Good morning, fam. Sad this newsletter dropped today and I couldn’t prank you.

But this newsletter is no joke! I’m taking you on a little journey through the past couple decades of my life. Buckle up!

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🪂 My exercise journey

This is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down my journey through exercise, from the early days to now. I’ll briefly describe my experience with exercise through each period along with some key takeaways and lessons they taught me. My hope is that this will give you insights into what has culminated to become my current mindset around exercise.

I don’t view any of those periods as “over,” but as necessary stepping stones from one phase to another. I haven’t thrown out any of it. Rather, I have added these experiences like new vegetables into the neverending stew that is my exercise philosophy. 

If I started with a large block of marble, I’ve been chiseling away at this masterpiece (my philosophy and practices, not my physique. I’m not that vain.) It gets more and more refined with time. I like to think I’ve chipped away some of the largest chunks with my education and ongoing studies + trying new things, but I keep surprising myself. Maybe there’s more to discover as we keep learning. That’s the MTI philosophy. Let’s dig in.

The early days:

Probably like you, I had a pretty standard American childhood. Playing multiple sports, enjoying—or disdaining—PE class depending on the day’s activity, and developing a mild to moderate self-consciousness around the shape of my body as soon as I was old enough to be aware of it. 

Learnings:

• Play is good. Do it all your life.

• Don’t specialize too early. Try everything! Be bad at some things. Learn how to get better at most things. Sports are for life.

• The world will make you feel like your body is too much or not enough or anything but okay. The sooner you learn to love it, the more you can take care of it from that love rather than from disapproval.

  • This one has (still is) taken a long time to learn.

Late high school:

I played several sports and was in marching band all through high school. I kept things varied. I had short off seasons (because I was usually quickly moving right into the next sport), so I never really had a lot of time to build a ton of strength or muscle or single-sport-specific skills. Downsides, but I don’t regret the diverse involvement. I’m more versatile today as a result. 

Then my senior year, a band director said, “How cool would it be if we all did a half marathon together?!” Four months later, I crossed the finish line with just him and our cross country coach (lol). This was my intro to distance running.

Learnings:

• It takes time to build strength and muscle. No one has the perfect program. There are principles to abide by, but many roads can lead to a similar end result.

• I can run long distances for long amounts of time! But it takes a training plan to reach a big goal, not just running on a whim. 

College: The CrossFit Years

In my freshman year of college, I took a twice-weekly CrossFit class for my activity credit. It was so cool to learn the exercises and sport in a class setting and see myself grow. I was still running some races throughout this time, but CrossFit taught me so much about lifting heavy under fatigue, pushing myself, and the (underestimated) value of a positive group fitness environment.

I kept it up on and off for many years, including during the summers back home and learned so many new skills. I also did weekly yoga for a time and benefited greatly from that.

Lessons:

• You can be fast and strong and energetic and enduring and multifaceted in fitness! The opportunities and exercises are endless.

• You can work toward multiple goals at one time, but it may be good to prioritize one.

• Full, healthy ranges of motion and proper form are paramount if you want longevity in your fitness.

• Yoga shouldn’t be all you do, but boy it sure can make your body feel good.

Post-College: The Messy Middle

In the few years after undergrad, floating between graduate schools (very stressful and time consuming!) and stents working back at home, my fitness journey was quite the mish-mash.

This was when I got a deep education in not just exercise science, but in rehabilitation and exercise as medicine for injuries and health. I gained a deeper knowledge of physiology and developed a bit of a resistance training bias. It really can fix most things!

However, stress, long hours, and changing environments often put fitness on the back burner. I knew I always had running, though. It can be done just about anywhere, anytime.

Lessons learned:

• Most people aren’t lifting weights enough, and they’d benefit tremendously from doing so.

• Most musculoskeletal injuries can be both prevented and rehabilitated by proper exercise.

• Running will always be there. If you’ve been off awhile, you’ll be out of shape. That’s just the way it is. Start back slowly.

• You get “old man strength” somewhere around your late 20s. At least that’s what my PT coworkers told me. I kinda believe it. Sometimes you just gotta put in years of consistency combined with testosterone & grit.

Covid times:

Ahh, when everything we knew and loved was stripped from us. Home workouts became not just the norm, but a necessity. Daily walks became an essential source of life. I used Chris Hemsworth’s training app, Centr, for a while and let calisthenics circuits and shadow boxing kick my butt.

