#196: Fitness for Freelancers—How to Get and Stay Physically Fit When You’re a Work-at-Home Profe...

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. Just a quick reminder that you can find detailed show notes for this episode@BW launcher.com Episode 196 in those notes, always include a summary of our discussion here, as well as any links to resources we mentioned during the show. You would think that having a flexible work schedule would lead to better physical health, but the sad truth is that many work at home writers struggle to get and stay healthy. Now, of course, we may not have a long day with a brutal commute like our colleagues with day jobs, but we have other and often just perceived challenges. We have other challenges to contend with. I mean, when you think about it, a flexible schedule leads many of us to put everything ahead of physical fitness. You know, because when it's that flexible and nobody's telling you do this, or you have very limited time to get these things done, very limited blocks during a day to get these things done, then it tends to get put at the back of the line. Also, being so close to a refrigerator full of food or a pantry full of food is also a problem. And working at a desk for long hours can take a toll on the body. We're addressing this very important issue head on in today's episode. My guest is Steve Beck. He's a great guy. He's a certified personal trainer who works with individuals and teaches tennis players how to increase their performance through improved fitness. And in this episode, we cover a wide range of topics, including how to get started with a simple exercise program if you're currently at zero. And how to do this with a really low budget and with some very simple tools. How to improve your diet without making unsustainable sacrifices. How to build on your current fitness foundation and routine if you're already doing some of this stuff. How to play simple games with yourself and apply some behavioral science that's proven to ensure you stick to your commitments. And how to turn fitness and healthier eating into a lifelong habit, something that actually sticks. Now, before we get to Steve, I want to just include a quick but very important note. Steve and I are not doctors. We're not medical professionals. We don't even play one on the Internet. So please consult with your doctor before starting or changing your exercise or nutrition program. So with that, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Steve Beck. Hey, Steve, welcome to the show, man. It's great to have you here.

Hey, Ed, thanks for having me. It's great to be here and I look forward to helping you answer some and your team, your crew answer some questions.

Perfect. Well, I'm glad you're here. This is a very important topic that I've been wanting to dive into for a while. Before we get to that, tell us a little bit about yourself and the kind of work you do, your area of expertise, just so people have a little bit of context.

Yeah, sure. So I have been in and out of the fitness. Well, let me start off with this. My own personal fitness journey, I guess, started when I was, I don't know, the first time I saw a Bruce Lee movie and I wanted to do that. That is what I wanted to do. And so I took some karate classes when I was a kid and I played baseball growing up and I always loved gymnastics and running around and playing in the woods and swinging on stuff and was always a pretty naturally gifted athletic person. And then when I turned maybe 16, 17, I was fairly skinny kid and so I decided I wanted to start exercising and working out. And I'd never done anything formally so I joined a gym and did a bunch of stuff and made a bunch of mistakes and didn't ever get injured or anything, but, you know, just kind of found my way. And a couple years, well probably about nine, 10 years ago, started really developing an earnest interest in health and fitness. And so I pretty much went online and read books and got my hands on every resource I could. And then I went and got personal trainer certification. After that I saw I was training clients and working with them and I saw that nutrition was pretty much going to be a huge part of any kind of fitness program or overall health. And so I got a really good nutrition certification from a guy named John Berardi. He runs a company called Precision Nutrition up in Kennedy's out of Toronto. Shout out to him, he's a brilliant guy. And then I got a furthering my education, I got a corrective exercise specialist certification which really helped me out with a bunch of stuff, including my own personal issues. So I just kind of wanted to be as well rounded as I could and provide every solution that I could for clients. And I coached for about the last eight years or so pretty heavily in the beginning. And I've kind of tapered off a little bit. I've got a full time job that I do. And like you and I discussed a little bit beforehand, I kind of just do some one off stuff. Now I've got a couple people that I help out and write programs for and really just try to be a resource for anyone around me that needs help in that area.

