015 By Jason Harrison

Lifelong fitness isn’t effort, it’s not willpower, and it’s definitely not innate ability. It’s the answer to the question: what do I value as demonstrated by how I spend my time?

Make a list of what you value and be completely honest with yourself. Include things like relationships, sex, family, professional status, and maybe something like volunteering. Make it your list. Rank the items on the list if you’d like.

Now, do an inventory of the most recent three days of your life and where you spent your time. Break it down hour-by-hour and put your activities into buckets (television, family, work, fitness, etc.)

Did your values list match where you spent the preponderance of your time?

If you ranked family first on your list, for example, how much time and energy are you spending on them versus fantasy football, television, or going to happy hours?

Now before we go any further, let’s establish one thing: you are not to judge yourself for what’s on your list or if there’s a disconnect between your values and where you’re spending your time. This is an information-gathering exercise, not an inquisition.

So, if, say, you’re way into video games I don’t want you to feel sheepish about that. I want that on your values list. I want you to be open with yourself about video games being something that you love to play. I want you to be purposeful about playing video games. (Seriously.)

But if there’s something on the list of things to which you devote an inordinate amount of time that you don’t actually value—watching television is on this list for a lot of people—then be aware of that and work to curtail the amount of time you spend on it, replacing it with the things you do value.

I’ve found that a lot of people who are sitting on the sidelines of fitness actually value many aspects of it. They want to feel better. They want to look better. They want to be sick less often. They want to be able to move without pain. They value fitness, but there’s a disconnect between the value they place on it and the lives that they’re living. This disconnect is a recipe for sadness, anxiety, and discontent.

The reason people remain discontented with their lives isn’t laziness. Often they’ve never stopped to think about where they’re spending their precious time. Seasoned and respected professionals, they’ve never done an analysis of their lives the way they might for a customer’s issue, a patient’s illness, or a boss’s request. And sometimes the most pernicious of all reasons is shame. They’re ashamed they’ve never spent time on fitness and now they’re fat/injured/weak/deconditioned/unattractive/insert your own negative self-talk here. Finally, many people don’t believe that they have the self-efficacy to achieve lifelong fitness, so why invest the time to try?

Discard what doesn’t align with your values.

For those folks who don’t value fitness and health, often the reason for the notable absence of things that a sustain quality of life is a lack of self-esteem. Yeah, yeah, I know. It sounds squishy and touchy feely. But stay with me for a second.

If self-efficacy is the belief that one can do something (I can learn how to squat and press a weight above my head), then self-esteem is the belief that one deserves to do something (like achieve a fit body). You already know what this negative self-talk sounds like. “I’m so fat and disgusting. I deserve this. I did this to myself.”

If you fall into the category of people who value fitness but aren’t currently making the time for it, I encourage you to inventory your values and your time without judgment. Eliminate the extraneous and emphasize that which will make you happier and healthier.

If you fall into the category of people who don’t value fitness, I hope you’ll ponder whether you’re lacking the requisite self-esteem to take care of the one body you’ll ever have. If you are, then there’s a strong chance that you won’t get to the gym without first working with a good psychologist, psychiatrist, or counselor to help you troubleshoot the way you think about yourself.

Put Sleep On Your Calendar.

September 2, 2015 By Jason Harrison

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You’re planning your day, or maybe your week. You’re trying to get fit, so you schedule in some gym time. You’ve been trying to eat healthier, so you know you need to leave some extra cooking time. Maybe you’re making it a point to drink water instead of soda and you have your water bottle ready before you go to bed so you can grab it on your way to work. Because you know all of these things have to fit in with the rest of your life, you’ve scheduled in meetings, work tasks, and even some down time with your significant other.

You do all of these things and you feel like you’re on the right path, but then your plan goes awry. You stay up a little late catching up on emails or watching Sportcenter, and your entire morning is thrown off when you sleep in an extra thirty minutes to try to catch up.

How could you do all of that planning and still get thrown off your game?

Here’s your answer: everything in fitness begins and ends with sleep, including your nutrition.

You can’t work as hard in the gym—or even make it to the gym—if you’re not sleeping seven to eight hours a night.

You can’t recover as well from a hard training session if you’re not sleeping seven to eight hours a night.

You won’t make sound nutritional choices if you’re not sleeping seven to eight hours per night. (Don’t believe me? Compare your willpower when you’re fully rested to your willpower when you’re sleepy or fading.)

If all of this is true (and even intuitive), why don’t we schedule sleep when we fill in our calendars? What we do instead is pack our schedules full and then hit the pillow whenever we get to it. But given the importance of sleep to everything we do, a wiser choice would be to begin our daily or weekly calendar with seven or eight hours of sleep assumed and then build the rest of the schedule around that time.