I also began diving deeper into Marcus Filly’s Functional Bodybuilding philosophy, combining the best of CrossFit, conditioning, functional exercise, and classic bodybuilding-style lifting. I got pretty fit in new ways!

Lessons: 

• I don’t love home workouts. But if I have a plan or videos to follow, I can make them work and still see results.

• Accountability and workout buddies can be great.

• Walking is underrated. Do it for life.

• Slow eccentrics with full range of motion really are elite for gaining muscle mass.

Iraq & the interim back home:

This next phase of life was marked by—I’ll be honest—pretty inconsistent exercise. I was focusing on living life and socializing in a new country, followed by being back home a while treasuring time with my family.

I did some home workouts. I found some weights. I joined a gym for a bit. I even hired a virtual coach for a couple months. None of it was perfect, and I didn’t have any clearly defined goals, so I got a bit out of shape. But I maintained my fitness far better than if I had been doing nothing. 

Lessons:

• Sometimes it’s okay to take a step back for a period! It’s much easier to maintain fitness than it is to make gains.

• Coaching and accountability help, but I don’t do well on generic plans that I don’t enjoy. I need my program to be deeply tailored to what I love, flexible to incorporate my own new goals, ideas, and methods.

• I need consistency to make progress. 

Virginia, My Current Chapter:

I moved to Richmond, VA and have been here for almost three years now. This has been the most consistent period I’ve had in my fitness in quite some time. I walk to Crunch three minutes from my apartment to exercise every day I can. I’ve started running some races again. I frequently track my body composition and progress on an InBody scale. I’ve set goals and made plans to reach them. I’ve started logging my workouts in a notebook so I can track what I’ve done and progressively overload. I’ve gone on at least one or two walks just about every day.

I’ve been incorporating everything I continue to learn, such as Zone 2 cardio training, sprinting and power, and more, while still building on the principles I’ve learned along the way. I’ve picked up rowing and found a new fun way to push myself to new heights. I’ve hit PRs and put on muscle. It’s been a good ride. (That sounds like a goodbye. It’s not!)

Lessons learned:

• Never stop going on walks. Beautiful streets make this much easier.

• Track your workouts! You can’t keep making progress if you’re not even sure if you’re making progress.

• Stay consistent. At least a few workouts a week. If you fall off the wagon, hop back on as quickly as you can. Anything you lost will come back quickly.

• Make goals for certain periods. A cardio goal here, a strength goal next, a hypertrophy goal after that, and a new race goal after that. Have fun with it!

• Never stop learning. You will continue to find new ways to be active and discover activities you never thought you’d enjoy. Stay open to it all!

I hope you’ve appreciated this journey through my experience with exercise and many of the lessons I’ve learned along the way. It’s crazy to think how far I’ve come and think about the many decades I hope to still have ahead of me.

What are the experiences around exercise that you’ve learned and grown from? Any suggestions for what I might dip my toes into next?

It’s exciting to think that new things will bring me growth and joy. Be a lifelong learner and a lifelong mover. It’s the MTI philosophy.

✅ Take Action

Every newsletter's Take Action section will invite you to take small steps to improve your health. Recognizing that we all have different capabilities, I'll offer three different levels of action you can choose to take.

Level 1: Consider your earliest memories with exercise. Have they shaped how you view it today?

Level 2: Take a walk down memory lane and think about the different phases you went through. What brought you joy and passion, and what are you happy to leave in the past?

Level 3: Develop your own philosophy around exercise! It may be different from mine based on your background, goals, and preferences. That’s cool. Share it with me!

This newsletter is brought to you by… me!

Interested in becoming a sponsor? Know someone else who might be? I’d love to get to know you and/or your business and see how we can partner together. Reply to this email!

✍️ Drew's Picks:

• Decide wisely: This article from a professional decision coach (where can I apply?) makes a case for making decisions based on who you are, not who you aspire to be. Interesting!

• Gym bro?: Not every gym bro has to go down the path of toxic masculinity, crypto day trading, and far-right conspiracy theories. This post gives me hope. 🥹

See y’all next week! Send me speed as I cram this final training for my 10k coming up in 10 days! 🏃‍♂️ 

Keep moving,

Drew

The content in Move to Improve is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice. It is always a good idea to consult with a trusted health professional before making any major lifestyle changes that could have a significant impact on your health. This is not a medical resource, and any opinions and articles are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. They are not substitutes for consulting a qualified medical professional. Please think critically and take what I say with a grain of salt (aka don’t sue me).