Oh, that's perfect. So it sounds like a lot of this started as kind of a personal journey and a personal passion and then it turned into working with others, which is the way that so many of us get started and get going. You mentioned something that I wanted to hit on. I'm going to get kind of real granular and then we'll pull back and get more high level. But you mentioned nutrition being a huge part of the formula and I'm curious. There's always this question of nutrition versus exercise. Obviously we need both. But what's your take on if we want to get healthy, live a healthier life, improve our overall health? How much of it is a nutrition thing and how much of it is an exercise thing?

Well, like most answers that I will give to most questions that people ask about fitness and it can be kind of maddening. It depends. So, yeah, it depends on so many factors. What's your current lifestyle? What are your genetics? What underlying conditions might you have? How willing are you to change? How able are you to change? So it can go really deep, really quick. But to give you, I guess, a short answer, you can't out train a bad diet. Right. And so food is, who was it? Hippocrates, I think, said let food be that medicine and medicine be that food. So food is kind of the, a cornerstone or pillar, foundational element of our overall health whether we're exercising or not. If you eat McDonald's three times a day and drink soda and sit on the couch, guess what's going to happen? Not good stuff, right?

Yeah.

Not good for your physique, not going to be good for your overall health. So I think it's an integral part. If I was coaching someone and I couldn't have them exercise, but I wanted them get better, in better shape, I would tell them to, I would modify their diet and tell them to eat clean food and I would tell them to get eight hours of sleep a night and then we could come back and revisit in a month and see how they're feeling. So that was kind of a long winded way to answer your question, but is that kind of what you were looking for?

Yeah. Yeah, because here's where I'm going with this. And I think anyone listening to this can relate. I think there's a general belief out there and I'm asking you. I don't know what the answer is, but there's a general belief that. You know what? I know I can't eat McDonald's three times a day, okay. But I'm going to have ice cream about three, four times a week and have a whole pizza to myself. But I will make it up at the gym. Okay? And I know this is a very complex topic and I guess maybe the question needs to be qualified. It depends on your goal and what you're trying to accomplish. But is that kind of a fallacy? This idea that I'm going to work really hard at the gym, but then I'm going to eat whatever I want within reason, Is that maybe the wrong way to think about it?

Yeah, I guess it depends on what your definition of within reason is. But in essence, I think it's something that you can't overcome. And I kind of look at it like a bank account, right? If you're making good deposits all the time, then your bank account is going to be healthy and flourished. Or rather, let's say a portfolio, a stock portfolio. If you invest in good stocks and solid things like Warren Buffett, you're going to have a net ad or net gain at the end of the day. But if you invest in a bunch of junk and Internet startups and tech bubble type things and prospects and angel investing, it's going to be questionable. You might be okay, but more than likely you're going to have some issues at some point. So again, it goes back. It's a foundational thing. And if you were to do nothing else but eat healthy and walk around and sleep good, you'd be light years ahead of the general populace in terms of sleep.

Is the eight hour a night thing still kind of the way to go?

I mean, it's a good starting place. I would probably challenge you to find someone that gets eight hours of sleep a night. I know I probably don't. I know you might not. I know probably a bunch of your listeners, if they have an entrepreneurial spirit, may not be great at that. But that's kind of a good baseline. You know, people are different. Some people can get by 6 to 7. Some people need 8 or 9. Depends on how much stress you have, what you're trying to recover from in your life, physical wise and mental wise and just kind of all those things. Again, it depends. But it's a good starting place, I think.

Gotcha. I want to kind of set the Stage here and just kind of explain who might be listening here. So most of my listeners are freelance creative professionals. They spend a good portion of their day sitting at their desk. They know they need to exercise more. I mean, I don't think that's really a debatable issue. But they're not really sure what to do, how to get started or how to make it stick. We can get into some detail here if you want, but what's a practical way to overcome these challenges?

