That’s the question Daniel Fajardo—a doctor, husband, and father in St. Simons Island, Georgia—found himself asking a few years ago, after years of heavy lifting left him too sore and stiff to play with his kids. The answer he found was Onnit. The Onnit 6 programs’ focus on mobility and longevity helped Fajardo reframe what fitness means, and restore the body he thought had given out on him.

Fajardo tells his tale to Shane Heins, Onnit’s Director of Community Engagement, in this week’s Onnit Story—part of our ongoing series of live video interviews with people who have made great life improvements with Onnit’s help. See the video below, along with an edited transcript of the highlights, time-stamped so you can easily find them in the video. Stay up to date with Onnit Stories by following Onnit’s Instagram TV (IGTV).

Daniel Fajardo Show Notes

4:20 – How Daniel Got Onnit

Daniel Fajardo: It was kind of a happy accident. I was just scrolling through Facebook and an Onnit ad came up, asking if I wanted a free workout. I had been working out for several years, but things weren’t right. I always felt sore. I was very stiff. That got me looking a lot into mobility. I tried different mobility programs and had some results, but I still wasn’t satisfied. I wasn’t enjoying doing them.

So when I saw the Onnit ad, I just clicked on it, entered my email address, and I got this free workout with some guy that was jumping up and down screaming, “I’m a beautiful butterfly.” [Shane Heins, who coaches several of the Onnit in 30 workouts, likes to make them entertaining.] I got into it. I thought, “Well, this guy is a little strange, but he’s got a lot of energy.”

The workout was short, but I enjoyed it, and I felt like I got a lot of benefit from it. I was just doing mobility, but my heart rate was up, and I felt good. I noticed that, the next day, Onnit was offering an Onnit 6 Challenge.

I had a lot of workout tools already. I had kettlebells, but I wasn’t really using them. I even had a five-pound steel club that I’d bought for a different program. I contacted Onnit and asked what kind of workout to do for the Challenge. I said, “I’m very stiff. I have a lot of neck, back, and shoulder soreness, and hip stiffness.” The rep I spoke to said, “You need to try Durability.” I said, “I’ll trust the process and do it.” The rep also told me to join the Onnit Tribe—the Facebook group where Challenge participants can talk to each other.

I joined the Tribe thinking, “Oh, here’s my competition.” But very shortly afterwards I didn’t see them as that. The members came from different walks of life, but we all had the same goal of improving ourselves. I found a lot of support in there. Everybody was very positive, and I saw that even though some people were going through some real struggles, they were very open about it. I’m not usually that open, so that was a big deal to me. People weren’t afraid to be vulnerable in the Tribe. That’s pretty unusual in the world of social media.

Over the course of the Durability program during the Challenge, a lot of the stiffness got better. The pain started going away. The workouts were different from what I had been doing. They were challenging for different reasons. There are three levels of difficulty with each workout in Onnit 6, and in the beginning, I thought I’d never get to Level 3. But the workouts showed me how to modify the exercises so I could go at my own pace. By the end of six weeks, I was doing Level 3 movements.

I’ve always had problems with my hips. I had hip surgery when I was in my early 40s. I liked the hip exercises in Durability so much that, sometimes, after I finished a workout, I would do them for an extra few minutes, and I noticed a lot of benefit from that. 

I became a father late in life. I have three young boys—ages nine, six, and four. Last year, when I started with the Onnit 6 Challenge, it was February 2021. I remember one day my boys wanted to go play soccer. I had to say to them, “You have to give me about an hour to get my body ready.” I would have to stretch first, and do a certain amount of warming up, just so I could play with them. By the time I was ready to take them to the park, we could only play for about an hour. By then, it was my three year-old’s nap time. Well, fast forward to about halfway through the Durability Challenge, and I noticed that I only had to warm up about five minutes before I could go out and play with the kids. So Durability gave me back quality time with my children.

I used to feel like I couldn’t do a lot of things. I was just like, “Yeah, I can’t lift you up. My back is killing me.” Or, “my shoulders are really bothering me.” Now, over a year later, my stiffness is never to the point where I can’t play with my kids. Now I do yoga. I never liked it before because it was very hard for me, but now I can do the poses, or modify them as I need to.  

That brings me back to the Tribe. If I say I’m having trouble doing something, they say, “Well, maybe you should try this other thing first, and then, as time progresses, you’ll be able to reach your goal.” They showed me that if I put the time in, I will get to that point. I’m still not super limber, but I am miles ahead from where I was when I first started, and it’s showing.

13:40 – On Flexibility

I’ve noticed the mobility I’ve gained helping with other things I do, like jiu-jitsu. You have to be able to move in jiu-jitsu. I used to get trapped in submission holds and before the other guy had even sunk in the technique yet I was already tapping. Now I usually feel like I have a little more range, which buys me some time. 

One of the first things I noticed about the Challenge was how the people in the Tribe don’t shame you for the things you can’t do. We had a family emergency come up, and I wasn’t able to do the workout one day. I thought, “Man, I’ve already messed up on this Challenge.” I posted about it, but the Tribe members said, “Don’t worry about it. Things come up.” Now I see problems as just a speed bump. They slow you down, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop. I think it’s important, sometimes, to slow down, just to make sure you don’t stop completely.

16:10 – Daniel’s Background

I was born in Peru and came to the United States when I was 10. I moved around the US a lot and now I’m in St. Simons Island, Georgia. My job requires a lot of sitting because I spend all day on a microscope. I think that’s why my neck started hurting in the first place. It’s a very sedentary job, so I always tried to work out a lot. For me, that usually meant heavy weights, but that’s not the smartest thing at my age. I was getting injured. I tore my rotator cuff. I had to ask myself, “What’s important? Moving this heavy weight, or being able to move myself?” I actually haven’t even touched a heavy weight in months because I’ve been doing the Onnit 6 HydroCore program.

I’m not against lifting weights now, and I’ll probably go back to it in some form, but I’m glad I’ve found other ways to work out. I don’t push through injuries like I used to. Onnit taught me discipline, and true discipline isn’t just working out when you don’t feel like it. It’s not working out when you SHOULDN’T work out.

24:00 – Abandoning The All-or-Nothing Approach

The Tribe encourages reflection, and tries to help you understand your why. “Why are you doing this?” My first why with Onnit was because I wanted to win the Challenge, but then I started to ask myself why I really wanted to work out. I realized I wanted to play with my kids. I wanted to move around and not be in pain.

Then I started to think about how I would reach that goal. I knew that the kind of training I had been doing couldn’t be a part of it, because I had torn my rotator cuff. I had six months where I couldn’t lift my arm above my head. Did I want that again? So my goal was not about just working out but working out smarter. 

It’s easy to get hooked on the negatives. You have these goals, and when you don’t reach them, you feel like you failed. But you don’t really fail. You only fail when you quit. Things come up in everybody’s life. So you may not reach your goal in the time you allotted yourself, but you definitely will never reach it if you completely stop.

The Tribe never tells you to just “suck it up and do your workout.” Or, “push through the pain.” That’s so different from what I’m used to—going all in or going out of it entirely. I finished the last Onnit 6 Challenge a week late due to illness, but I finished it. I’m behind in this Challenge, but I’ll finish it. And the Tribe members are still encouraging me all the way.

Here’s another example. I had a trip planned for Costa Rica. I was so excited, but then I ended up getting COVID-19 and I couldn’t go. I even infected my three year-old, and I had to quarantine with him. I felt miserable. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had never had that much uninterrupted time with my son before. My son had some mild symptoms, but he was fine, so we could play together and I could read him books. So I may have missed out on Costa Rica, but I had a whole week where I got to spend time with my son. And then, earlier this year, I got to go to Costa Rica anyway, and I enjoyed it—but I look back on that week I had with my son even more fondly.

33:15 – Becoming A Tribe Moderator

It was very humbling, when I was asked. It was about a year ago and the other moderators said, “We value you as a Tribe member. Join our team.” It felt really nice. I said, “Oh, OK.” I was just posting because I enjoyed interacting with the other people. But they said, “We feel you’d add a lot of value to the Tribe as a moderator.” So here I am.

36:20 – Daniel’s Go-To Supplements

I take Total Human^® every day. It’s basically a mix of supplements organized into night and daytime packets. It includes Alpha BRAIN^® and ShroomTech SPORT^® and a greens formula, among other things. I use it every day. I noticed I feel a lot better, sleep a lot better, and have more energy. I do like Alpha BRAIN on its own too. I’ve tried the different versions, from the capsules to the different flavored Instant mixes, and I think the peach one is my favorite. I also like to eat the Protein Bites, but I have learned to slow down because I can scarf quite a few in one time. The S’mores ones are really, really good.  

I take creatine as well. I think the science behind protein and creatine is pretty solid. Creatine has been found to help with cognitive function as well as the muscles. With Alpha BRAIN and Total Human, I just go by the way I feel. I think they help me focus, which is very important in my job. If I forget to take a packet, I do notice the difference without it. 

39:20 – Daniel’s Favorite Fitness Equipment and Workouts

Right now, it’s the HydroCore bag. I was fortunate enough to participate in the beta-testing of the new Onnit 6 HydroCore program. Like I said, I had an injury, but I didn’t have trouble training with the bag. It’s done wonders for my shoulder. I feel like I get a workout with it, but I never feel like I’m wrecked afterward. I also like steel clubs quite a bit. The steel clubs from Onnit are excellent. Third on my list would be kettlebells.

The Onnit in 30 workout programs, I think, are probably some of the best $10 you can spend. The amount of training you get for that is amazing. I do the Move & Groove and Morning Mobility very often. Juan Leija’s My Warmup, Your Workout is brutal, but I like it because it’s very specific. It really gets your heart rate up. For a while, I was using that for my warmup and then the Mobilized Strength for my workout. Then, for the cool down, I would use Decompress To Defy. So that’s three programs. For those three Onnit in 30 programs, you get 30 workouts for $30. That’s a great deal. 

The Onnit 6 Steel Club program has yoga workouts in it, like all the Onnit 6’s. But the Steel Club ones are my favorite. I was someone who hated yoga, but the Onnit 6 program makes it fun, and my body feels great afterward.

Of all the Onnit 6 programs, the Bodyweight is probably the most challenging. I had to learn to start at Level 1 until I got comfortable. Then you can increase the difficulty to Level 2, or increase your reps, or go faster. It has a lot of modifications too. If you can’t do a pushup on the floor, you can start by doing one on a chair. 

43:20 – Shane Sums Up Daniel’s Journey

Shane Heins: For people who don’t know, Daniel is a strong, strong man. He’s got muscle on him, and he used to refer to himself as a rock. Watching him move now, you wouldn’t know he has a history of things he’s gone through with his shoulders, wrists, and hips. 

Daniel Fajardo: Yeah, and just to clarify, I used to refer to myself as a rock because I was so stiff, not because I thought I was jacked [laughs].

Shane: To see the way you move now is a testament to not just all of the effort that you’ve put in, but the shift in the mindset that you created for yourself. You’re a lot like [Onnit Chief Fitness Officer John Wolf]. When people see him they’re like, “Big dude. How does he move like that?” Well, it’s because he takes care of himself and continues to practice mobility.

The post “Problems Are Just A Speed Bump”: Daniel Fajardo’s Onnit Story appeared first on Onnit Academy.

In this week’s Onnit Story, Mariana reveals to Chief Fitness Officer John Wolf how the Tribe, the Onnit 6 Challenge, and the steel mace have helped on her fitness journey, and led to her making some of the best friends she’s ever known. See the video of their interview below, along with an edited transcript of the highlights, time-stamped so you can find those moments in the video. You can stay up to date with Onnit Stories by following Onnit’s Instagram TV (IGTV), where a new one appears regularly.

Mariana Fuentes-Smith Show Notes

4:50 – How Mariana Found Onnit

Mariana Fuentes-Smith: A year ago, I saw one of the trainers that I follow online—Hannah Eden—working with a steel mace, and I just thought, “Oh my gosh, I wish I could do that.” I started looking into it, and I saw that a new Onnit 6 Challenge was about to start. So I hurried up and bought me a mace and set up for the Challenge. And, well, here we are.

John Wolf: Just to clarify for anybody watching, we do three, six-week lifestyle transformation challenges throughout the year. They cover the first three seasons of the year, but we take off the holiday season at the end of the year because there’s so much going on with everybody’s lives. These are called the Onnit 6 Challenges, and they’re a big community event for us.

8:45 – Meet The Onnit Tribe

Mariana: The Onnit Tribe is the most welcoming community that I have ever been a part of. The people in there are all just so honest and real about their journey, and they make you feel comfortable about sharing your story. I’ve been very active ever since the first day that I joined, meaning I post my workouts in the group literally every day. But during my first Challenge, I didn’t interact with the members—I just sort of watched how everything was. Afterward, I took a little time away from the Tribe. Then, for the next Challenge, I jumped into the group and I was like, “OK, there’s no way I can leave these people.” Now they just feel like family and it’s gotten better and better.

