About Me

I’m not a personal trainer. I’m not a coach. But my profession does relate to the history of the “fitness industry” in a rather unique way.

I’m by training a theologian, in fact I’m an M.Div.

Some may think I’ve switched over to preaching the ol’ gospel of Iron; however, for well over 100 years there has been cultural interest among Christians in the United States promoting general health and fitness. Today we look back on that era as “Muscular Christianity” and it conjures up images of guys like Teddy Roosevelt pushing himself to get over his asthma. It’s actually a really fun conversation in many ways as you can stand outside of a YMCA and most people you talk to won’t even recognize that it stands for Young Men’s Christian Association.

The reason the Y’s all became gyms, was because they stemmed from that earlier movement of trying to get the nation moving and healthy.

The reason we probably never think to connect with the word Christian though, is the world has changed a lot since 1906 or whatever and especially during the cold war exercise science became its own mature specialty discipline. I think that lead to a disconnect ultimately because “sport” came to be viewed as something very worldly with mega-salary stars, beach bodies, and not a few spray tans.

At the same time, religious culture has changed overall and you would be hard pressed to find any pastor really willing to stand in front of his congregation and risk his career preaching on the sins of gluttony and sloth!

In fact, both things seem to come together in the worst way when you see a bulked out celebrity pastor in designer jeans trying to sound edgy and whatnot.

So part of my interest in this topic I’ll confess and you’ll just have to put up with if purely the spiritual component of fitness and general bodily stewardship. For me it is an applied theology. When I look through the theological libraries the books are all terribly dated, as I said most congregations would throw you out on your ear for ever bringing up their eating habits, and while it is today almost a faux-pas to say to loudly I’m sympathetic to the idea that western Christianity as a whole has taken on a very effeminate bent. Then, if that’s not enough in the 2020’s you church’s main competition is likely actually sports itself! Lots of families skip Sunday School so Jr. can play X, Y, or Z. Some churches lean into it with a gym; most just treat the separation of diet/ exercise and spirituality the same as that between church and state.

That said I’ll not try to get to preachy on this website but no promises. My main thing is I feel that I can’t really write on this topic or really get into it unless I truly put my money where my mouth is. And I’ll confess like most pastors I went through a good long period where I treated my health very poorly and as an afterthought.

This website is my running record of me turning around my own relationships with food, exercise, and experience I’ve gained vicariously over the years about turning around relationships to alcohol and such.

It’s also a bit of a plea, as I’m frankly just tired of seeing my millennial peers have bad health outcomes. While I think there exist an embarrassment of high quality content these days regarding fitness that we something I could only dream of as a young man, none of them seem to be focused on my age cohort specifically and tend to be either a bit too advanced OR too simplistic. On top of that, the fitness category has super strong commercial intent and that brings in a lot of quick fix salesmen and content that is geared more towards clicks than any sort of real world effectiveness/ applications.

I get into that plenty on the blog enough.

So what I’ve tried to put together is a resource of what works(ed) for me (and anyone else that want’s to contribute), and while I’m no sort of research scientist my critical reading skills are highly transferable in digesting and passing on what I’ve read to you. I’m sure someone can find a problem with everything ever written on the topic, so if something really grinds your gears let me know; I do have to ultimately pick a flavor!

The flavor I came down on and the position I take on this blog I owe to a lot of coaches and mentors when I was young and lifting weights. Other’s came up with the same idea; this was my own conclusion and hypothesis.

My thinking is regards to building bodily strength/ fitness/ and endurance is that every single element can be controlled in a linear fashion.