Yeah, so if you're at like starting at zero, basically, or maybe you've had some, maybe you played sports in your young life or in school or in college, and maybe you used to exercise or you've exercised intermittently or you've never exercised before in your life. There's a lot of. I'm a big proponent of all the stuff I've learned over the years. The more that I learn, the more I figure out just to keep it simple. Right. So if you can make yourself take two 10 minute walks a day or try to challenge yourself to get eight to 10,000 steps a day, if you got a pedometer or something like that, that's a great, really, really good starting point. That has a lot of benefit for your cardiovascular system. It gets you out of the seat, out of the office, out into some natural sunlight, into the atmosphere, which is really good for you. That's a great kind of a B would be if you want to start doing some minor or low level strengthening things, kind of calisthenics based stuff where you don't need equipment, push ups, pull ups, squats, lunges, sit ups, all kinds of things like that. Those have been proven to be phenomenal just for your joint mobility, your postural restoration. You know, we're all bent over devices and cell phones and computers all day. So that's a good restorative for that. So those are kind of A and B, you know, and they kind of play off each other and can be beneficial and cumulatively beneficial for just getting you on the road. Right. The first step down the path, that would be a fairly easy and low barrier to entry starting place.

So yeah, let's go with that. Let's talk about, you know, kind of an easy, low friction kind of way to start. And let's just assume that we're at zero. And let's just assume that we've already gotten the go ahead from our doctor, which everyone here should always get. This is not meant to be medical advice, but let's just say we got that clearance. But we know that if we try to do too much too soon, it's not going to stick. So if you were to say specifically, what basic things could we do?

If you stand up and hold your arms above your head and stand with a really straight tall posture and do that for 10 seconds at a time every hour, you know, maybe do those squats, and then the next hour do stand up and you know, just stand up really straight and kind of fix your posture. Get back in tune with the muscles that kind of get turned off when you're sitting down. That's a great way. So so far we've got squatting, we've got standing up straight, which isn't an exercise, but it does good for your body. And then twice a day, you know, every four hours or whenever you want to squeeze it in, go outside and take a walk for 10 or 15 minutes and just slow, steady, breathe in through your nose as you're going down, breathe out through your mouth as you're coming up, and do that as many times a day as you could. You know, there's a guy named Pavel Satselin who is Russian and he's credited with bringing kettlebell training to the United States. And he kind of calls a repetitive thing like that greasing the groove. Right? So if you're trying to get better at something, pull ups per se, I've got a pull up bar sitting three feet away from me and when I work from home, I try to do five pull ups every time I walk under it. Now I can do a lot of pull ups and five isn't going to tax me, it's not going to hurt me. But if I've done that 10 times a day, I've done 50 pull ups and there's no real strain on the body. So it's the same concept. A lot of people need some corrective exercise in the upper body due to that, know, forward hunch we get. So, you know, if you stand up and hold your arms above your head and stand with a really straight tall posture and do that for 10 seconds at a time every hour, you know, maybe do those squats. And then the next hour do stand up and, you know, just stand up really straight and kind of fix your posture. Get back in tune with the muscles that kind of get turned off when you're sitting down, that's a great way. So so far we've got squatting, we've got standing up straight, which isn't an exercise, but it does good for your body. And then twice a day, you know, every four Hours or whenever you want to squeeze it in. Go outside and take a walk for 10 or 15 minutes and just at a, you know, steady, slow pace. Don't try to kill anything. Open your eyes, look up at nature, enjoy the scenery, feed your brain with what's going on in the world. Don't take your phone with you or keep it in your pocket. Yes. You know, so distract it, get away from the screen and just, you know, turn your brain on so much. We get so hyper focused that I'm just as guilty as anybody. We're working on a task and, you know, all we see is the 8 by 10 screen in front of us and we forget that there's a beautiful world out there and there's green grass and wildlife and sun shining. That's really good for our vitamin D and helping our circadian rhythms. So just do a little, get back to nature. I mean, even if you're in a city or in a pretty populated area, still just getting out and getting some fresh air and sunshine is really good for you. So right there you've got three things that are low impact, high roi, if you do them consistently and with awareness.