John: For the people at home, if you search Onnit Tribe on Facebook, you’ll see the group pop up. You’ll go through a brief interview to make sure you’re not a bot, and then you’ll be approved to come in. Then maybe you’ll experience what Mariana is talking about, which is this supportive vibe that is the Tribe.

Mariana: I think it’s a really big part of the Onnit 6 Challenge. I know there are a lot of people that do the Onnit 6 workouts but don’t join the Tribe, and that’s fine, but I think if you’re looking for support, you’re definitely going to find it there. And we have a lot of fun.

12:20 – Why Sharing Is Caring

Mariana: One of the reasons I like to share videos of my workouts within the group is that I want people to feel comfortable doing that themselves. I always tell people it’s a good way to check on your form. We ask each other for help in the Tribe all the time—everybody helping everybody is really what it comes down to.

John: I think there’s a lot of power in what you’re saying. “Hey, I’m going to put myself out there in this format for everybody to see. I’m documenting my journey, but I’m doing it in a way that’s public and open and vulnerable.” I think it takes leaders being vulnerable to permit other people who might not feel so comfortable to do the same. That’s a really big part of the growth that our Tribe members experience.

Mariana: When I am able to help somebody else with whatever it is they’re asking about, it really fills me. It makes me feel great. And that helps my journey too. This last Challenge was really hard, and I started asking others for help, and that’s something that I don’t ever do. But I’ve realized that I can ask for help and it’s fine. I mean, it’s really easy for me to try and help somebody else. It just comes naturally. But to receive? That’s like, “Ugh, I don’t know how I feel about this.” But I’m getting used to it. I’m getting better at it.

20:12 – What Kind of Relationships Can You Develop Through A Keyboard?

Mariana: I found my long lost sister through the Onnit Tribe [laughs]. Another member, my dear Yvonne—better known in the Tribe as Bonbon. I actually met her through a different group before I joined the Onnit community, but we didn’t really connect then. Through Onnit, we started commenting on each other’s posts. By the time we did the first Onnit 6 Challenge of this year, we were basically dressing alike. I convinced her to get the same shirt as me, which had a frog on it [laughs].

We started talking more and more every day. I was making a trip to Arizona, and Yvonne lives there, so I was like, “OK, we have to meet.” We ended up spending four hours together, just laughing and talking about everything. We were laughing like crazy. People were walking by with looks on their faces like, “What is going on?” It was amazing, and now I just want to meet everybody in the Tribe.

John: That’s very reaffirming, because these days, with so many interactions happening online, you’re left wondering, “Who is this person, really?” You see them post things about themselves, but that doesn’t mean you’re seeing the real version of that person. I think, even in the Tribe, we aren’t all always the person we show up as in the community, but we’re all aspiring to be that person—the best version of ourselves.

Mariana: Yes, and that’s why in this last Challenge I really tried to share as much as possible about how I was feeling so people know it’s not always rainbows and butterflies. We all go through stuff, and sometimes we don’t feel like working out. We don’t always feel our best, but we’re always showing up to support each other in the Tribe.

23:50 – How John Used The Tribe To Cope With A Family Tragedy

John: A lot of us have shared a lot of our harder experiences in the Tribe. Personally, I leaned on the Tribe recently after the loss of my younger brother—a 29 year-old young man with two children, including a seven-month old girl.

I don’t know that I’ve ever felt as comfortable or as genuinely accepted during a time when I was so distraught with everything. This community never made me feel anything less than 100% supported.

25:30 – The New Onnit 6 Challenge Themes

John: At the beginning of this year, we changed the way that we select the champions of the Onnit 6 Challenge. We now have six different themed categories. Before, we had this binary thing where there was a male winner and a female winner, but now we select a winner for each of six categories. So it’s not like there’s one overall winner anymore—there are people who are champions of the different themes—community, performance, personal growth, emotional healing, under age 40, and over 40. Mariana, you were one of those people last time.

Mariana: I was the Community champion. It’s hard to decide which category to enter because you change in so many ways during the Challenges. It’s hard to say which area of your life you developed the most. But I made a lot of connections with the other members during that Challenge, so Community felt like the right one to go for. You really have to decide which category to enter yourself in at the end of the Challenge, because you never know what direction you’re going to develop in over the course of the Challenge.

31:30 – Challenges Within The Challenges

Mariana: The Tribe has its own mini-competitions that members participate in to stay engaged. Many of them aren’t fitness themed at all—they’re just for fun. For instance, we have a lip-sync challenge.

John: We’ve had dance-offs where people rock their favorite song and just dance. Barry Peterson started that one. We also have a gratitude challenge, where you call out a member of the Tribe and tell them in a post what you appreciate about them.

33:00 – The Onnit Tribe Meetup

Mariana: We are planning an Onnit Tribe meetup in Austin, Texas, this October. I’m so excited about it.

John: Onnit has committed to host it, but we’re at the mercy of the Tribe. You guys will tell us what you want to do there. It’s going to be your show.

Mariana: We’ll definitely have a group workout and yoga, and, because we’re in Texas, we’re going to eat tacos!

37:20 – Mariana’s Favorite Workout Tool

Mariana: I think it’s the steel mace. I did the Onnit 6 Barbell program twice. I’m going to do the Onnit 6 Steel Club for the next challenge, and I’m recruiting team members for it, so whoever wants to sign up for that… But I think the steel mace is still my favorite piece of equipment. It’s just cool! It makes me feel powerful. At the same time, oh my gosh, it burns. The burn in the shoulders is real. There’s an exercise we do called the death march, and that makes everything burn, including my brain [laughs].

John: There’s a coordination challenge with that move. Before it feels cool, it may feel like you have two left feet for a little while. But once you get comfortable with it, it’s like you have a dance partner when you work out.

39:30 – Mariana’s Favorite Supplements

Mariana: I love the Vanilla Whey Protein. It’s the only brand I’m able to drink, because I don’t like the aftertaste of most protein shakes, and Onnit’s doesn’t have any, in my opinion. I also love HYDRATech^™ Instant. Sometimes I mix both the Tangerine and Lime flavors together. It tastes like a margarita, if you ask me. Also New MOOD®

has been a huge help. I had the hardest time sleeping for a long time. I tried New MOOD® after the first Challenge and I was hooked. It made a huge difference.

43:45 – Mariana’s Favorite Onnit 6 Challenge

Mariana: I did the barbell one twice, mainly because when I did it the first time I did it without the Tribe, and the second time I did it with them because I wanted to see the difference—and it did make a huge difference. I recruited a lot of people to do it with me, so we had a huge Team Barbell. Now I’m looking forward to the Onnit 6 Hydrocore.

John: That’s a to-be-released program. But people in the Tribe are already getting a whiff of it.

47:00 – What Keeps Mariana Consistent

Mariana: When I first started working out, it was for my daughter. She had just started gymnastics, and I was like, “How do you do this? I don’t understand how you can move like that. It’s ridiculous.” So that’s really what got me into fitness, just watching her do all these crazy things. I was like, “I want to do that too.” Maybe not everything that she does, but I’m trying to keep up with her.

When I joined the Onnit community, Kaysee Brooks and Freddy Lopez were two people that I was watching. I always thought, “Kaysee’s just so cool. She’s so cute. I love her.” And the more time that I spend with the community now, I feel like they are a big part of why I keep showing up. It’s my kids and it’s them, because they inspire me and I’ve been told that I inspire some of them. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s nice to hear.

49:50 – Mariana’s Advice For Those Interested in Joining the Tribe

Mariana: Just stop thinking about it and show up. We are so welcoming. From time to time, especially at the beginning of a Challenge, there are a lot of new people, and all the members are always so quick to jump in and make everybody feel welcome. If you have any questions, we’re here for you. The Tribe is a great place to be. I live there.

I know a lot of people don’t like being on social media, or don’t like being a part of groups, because there’s a lot of groups out there that are just crazy. But believe me when I say this is a great one. And I think a big part of being in the Challenge is having that support. I think everybody should have that.

The post “I Found A Sister In The Onnit Tribe”: Mariana Fuentes-Smith’s Onnit Story appeared first on Onnit Academy.

So what the hell does the average guy or gal have in common with Brian Butz? Well, as it turns out, much more than you think.

The most impressive thing about the former Onnit Gym coach from Latrobe, PA, isn’t his physique or feats of strength, but rather his evolution from a husky farm boy who grew up playing magic tricks rather than sports and eating bowls of Frosted Flakes^® snowed under in added sugar. Contrary to what his growing Instagram account may lead you to believe, Butz isn’t the poster boy for good genetics and divine favor. Instead, he’s living proof that we all have to start somewhere, and that anyone can leave that place behind if they choose to.

Butz, 29, spoke to us about his life and fitness journey, how he’s trying to single-handedly elevate the coaching profession, and his new workout app, the Mobile Mammoth Level 1.

Onnit: First, we need you to clarify something. We’ve never seen you and Thor in the same place before, so can you conclusively prove that you’re NOT, in fact, a Marvel superhero?

Brian Butz: [Laughs] That has become my nickname among some people. I’ve actually never seen any of those movies, but I get “You look like Chris Hemsworth” from people my age, and “You look like Brad Pitt” from older generations a lot. 

Were you always a physical specimen?

Not at all. My parents had zero concept of nutrition. I drank a lot of soda growing up, and my after-school snack was a giant bowl of Frosted Flakes^® with two strawberry Pop-Tarts^® broken up on top of them and four tablespoons of sugar on top of that. I didn’t have time to play sports because I grew up on a farm, and I was either working on that or working for my dad’s construction company, laying stone and pouring concrete. I started helping him when I was six and worked as a laborer every summer. When I did have time, I was into magic [laughs].

So how did you get into fitness?

I was 14, and my mom asked me one day if I needed a bra because I had such big boobies. She wasn’t kidding.

That’s when I said, “Fuck this.” I had seen commercials for the P90X^® transformation program, and I spent $140 of my own money to get it and started working out. I couldn’t even do a pushup at first. Nowadays, I can deadlift 710 pounds and do full splits, so people like to say, “It’s easy for you to talk about fitness, because you’ve always been like this.” That’s when I tell them, “Eh, not really.” [Laughs]

So I did P90X^® in my room every day. That program ended up being a big influence on my Mobile Mammoth Level 1 program that I offer now. You can do it in your garage. Since the pandemic began, many people have gotten a squat rack or other equipment that fits in a home gym, so, if you’re like I was back in the day, intimidated or uncomfortable going to a gym, you can train in your own room like I did with P90X^®. One of a coach’s jobs is to eliminate barriers to exercise for clients, so creating a program that allows you to train in a place where you’re not self-conscious and you’re free from distractions was important to me, because that’s how I started.

After I lost some weight with P90X^®, I wanted to go out for wrestling, because I knew all the wrestlers in my school were in great shape. I had a gym teacher who was also the wrestling coach. He was a really good guy—didn’t swear, but he was built like a tree, and his training was really diverse. He had us do synchronized swimming as part of our preparation. It turned out that I was pretty terrible at wrestling—I got my ass beat all the time. I’m not a tough guy. But Frank, the coach, supported me anyway. He was the first person who told me, “You can do this.” He told me I could be the first person in my family to go to college. That was a novel thing for me, because, at that time, I had no confidence. I never got much better at wrestling, but I did start believing in myself and pursuing other goals.

At the end of high school, I applied to Indiana University of Pennsylvania and got into their exercise science program. When I told my dad, he said, “That’s awesome. Now how are you going to pay for it?” I had always wanted to go into the Army anyway, so I signed up for an ROTC scholarship. They paid for three years of school, and I went into the Army afterward.

In 2016, I got stationed in Colorado Springs as a platoon leader. I didn’t become a war hero or a bad ass, but, as a First Lieutenant, I had $59 million of equipment under my supervision, and 80 personnel below me. I had to grow up really quickly. The attitude in the Army was, “You’re in charge, so don’t fuck this up.” I had to train people for combat, so I became good at planning, time management, and communication—because that’s how you get people to do things you need them to do when they’re wet, tired, hungry, or pissed off. That really paid off later when I became a trainer.

When did you know you wanted to do fitness for a living?

I married an Army nurse and, when I got out of the military, I moved to San Antonio to be with her. It didn’t work out—we were young and stupid, and some would say I still am [laughs]—but I stayed in Texas. It was really weird because I had an exercise science degree and an Army resume, but I couldn’t find a job anywhere.

I tried to do construction, but I couldn’t get work and ended up sitting on the couch watching The Sopranos. One day, I was working out in Gold’s Gym. I had been training back and was all pumped up, and, out of frustration, I walked into the manager’s office and said, “Hey, man, can I get a job here?” Maybe it was because of the way I looked, but he just said “Sure” right away.

I had some experience as a trainer because I had trained guys in the military—I was responsible for the physical fitness of the platoon. But I went out and got a training certification, and started training people at Gold’s. I really didn’t know what I was doing. The management told me to just go and get clients, so I applied the work ethic I grew up with. I was in the gym 12–14 hours a day, going from treadmill to treadmill talking people up, trying to win clients. I worked up to doing 70 sessions a week, seven days a week, and I became one of the best salesmen at the gym.

