Take the Stairs. Hop in that cold shower. Do the push-ups.

Jerzy Gregorek has an inspirational story that took him from the depths of alcoholism to Olympic Weightlifting glory winning multiple championships and world records. In an interview a few year ago, I heard him mention those powerful 8 words.

It’s so spot on.

If you want to age well and live a life of strength and vitality, those 8 words are a great framework for decision making.

This touches on the topic of willpower and discipline which I wrote all about here, but ultimately it speaks to one of the fundamental truths of the human body which is this…

The body simply responds and adapts to the specific forces you place on it. If you want a strong, flexible, resilient body, you have to expose it to the right inputs so that it adapts.

Let’s look at some practical real world examples of what this looks like..

The “hard choice” could be a hardcore 60-min workout or going on a restrictive diet. That might work for some people but it’s not necessary for making positive changes in your life.

At first, it might just be a slightly “harder choice”, something like…

• Walking an extra 5 minutes after dinner.
• Ordering a salad instead of a burger.
• Doing 10 minutes of a 30-min workout instead of nothing.
• Holding a deep squat for 30 seconds while brewing your morning coffee.

If done consistently, this “slightly harder” thing will have a huge positive impact on your body.

The challenging part is the daily execution of this slightly hard thing. Your brain will fight you on this because it wants to conserve energy and keep you safe.

Now this is where a simple yet powerful tool of “habit stacking” comes into play…

You do the “harder thing” after doing something you already do every day. Think of something you do automatically already:

• Brush your teeth in the morning
• Make your bed
• Take a shower

Then “stack” the other thing right after. So you’re using the existing habit as a trigger to do the new thing..

For example, I’ve been doing a simple squat practice every morning as I brew my coffee. It normally takes about 4–5 minutes to brew my coffee. During that time I’ll play around with my squat..

Some days it’s a squat hold for 30–60 seconds at a time.

Other days it’s a few reps of a squat.

Maybe I’ll change my foot position or grab onto a chair to give me more support.

At first, I would go through a 5 second negotiation with myself about how I don’t want to do it. I’m feeling extra stiff. I have some other seemingly important task to do.

But I do it. And it gets easier and easier every day. Now it’s a habit that requires very little effort.

Here are some slightly harder choices that you could add to your days..

• Take the stairs.
• Take a cold shower.
• Do 10 push-ups every day for 1 week.
• Take a 5 minute walk after each meal.
• Try skipping 1 meal 1 day per week.
• Commit to an exercise program for 1 week.

Most people will look at this list and say “nah, too easy, ain’t gonna work for me.” I’ll just wait till I’m motivated and crush the 60-min high intensity workout.

Or even more common, I’ll just go on some restrictive diet starting Monday or next month or next year.

Don’t be that person. Motivation will ebb and flow. It’s not reliable.

Instead, make the simple slightly harder choices become part of who you are. Take the stairs. Get a little uncomfortable in the cold shower. Skip a meal once in a while.

Schedule your life around those things and your future self will thank you.

For my visually inclined, this is what can happen.

If you want help figuring this stuff out, don’t hesitate to reach out to me! And check out my brand new quiz below that will nudge you into action.

Free Fitness Quiz for Men Over 40 — Find out what’s holding you back — Is it strength? Cardio? Or flexibility? Find out in under 3 minutes.

If you’re heard of Jocko Willink, a Navy Seal turned leadership guru, you might be familiar with the statement that discipline equals freedom. He wrote a whole book about it.

The punchline is that you need to do hard stuff — wake up early, do tough physical training, take cold showers, do things out of your comfort zone, etc — to have freedom.

Simple enough right?

Well maybe — but I wanted to take it a layer deeper and share my thoughts on the topic.

I’m not so sure discipline equals freedom, but it can help in certain situations, especially as it relates to your body and your health.

Before we get to discipline, I want to talk about willpower because many people talk about these 2 ideas as the same thing. They are not.

Willpower vs discipline…

I view discipline as upstream to willpower, that is, if you have the discipline to set up systems in your life based on your values, then you don’t need to rely on willpower as much.

Willpower

Willpower is the immediate currency that’s finite and gets used up.

Avoiding the Monday morning donuts and the afternoon snacks around the office require willpower. And there’s a reason it’s Friday pizza night and not Tuesday pizza night. You have more willpower earlier in the week before it gets used up by Friday night.