I love that because that's exactly what I was hoping you'd give us, is some high roi, easy things to do that will create quick wins. Because if we do this, you're going to feel so good about yourself and the fact that you did them and you're going to start feeling better and then that's going to be the reward.

Absolutely.

That's the feedback loop right there that we're looking for. And then it turns into a habit and now you're starting to ask yourself, okay, what else can I do?

Yeah, yeah, that becomes like, oh, that's normal now. And I've patterned that those activities and that's really what every good exercise program, every good athlete is built on is patterning to some degree. When you're a baby, you learn how to walk, you learn how to sit, you learn how to squat, you learn how to run, you learn how to sprint, you learn how to cut sideways, and then you learn how to do it with a load, either running up a hill or with an external load of some sort. And that's that patterning and that, you know, in neurological terms, I guess you would call it myelinating the axons of your brain to repeat those patterns and cement them in place. And now you've got a good baseline that you can start building on.

Now, do you recommend in terms of cues? Because I know many times this sounds Great, I got good intentions. But then it's the end of the day and I forgot. Right. So are there any suggestions or recommendations, even really simple stuff to ensure that we actually remember to do this stuff and not have it slip?

Yeah, I mean, you can play games with yourself. Well, before that you could just set a calendar reminder, you know, go in, everybody's got a phone, right? And it's tied to their hip or glued to their hand virtually. So put a calendar reminder in every hour. If you need to squat, go for a walk every four hours, correct your posture every hour, every other hour, until it becomes habitual. And you can play games with yourself too. You know, I like to reward myself, you know, watching a YouTube video or reading an article or something like that. And you say, well, just like raising a kid, you know, if you do A, then you can have B, if you're good and clean your room, we can go out for ice cream Friday night. If you don't complete the goals that you set for yourself, then you don't get X reward. Whatever it is, make it something meaningful to you. I know that you guys, your listeners are probably pretty risk or pretty reward based folks as entrepreneurs are.

Oh yeah.

And so setting things like that, that they're, you know, setting achievements that they need to reach are, is probably second nature. So, you know, reward yourself with some healthy goals and healthy rewards.

I'm a big believer in that. And I've found that most of us don't really need anything big in terms of a reward for it to be effective. So like you said, you know, making myself a really nice coffee with a coffee press, which is something I rarely use anymore because of the time that it takes and all that. But the result is so wonderful, it's so exquisite. So rewarding myself with something simple like that or just going out to the patio and taking an extended break on a nice day. Things that we probably should be doing anyway, but sometimes we don't give ourselves permission to do. So maybe this is what I found is this is kind of the workaround. It's like, okay, normally I don't give myself permission to do this, but this is going to be the reward. And listen, as long as it works, I think that's really the key. As long as it's something that motivates you, right?

Yeah. Don't make it a trap. Don't say I get to go out for a cheeseburger or maybe do that once a week. If you hit all your little goals, you go out on Saturday and you have a Pizza, have an ice cream sundae. It's not going to kill you, just.

Not the whole pizza.

Yeah, that double pizza. And don't make it a concrete, you know, shake from your favorite custard joint every afternoon. That's shooting yourself in the foot, you know, so be smart. That kind of goes without saying, but yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about once you get past, you know, those baby steps and you develop kind of the basic habits that foundation or for those who are a little bit further ahead and they're not starting from scratch, what are your thoughts on exercising from home versus a gym or fitness facility? Pros and cons of each?