Part of my success was due to outworking the competition, but it was also my personality. I was very empathetic to people. My old coach, Frank, used to say that people don’t care how much you know till they know how much you care, and that stuck with me.

How did you find Onnit?

I had heard [Onnit co-founder] Aubrey Marcus on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast when I was in high school. He was talking about an ayahuasca experience that he had had and was actually crying. That made a huge impression on me. 

Remember that I grew up around farmers, construction workers, and wrestlers. I was raised to think that if you were having an issue, the only solution was to raise yourself up by your bootstraps. There wasn’t a lot of space for a man to have feelings. But Aubrey was a guy who was jacked, and hunted fish with a speargun—and was also sensitive enough to cry in public. He showed me that a bad ass can also be in touch with his feelings. So I had known about Onnit for a while, and I had actually been taking Shroom Tech^® SPORT before workouts for years and loved it.

Trainers know that if they get more certifications, they can charge more money, so I said to a bunch of the Gold’s trainers that we should go up to Onnit in Austin and take a cert course. In 2019, we went and did the kettlebell cert, and I left it telling myself that I had to work at Onnit someday. It became the mecca for me. 

What about Onnit impressed you so much?

The kettlebell course was amazing, but there was something about Coach John Wolf [Onnit’s Chief Fitness Officer] that inspired me. He’s a very powerful guy who speaks and teaches well. Like Aubrey, he had a quiet confidence about him and showed that you can be strong and smart and friendly—a balanced person. He owned the room when he taught.

You know, I truly believe that fitness is a vehicle for teaching lessons in life. When I was younger, bodybuilding was very important to me. It was how I dealt with friends who were dying in the military. I worked off a lot of that stress and anger by lifting heavy weights. Then, one day, not long after I went to Onnit the first time, I did a workout where I front squatted 315 for 25 reps. It was awful. I sat down on a bench afterward and thought, “I’m not angry anymore. I want to heal.” Shortly after that, I took Onnit’s Durability certification. Shane Heins [co-creator of Onnit’s fitness education] actually said, “When I saw you come in, I saw this very big guy who looked like a lumberjack, but I could tell that you were just ready to change. I’m excited to see where you take Durability.”

That cert changed my life, and it’s now the basis of everything I do. First of all, Durability made me realize how tight I was. When I tried to do a shinbox sit, my front knee was five inches above the floor. So I stopped lifting entirely for six months and did the Durability moves every day—the mountain climber series, shinboxes, etc. I just did Durability and ran, and that’s it.

Then, in the fall of 2020, [Former Director of Fitness Programming] Juan Leija posted that Onnit Gym was looking for coaches. I messaged him saying I wanted the job, and he invited me to come do a workout with the other coaches. That was part of my job interview. He put us through the ringer, running with an 80-pound sandbag on our shoulders, among other things, but I was in great shape from all the cardio and mobility training. Juan offered me the job, and I moved to Austin.

I worked at Onnit a year, and it was a great experience. I learned a ton. But I recognized that it was getting time for me to step out on my own. There were people waiting a half-year to train with me at the gym, and I felt like I had to find a way to get my training to the masses.

John Wolf had told me that Onnit is a place where coaches come, learn and develop, and then move on to something else. It’s a springboard, not necessarily a destination. So, while it was terrifying to move on, I decided to step away from Onnit so I could develop the Mobile Mammoth plan. 

Where did the idea for Mobile Mammoth training come from?

I had three questions I couldn’t get out of my mind. “What is fitness and why do we need it? What is being offered now in the market and what does it not address? And why is everybody getting hurt?” I thought that if I could answer those, I’d have a training system that would serve more people.

I wanted people to link fitness to life outside the gym. You should know what aspect of your life you want to improve with fitness, and how to train to get there. No one really wants to work out just to get better at working out. Most trainers I see don’t help their clients identify and set smart, specific goals, and I wanted to offer a program that did, no matter who you are. And as for the third question, why is everybody hurt, we need a better model to teach people how to take care of themselves. I’ve trained over 1,000 people now, and I’ve seen that, more than any other factor, what stops them from making progress always comes down to injury. We’re always hearing about female soccer players blowing out their ACLs, and 70% of people who go to physical therapy drop out after the third session—so it falls on trainers to not let them get injured in the first place. 

So, in my system, posture is really important. We work on basic movement skills. I try to educate on simple but important things like how to breathe, how to brace the core. You know, for a long time, I was afraid that clients wouldn’t stay with me if I trained them like that. If I made them do bodyweight squats before barbell squats, focusing on fundamental positions. But I found that when you take the time to explain what you’re doing and why, and you show that it’s because you care about the client, they appreciate it and run with it. And believe me, I can make an exercise hard without adding weight to it. There are all kinds of ways to add intensity to your training, like adding a tempo to your reps, decreasing rest periods, upping the volume, working off one foot rather than two, and so on. 

I have a weird amount of empathy and awareness. I can feel how people are, and I believe that how you show up for people and the attention that you give them is reciprocal. For the hour I’m in the gym with a client, we’re alone. I want them to leave thinking, “Wow, he really paid attention to me.” That can have a huge impact on people, and their fitness. I look at it this way—most people see their doctor maybe once a year, but if you have a trainer, you see them three times a week. We have a big responsibility, and an opportunity to really change lives.

Your mobility now is amazing, especially for a guy your size, but you mentioned that you used to be very inflexible. What do you recommend for people who want to start limbering up?

Spend time in the positions you’re trying to improve and work on owning the end ranges of motion. But also, work on the basics of a healthy lifestyle. Honestly, drinking more water and sleeping eight hours at night had the biggest impact on my mobility. It took me out of that fight-or-flight state, and rehydrated the tissue. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to do mobility, as basic healthy lifestyle guidelines would cover most of it.

In the Mobile Mammoth app, I put people in positions that challenge them while still letting them do exercises that are familiar and that they enjoy. For instance, there’s biceps curls in the program, but sometimes you’ll do them in different stances. You’re still training biceps, but when you do them in a staggered stance, there’s a balance component, you work hip extension, and you have to be mindful of keeping a neutral pelvis, so mobility and posture are built into the training.

Tell us more about your new app, Mobile Mammoth Level 1

It’s available July 4 on Google Play for Android and iOS for iPhone. You get access to a program for 12 months—three days a week of resistance training and two days of cardio and mobility. You also get what I call Mobility Mammoth Minutes, which are 15-minute routines for when you don’t have time for a full workout. The workouts use equipment that most people have at home—a squat rack, landmine, and dumbbells or kettlebells.

I designed the app to teach people the fundamentals they need to do a hard reset on your fitness, and it will help you answer the question of where you can take your fitness afterward. It’s heavy on education, so it’s not just another program you do and are done with in 30 days. It will feel more like a course you take to learn about training. You can repeat the program again and again, progressing and regressing the exercises as needed.

Download The Mobile Mammoth Level 1 app at  train.themobilemammoth.com, and follow Brian on Instagram, @themobilemammoth.

The post Meet The Mobile Mammoth: Q&A With Brian Butz appeared first on Onnit Academy.

See the video of Shane and Magnus’ interview below, along with an edited transcript of the highlights, time-stamped so you can find those moments in the video. You can stay up to date with Onnit Stories by following Onnit’s Instagram TV (IGTV), where a new one appears every other week.

Magnus Palmer Show Notes

3:00 – How Magnus Met Onnit

Magnus Palmer: I saw that a friend of mine liked one of Jocko Willink’s posts on social media. When I looked at the post, it showed this weird-looking metal equipment. I said, “What is that?” When I learned it was a steel mace, I felt I had to have it. I ordered one on January 1, 2021, and then I looked on the internet for resources on how to use it. I found a video of [Onnit co-founder] Aubrey Marcus using a mace, and I started following what he did.

I used the mace every day. Unfortunately, the mace I bought was a 15-pounder, which was too heavy, and I hurt my lower back. I wised up, took a step back, ordered a lighter mace, and somehow stumbled onto the Onnit 6 Steel Mace program in February of last year.

When I started following Onnit 6, I understood why my back was hurting. Coach John Wolf tells you in the videos not to arch your back—you want it neutral—and I had been arching like crazy because the 15-pound mace was too heavy, and I didn’t have the foundational knowledge to use it properly.

5:15 – When Lighter Is Better

Shane Heins: A lot of people look at the unconventional Onnit tools and think 10 or 15 pounds is too light, because they compare those weights to what they use on more conventional equipment and exercises. We used to sell a lot more of the 15, 20, and 25-pound maces, but when we started teaching certifications for the steel mace and creating more education for it, people realized they could get more out of lighter weights to start with. Then we saw this huge shift. Suddenly, we were selling out of the 10-pound maces [laughs].

7:55 – Finding His Tribe

Magnus: After a few weeks of Onnit 6 Steel Mace, I bought the Onnit in 30 Move & Groove program. Then I got a suggestion on Facebook to join the Onnit Tribe, and I thought that, maybe if I joined, it would give me a tip or two about using the mace. So I joined the Tribe, thinking I would just ask a question about mace training and get some advice.

Within the first few days I was in the Tribe, I was blown away by the leadership, the diversity, and everyone coming together and having the backs of others. It was so different from other communities I’ve tried. I now consider the Tribe part of my extended family. Even though it’s all online, you get to know people, and these people have their ups and downs. They come from different backgrounds, different parts of the world. These are people you would never get the chance to hang out with otherwise, but you can connect with them in the Tribe because you have something in common.

At the time that I joined, the world was such a turbulent place, but that was never the focus in the Tribe. The focus was on the people in the Tribe. No matter what’s going on outside, you still have people you can connect with and be inspired by.

10:55 – Finding Balance In His Workouts

Magnus: One thing I’ve learned in this journey is that recovery is important. I used to go hard and then harder, and that got me  injured or sick. When I was better, I’d repeat the cycle all over again. But recovery is built into every Onnit program. They have yoga and active recovery sessions, which provides a nice balance to the resistance work. Onnit taught me to use a foam roller, which was pretty torturous at first, but I love it now. 

The Tribe offers these mini-challenges that keep you on task. They’re great for people like me who skip yoga, or complain about it [laughs]. One of them was to do yoga for 14 days. They weren’t all long sessions; it was just a challenge to get you in the habit of doing some, and I did. At the end of the Challenge, I thought I failed, because I only did 11 out of the 14 days. But you, Shane, said it wasn’t a failure. “It’s a success,” you said, “because that’s 11 days more than nothing.” And you were right, because it really opened up my mind to yoga. I tried all different types and found one I really enjoy.

The Tribe pushes you beyond your comfort zone, and it’s helped me rediscover a lot of healthy habits that I forgot along the way. If you’re trying to do it all alone, it’s easy to let those habits fade away.

17:50 – Unity in Diversity

Shane: You mentioned diversity earlier, and one of the pillar principles in our fitness education is Unity In Diversity. We believe that unity, taken to an extreme, can become conformity—a box where everyone lives and has to do everything the same. And diversity, taken to an extreme, can become chaos, because there’s nothing connecting the dots to create structure. So the idea of Unity in Diversity is about how we find the common through-lines in our diversity to connect us all together so that we can move forward together. 

It’s beautiful to hear that in what you’re talking about—that yes, we’re all different people, but we can recognize that we’re all going through something similar. We can draw strength from that.

20:40 – Magnus’ Background

Magnus: I live in Sweden with my future wife, and I have four daughters. I’ll be 48 soon. We have two cats, one dog, and two rabbits living outside. My previous job was actually at IKEA as a senior data engineer. If you go to IKEA’s website, you’ll see things my team and I did. I was at a big data conference in San Francisco in 2019, and I met a lot of people. They joked with me, asking if I had to assemble an IKEA chair for my job interview. It was funny the first few times I heard that, but I don’t know how many times I had to hear that joke [laughs]. I’m a computer geek developer at a small Swedish/American company now. 

I used to do a lot of martial arts when I was younger, and when I saw The Ultimate Fighter TV show in 2008, I said, “I’m only 34, maybe I could have a go at this because I’m not that old.” I started training again, but it takes time to get your body used to that kind of training. But I didn’t know that then, and I got injured. After four and a half years, I looked back on what I was doing and realized that two-thirds of that time was spent with injury and rehab. It didn’t seem worth it, so I quit.

Now, fast forward a few years, and all the sitting I was doing in front of a computer was causing neck problems. The Onnit in 30 Morning Mobility has been a lifesaver for me in that regard.

My daughter wanted to train martial arts, and that got me into judo. Now that I’m doing the Onnit workouts, I noticed that I have fewer headaches than when I trained before, because I’m not as stiff from sitting in front of the computer. 

Onnit has helped my mindset so much too. Now, if I do get injured, instead of thinking about how I can’t do what I want, and not doing anything as a result, I ask myself what I can do instead. That’s proof of a new mindset. The last time I got injured, I managed to do 76 days of stretching in a row.

I also did a lot of planks. I was in plank purgatory! Level 1 planks in the Onnit 6 Steel Mace program are brutal. Every Onnit 6 exercise can be progressed and regressed depending on your ability, and many people want to jump to Level 3 as fast as they can, but sometimes Level 1 is even harder. And if something does feel easy, Coach Wolf shows you how to make it feel hard, and that’s a good skill for life in general.  