Sleep also plays a vital role on willpower. All things being equal, less sleep = less willpower reserves.

Discipline

As mentioned, I view discipline as upstream to willpower. It’s more of a life philosophy to do the right thing at the right time. It’s aligning actions with values.

Personally, maintaining my health so that I can live a full, engaged, connected life and have impact on the world is one of my core values so many of these choices become quite easy.

• I might want to eat cake for breakfast or have a nightly beer, but I choose not to.
• I might not want to lift weights every week, but I do.
• I might not want to eat a salad every day, but I almost always do.
• I might want to stay up late and binge on netflix, but I normally don’t.

I choose to not have the daily cake because I know what it will do to my body, but I do have a daily square or 2 of dark chocolate or a protein bar to satisfy my sweet needs.

I understand that if I maintain muscle mass via strength training my sugar storage tank is huge (carbs get stored in muscles) so I can occasionally splurge on the ice cream or the adult beverages without it doing too much damage.

I know that if I consistently sleep 8+ hours a night, my mental capacity is better, I have less cravings and better ability to fight the temptation of donuts and deep fried chicken.

All these actions might look like discipline, but really it’s just aligning my actions to my values.

Sure, having a full tank of willpower helps, but if you do the work to get clear with your values and move towards aligning your actions to those values, you’ll quickly notice how little willpower you need.

Want help figuring all this out, let’s chat. This is what I help guys do. Once you get this first part down, then it’s simply showing up and following a proven plan to get you to where you want to go.

I’ll leave you with a bonus rule to follow:

Say No To Free Dopamine!

Dopamine is a brain chemical mostly associated with pleasure and reward. We release dopamine from various different activities, some require effort to release dopamine (like exercise), other dopamine producing activities require little to no effort (consuming alcohol or sugary drinks).

The key point here is that you’ll want to earn your dopamine with some effort vs getting it for free. Let your brain chemistry work for you instead of against you.

For example, easy unearned dopamine, aka free dopamine:

• Alcohol
• Social media and the magic of maybe*
• Shopping
• Sugary drinks
• Salty processed food

In contrast to getting dopamine for free, a better way is to earn your dopamine with any of the following activities:

• Exercise
• Movement of any kind
• Learning a new skill
• Cold exposure (ice baths, cold showers)
• Meditation
• Sex
• Sunlight

Further reading on dopamine:

*Magic of maybe — Stanford researcher Robert Sapolsky on the reason why social media and email are so damaging to our brains. “Dopamine is not about pleasure; it’s about the anticipation of pleasure. It’s about the pursuit of happiness, rather than about the happiness itself.”

And the fascinating book The Molecule of More by Daniel Lieberman will give you a deeper dive on everything dopamine.

“For the simplicity that lies this side of complexity, I would not give a fig, but for the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity, I would give my life.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes

The world is vastly complex and most of the simple solutions that you see are on “this side” of complexity. My goal is to get to the other side as Mr. Holmes alludes to — what I call refer to as sophisticated simplicity.

Let’s unpack this with a topic that almost everyone will deal with at some point…

Low back pain.

The “this side” of complexity, what I call unrefined simple would be something like:

• Do this one stretch or one exercise.
• Get a chiropractic adjustment.
• Take a pill to mask pain.
• Stop lifting weights altogether (this is what my doctor told me 20 years ago 🤬).

Simple for sure. But helpful? Probably not.

Now, while some of those might help in the short term — a stretch can help, an adjustment might work, and there might be a time for pain meds or bed rest, none of this will help in the long-run.

We need a better solution for back pain that is on the “other side” of complexity, that takes into consideration the complexity of the human biological system and distills down big concepts into useful practical frameworks.

A few helpful principles of the how the body functions:

• The body is a system of tissues and cells working to keep us alive.
• This system is self organizing and self healing.
• It adapts to the forces we place on it.
• Our brain is always looking to conserve energy.

From those first principles, we can further our understanding by looking at our own unique history with our body — past injuries, sports we played and still play, daily activities we do, etc:

• A shoulder injury 10 years ago that’s causing compensation patterns.
• Sitting at a desk that causes hip muscles to shorten and weaken.
• Looking at a phone with hunched posture that pulls the shoulder blades forward.
• An ankle sprain in high school that limits our ankle range of motion.
• Wearing narrow shoes that squish our toes together and weaken our feet.