Yeah, I think again, it depends on your, what best motivates you. Some people are better with like, okay, I'm going to. I've been locked up in the house all day. I've been writing, I've been doing X, Y and Z. I got to get out. Like this is going to be my escape. Go to the gym. Great, that works great. Other folks maybe not so much. It's like a hassle. And I got to get my clothes together and then I got to drive or take the subway or take, get a ride and then I got to be out for an extra 30, 40 minutes of commute time and I got kids at home and you know, et cetera, et cetera. So that in that case working out at home might be better for you. And there's. You could for a minimal amount of money, you can get a lot of bang for your buck if you were to. So again, just take working from home. For example, if you were to buy a kettlebell and a pull up bar, investment of under 100 bucks and maybe a nice exercise band should probably cost you 15 bucks or something like that. So under 100 bucks, you got a really good starter home gym that you could really challenge yourself with. Gym memberships are pretty cheap. So if you choose to go that route, I would say there's a lot more opportunity to get yourself confused almost because then you get around the bros or the sisses who are giving you all the bro science. You need to eat six meals a day, bro, you need to take a protein shake 12, you know that kind of stuff. And there's a lot more danger areas in the playground of gym equipment and you can even get overwhelmed by with the different opportunities. Like you walk in a place and there's a 500 pieces of equipment, you're like, man, what the heck, where do I even start? So going back to, I guess to answer Your question originally, what are the pros and cons? It depends on your personality. What's more likely to get you to change your behavior? Is it going out to the gym and changing your environment, or is it doing it at home to where you're more likely to get it in? Just depends on you, really.

Yeah. I found that for me, and I think a lot of people were this way too, is I needed to standardize the time of day and the method of getting there, of making it happen. So for me, what happened was when I finally got into a habit of doing this, I was driving my young son, my youngest, to school. And the theory was, and it ended up working out, that the gym was actually on the same road as the school. So I would take him to school, and instead of getting my butt home, which, by the way, if I went back home, I wouldn't leave. Right. So I was already on that road. So I would just take the short drive to the gym from there and then it would happen. So I removed the friction in terms of distance because I was trying to do it during lunch and it just wasn't happening. I would fall behind. And then I said, oh, I'll do it tomorrow. So that was one. And then the other thing for me was the time in that if it was at a different time all the time, it wasn't standardized. So it was up in the air. So I moved it to first thing in the morning because there's no excuses. And if you get that done, then that's it, you got it checked off. And that worked really well for me. I know for other people, they like doing it at the end of the day, that's fine. But for me, I just know myself that time wouldn't work well for me. So I guess it's right. It's knowing your daily rhythm and what's going to have the highest probability of sticking.

Absolutely. I'm a lunchtime guy, so like 11:30, I've got. We're fortunate at my office to have a little gym over in the next building. I walk over there and it's great. I developed a friendship with a guy who was also working out. Now he's my workout buddy. So I've got some accountability and throw that into the mix. If you can find a partner or a friend or an acquaintance or someone to join in with you, you are way highly more likely to keep progressing and to keeping that habit.

Yeah. Because they're expecting you. Right. So you. If you don't feel like it, it's like, well, yeah, But Jim's waiting for me, so. And nobody wants. I mean, you can maybe make up an excuse one day, but I mean, if you keep that up.

Oh, like a lie.

Yeah, you lie, man. You lie. Yeah. Okay, so I like that very much. In terms of any other ideas, tips, hacks that you found work really well to again, establish and maintain a routine that actually turns into a habit, especially for people who work from home.

Yeah, you've really just got to hold yourself accountable. And that just comes from developing discipline. And so I've gotten to the point where, I mean, I've been working out really consistently for 27 years now, just turned 46, so I feel like I've got the hang of it. But still, there are days where like, man, I don't want to today, I don't feel like it. I'm not in the mood. And I'll tell myself, procrastinate tomorrow. Go ahead and do it today and procrastinate tomorrow. So I put off putting it off, which is a neat little trick with regards to nutrition. You can think of it really simply as, this is going to taste really good for about 30 seconds and then it won't matter what I ate. I could have eaten a pail of garbage and it would have the same. You know what I mean? That memory goes away, right? So that cheeseburger doesn't taste good for the rest of the day. That chocolate peanut butter milkshake doesn't taste good for the rest of the day. In fact, if you eat something like that, if you eat crap, you're probably gonna feel worse afterward. And really, 10 seconds of pleasure, mouth pleasure didn't even really, didn't stick. It didn't matter, didn't make a difference, right? So I try to think about when I'm eating something, you know what? I'm hungry. And I get hungry because I do what's called intermittent fasting. So I'll basically skip breakfast and eat after I work out around one o'. Clock. And sometimes I'm like, man, McDonald's is literally right across the street from my office. I could go there within five minutes and have something real good. But I tell myself, you know what, just eat what I brought, which is generally healthy food. And I won't be, you know, I'll forget about it in 30 minutes. The immediacy of hunger sometimes drives us to do stupid things. But if you can work through that and just say, make something healthy, eat it, and then you'll be fine after that.