There are lots of Onnit principles you can apply to your life. My plan right now is to be doing great when I turn 50. Onnit is one of the resources I use to push me. I just have to be sure not to stop the good things I’m doing and fall back on old habits, which is what I’ve done over the years. When you’re in a good place, it’s easy to let your good habits fade away and forget their benefits.

34:20 – Good Is The Enemy of Great

Shane: I love the saying that good is the enemy of great. Aiming for good enough can be an obstacle to pushing yourself to the next level. The trick is to know when to push yourself and when to take your foot off the pedal a little bit. That’s why our fitness system really is a longevity and performance-focused system. It’s not just longevity for longevity’s sake. It’s about achieving longevity so you can continue to do the things that you love to do at a higher level for as long as you live. That’s how to make age 50 better than 48.

Magnus: A few weeks ago, there was a really emotional moment in the Onnit Tribe Live at Five [a Q&A with the Onnit 6 coaches at 5p.m. CST in the Tribe’s Facebook group]. You said we owe it to ourselves to be the best version of ourselves when tragedy happens. That really hit me profoundly. Sometimes life seems meaningless, so I remember what you said. I will try to be the best version of myself, and the good thing is, doing so is a lifetime quest.

Shane: I appreciate you saying that. ​​I think when you’re feeling paralyzed and asking, “What’s the point? Why try?,” you have to remember that there are folks who do not or will not have the opportunity to change things in their lives. So, in a way, you owe it to them, to yourself, and to the world to do what you can. Outside of whatever else we can’t control or dictate, we can start with ourselves and shift the energy. “Why am I doing this? Because I can, and if I can, then I will. And I will in honor of those who can’t.”

45:00 – Leading By Example 

Magnus: It’s pointless to tell someone, “You should join the Tribe. You should do mobility. You should do yoga.” That doesn’t work. They need to see you and me and say, “I want to have what you have.” Leading by example is the only way to persuade people—because you don’t “persuade” them. You win them over by being you. I want people to look at me and say, “He’s old and he’s big. He shouldn’t be that flexible.” Then they might get inspired to train mobility.

49:40 – The Biggest Improvement in Magnus’ Life, Thanks to the Onnit 6 Programs

Accountability. I actually joined an accountability team in the Tribe for the Onnit in 30 workouts, and being part of that has made me do my decompression sessions late at night, and my Morning Mobility early in the day. These are times when I would normally say, “I don’t have time to do it,” but I realize now that I have time because I want to honor the others in that small group who keep me accountable. That’s a tip for you all out there. If you ever join the Tribe, take the opportunity to connect with others. Sometimes you will inspire them, and sometimes they will inspire you.

The post “We Owe It To Ourselves”: Magnus Palmer’s Onnit Story appeared first on Onnit Academy.

In this interview, Brandon reveals how he survived life on the street, quit drugs cold turkey, and why the Onnit 6 Challenge is really a contest without a competition.

Onnit: Tell us about life before you found Onnit.

Jake Brandon: I joined the Army as soon as I was 18, and still a senior in high school. I felt like serving my country was just something I had to do. The 9/11 attacks happened two days before I graduated basic training, and I wanted to go to Afghanistan, but I had already been assigned to a reserve unit in Omaha.

I was trained to be a helicopter mechanic, but there never seemed to be a helicopter for me to work on, so I went over my head to an officer that I shouldn’t have, asking to get deployed. Instead, I got reprimanded, and was eventually let go from the Army with a less than honorable discharge—just because I broke rank.

That experience left a hole in me somewhere. There was also a death in my family around that time, and it sent me on a downward spiral. Health was not remotely a concern of mine.

I got married, and my wife and I had my first son. Four years later, we had another boy, but I was gaining a lot of weight. I started a job that had me working on wind turbines, and that’s when I started to see the value in keeping myself healthy. I had to climb towers that were 300 feet in the air, and doing that multiple times a day is a workout. That made me start paying attention to what I was eating.

I got the job weighing 268 pounds, but 265 was the weight limit for my position, so I promised that I would lose it. Over the next year and a half, I got down to 215.

Something tells us it’s too early for a happy ending…

You got it. In 2015, my marriage ended in a nasty divorce. My wife took my son away, and he was everything to me. I got depressed, moved back to my hometown, and lost track of fitness again altogether. I was too ashamed, or too prideful, to reach out to family for help, so I ended up staying with a friend of mine—and I use that term lightly. I knew he had done drugs in the past, but I didn’t anticipate it rubbing off on me the way it did. Staying with him in the mindset that I was in at the time made me the perfect victim.

I started doing a lot of hard drugs, and it didn’t take long for me to find myself on the street. I was surviving any way I could, sleeping in the woods or an alley, and occasionally crashing at someone’s place. I made sure that wherever I slept, no one else could see me. I wasn’t proud of where I was at, and I continued using drugs.

In one of the lowest moments of my life, I slept in an abandoned house with no windows. It was the middle of winter. I managed to scrounge up enough money to buy a Marlboro sleeping bag from a pawn shop, so I had that for warmth, and a few blankets, but I woke up in near hypothermia, urinating on myself.

After about a year and a half of being homeless, I had had enough, so I reached out to my brother. He told my mom everything and, even though my mom and I didn’t have a great relationship at that time, she offered me a place to stay. From there, I was able to get myself clean. I never went to rehab—I just stopped using.

The first couple weeks were the hardest. Head to toe pain, body aches, and chills. But I was motivated by my boys. My oldest was four and a half, and my youngest was six months, and I didn’t want them to discover that this was their dad. When my head was clear, I developed a plan to start life over again.

What was the first step?

I started a new career in HVAC. I wanted to do heating and air replacement and repair, and I had to show the court that I was rebuilding my life before I could get joint custody of my boys. The HVAC company had their own apprenticeship program, so I didn’t have to go back to college to get another degree. I could go through the apprenticeship while I was working. Of course, it raised some red flags when I applied, but I told them I would be the best hire they ever had if they took a chance on me. As it turned out, I became their top apprentice for the next three and a half years, and I was made lead of a division in the company.

About a year into the job, I was talking to a coworker, and I found that we shared a love of mixed martial arts. That evolved to us talking about fitness, and he asked if I ever used kettlebells, and showed me the Onnit 6 Kettlebell program. In 2019, I started working out on my own with it. I didn’t want to commit to any Onnit 6 Challenge yet; I just wanted to see if I could do the workouts, because, at that point, my weight was up to 299 pounds.

I was pretty disgusted with myself and I didn’t know if I could handle the workouts. My friend showed me another workout program, RUSHFIT, from Georges St-Pierre, who was one of my favorite UFC fighters. RUSHFIT was more cardio-based, and I used it to help melt some of the fat off and prepare me to do Onnit 6. The more fat I lost, the more comfortable I felt doing the kettlebell exercises I saw from Onnit, and that’s when I decided to join the Onnit Tribe and do my first Onnit 6 Challenge.

By the way, I got joint custody of my kids a year and a half after I started the new job. I want to say that I couldn’t have done it without my Mom, Grandpa, and God in my life.

What were your first impressions of the Tribe?

I joined the Tribe out of curiosity. But I was also skeptical. I had it in my head that it was going to be just fitness enthusiasts with years of experience in there. I thought I wouldn’t fit in. To my shock, the Tribe turned out to be made up of everyday people. No matter your fitness, financial, or social status, you were welcome. But I didn’t open up to the members right away because I felt I didn’t belong. After my drug history, I felt like a fraud being a part of a fitness group.

I kept pretty quiet for the first Challenge I did—the kettlebell one. There was one couple in the Tribe that I did go back and forth with in conversation, and they hounded me about opening up to the whole group. They just said, “You’ll get more out of this if you share more.”

Talking to [Onnit Chief Fitness Officer] John Wolf helped too. He shared details about his past, which included drug use, and that inspired me. Here I was thinking that I was the only one in the Tribe with a story like that, but I wasn’t. The Tribe became the most important people in my life. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t doing another workout, diet, or fitness fad. I was beginning a whole new lifestyle.

How did you like the Onnit 6 workouts?

When I started using the kettlebells, it was awkward at first. There are three tiers of exercises you can choose from when you do the Onnit 6 workouts, and I stayed at Level 1, instead of jumping ahead, and that made all the difference. I have herniated discs in my back from when I was in the service, but the way the program is designed, I was able to build up strength in my back without aggravating it. Now I don’t have low-back pain anymore.

Doing the Onnit and RUSHFIT workouts got my bodyweight down to a healthy 175. I think by now I’ve done every one of the Onnit 6’s. The programs Onnit offers, with or without the Tribe, are on a whole other level from others I’ve tried. Other fitness programs have their benefits, but they’re laser-focused on just one thing—fitness. My whole outlook on fitness now is that it’s a lifestyle. I’m getting my mom and my boys into it too. I want to show them what you can do if you put your mind to it.

My six year-old son is eating more whole grains now. He had been living on white bread with ketchup and eggs, but I prepared meals in front of him so he could see what I’m eating, and he learned to try new foods. I ask him if he wants to try what I’m having. Sometimes he turns his nose up at it, but sometimes he’ll try it. I have him two weekends a month, so I do my best to lead by example.

In spite of all the kind things you’ve said about the Challenges, you took a step back from them for a while. What was that about?

I’m a competitive person, and that can be a bad thing. When I compete for something and don’t win or get noticed, it can have an effect on me. About four Challenges ago, I wanted to stop participating. I was putting everything I had into these contests, but I hadn’t been named as a finalist.

I was getting up at 5 a.m., getting back from work at 4 p.m., and my life was all about Onnit after that. I really didn’t have a life because I was so focused on this new fitness lifestyle. There wasn’t room for anything else anymore but work and fitness. I thought that if I stayed very regimented with training and eating, that that discipline would keep me from going back to drugs.

Once again, the Tribe helped me through it. Tim Sibley said I shouldn’t view the Onnit 6 Challenges as competitions in the sense of one person against another. They’re supposed to be about all of us working together, competing against our former selves. Tim said that you can’t compare one person’s progress to another person’s, “because we’re all on a different point in our journey.” There’s no standard to measure up against.

That helped me to let go a little and have fun with the Challenges again, like I did in the beginning. When it started to feel like fun again, I was able to look at where other people were at and help them do better. I could see myself in some of the other Tribe members and knew what they were struggling with, and that allowed me to support them. 

Interestingly, I ended up being a finalist in that Onnit 6 Challenge, using the Onnit 6 Barbell program, last August. So, looking back at the process, it isn’t just a fitness journey I’m on. It’s been about building my character.

Are you a fan of any supplements?

I’ve taken Total GUT HEALTH™. I’m studying right now for my journeyman license in heating and air, and you can bet that I’ll take Alpha BRAIN^® Black Label before I take that test [laughs]. I also like New MOOD^® for when I’m going to sleep. But for the most part, I do well on what I eat. I used to take supplements for a kick in the butt, but now I find I have the energy from a healthy diet, so I don’t need supplements for that anymore.

What’s your advice to people who may be considering joining an Onnit 6 Challenge, or the Onnit Tribe?

Have fun with fitness. Don’t take it too seriously. Yes, it’s about your health, and you need to be consistent with it, but don’t let it consume you to where you don’t enjoy life. Fitness should be a way to make friends, and you can find a lot of amazing people in the Onnit Tribe on Facebook and on Discord. I got away from Facebook for a while because of their politics, but I’m back on now so I can be in the Tribe. It’s important to me to give back to a place that I got so much support from.

The post “It’s About Building Character”: Q&A With Onnit Tribe Member Jake Brandon appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Read about Maggie’s MS journey below, and make your contribution at the Onnit Social Responsibility Committee’s donation page. Onnit will match all donations up to $1,150.

“Don’t Tell Me You’re Sorry”: How Onnit’s Maggie Cunningham Is Facing Down MS

It started with stomach pain, but this was no garden-variety bellyache. Maggie Cunningham, age 20 at the time, hurt badly enough that she had to avoid food altogether, and if she did eat, she felt dizzy. Maggie stopped going to work and school, and confined herself to the couch. In three weeks, she lost 50 pounds.

It would be another decade before doctors found out what was wrong.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disorder where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks the myelin sheaths (protective coverings) of the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.

The effect is like an electrical wire that’s had some of its rubber coating worn off—when the nerve fiber inside is unprotected, nerve transmissions can be slowed or blocked. The body will try to repair the damage, but in doing so leaves scar tissue in the affected areas. Sclerosis means scarring, hence the term multiple sclerosis.

Symptoms are highly variable, which makes MS difficult to identify. Nearly one million people in the U.S. live with MS, and roughly 200 new cases are diagnosed each week. To date, there is no cure. The most famous MS case in recent years may belong to actress Selma Blair, who made a documentary about her struggle in 2021.

On Pins and Needles

Maggie, from Austin, TX, never liked going to the doctor. As a kid, she was diagnosed with vasovagal syncope—a condition where certain triggers cause enough emotional distress to make your heart rate and blood pressure drop suddenly, resulting in fainting. Maggie’s trigger was medical settings.