When I started doing this for myself, a surprising thing happened. I panicked because there didn’t seem to be as many hours in the day, but I found myself getting stronger, injured far less frequently, and far less prone to illness. I had fewer waking hours, but I was more productive in the hours I had left after building in a dignified night of sleep.

Americans especially seem to pride ourselves on how little we’re sleeping, but study after study shows that this is a terrible approach for both productivity and health. When you’re thinking through your schedule tomorrow and beyond, I encourage you to start with sleep and build from there. If you’re like most people, you’ll be better able to function at work, more likely to go to the gym and work hard, and more likely to make sound nutrition choices.

Of course, once you’ve made the choice to get more sleep you need to make sure you actually shut your eyes and drift off.

Turn off electronics an hour before bed.
Sleep in a cool, dark room.
Think of three things from the previous day for which you are specifically thankful. Don’t just say, “family,” say, “I’m grateful for my sister’s great advice when I asked her about switching jobs.” This gratitude practice forces your brain to search for positivity, which can decrease anxiety and make falling asleep easier.

Pick something up this week and get stronger.

August 25, 2015 By Jason Harrison

You’ve heard the advice about grocery shopping, right? About how you should shop the outside aisles where most of the fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats reside? I like that advice. It’s simple and easy to understand. Shop where the real food is.

When it comes to exercise, allow me to give you some similar advice. Shop the outside aisles. Only in this case, you’re looking for free weights (your fruits, veggies, and meat) and not for the machines (your processed foods and children’s cereals).

You can make your muscles sore by sitting on a tricep extension machine and isolating one muscle group out of many. But soreness isn’t your goal when it comes to fitness; mobility, strength, body composition, bone density, and coordination are.

When you’re standing up and holding a thing, like a barbell, dumbbell, or kettlebell, and you lift that thing over your head, your body has to execute a complex set of operations to ensure that your spine doesn’t collapse on itself and your deltoids don’t get shredded apart. This complex movement helps you do everyday things better, like put a heavy thing on a tall shelf—or if you’re someone like a firefighter, pull a ceiling down.

Machines might make you feel safer, and you might even be able to make yourself sore using them, but I would much rather have a person who is new to fitness learn how to squat than sit on a leg extension or leg press machine. After all, every single one of us has to squat every single day. Why not learn how to do it properly, all the while building muscle and transforming your body composition?

I’m a personal trainer by trade, but I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret: you don’t need me to learn how to lift weights. If you have an injury history, would feel better about having expert supervision, or you’ve been having trouble on your own, of course hiring a good coach might be necessary. However, with a little perseverance, YouTube navigation skills, and Googling acumen you could probably figure out the basics on your own.

Below is a workout to get you started. You’ll notice it consists of a two-leg movement (the goblet squat), a horizontal press, a horizontal pull, a vertical press, and a vertical pull. If you did this sample workout, say, two days a week, you’d be off to a great start. I’d recommend three sets of ten repetitions for each exercise, resting a minute to ninety seconds in between each set and about two minutes in between each exercise. When you can lift the weight for three sets of ten, add five pounds the next time.

This is a beginner workout, which means if you’re dedicated to it you’ll outgrow it quickly and will need to move on to more advanced set and rep schemes (not to mention additional exercises). This is a good problem to have.

If you’re intimidated by the free weight section of your local gym, try out this framework and see how you do. My guess is you’ll get over your insecurity within one or two sessions and you’ll be well on your way to building a stronger, more mobile, and leaner body.

Goblet squat

Dumbbell bench press

Dumbbell row

Dumbbell overhead press

Lat pulldown

Learn To Cook. If Not Today, Then This Weekend.

August 19, 2015 By Jason Harrison

The single most important lifestyle change you can make today, if vibrance and longevity are your goals, is to learn how to cook. Eating healthy can be a dramatic shift for a lot of people, and I’ve found that the newly health conscious abandon their quest for nutrient density because of a surprisingly simple obstacle.

Their food tastes terrible.

Who wants to eat dry chicken breast with plain broccoli? Who wants to eat a piece of grapefruit for breakfast? The most effective tool for maintaining a healthy diet is deliciousness. But deliciousness doesn’t happen over night. You have to work for it. You have to get your reps in. You have to burn some dinners and fail. Cooking, like strength, is a skill game. The more you do it, the better you get at it.

If you’re living alone, the prospect of learning how to cook should be less complicated than if you’re preparing meals for a family. Find a cookbook, find a night when you have some time, and turn your kitchen into a gastronomy laboratory.

But if you’re cooking for more than just yourself, you need to think carefully in a realistic world about when and how to begin your learning to cook journey.

Newbies in the kitchen probably don’t want to risk trying out that three-course French meal on a Tuesday night when they’re just getting home from work, the kids have school the next day, and the spouse has an early morning meeting. A burned dinner under these circumstances can mean disaster—stress, hurt feelings, resentment, and ultimately hunger.