I actually never thought about that before, Steve. So I'm glad you mentioned it. Doesn't it seem like if you're thinking about a pizza or McDonald's or whatever, it's really the anticipation that's greater. So in other words, if I'm thinking about it and it's 10 o' clock in the morning and I'm thinking about on the way home, pick up a pizza, it's really the high that you can experience is from that moment till six o' clock when you get out of work. But the moment you eat it, it lasts about whatever, a few minutes and then you feel like crap for the rest of the night. I never really thought about that.

We have it backwards in the morning. Then we might have deeper issues that we need to look into.

Yeah, exactly. But I never thought about it. It's actually inverted. We never anticipate it and then feel great while and after. It's always the anticipation, the five minutes it takes to eat a couple of slices of pizza and then that's it. And then after that it's a huge low.

It takes the same amount of time to eat a piece of steak and some roasted broccoli and you feel better afterwards. But yeah, you're right, we place a lot of emphasis on the thing. Like I need that thing, I need that dopamine hit that's going to come from that food and it's going to be so good and yada yada yada.

Yeah, totally. You mentioned intermittent fasting. If you wouldn't mind, can you tell us a little bit about what that is? I know that's been a huge topic lately and curious. You said you wait till 1 o' clock and what's your eating window like? How long?

Yeah, generally I'll eat between 1130 and try not to eat past 930 at night during the week. Weekends are a little bit different. I'll loosen up a little bit.

So you got an eight hour eating window?

Yeah, pretty much.

So what's the benefit of that?

There's a lot of benefit. First and foremost, it'll teach you to recognize mental hunger from physical hunger. So the first, if you do this experiment, just skip breakfast three days in a row and allow yourself water or black coffee. So nothing caloric. Right. You may think you're hungry when you get up in the morning, but you'll recognize by noon I'm really hungry. This is what real hunger feels like. You could even do a 24 hour fast and kind of further that experiment a little bit. But the science has shown that it's really good because it Kind of allows you to reset your digestive system, clean everything out. There's some stuff that happens at the cellular level that I'm not smart enough to understand. I could throw out some smart sounding words, but suffice it to say, it's really good for kind of cell regeneration and things of that nature. So it's got a lot of benefits. I think for me one of the biggest benefits is just kind of the mental toughness aspect, if I can say it that way, is just I control when I'm going to eat. My hunger doesn't control me. And it allows me to have a little bit more autonomy over the way that I look at food. And I look at it like, man, I just went 16 hours without eating. Granted, eight of them, seven of them I was asleep. So that's no real big challenge. But I've kind of deprived myself of food. I want something that's going to reward me in a healthy and positive way for that small sacrifice. And it allows me to look at foods like not just as we have a problem in America, we have so much ready access to food that we kind of take it for granted and we can just eat whatever, whenever, 24 7, you can get it delivered to your door without even leaving the couch. Right. So I think we've lost the value of what food really is. And if you deprive yourself for a little while, you kind of regain that respect for food and see it for what it is. It's either a building block or an agent for positive change in your life and positivity. Or it's an agent for destruction and sickness and kind of going backwards. So that all makes sense.