Confronting with anything to do with doctors, hospitals, medical procedures, or health troubles provokes a visceral reaction. For years, she ran the risk of passing out when getting a shot, or even waiting in an examination room.

“I don’t know where it started,” she says. “Doctors have asked my mother if I had a traumatic birth, but I didn’t. I can remember being in the fourth grade, reading a book in class about a guy who went blind by stabbing himself in the eye. That made me fall backward in my chair! Then I threw up on the teacher.”

Maggie laughs. “But that’s fine. She was a mean lady anyway.”

So, when Maggie’s stomach pain and wasting got too serious to wait out any longer, her family had to take her to the hospital by force.

A doctor told Maggie she was merely constipated, and that cutting out meat, dairy, and gluten would solve it. She was compliant for the next six months, and while the pain and disorientation abated, she didn’t feel normal.

A few years passed, and in 2015, Maggie was bending over to pick up a box at work. “It was heavier than what I should have tried to lift on my own,” she says, “but I have trouble asking people for help.” She immediately noticed a tingling sensation, like pins and needles, in the skin around her stomach.

By the end of her shift, the feeling had spread around the right side of her back to her spine.

By the end of the week, it had moved down to her toes.

MS often causes odd sensations in the legs and arms, due to the nerve signals being interfered with. This can progress to loss of power in the limbs, pain, spasms, and difficulty walking. Symptoms can come on over the course of a day or two and last days or weeks, usually resolving—or at least improving—on their own, as the body attempts to heal itself.

MS can also result in blurred or lost vision in one eye, fatigue, incontinence, sexual dysfunction, and, if for no other reason than it’s so challenging to live with, depression.

MS usually shows up in people between the ages of 20 and 40, but it can strike anyone at any time. Low levels of Vitamin D are associated with increased risk, as is being overweight, and women are three times as likely as men to get relapsing-remitting MS—the most common type, which is characterized by repeated attacks, or relapses.

White people, particularly those living in the northern U.S. and Canada, have the highest rates of MS.

Searching for Answers… And Finding More Questions

Maggie went to a chiropractor who assumed the tingling was due to a pinched nerve sustained from picking up the heavy box. She got some adjustments, and it went away. A year later, the feeling came back, but this time in her hip. A doctor gave her corticosteroids to no avail, but the issue once again resolved on its own within weeks.

In 2017, Maggie started work at Onnit as a Customer Service Representative. Her first week on the job, the tingles struck one of her legs. To add to the confusion, her eyesight was affected as well. “I could see, but I couldn’t focus on anything,” she says. “I felt like I was going cross-eyed. But at the time, I just thought I was adjusting to having a desk job and sitting in office lighting in front of a computer.” She was all right again within days.

Another two years passed, and Maggie was working out at Onnit Gym. She started feeling back pain in the midst of an exercise. She told Coach John Wolf, Onnit’s Chief Fitness Officer, she felt like there was a gremlin next to her spine. “He told me to stop the workout, which was great, because I’m the kind of person who will keep pushing even when my body is screaming not to.”

Another chiropractic treatment brought no relief, and the next day, Maggie couldn’t feel anything but tightness from her waist to the middle of her thigh on both legs. “I was waddling around the office feeling like I was wearing a wetsuit that was three sizes too small.” The day after that, she could hardly breathe due to restriction in her chest.

An MRI revealed bulging discs in her low back, as well as arthritis, but these aren’t uncommon conditions in most adults, and they often don’t manifest with symptoms.

“I started seeing a physical therapist,” says Maggie, “but the problem kept getting worse until I couldn’t get out of bed for six weeks. I worked from home for the next two months until it went away.”

Maggie continued assembling a small army of professionals to help her live a (somewhat) normal life. A functional medicine clinic and dietician identified low Vitamin D levels. (That’s putting it mildly: normal D levels are thought to be 20–50 ng/mL, and Maggie’s were at 14—low enough to be associated with a higher risk of all-cause mortality).

Lifestyle changes brought tenuous improvements, but by the end of 2019, she was in a near-constant struggle with her body. “My leg would go numb and then fix itself,” she says. “Then my hands, and they would fix themselves.” Sometimes her thinking would be so clouded that she’d have to step away from her work and take a 10-minute walk to clear her head.

The bad doctors told her that all the symptoms—from the gut pain, to the numbness and tingling, to the complete loss of feeling in her muscles—were all a figment of her imagination. The better ones believed it was a musculo-skeletal problem, likely caused by some injury. But it was becoming clearer that the issue was neurological. By May 2021, Maggie’s physical therapist threw her hands up in defeat.

“She said, ‘You’ve been coming here two years, and while I can keep helping you manage your symptoms, we need to find out what the underlying cause is,’” Maggie says. Suspecting an auto-immune disorder, the PT told her to see a rheumatologist.

Getting blood drawn required a friend to hold her hand, and lying down to keep calm, but Maggie got through it. And her labs came back… normal.

“I walked away from the rheumatologist sobbing,” Maggie says. “I texted my friend Chanda [Mise, Onnit’s Sr. Director of Customer Experience]. I said, ‘Why can’t I ever leave a doctor’s office with answers? I’m so frustrated.’ But as we talked, I realized that the worst symptoms always came in times of extreme stress.

“It started getting really bad and not going away in 2019, when I was planning my wedding, and I was working almost every day. I have a tendency to overwork myself to the point where my body starts screaming at me.

“Chanda said, ‘OK, you’ve figured out your trigger. So treat that, and wait till doctors meet you halfway.’”

Maggie had learned to use breathing techniques, psychotherapy, and anti-anxiety medication to help manage her vasovagal syncope, and they could mitigate this mystery disease too.

Fortunately, Maggie didn’t have to wait much longer for the revelation. The rheumatologist referred her to a neurologist who ordered an MRI of her brain, thoracic spine, and spinal cord, requiring Maggie to lay in the noisy plastic tube for 90 minutes—but finally, in August 2021, she had an answer.

“When the MRI came back, the neurologist showed me the lesions on my brain and spinal cord, and said I have relapsing-remitting MS”—the type identified in approximately 85% of MS cases. It was three weeks before her 29^th birthday.

“I kind of blacked out when I heard it,” says Maggie. “My husband started asking questions, but I zoned out from shock.”

As the information sunk in, Maggie’s reaction was more relief than grief. “I had spent most of my life at that point being told by doctors that any health issue I came to them with was ‘All in my head.’ Well, the joke was on them, because it turns out that it literally was in my head—and also in my spinal cord and nervous system… So please, don’t anyone tell me you’re sorry. That’s my only request.” Maggie is just happy to finally know the truth.

As it turns out, Maggie’s great aunt has MS too, though the family never spoke about it, and Maggie never knew. At 85 years old, the aunt is perfectly healthy, apart from some vision problems. While your risk of getting MS is higher if it runs in your family, it’s not thought to be a hereditary health problem. You’re only one percent more likely to get MS if a parent or sibling has it.

Life Goes Onnit

Maggie’s neurologist explained that her treatment options included daily pills, drugs she could inject herself, or an infusion. While all are effective, each came with its own caveats. So powerful were the pills that if she missed a dose, she’d have to take her next one under medical supervision to ensure she didn’t have a bad reaction. Her fear of needles made self-injections out of the question, and that left only the infusion (which, luckily, was the doctor’s recommendation anyway).

“Up until the needle goes in, I’m scared,” says Maggie, laughing. “But once it is, I’m totally fine.” 

The infusion contains a monoclonal antibody. It kills T-cells, essentially weakening the immune system so that it doesn’t attack the nerves so hard. The main side effects are fatigue for a few days afterward, and an increased risk of infection. “It takes longer to heal from cuts now when my dog scratches me,” Maggie says. “So I eat well and do everything else I can to keep my immune system strong.”

With prep and post-treatment observation, the infusion process takes eight hours, but Maggie only needs to do it twice a year. Thank goodness for medical insurance, as the treatment costs $99,666.43 each time.

(Yes, that comma and decimal point are in the right places. The total lifetime cost of treating MS, per person, has been estimated at $4.1 million.)

But so far, it’s been worth every penny. “Stress is my trigger,” says Maggie. “The last 10 months have been really hard, as my marriage was breaking up. If I hadn’t started the infusion therapy when I did, I’m pretty sure that I would be almost completely disabled now.”

Armed with the medicine, Maggie hasn’t had to modify her lifestyle too greatly. She avoids pro-inflammatory foods (including starches, although she still enjoys potatoes), and keeps her gut microbiome balanced with probiotics and prebiotics.

Extreme temperatures tend to aggravate symptoms in MS patients, and that can be challenging for a Texas resident. “If it’s over 85 degrees outside,” Maggie says, “that strip from my waist to my knee feels like it’s burning. But if I go inside and sit by a fan, it goes away. If it’s cold out, my knees hurt.”

Maggie remains as active as possible. She’s even helping test out the upcoming Onnit 6 Hydrocore workout program before it’s released to the public. (Each Onnit 6 program is given a dry run by volunteers from the Onnit staff. The program is then tweaked according to their feedback before its debut.) It’s the first structured routine Maggie has been able to commit to in three years. “Working out [in general] is good for MS,” Maggie says. “The workout activates the nervous system, but the cooldown is the most important part for me. It helps me regulate my heart rate, which calms down my nervous system and lessens my symptoms.

“MS has made me listen to my body more,” says Maggie. “I’ve learned where my limits are and not to push them too hard.”

Maggie’s current title is Onnit Social Media Community Manager. Part of her job is acting as an administrator in the Onnit Tribe—Onnit’s private support group on Facebook and Discord. Members of the Onnit community (fans, customers, and employees) post in the forums, sharing thoughts and feelings about their workouts, as well as their personal lives.

Maggie is known for rallying behind members when they need encouragement, and now they’re doing the same for her.

“I had been open about my medical problems in the Tribe until my marriage started to fail,” she says. “Then I just felt like I had to pull away for a while. But I remembered how anyone can be completely honest in the Tribe, and how helpful it is to share. So now I’m back, using my posts in the Tribe to log how I’m feeling, and also for accountability on the Hydrocore program.

“Working in social media is so helpful in times like this, because I can connect with other people who are experiencing similar things. Whether it’s someone who’s immune-compromised or has MS, it’s just nice to know I’m not alone in this. Even if I’m not sitting next to the other person who’s struggling, I can connect with them and engage.”

She credits her team and coworkers at Onnit as well. “The fact that I can talk openly about my disability at my job speaks volumes about this place. I’ve heard so many stories from people about how badly or unfairly they were treated at work because of a health problem. But I haven’t experienced any of that. I’m still treated the same and provided the same resources and opportunities that everyone else at Onnit is. If I didn’t have Onnit, I’m not sure how I would have processed all this.”

Maggie calls MS an “invisible disease.” She may look fine on the outside, but could be experiencing multiple symptoms at any given time. She doesn’t know if her condition will get worse over time, or in what ways it may affect her future.

“As someone who is a planner,” she says, “that’s hard for me. I’m a type-A personality. A control-freak. So having to take each day as it comes has been very different for me, but very rewarding too.

“I’m still me. I’m still out there being loud and opinionated [laughs]. I’m trying to enjoy life, and I’m learning not to focus on what I can’t control. At the same time, I’m tackling this in every way possible.”

She still regularly sees a physical therapist, psychiatrist, primary care doctor, and neurologist. One of the silver linings to her MS has been its effect in helping her overcome her fear of medical settings, to a degree. Another has been gaining the ability to ask for help when she needs it.

If she chooses to have children one day, MS likely won’t complicate it. Women with MS can safely carry a baby to term. In fact, expecting mothers often get relief from symptoms during pregnancy.

If you’re currently dealing with MS, or symptoms that may reflect it, Maggie urges you to take them seriously. “Don’t let doctors gaslight you,” she says. “Keep going until you get an answer, and know that there are people out there who will offer support.”

*   *   *

The Onnit Office Olympics in support of the National MS Society will take place at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, June 3^rd. Inspired by elementary-school track and field events (as well as The Office TV show), the Olympics will feature a mobility warmup and relay races, as well as some mental gymnastics (riddle-solving, a paper airplane folding contest, and more). Onnit employees are invited to participate in person at Onnit Gym, but all others are welcome to participate virtually by logging onto TBD.COM, where the event will be live-streamed.

Donations can be made at the Onnit Social Responsibility Committee’s donation page, which benefits the National MS Society. Onnit will match all donations up to $1,150.

For more information about MS, visit the National MS Society.

The post “Don’t Tell Me You’re Sorry”: How Onnit’s Maggie Cunningham Is Facing Down MS appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Fortunately, some schools today are changing, due to an understanding that we don’t all learn the same way. And in the fitness world, personal trainers are changing too, in an effort to help clients understand what they’re doing in training and find ways to enjoy the process more. AJ Londono and Georgie Boynton, a couple with a fitness business in south Florida, know this all too well, and train their clients—which have included children—with different techniques that not only make working out more effective, but also not something you can sleep through like a junior high biology class.