My suggestion? Saturdays.

Turn it into a weekly event. Include your children in the entire process, from choosing the menu, to shopping at the grocery, to basic preparation like washing the produce. Your goal with all of this is twofold: first, you want to change the conversation around food in your house. You want your children and the other members of your household to fall in love with food and ingredients in a healthy way. Second, you want to make the process of cooking simultaneously fun and educational. You’ll be looking up ingredients as a family, shopping as a family, and acquiring a new skill as a family.

Saturdays are good for this sort of thing because there’s less stress and more time generally speaking. And if you burn the dinner, forget to add a crucial ingredient, or quite simply choose a terrible recipe (I’ve done all of these things), you can always resort to whatever it was you were already doing. I won’t be mad at you if you order carryout after putting in a good effort.

When it’s time to choose a recipe, there are a wealth of options for learning the basics. My list below includes (but is not limited to) both poles of the nutrition Cold War: Paleo and vegetarian. I’m not interested in diet orthodoxy, but in fresh, delicious ingredients. Most importantly, I advocate finding what tastes best to you and your family–because that’s what will keep you coming back to the kitchen.

Mark Bittman — I really like his approach to cooking. He has various cookbooks and apps available, including “quick options” and vegetarian options.

NY Times Cooking — I’ve been using this app/page most often lately. With an account you can log in, save recipes, and search for recipes based on ingredients. It also works well if you’re a vegetarian.

The Domestic Man — Technically this is a Paleo resource, but don’t think of it that way. It’s just a good, healthy mix of recipes based on a variety of real food ingredients.

Nom Nom Paleo — Another Paleo resource featuring fresh ingredients and creative recipes. Again, I’m not pushing a Paleo diet (or a vegetarian one), but good, healthy cooking.

Trying To Get Healthy? Keep It Simple To Start.

August 12, 2015 By Jason Harrison

I’ve worked as a personal trainer and fitness coach all across this country, from New York to Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. As I return to my roots in the Dayton area, I’ll be using this space to write about health, wellness, and lifestyle with an eye toward the practical, the sustainable, and the efficient. Probably the most important thing that I’ve learned over the last ten years in an exploding industry is that health and fitness have become needlessly complicated for busy people. My goal in my work and in this space is to fix that.

So let’s get started.

If you’re the average American—meaning, you don’t eat the right combination of foods, you don’t get enough exercise, and you’re overweight—then you should start your fitness journey as simply as possible.

What to Put in Your Face: Vegetables and Water

When it comes to healthy body composition, your goal is to find nutrient dense foods as opposed to calorie dense foods. Vegetables are nutrient dense foods packed with things like vitamins and minerals but not calories. They also are full of fiber, which has been shown to play an important role in everything from immune health to digestion. Chances are if you fill half your plate with vegetables at every meal (yes, including breakfast) and eat slowly, you’ll have a built-in portion control.

The rest of your plate should be a combination of a good, lean source of protein like chicken if you’re a meat eater or beans if you’re not; a healthy fat like olive oil or avocado; and a small amount of a starchy carbohydrate like rice, potatoes, or bread (if you must).

And of course, like your grandmama said, drink more water. It will help with proper body function and it will help you avoid mindless consumption of things like soda. If you’re struggling to drink enough, try this: fill a glass of water and put it by your bedside table. When you wake up in the morning drink the entire glass.

What to do with Your Body: Lift, Walk, Love

Many people mistakenly believe that they need to run, bike, jog, dance, or somehow cardio their way to a better body. They buy Fitbits and sign up for brutal bootcamps and hire trainers to kick their butts like they see on reality television. They do all of these things because they believe the goal with exercise is pain and sweat. But if you’re a busy person with limited time, your primary goal with exercise ought to be to build as much muscle mass as possible.

Why? Simply put, the more muscle mass you have, the higher the rate of your calorie burning while at rest. People say they want to lose weight, but more often they’re really looking to be leaner. They want to look good naked as opposed to only looking good with their clothes on (the dreaded “skinny fat” aesthetic). Looking good naked requires muscle.

If you’re doing weight-bearing exercise twice a week then you’re already giving yourself a fighting chance of having the body you want. But cardiovascular fitness also is important, so you should try to walk—preferably outside, and preferably with a loved one—several times a week. Outside because it’s more interesting and you’ll get valuable vitamin D from the sun exposure. With a loved one because strong social ties and stress reduction are important foundations for lifelong fitness.

Living a healthy lifestyle isn’t complicated, but that’s not the same thing as easy. Incorporating these simple changes into one’s life is difficult enough. Don’t distract yourself with gadgets, juice cleanses, and diets. Sustainability and efficiency are built upon a foundation of the basics.