Yeah, that's a beautiful explanation. The mental toughness aspect is something I hadn't really given much thought to. I started doing this about a year ago and, well, a couple of things, you're right. I've been able to kind of play that game with myself. My brain tells me that I'm hungry, but I'm really not. And being able to forego that and just see how far I can push it has been a really interesting experiment. And I've even gone as far as 42 hours, which really makes me more mindful and aware in a way I can't really explain. And it also cuts me back, cuts it down to two meals a day because by the time I eat it's lunch. And then I'll have a bulletproof coffee or something somewhere in the middle and then it's dinner and then that's it. I'm Done. So I'm consuming less, which is obviously good thing.

Yeah. For me. I'm older now and I mean, I used to be you. Probably most people can identify with this. When you're younger and you're a male and you're growing, you could eat the refrigerator. Right. It doesn't matter. But now, like, I can't shovel in much more than a couple thousand calories in my eating window, so it's going to naturally make me eat less. That kind of mental toughness or mental aspect of it makes me focus on better food choices because I don't want to waste my calories on something that's not going to be good for me. Right.

Yeah.

So it does a lot of. There's a multitude again, you know, going back to what you said, you know, check with your doctor, make sure you get, you're okay to do that. But I think most people would probably benefit from doing that. I mean, there's guys that, that will go do like a 72 hour fast every quarter. They'll go like every week, they'll go a 24 hour fast, something like that. So there's a lot of benefit to it in the mental and the physical. I've found that it helps me stay leaner, helps me stay at a healthy weight and it's good for me mentally and physically.

Man, this has been great. Steve, I've learned so much and you certainly understand what it's like to be at home that close to the fridge, that easy to be able to say, I don't need to go to the gym today, I'll go tomorrow. So I appreciate all the tips, advice that you gave us to make sure that we can start and develop that foundation or if we're already there, that we can improve on what we're already doing. Before we sign off, where can people learn more about you and what you're up to?

Yeah, so I'm kind of unique in that I don't have a social media presence. That's the one disciplinary cut that I've made in my life that I have found to be endlessly positive. I don't waste time on Twitter, Facebook, et cetera. So you really can't find me. If you want to give out my email address, you can do that. But I don't know how many listeners you have. I'm a little hesitant.

Yeah, let's not just in case, but if there's any other way that people can check out what you're doing or maybe some of the courses that you've helped developed, you know, I'd love to link to them in the. In the show notes.

Ian's website. Our friend in common, Ian Westerman, runs a website called essentialtennis.com and he has a lot of content up on YouTube. I know that his courses are pay to enter, right? So, yeah, he only releases them at certain points. We just did rehash of not a rehash, a whole new program called complete Tennis Fitness 360, which we launched at the beginning of the year. And I know that it's a really good program. It's the best one we've done yet. It's the third iteration, so I know that he relaunches that from time to time. And you can sign up for his email list or you can go on his website. There's also some stuff on YouTube you can see if you search for his stuff. And you know, Essential Tennis Steve Beck, you'll see some content there, some promotional content, stuff that we've done together. But there's a lot of good resources out there. BenGreenfieldFitness.com is one of my favorite guys to go to. He's really smart with nutrition and exercise. So yeah, that's kind of my little plug for other people. Perfect.

No, I appreciate that. And we'll make sure to link to those in the show notes. And I just want to give an extra plug to Ian, my buddy Ian Westerman with Essential Tennis. Some amazing content. That guy is just so passionate about creating the best stuff possible and so much of it is free. And in fact, I would say whether or not you play tennis, check out his YouTube channel, the Essential Tennis YouTube channel. One of the things that I'm so impressed by what he's done is he has got the biggest YouTube channel outside of the USTA Wimbledon and one other big tennis channel. I mean, so he's like the outside of those, he is the biggest, which is amazing. I've seen his growth and just been so inspired by what he's done. He's got some great stuff and I know the stuff you guys have put together, it's just top notch. So guys, check it out. Links are in the show notes. And Steve, thanks again, man. Really appreciate you joining us today, Ed.

It's been my pleasure and I really enjoyed our chat.

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