AJ and Georgie spoke to Shane Heins, Onnit’s Director of Community Engagement, to tell their Onnit Story—part of our ongoing series of interviews with people who have made inspiring life changes with Onnit’s support. See the video of AJ and Georgie’s interview below, along with an edited transcript of the highlights, time-stamped so you can find those moments in the video. You can stay up to date with Onnit Stories by following Onnit’s Instagram TV (IGTV), where a new one appears every other week.

AJ Londono & Georgie Boynton Show Notes

4:10 – How AJ and Georgie Intersected with Onnit

AJ Londono: I was a huge fan of Joe Rogan’s podcast from the beginning, and that’s how I found Onnit. When I learned that Onnit had training certifications, I did everything I could to get to Austin to take one. It opened a new world to me that I didn’t know existed. Being a trainer already, I left that certification thinking, “How have I not injured myself or the people I work with yet?” [Laughs]

I had an ego death and then rebirth, due to Onnit. I had to build myself back up as my own first client, using Onnit’s education to learn good movement skills. Onnit’s teachings gave me a manual for what the human body is really meant to do, versus just letting your body be on autopilot. I got addicted to Onnit, and I kept coming back to take every course you guys had to offer. Fast forward a few years, and I was teaching a hot kettlebell class at a yoga studio, and Georgie walked in…

Georgie Boynton: I was working as a trainer and living in Vermont. I went on spring break in Florida, and a friend got me some free class passes to a yoga studio, so I took a class. I had never picked up a kettlebell before, or done a hot yoga class, and it ended up being the most intense class I had ever taken. It blew my mind—all the different movements, and the functional way of training they had. AJ was the instructor, and afterward, I picked his brain for probably 20 minutes about what I could do to incorporate more of this kind of training into my lifestyle. He gave me some things to do and…

AJ: And, fast forward, she moved to Florida! And then started taking all the Onnit courses like I did.

Georgie: If I could take the Durability cert 100 times, I would. It allows you the longevity to keep doing any other fitness practice you like. 

11:30 – Life Before Onnit

AJ: In the early 2000s, I was a trainer in a mixed martial arts gym, doing strength and conditioning classes and working with a lot of professional fighters. At the same time, I was planning on going to medical school. By the time I had taken the MCAT, which is an entrance exam for medical school, I was completely addicted to the gym. It got me to look at health in a different way, and I latched onto that community. I forgot about medicine and decided I had to train people as a full-time career.

Two or three years later, when I went to Austin for the Onnit cert, it really felt like a rebirth. That’s when the 2.0 version of me began. Since then, my whole business and brand has been about teaching other people to create 2.0 versions of themselves. I want people to look at life like it’s a video game, enjoying it to its fullest potential. 

Georgie: My background is movement of all types. I was born and raised in a small town—Rutland, Vermont. I grew up running pretty much barefoot in the mountains. My mom had me playing every sport you can think of. I did swim team in the summer, dance year-round, soccer, and even flag football at one point. My mom was super adamant about me being active and trying different things. But at the time, I hated it. I didn’t want to do all those things! I wanted to do my own thing. But, looking back, she gave me the best foundation possible, which is body awareness and the ability to pick up new skills. Today, I thank her for that. 

But I always wanted to find my own path, and if everybody was doing this one thing, I was going to go the other direction and see what was over there. After high school, when we were all trying to figure out what to do with our lives, I decided to get into funeral directing. I went to school for mortuary science, and I was a mortician for about five years.

The biggest thing I took away from that time is that absolutely nothing is guaranteed for you in this life. You have to show up every day and be grateful. Do what you love, because you never know what’s going to happen. When that lesson really settled in, it showed me what my passion was. I would work funerals, and it would be really heavy. Then, at the end of the day, I would go and either work out or teach workout classes. That became my passion.

So, I essentially took a 180 from being a funeral director to being a health and life coach. Right around that time is when I met AJ in Florida, and then decided to move there.

22:20 – Two pillars of the Onnit System

AJ: There are two components of Onnit’s education system that have made all the difference for me: “Unity in Diversity,” and “Give to Empower.” Those pillars taught me to try every modality I could and learn from whoever I could, as well as shift my career from just handing out workouts to clients to actually coaching and teaching them new things, and seeing how they could apply fitness to the rest of their lives.

Once I met Georgie in 2017, we continued on the educational path together, and, starting in 2020, we started our own brand—ELVT Movement. It’s about elevating humanity through the way we breathe, move, and feel. Community is one of the biggest components, because that was one of the biggest things I gained from Onnit. The team, the family that was created through the training, was not only a huge help but also a continuous motivator. Whenever things got hard, the Onnit community was there, saying “You can do this. Here’s a hack, or a tip.”

Georgie is a beautiful mover, but I used to be like a puppet with the puppeteer asleep above the stage. [Laughs] I had to learn movement skills from scratch. We both come from two different ends of the spectrum, so we get to add in these pieces of contextual knowledge now, and that allows us to work with such a wide demographic of people.

Georgie: The purpose and message that we share with everybody that we teach and interact with is, “It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.” It’s the intention behind what you do that’s important. We’ve done everything from arm balance and inversion workshops to bodyweight training, and anything else that allows you to move and maybe learn a new skill along the way and connect with other people.

28:20 – Lessons from Working with Kids

AJ: We had the opportunity to take a fitness class from a really popular summer camp here in south Florida and replace it with a movement-based, social-emotional learning program. It’s how we teach people at ELVT, but we turned it into a gamified system.

The amazing thing about little kids is getting to see the spectrum of abilities they have: some of them are natural movers like Georgie was, and others, usually city kids, didn’t really move much growing up. But with any child, you’re able to communicate at a super high level physically. They’re able to understand you at a physical level and mimic what you’re doing. That transformed a lot of the way that we coach—realizing that we could teach super advanced things through mimicry rather than verbal conversation.

As you go up in age, physical lessons and verbal cues meet somewhere in the middle, and it becomes a lot more about teaching someone the idea behind the concept. Their body might not be able to get there today, but they can understand the idea behind the position you’re asking them to get into. So teaching kids helped us teach older demographics too.

Georgie: Teaching kids is so rewarding, and it’s so challenging at the same time. It was quite honestly one of the hardest things I think we’ve ever done. The amount of reaction training is profound, because kids’ attention spans can be here and there. We had to be quick on our toes and completely animated versions of ourselves at all times. We were walking around feeling like video game characters.

AJ: To give some context, these were 40-minute increments where we would be working with 20 eight-year old boys. Then they’d leave and it would be 20 12 year-old girls. So it was a completely different energy, and a completely different way of communicating. 

Georgie: It was a super amazing way to learn about yourself and others, and the best ways to communicate. So, new coaches out there, get in front of some kids.

33:50 – The Layers of Learning

AJ: I would say that there are multiple layers of learning. You can learn something from an ideological standpoint. You can learn something by mimicking a movement physically. And then you can learn something intuitively—like tying your shoes—where you can do it with minimal mind currency. So our trick when it comes to coaching big audiences has been trying to teach people in those three layers. And if I don’t get them in all three, can I at least catch their attention with one of those? We try to entertain people and teach them at the same time. 

37:10 – Georgie and AJ’s favorite supplements

Georgie: I really loved the Total Nitric Oxide^® as a pre-workout. I loved the way it made me feel. But my all-time favorite supplement that Onnit makes is the protein powder. I love cooking with it, drinking it, eating it, smelling it. [Laughs]

AJ: For me, it’s a tie between the Alpha BRAIN^® and Shroom Tech^® SPORT, with the cordyceps mushrooms. When I found out about cordyceps, and how it’s been used for hundreds of years, it sold me. Honestly, Shroom Tech^® SPORT is one of the best natural supplements for workout energy that I’ve ever tried. I actually feel a tangible difference when I use it. Alpha BRAIN^® has an effect that’s hard to explain unless you’ve experienced it. Alpha BRAIN^® was part of my daily routine for a long time, and when I stopped taking it, I felt the difference going through the day without it. 

40:05 – Their Favorite Foods

AJ: You can’t ask us a question like this. We can just go all day. [Laughs]

41:45 – Their Favorite Fitness Tools

Georgie: The eight-kilogram Onnit kettlebell. I call it “Pinky,” because of the little pink rings on the handle. If I could only use one tool, that would be it.

AJ: For me it’s the 10-pound steel mace. I can use some kettlebell methodology when I’m working with it, and some suspension training methodology too. But I have all the tools in our garage. It looks like a little Onnit store in there. We use all of them, probably daily. 

Georgie: We do it all because we’re always trying to give others the knowledge to empower themselves. I mean, we’re not your average trainers where we want to be your trainer for life. We want to give you the information and the skill development that you need to move forward and take ownership of your own training. We’re just paying it forward over and over again.

The post “There Are Multiple Layers of Learning”: AJ & Georgie’s Onnit Story appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Kaysee spoke to Shane Heins, Onnit’s Director of Education, to tell her Onnit Story—part of our ongoing series of interviews with people who have made inspiring life changes with Onnit’s support. See the video of Kaysee’s interview below, along with an edited transcript of the highlights, time-stamped so you can find those moments in the video, and stay up to date with Onnit Stories by following Onnit’s Instagram TV (IGTV), where a new one appears every other week.

Kaysee Brooks Show Notes

2:50 – Finding Onnit

I found Onnit through Instagram. Onnit was doing a giveaway, and somebody I follow shared it in their Instagram Story. At that time in my life, I was looking for a new workout program to do, because I was getting burned out on what I had been doing at that time. I looked up Onnit’s website, and I signed up for Onnit 6 Bodyweight. That was in the fall of 2020, and I joined the Onnit Tribe in January 2021.

I wasn’t really big on joining Facebook groups at that time, mostly because I didn’t know anything about them. I wanted to do the workout program by myself and just do it at home, but I lacked a community. When people go to the gym, they have a community—they make friends that way. Because of the pandemic, I couldn’t go to the gym, so I said, “Screw it. Why not just join the Tribe and let’s see where it goes?”

So, I did the Onnit 6 Challenge, Steel Club, with the Tribe that January. In the beginning, I wasn’t that active in the Tribe, because I wanted to get a feel for what the Tribe was. At that time, I didn’t believe that you could find authentic people online, but I’ve learned that you can definitely find authentic people in the Tribe [laughs].

5:45 – What the Onnit Tribe Is Really Like

What you give you get back. I found that the more I engaged with the Tribe, and the more attention I paid to each member that posted, the more they would engage with me right back. When I posted something and people responded to it, it made me realize, “Oh, I can be seen on here. People are reading my posts.” That felt really good, because we were all isolated, stuck at home. Going online to the Tribe gave me the social interaction I couldn’t get anywhere else. After the six weeks of Steel Club, I went back and did the Bodyweight Challenge again and was super engaged this time. I wished these people were in the same city as me, so we could go and do the program out in the backyard and I could meet them in person. 

9:30 – Kaysee’s Evolution Through the Onnit 6 Programs

I started with Bodyweight, and that gave me a foundation for the other workout programs. At the time, I didn’t have the money to buy equipment, so bodyweight training was perfect for me. I’d also never touched a steel club, steel mace, kettlebell, or barbell before. They all seemed exotic to me, so I thought I would just keep doing Bodyweight over and over. But I had a change of heart from seeing the other Tribe members doing the other Onnit programs.

Seeing the movements everybody else was doing with the steel club made me want to try it. It looked so powerful. Eventually, I wanted to use kettlebells, and then the most exotic tool for me, the steel mace. After I did the Kettlebell Challenge, I thought, “I can try new equipment and it won’t hurt” [laughs]. As I progressed through the programs, I found that I became more open and braver about trying different equipment and realizing how each tool changes the way we build our strength. Now I’m doing the Onnit 6 Barbell and I love it. I don’t think I’ll ever pick a dumbbell up again [laughs]. 

14:30 – The Tool Kaysee Learned the Most From

The kettlebell for sure. It isn’t just that I connect with that tool, it’s that it makes me realize that each time I do a workout, I’m in this for the long haul. What I do each day isn’t just to make me look better; it’s for my health. It’s to set a foundation from which to grow stronger. When I understood that, that’s when I started to really fall in love with the process. I basically stopped setting goals. I stopped weighing myself. I stopped counting my calories. I stopped looking in the mirror and downgrading myself. I don’t pick out parts of my body and say, “I want to change this.” When I follow a workout program, I just accept it for what it is and keep going. I just want to get stronger. I’m in it for a lifetime.  

18:50 – Life Before Onnit

I did the Beachbody program, but I wanted something more. I wanted something that explained more about what I was doing with the equipment I was using. I didn’t want to just keep doing biceps curls. I wanted to know, “What am I working? What am I supposed to feel?” I wanted to know that the work I was doing was effective. I love the explanations Onnit gives for every workout. The coaches tell you what cues to pay attention to, what muscle groups you’re working, and ways to connect to the muscles you’re training to make sure your form is correct. If you’re not feeling it where you’re supposed to feel it, they tell you how to fix that. If you’re not going to train seriously, then what’s the point? You’re just going to hurt yourself.