Taking all this complexity into account — here’s simplicity on the other side..

Sit less and spend more time walking barefoot every day!

Sitting less will help balance the hip muscles.

Spending time barefoot will train the foot so that you have a solid and strong foundation.

Now, you might have specific issues that might need additional work, but I will guarantee that if you sit less and spend more time barefoot, you will 100% improve your health and most likely decrease your back pain.

This is simplicity on the other side of complexity.

I’ll leave you with a few basic experiments to nudge you into action:

• Record the amount of hours you sit per day. Everything from the desk chair to driving, on a train or plane — doesn’t matter what you’re sitting on, log the total hours in a sitting position. There’s no magic number to get to but you probably want to shoot for under 4 hours per day. If you’re over 10, work to reduce that number and also do some exercises to offset all that sitting. My guide for clients is 2 mins of this stretch for every hour of sitting.
• Log some time everyday barefoot. If you can do it outside, even better! Slowly work to increase the amount of time you spend shoeless.
• Make your next sneaker purchase a more natural shoe (flat, flexible, foot-shaped, thin). Here’s a good resource on what to look for in a natural shoe.

If you liked this, give it a big thumbs up or feel free to share it, I would appreciate it very much!

And if you want any help with your health, don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

Nick

Yes, I get it — we all want to live longer. Most of us are afraid to die.

And thank you to all the hard working anti-aging researchers working on this impossible problem. But here’s the big issue I see with many people trying to implement this stuff..

People are so obsessed with anti-aging that they are forgetting how to live!

Yes, taking care of our future self is very important.

Of course I want to live a long enjoyable, meaningful life.

AND at the same time — life is meant to be lived, to be experienced fully in the moment with people you love and doing the things that bring you joy.

I believe the obsessive, neurotic nature of many anti-aging behaviors flies directly in the face of living a good life.

Let me offer another perspective and share why I think focusing all your energy and time on anti-aging is a waste of time.

I believe there’s a way to increase the quality and duration of your life without being obsessive and dogmatic.

And one that is way more fun too.

Let’s first take alcohol.

I feel confident saying that there is NO amount of alcohol that is healthy for the human body. I’d love to see data that suggests otherwise but it’s just not there.

BUT if you can indulge occasionally and not have it be habitual, I believe you can drink booze and still be healthy. You can use it responsibly to celebrate life and connect with other humans.

The anti-agers will tell you to avoid booze at all costs. I will say limited booze and you’ll probably be ok.

And let’s talk about sugar.

The anti-agers will argue that sugar is the devil and should be avoided at all costs. They argue that consuming sugar will give you diabetes and dementia and increase your chance of dying early.

Sure, that’s 100% true if you’re sedentary and overfat, eating sugar is a terrible idea. It will age you faster and most likely ruin your quality of life.

But if you’re active, metabolically healthy (fasting glucose <90, trigs < 100) and have some muscle mass, I would argue sugar in moderation is absolutely fine.

If you look at fit people with muscle mass who are active, they can handle a shit ton of sugar and not have much metabolic damage from it. I’m not advocating lucky charms and pancakes every morning, but if you have some muscle mass and you’re active, you can 100% eat donuts and french fries on occasion without doing too much harm to your body.

I think there’s a balance here to living a good life, to feeling good in your body, and not being obsessed with living forever.

So here’s how I’m playing the longevity game in a non-dogmatic way. I create golden rules around high leverage activities like sleep, movement, nutrition, and stress management. For example:

• I get 8+ hours of sleep.
• I get over 11k steps every day.
• I do something every day to train my body.
• I eat mostly whole foods with sufficient protein that gives my body the proper building blocks it needs to thrive. (a big salad with chicken, fish, eggs, or meat every day will do the trick)
• I don’t drink very much alcohol (under a few drinks per month) and I don’t smoke tobacco.
• I do a minimum of 5 mins per day of some kind of stress management practice (meditation, breath work, journaling, stretching, walking in nature, etc.)

When you focus on improving the high leverage activities above and stop wasting your energy searching for the next magical anti-aging supplement or newest biohacking gadget, you’ll have more time and money to spend on the important things in life.

