3 Things I Wish I Knew When I First Started

With being a Nutrition & CrossFit coach for a couple of years now I wanted to look back at my own fitness journey and share what I wish I knew when I was first starting out.

_{*A quick disclaimer, I was a 16-year-old little shit who didn't want to listen to anyone. If you are reading this please be better than 16-year-old me *}

Find someone to teach you the basics

When I was first starting out I had my older brother and his friends teach me how to lift. I appreciate a lot of what they taught me in life but their lifting advice was not ideal. I was fortunate enough that my parents saw I had a true passion for the gym and decided to get me a trainer. This trainer, Bert, had worked with my family previously and they trusted him. Bert gave me the base layer of my foundation in fitness, which I still use today almost 10 years later. After lifting for another year, I hired another trainer, Nick, who elevated my training even more. Nick completely changed the way I view training and he solidified the strong foundation that I have.

There is no shame in hiring someone to teach you how to lift. I always equate hiring a trainer to hiring a car mechanic. You most likely know nothing about cars to start, you could go on youtube and learn but that would be very time-consuming and potentially costly. The gym is the same way, you could watch youtube and learn by trial and error but your potential for injury is also much higher.

Put your ego aside and hire a professional even if it’s only for 3 months.

Body composition changes come from nutrition

I thought I could outwork a bad diet and I thought that for years. It wasn't until I heard Matt Fraser, 5x Crossfit games champ, say “you cannot outwork a bad diet” did I start to think twice about my ideas. Like I said I was a little shithead. If you want to truly build muscle or lose body fat you need to look at what you are putting into your body.

Garbage inputs = Garbage outputs

If you completely ignore nutrition you better hope you have great genetics because the amount of effort required to get the body you want will be astronomical.

Today I am a big fan of working smart, so I work out for 60-90 minutes a day and then use the other 22.5-23 hours in the day to maximize that time in the gym through recovery and nutrition.

Learn how to run properly

This one sounds silly but think about it, who taught you how to run? Unless you were a member of the track team growing up, you might likely had no one teach you. You just decided to go outside and pound concrete. Whenever it's nice out or we are down the shore people want to go run for some reason, I can't explain why but even I do it. I didn't learn how to run until about 2 years ago and it changed the way I view running. I was able to cut my mile time down by 1 minute and 30 seconds without needing to put in serious time or mileage. I became more efficient at it, my knees stopped hurting and I actually enjoyed it.

3 ways I can help right now

1. Follow me on Instagram where I talk about fitness and nutrition daily. You will find a lot of great tips and tricks you can apply directly to your nutrition and training

2. Follow me on Twitter for more insight into my ideas. I tweet daily so keep up!

3. Book a call with me to schedule a free consult. I am here to help you. You took the time to read my newsletter which I appreciate more than you know. Again this is totally free you just need to fill out a few questions so you can get the most out of the call!

I've created an awesome cheat sheet that I want to give you (to help you unlock new ideas for your nutrition).

I summarized 5 years of learnings into a Nutrition cheat sheet. It has 100 hours of mastery summarized in 6 pages.

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See you again next week!