I started being more active about a year before I got pregnant. I was doing Orangetheory then, and I worked out throughout my pregnancy until the seventh month. After my pregnancy, the pandemic had shut the gyms down, so I had to find something to do online. That’s how I found Beachbody, and then Onnit. 

Initially, I just wanted to be healthy. I didn’t want to be overweight, and at that time, I was reaching that line. But I just wanted to move.

21:30 – Kaysee’s Non-Onnit Workouts

I really want to strengthen my knees. I want young knees, so I bought a sled. I’ll do medicine-ball slams for three sets of eight, and then push and pull the sled. I’ve also picked up rucking, which I’ve heard is a more joint-friendly alternative to running [you wear a weighted backpack and walk briskly]. I can do one mile in under 17 minutes now. I’ll do these workouts on the weekends when I’m not doing my Onnit training.

25:30 – How Kaysee’s Workouts are Making her Daughter Fitter

My husband exercises too, and my daughter sees us working out and she comes out to us and says, “I want to exercise.” I’ll say, “Oh, OK. What are you going to do?” She saw me doing medicine-ball slams with a 20-pound ball, and she was upset because she couldn’t pick it up. So I decided to get her a four-pound ball, and now she’s rolling it, she’s slamming it, she’s pushing it. We enrolled her in an exercise class for kids—it’s basically CrossFit for kids—and she loves it. Plus, it’s a great way to get her to fall asleep right after.

I never thought that I would ever be a parent, or that I would be good at it if I were. She’s a reflection of everything her parents do and say, and it doesn’t take her long to catch on. She’s about to be three in two weeks. It’s a privilege to be able to raise another human being that can make an impact of her own in our world. And… gosh, dang it, Shane, you’re making me cry…

I know that whatever lessons or wisdom she’s received from my husband and me, she’s still going to be her own person. Knowing that is heartbreaking and heart-filling at the same time.

30:45 – How She’s Helping her Daughter Adopt a Positive Mindset

I used to downgrade myself all the time. I would look in the mirror and be like, “Ugh.” Then I made a promise that I would never do that in front of my daughter. That she would never hear me say that. I also never wanted her to hear me complain about doing the dishes, or other things that are mundane around the house. Now, when she sees me doing those things, she wants to do them too. She doesn’t complain about herself in the mirror either. Our kids pick up our negativity as well as our positivity, so we have to watch both. 

38:10 – Kaysee’s Favorite Supplement

Total Human^®. You get it all in that little bundle. I seem to get better sleep when I take the night pack. When I wake up, I’m ready to go. I don’t hit the snooze button.

39:50 – Her Favorite Snack Foods

The Chocolate Cookie Dough Protein Bites. I love them. Put them in my Easter basket [laughs].

40:50 – Favorite Digital Workout Programs

I love the Barbell Onnit 6, which I’m doing now, and I love the Kettlebell Onnit 6. For the Onnit in 30s, I like Decompress To Defy.

42:30 – What Inspires Kaysee

I’m on Instagram a lot. So, I make sure that people that I follow are people that motivate me, inspire me, and offer something that puts positivity into my life and helps me keep going. I follow a lot of women that are fit and use different workout tools. My daughter inspires me, obviously. I want to become better at everything. I just make sure that whatever I’m reading, whatever is in front of my eyes, is making me better. If it doesn’t make me better, I don’t partake in it.

43:35 – On Not Over-Dieting

In the past, when I would be in a calorie deficit, I was also losing muscle, and I didn’t want to lose muscle, because I wanted to get stronger. One day, a coworker told me, “You’re about to blow away.” I didn’t want that [laughs], so I decided to bring my calories back to a maintenance level, and that’s where I mostly stay now. That’s how I learned how powerful food and nutrition are. If I don’t eat, or eat crap, my workouts are crap. I feel weak, lethargic, unmotivated. But when my eating is on point, I can move all day. Let’s go!

45:45 – Her Nickname in the Tribe

The Tribe has given me two nicknames: “Butterfly Brooks,” and “Wonder Brooks.” Butterfly refers to my metamorphosis over the years, and Wonder is from Wonder Woman.

48:15 – Surviving a Hurricane

I’ve lived in southern Louisiana all my life. So being around hurricanes as much as I have has taught me to kind of party at the same time. You can’t be inside when there’s no A/C and no power—it’s hotter inside than it is outside. So, we take our lounge chairs and go outside and put cookies or pizza on a barbeque pit and eat that way. It’s like camping. I grew up like that and it never really fazed me. I thought, “We have everything we need. It’s not going to last forever. And we’ll be just fine. We’ll make do with what we’ve got and just keep going.” I will say, I can tolerate the southern heat much better now than when I was not working out.

51:08 – Kaysee’s Book Recommendations

The Untethered Soul [by Michael Alan Singer]. The cover is light blue; it’s got a horse on it. John Wolf recommended that book to me, and it’s helped me tremendously—enough to where I recommended it to my sister who’s a police officer. It’s about escaping your boundaries and finding inner peace. Also, I recommend Breath [by James Nestor]. It really teaches you everything about the power of breathing. It goes into detail and it gets scientific, but I promise you, it’s very interesting. That book got me to try going to sleep with tape on my mouth so I have to breathe through my nose, and it makes a big difference. 

53:05 – Her Favorite Exercise

I love the kettlebell swing. If I had to be consistent with one tool and one movement, I’d choose the kettlebell swing. It builds power in the legs, once you realize that it’s not just swinging with your arms. I am not perfect at it. I still get some crappy reps here and there. But I’ll get some good ones too. I’m still trying to make that mind-body connection and make it consistent. It’s a great feeling of power to lift a kettlebell without using your arms.

54:00 – What To Do on Your First Day in the Gym

Definitely warm up, but not just for five minutes or 10 minutes. Take 15 minutes, doing breathwork at the same time. Avoid the treadmill and go to the weights. One thing that makes the Onnit programs different is the emphasis they put on the warmup. It makes the workout so much more effective, and gives you more range of motion. And don’t go by how sore you are to gauge how the workout was. I thought being sore was the ticket, but that’s not true.

The post “I Made A Promise To My Daughter”: Kaysee Brooks’ Onnit Story appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Daniel Morrow, 34, of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, was one of those. He was so much the opposite of a health and fitness enthusiast, in fact, that he nearly died in his early 20s from kidney and liver damage brought on by drug abuse. But discovering Onnit turned him onto the steel mace, and then to bodyweight training, and now he’s so into the fit life that he gets paid to teach others how to adopt it.

We interviewed Morrow about the Onnit 6 Challenge that started it all, and how the Onnit Tribe—our private support group, available on both Facebook and Discord—helps keep it going.

Onnit: What was life like before you found Onnit?

Daniel Morrow: I was not taking good care of myself. When I was 14, I started drinking and smoking. My first job out of high school was in a restaurant, and my manager spiked my drinks with Ecstasy—MDMA—the whole time I was employed there. My girlfriend caught him doing it. He said the reason he was drugging me was to give me more energy to help me perform my job better. The craziest thing is, when I found out, I didn’t care.

I actually went out and found a drug dealer and started purchasing so much from this guy that he thought I was distributing at parties and raves. He started giving me wholesale prices [laughs]. When he found out I was buying all those drugs just for myself, and buying more every week, even he said, “How are you not dead yet?” I said, “I don’t care. I’m having fun. Leave me alone.”

When I was around 20, I worked as an insurance adviser. I believe that you can’t really promote something if you don’t believe in it enough to use it yourself, so I applied for my company’s insurance. I got declined, but I didn’t even look into why. I just didn’t care. Pretty soon afterward, though, I stopped using drugs. Then, about a decade later, I was working as a financial adviser, and I reapplied for insurance and again got declined, mainly because I had been declined 10 years earlier. This time, I asked to see the files from that first rejection. My physical evaluation showed that, in my early 20s, I was borderline for kidney and liver failure. Bile had been secreting into my bloodstream.

That was a wakeup call to me. I felt like I had been living on borrowed time for the past decade, and that there must be a reason I was still here. I had gotten off drugs, but I still wasn’t taking great care of my health, and now I was finally ready to take it seriously. I knew I had to make some lasting changes if I wanted to live long enough to accomplish my goals in life.

Why do you think you were so self-destructive at such a young age? Did you go through some terrible trauma as a kid?

I really don’t know. I was always a scrawny kid—I weighed only 115 pounds into my mid 20s—and I got bullied all through school. But I don’t think that fully explains why I acted the way I did. I was very nihilistic when I was young. My attitude was, “Nothing matters. What’s the point? Who even cares?” I never bothered to sort through the why behind that thinking.

But I started to make changes when I was 21. I was still partying and using drugs, and one day I woke up and I was massively hungover. I was living at my dad’s, and we had a garden. I found a lot of joy in doing the gardening. So I got up, went out and sat in a lawnchair by the garden, and sparked up a cigarette. I was looking at the garden and the smell of my cigarette smoke suddenly upset my stomach. That’s when I broke down crying and everything came out. “What am I doing with my life? I’m putting all this crap into my body. I’m not going anywhere. Here I am, putting all of this effort into this garden… Why can’t I make my life as beautiful as I can make this garden?”

I went out that day to my cell-phone provider and asked them to change my number, so the negative people I dealt with couldn’t reach me anymore. I packed up my stuff and moved out. I went to my ex-girlfriend’s house and stayed in her spare bedroom in Vancouver. As soon as I got out of my hometown, I didn’t have the cravings anymore. Leaving and not looking back was the jolt I needed to quit everything cold turkey.

So when and how did you find Onnit?

Like I said, after that second decline on the insurance, I got more curious about health and fitness. I found Aubrey Marcus’ book, Own The Day, and I really liked it, along with what his company, Onnit, seemed to be about. A few months later, in the spring of 2020, I decided to sign on for the very first Onnit 6 Challenge, and I chose the Steel Mace program. 

Why did the steel mace appeal to you, and what was your experience with that Challenge?

I chose the steel mace because it looked bad ass! One of the things I liked in Aubrey’s book was the idea that working out can be about playing and having fun. I knew I wouldn’t be consistent with any kind of training until I could gamefy it in some way.

I tend to do a lot of things impulsively, but if I don’t have something to look forward to, and people to hold me accountable, I probably won’t keep doing it. That’s why doing conventional workouts in a gym does nothing for me. I wanted some kind of activity that I could do on my time, anytime, anywhere, on my terms. The Onnit 6 Challenge looked like the right fit, and my goal was to use it to establish a consistent habit of being active, and to get to know myself better as a result.

One of the things I learned about myself during the Challenge is that I’m my own worst enemy. In the beginning, I thought I had to power through every workout and keep up with what Coach John Wolf was doing. But going hard wasn’t getting me any results. It taught me that I could push myself hard for 20 minutes at a time, but I wasn’t learning to use the steel mace properly. Wolf spent most of the Challenge trying to get me to slow down and realize that the steel mace is a very technical tool. You’re constantly pushing and pulling and trying to bend it to activate lines of tension in your body. I started with a 15-pound mace, but I should have been using a 10 or seven-pounder. I didn’t make any true progress until the Challenge was over, but I learned from that mistake. I got a 10-pound mace and did the whole Challenge again, this time really taking the time to master each movement.

Since then, I’ve done almost every Onnit 6 Challenge that has been offered. I’ve gained a lot of definition in my body—I no longer have that dad-bod look. The biggest physical improvement I’ve noticed—and this was my biggest weakness before I found Onnit—is my mobility. My hips are looser now. I can get deeper in my squat, and I don’t struggle to do overhead presses anymore. I can get my arms behind my head to do mace swings. 

Onnit 6 Challenge participants are encouraged to join the Onnit Tribe, where they can get moral support from the other members, as well as socialize. What has your experience been with the Tribe?

At first, I thought it would be the meathead stereotype. I thought it would be people only talking about their workouts and they might be very judgmental, so I stayed behind the scenes. I was very reserved in what I would say in posts. But then I saw how great John was leading the Tribe. I thought, “If this is the kind of guy who’s running the community, I’m pretty sure all of those biases and fears I have are non-existent.” Everyone was warm and supportive all the time, and I was amazed at how much they shared about their own lives. Seeing other people put themselves out on the ledge helps you do the same yourself. It’s easier to share when others are sharing. So I thought, “Maybe I should be experiencing this instead of running from it.”

As I got more comfortable sharing my story, I made friends in the Tribe. Tim Sibley is now a good friend of mine, and we talk almost every day. I found that sharing my journey helped other people get going when they were stuck, and it did the same for me. I had never been consistent with physical activity before, but the Tribe kept me going with it. I realized that if I were to drop out, I wouldn’t just be letting myself down, I’d be letting these other people down too. I’d be letting the whole team down. Doing something just for myself is not a big enough reason to motivate me. I need something bigger.

I’ll tell you how I got comfortable with the idea of posting in the Tribe. I would make a post, and then abandon social media for hours. I didn’t want to think about what people might be commenting on it. I’d come back maybe eight hours later, long enough so that I had pretty much forgotten what I even wrote. That’s when I’d see that it wasn’t as bad as I thought. No matter what I said, everyone responded positively. That made me want to stick around and engage in real-time conversations. We all fear being vulnerable with people because we don’t know the response we’ll get, but in the Tribe, it will always be encouraging.