That’s how I’m playing the longevity game — how about you?!

Show up every day.

That’s my health advice that’s taken me a decade to figure out..

If you want to feel good in your body, move well without pain, and wake up full of energy, these 4 words will get you there. They might not be sexy, but if you can embrace these 4 words, you will be make serious progress with your health.

Showing up every day will look different for everyone…

It will look different on weekends vs weekdays and when you’re on the road traveling vs being at home.

It will look very different on days when you’re well rested vs days when you’re exhausted.

It will also be highly dependent on what you’re trying to do with your body and the current state of your body.

The high level point is that if you want to age well, avoid disease, move without pain, and have more energy to do the activities that you love — you need to show up every day.

There are no off days.

Now this doesn’t mean you need to crush 60-min workouts every day and never eat donuts, but you do need to do something every day.

Here’s what showing up could look like:

• Do 100 push ups over the course of the day (my favorite protocol — every hr do 10)
• A 10 minute walk.
• Skipping breakfast.
• Taking the stairs.
• Eating a big salad every day.
• Choosing a protein shake over a donut.
• Drinking enough water.
• Carving out the time for 10 minutes of meditation or breath work.
• A 30 minute strength workout.
• A 60 minute strength workout.
• A 20-min HIIT workout.
• 30 minutes on the bike.
• A 30-min jog.
• 15 minutes of stretching.
• Avoiding screens before bed.

The reality is that we’re all going to have days when we don’t feel our best, when we don’t feel like working out, going for a walk, or stretching.

But if you can show up on those days and just do something to move your body and take care of yourself — and if you can do that consistently over time no matter what — that is the key to long term health and vitality.

It really can be that simple. Show up every day.

I’ll leave you with this — How are you going to show up today?

As I was approaching my 30th birthday, everything looked “ok” from the outside, but my body was starting to fall apart from the inside. I was getting softer, fatter, and more lethargic — the athlete inside of me was dying a slow death.

I had to make a change.

So I left behind a lucrative and stable career in finance, a boatload of amazing friends, a loving family, all the ‘securities’ of an American life, and I moved to Costa Rica to reawaken my identity of an athlete that had gone missing working in the corporate world.

I stopped living the life I was supposed to live, and I started living the life I was meant to live.

I now coach high performing men and women how to master their bodies and minds to break through their self-imposed limitations and do more amazing things in their lives.

I truly believe that we all have a unique gift to give this world and that there is greatness in us all.

Most of the time it’s simply a matter of finding the right environment for you, being surrounded by the right people, and putting yourself in situations that allow for your superpowers to shine. I’m here to help clear that path for you.

Playing the Master Game

Before Costa Rica, I thought there was only one game in town, the game of life according to our modern culture that went something along these lines:

The only problem — I was playing the game well, but I wasn’t feeling any real benefits. I had a good salary, great benefits, and an amazing office view overlooking the San Francisco Bay.

But I was bored, frustrated, and didn’t give a shit about the meaningless work I was doing. And my body was starting to fall apart.

Growing up as an athlete, my body always provided me so much strength and vitality. I felt so at home on the court, the field, or on the diamond.

Playing and excelling at sports defined who I was as a person.

And it even got me into college as I was recruited to play basketball for Emory University. But something happened to that passion of playing between graduating Emory University with an Economics degree and getting into the work force where I was resigned to sitting at a desk all day.

That inner critic in my head seeking security, certainty, and status kept telling me to suck it up and play the game. Look at all your peers, look at all that success you can have if you just stay the course and play by the rules. Who are you to think you can dream big and play another game. Stay the course and follow along.

But that strong and vital body of mine was starting to breakdown as my stomach grew inches, my muscles weakened, and my joints ached.

I was in pain a lot. The athlete in me, now softer and 20 pounds heavier, was slowly withering away.

That adventurous little kid inside me who loved to play in the dirt and shoot hoops until midnight was nowhere to be found.

I realized that I was essentially spending the vast majority of my existence taking no risks, dropping every dream I ever had, living for the weekends, and dreaming of a life that could have been.

I had to figure out what was going on.There had to be another game. Or at least different rules to play by.

One morning an email came across my desk from a recruiter in NYC titled “Surf Camp in Costa Rica looking to assemble a team”.

Having just returned from a short surf trip in Nicaragua, I was intrigued. I reached out to Joe, the owner of Witch’s Rock Surf Camp, and a few months later we met at a trade show in San Diego.

Joe was playing a different game. Led by an insatiable desire for surfing, 15 years ago Joe drove a school bus down to Costa Rica and started a small little surf camp. Now it’s one of the most famous surf camps in the world.

Joe was playing by his rules, focusing intensely on doing something he loved and building a successful business around it. He wasn’t tied to some number, accumulating stuff along the way.

Joe represented a shift in thinking about playing the game of life I was conditioned to believe. There was another game that could be played. And here was an opportunity to create something for myself and get back to the athlete inside of me.

It was a life inspired by the natural beauty of the environment, and centered around a newly found passion of surfing that lit me up on the inside. It gave me a chance to fall back in love with moving my body and being active outside in nature.

But in those months before the fateful move, I was scared silly.

The “what if’s” flooded my head. What if I fail? What if I run out of the little money that I saved up?

The doubt crept in as my inner critic uttered those same words again, “Who are you to do this?”

This time my gut and heart had a different answer –“Who am I not to do this?”

What I Discovered

After a year working with Joe and the surf camp, I started training surf camp guests on how to get stronger and better prepared for surfing.

Shortly thereafter, I started Nick Holt Fitness that branched out to beach boot camp classes on the beach. With the help of my new love Julie, we built NHF into the #1 attraction in Tamarindo. We have now ventured online with Saltwater Fit to take our message to the people.

Saltwater Fit is the antidote to our sedentary, uninspired, distracted modern life that so many of us are living.

I’ve dedicated the last 6 years of my life to learning everything I could about fitness, training, nutrition, and health. I’ve personally trained and coached 100’s of men and women helping them work to be their best selves.

And in this quest, I’ve uncovered some shocking truths. It turns out most of what we’ve been told about diet and exercise is wrong.

I learned that lifting heavy weights with good form, especially big movements like the deadlift and squat, is actually one of the best things you can do to protect your back and stay strong.

This comes from someone who broke their back in high school football and was told by my doctor to never lift heavy weights again.

I know better now. I’ve worked my way up to deadlifting almost 400 pounds now and my body is stronger, more flexible and more supple at 35 than it has ever been.

I also realized those long boring jogs I thought were necessary for dropping pounds could be replaced by shorter more effective bouts of high intensity training — sprinting, jumping rope, or blasting on the bike for 10 hard-core minutes was all I needed to get the same effect of that 45 minute jog.

I learned that we can’t cheat sleep and that we must prioritize time in our day for rest and recovery.

I’ve learned to listen up to the infinite wisdom of my body and silence the “no pain — no gain” attitude that I had been conditioned to believe growing up as a male athlete.

I learned to fall in love with yoga because yoga is awesome. Yes, yoga is awesome. If you told me 10 years ago that I’d be saying those words about yoga, I’d say you were crazy. But we all evolve, right?

As far as nutrition goes, once I stopped listening to my doctor’s advice, I lost 20 pounds and gained a bunch of muscle in a few months. Once I understood the basics of nutrition and how certain foods affect hunger, cravings, blood sugar, satiety, etc., eating became easy and effortless. I could eat the foods I wanted to eat.

Now I’m still able to stay lean and strong and eat the foods I want because I have a solid nutritional foundation of veggies, lean proteins, and good fats.

With that solid foundation, I get away with Saturday morning pancakes, a monster burrito or an almond croissant when I’m feeling it.

You Ready for You?

Here’s the truth. I’m no guru and I certainly don’t have all the answers. You are your own guru because you know you. But here’s what I can promise — I can be an incredible tour guide — leading you on the most amazing journey possible — to a fitter, healthier you.

I can help you clear the obstacles and help you become more alive and full of vitality.

I can help you explore the potential and the resources that you already have around you and inside you and put that into action, and blast past the limits that you may have inadvertently set for yourself.

Experiencing this transformation in me and now seeing it happen for so many people that I’ve worked with and coached, it excites the hell out of me and gets me out of bed every morning. It’s my mission.

If any of my story touched, moved, or inspired you, I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a message at nick@saltwaterfit.com.