Like I said, I was always scrawny. I’m only 123 pounds now. One of my nicknames in high school was Sasquatch, because I’m so hairy [laughs]. I’ve always been self-conscious, so I never cared for muscle shirts or tank tops that showed too much. A lot of people post pictures of themselves in the Tribe working out in muscle shirts, so I finally did too, and people told me I looked good! Now muscle shirts are my favorite type of shirt. I wear them all the time in the summer, or at least for the two months of the year that it’s warm enough in Canada [laughs].

What is your lifestyle like now that you’re a fit guy?

Before Onnit, I would go to bed as late as 3:00 a.m. and sleep till 3:00 in the afternoon. Now I’m in bed by nine or 10 every night [laughs]. I’m so regimented that it’s almost turned into a bad habit. Every morning I have a greens drink, meditate, and do my workout, and now if I don’t do them all in that order, it throws off my whole day. I’m too consistent! So now I’m working on being more fluid. 

Has Onnit helped you in any other areas of life?

It’s helped me start a new career. When the pandemic hit, I had been working doing traditional business loans. When all the businesses suddenly shut down, no one was giving out money, so I was basically out of work. I was really getting into fitness through Onnit, so I studied and got a nutrition certification, and also got certified in Animal Flow. I wanted my next move to be coaching other people to get healthier.

I was trying to figure out who my audience was for coaching, and I got into crypto currencies at the same time. I realized there was a whole ecosystem of people who do nothing but sit in front of their computers for up to 20 hours a day coding and building stuff online. They’re not healthy; they’re not mobile. So I thought there could be an opportunity for me there in helping them.

I learned how to network in the Tribe, and I started doing the same on Discord, a social media platform where a lot of crypto people hang out. I started putting what I was learning about fitness into that community. Soon, the founders of crypto companies started reaching out to me, saying, “We need to focus on health within our organization. Can you run some fitness classes for us?” Next thing you know, I was brought on as a community manager. Now I’m able to codify my values into the organization for these businesses.

I help write the rules for these organizations. I design systems and procedures to put an emphasis on health and well-being for their employees. Crypto companies are all international organizations, so we contract with people all over the world. You’ll have people staying up till 3:00 in the morning to stay engaged with another team, and that’s not healthy. So I’ve initiated policies like having a team lead in our US zone, in our Asian zone, and the European zone, so staffers can work more normal hours. Now we don’t have people burning the midnight oil, and burning themselves out as a result. I also set up out-of-office areas and after-hours programs for employees, so when they’re off work, they can socialize with each other, which helps build camaraderie.

Do you use any Onnit supplements?

I take Alpha BRAIN^® in the morning with food. I’ve found that if I don’t eat with it, it bothers my stomach, but as long as I eat I’m fine. I like it for focus and memory. I think it helps me listen more actively on calls.

Do you have any advice for people who may be on the fence about joining the Tribe?

The sooner you get in there, the sooner you’ll get ahead in life. I know it’s human nature to have reservations and biases, but my tip is to put those off to the side and give it a chance.

The post “Doing It For Myself Is Not Enough”: Q&A With Onnit Tribe Member Daniel Morrow appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Wren sat down with Shane Heins, Onnit’s Director of Education, to discuss his humanitarian efforts, struggle with substance abuse, and return to the MMA ring in this edition of Onnit Stories—an ongoing series of live interviews with people who have made inspiring life changes with Onnit’s support. See the video of Wren’s interview below, along with an edited transcript of the highlights, time-stamped so you can find those moments in the video, and stay up to date with Onnit Stories by following Onnit’s Instagram TV (IGTV), where a new one appears every other week. 

Justin Wren Show Notes

4:10 – The Big Pygmy

The first time I’d heard of Onnit was when I tried Alpha BRAIN^® on Joe Rogan’s podcast. I felt the effects right away while I was on the show. Then I went to live in Congo for a year, and Onnit sent me a care package, and it had so much good stuff in it. I think that was probably 2014. I was so nutrient-deprived from living in the rainforest—the dirt was my bed; the fire was my blanket—and Onnit helped get me through it. I lived in a four or five-foot tall hut made of twigs and leaves, and I’m 6’3”.

My name on Instagram, “The Big Pygmy,” comes from my second family—the Congo tribe that adopted me. The name they gave me is Efeosa Mbuti MangBO. The first part, Efeosa, translates to “The man who loves us,” which I cherish. The rest of it, which won’t make sense in their language without the emphasized “BO,” means, “The big Pygmy.”

Last September, I was brought on to the Onnit Pro Team, and I love being a part of it with Juan Leija, Eric Leija, and Coach John Wolf. I always have to surround myself with the best. The missing link in my MMA training was always my strength and conditioning, but now that Onnit is supporting that, I feel ready to make a comeback to MMA this year. I need to be totally optimized to get in there, and a lot of times, strength and conditioning coaches see a fighter and they think they’ve got to beat this guy down with workouts so that he can withstand the stress of a fight. But that can lead to injuries. Poor technique, high load volume, and everything else is a bad idea when I’m already beating myself down with wrestling and jiu-jitsu and boxing. I need to build myself back up. Until I got into Onnit Gym, I didn’t have that watchful eye. 

8:45 – On Alpha BRAIN^®

Joe Rogan has said he thinks Alpha BRAIN^® helps you get into that flow of conversation faster, and I think it helps you stay there longer. I think it’s a pretty good hack for him and his guests. When I take it, I’m more engaged in any podcasts or conversation I’m in. I think it’s a no-brainer to take Alpha BRAIN^® before you go into a podcast. When I started my own show, it became part of my routine, my regimen.

11:25 – Facing his Demons with Onnit

There’s a Swahili proverb that the Pygmy people taught me that I think sums up the Onnit community well. “If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together.” I’m a pro athlete, and I’ve done that for 15 years, but I get just as much if not more out of training with regular people in the so-called regular classes that Onnit offers in their gym, because they give to me, and I’m able to give to them. It’s a reciprocal thing that means a lot to me. And looking at what we’ve gone through the last couple of years, it’s like, man, we need each other. We all need a community.

I moved here to Austin in November of 2020. I partnered with Onnit a year later, and shortly after that, I needed to go to treatment for substance abuse. I had a big relapse. I’m a founder of a nonprofit, and I was worried that I would lose it. I was worried I’d lose the partnership with Onnit. But I was so encouraged when I realized I could go to the regular classes at Onnit and tell my coaches what was happening. Here I was, a few months into a business relationship with Onnit, and I was telling them about a serious personal problem. I was like, “Oh, man, this is not a good look,” but I came in and I was just loved. I was told, “We’re behind you, man. And if we were only behind you as an athlete, then we’re in the wrong business.” That’s what [Chief Fitness Officer] John Wolf told me, as well as the Chief Marketing Officer, and other company leaders. 

They all said, “Go get what you need. Take some time, and come back better than ever.” When Onnit says Total Human Optimization, they mean it. They didn’t just want me as a fighter or a podcaster. They wanted me as a complete human. What was a dark time became a shining bright light, and it showed me how this amazing community operates. Onnit wasn’t behind me because of what I do, but because of who I am—and who they are. 

20:50 – Fighting Against People… and For Them

I got into MMA because I grew up getting incredibly, heavily bullied. When I saw mixed martial arts, the first thing I thought was, “These guys don’t get bullied.” Secondly, I loved the human chess match of it. I love the strategy. So I started pursuing MMA at 15 years old.

I started with wrestling, but I wasn’t very good. I lost every match my first year but one. The match I won, I won because the guy basically slipped and I fell on top of him and I beat him by one point. But I had two of the greatest coaches of all time—two Olympic gold medalists—and I eventually won a national championship in high school. I didn’t drink until after I won that title, and then, right away, I could see that I had addictive tendencies.

When you win the national championship trophy, it’s a big cup, and what do you do with a cup? You drink out of it. We started passing that thing around. It was my first time ever drinking, and I think I had about 15 shots. But I went on to be a Greco-Roman wrestling national champion, and then I went to the Olympic training center. Out of there, I got recruited by Iowa State University. Then, the UFC was interested in me, because I was going around helping their fighters with their wrestling.

For my first fight, I was a last-minute replacement for a guy who had gotten a staph infection and couldn’t fight. I took the fight on one day’s notice. I jumped in, threw the guy, and finished the fight. My third fight, I actually started in the audience, watching the fights. I was wearing dress shoes, jeans, and a button-down shirt. A fighter didn’t show up, and they needed a heavyweight to fill in for him. The promoter came out and apologized to the fans. He said, “If there’s anyone here who happens to be a pro fighter, a heavyweight, and wants to… let’s do it.” I was 19, had a fake ID, and was chugging my third beer, so I stood up and raised my hand. I ended up being the co-main event. I had to borrow another fighter’s sweaty jockstrap.

But fighting didn’t necessarily do it for me. I was excited to challenge myself in that way, but what I discovered was that I was fighting against people, and I really wanted to be fighting for people. I wanted to have purpose. So, I found my way to the Congo, living with the Pygmy people. I was 23 years old and had only focused on me, and I started to change that.

The Pygmies have a water crisis, which I didn’t even know about, and it was killing people. I held a baby’s hand when he took his last breath. I thought, “What is going on in the world?” It would have cost one dollar for the pills needed to cure that baby, but the local hospital had denied him treatment. They told his mom, “You’re too dirty to come in here. We won’t waste our medicine on a Pygmy animal.” My heart was crushed.

At one point, the chief pulled me aside and said, “Everyone else calls us the Forest People, but we call ourselves The Forgotten.” That’s where the name for my nonprofit, Fight for the Forgotten, comes from. We’ve had more than 10,000 donors from all 50 states and 60 different countries. Joe Rogan, Aubrey Marcus [co-founder of Onnit], and Onnit have been huge advocates for us.

At first, I thought it was going to be like emptying the ocean with an eyedropper. Would anybody ever notice the impact we’re trying to make? But that’s turned into 80 water wells serving over 30,000 people over 3,000 acres of land. We’ve built 28 homes for people that were kicked out of the rainforest. Now we’re building a health center there, and a school. 

I recently had a call with Bellator MMA, and I’m making a comeback to fighting. I hope that helps me rally some support around these projects.

43:40 – How You Can Help Your Community

You are more capable than you know. We limit ourselves. I thought I could never do anything for these Africans; their problems seemed insurmountable. But now we’re making a dent, and it’s well worth it. For the human heart to come alive, you need an adventure to live in and a battle to fight. Just start small.

I’ll give you another Swahili proverb: “If you think you’re too small to make a difference, try to sleep in a closed room with a mosquito.” It’s a little tongue in cheek, but I’ll admit that I’ve gotten my ass kicked worse than anything by a mosquito that weighed less than a gram. I got bitten and it made me sick. A mosquito made me lose 33 pounds in five days. I was vomiting red and green, blood and bile. So if a mosquito can make that much of a difference in my life, how much difference can anyone listening to this make in the lives of others, right?

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that you can’t do everything you want for everyone, but you can do everything for one person. You can make a meaningful impact on someone’s life by doing something small.

I saw a homeless guy one time, and everybody was walking across the street to get away from him. I walked right up to him, and even though I didn’t have any money on me, I said, “What do you need?” He said, “I need a hug.” I said, “I got you a hug.” I hugged him and he cried on my shoulder. I looked into his eyes and said, “I see you, man.” It doesn’t take as much effort as people think.

I started small. I started volunteering at the Denver children’s hospital before I ever thought about Fight for the Forgotten. I volunteered for the oncology unit, and then, all of a sudden, Rashad Evans was there, and Brendan Schaub, and Justin Gaethje, and Duane “Bang” Ludwig came in. We were all visiting these kids and playing video games with them, and sometimes holding their hands before they went into surgery. That’s where it started for me. After that, I was looking to make a difference anywhere I could—head on a swivel. What can I do next? Who can I help?

The more you help others, the more it helps you. That’s not my main motivation, but what I’ve learned through recovery is that, when all else fails, when the meditation isn’t working, or exercise isn’t working, or whatever you’re trying to do to feel better isn’t working, help somebody. When you get outside of yourself and help somebody else, you start to reconnect with a purpose.

49:50 – What Justin Got Back from the Pygmies

I told them so many times that I’m so grateful for them saving my life. I’ve learned so much from them about how to love, how to spend time with people. They like to say, “You Westerners, you have all the watches, but we’re the ones with the time.” They taught me how to value time. They remind you to slow down and enjoy things. Slow down and be here.

I’m not fluent in their language, but I know the language of the heart. You can tune into that without speaking someone’s language, and you will be in tears laughing, cheeks hurting from smiling so much. Some of the best nights of my life were spent drenched in my own sweat from laughing and dancing with these people. ​​I think it was Seneca, the Stoic philosopher, that said, “Life is long, if you know how to use it.”

The post “Total Humanitarian Optimization”: Justin Wren’s Onnit Story appeared first on Onnit Academy.