The Five Fitness and Excercise Principles That I Live By

From the guy who brought you Four Surprising Secrets to Being in the Best Shape of My Life at 40

I took the Boys Hope New Orleans crew on a camping and canoeing trip back in 2009. This was right after I got in great shape for the first time in my life.

When I lived in New Orleans at 26 years old helping to run a group home called Boys Hope New Orleans (support them here) I completed two full rounds of P90X and got in the best shape of my life at the time.

If P90X doesn’t ring a bell, you’re probably a part of Gen Z. It was a huge workout fad in the mid to late 2000s. Politicians, athletes, and many celebrities sang its praises.

Fad is probably not the right word to describe the program because it works. There’s nothing gimmicky about it. It’s just 50- to 90-minute workout videos that are incredibly hard to finish.

This is me in highschool, in my natural state as a 220 pound Wisconsin boy.

The staff at Boys Hope would get the kids up, fed, and out the door for school before 8 am. As soon as we waved them goodbye, we did P90X together; Sweating, struggling, farting, and laughing together on the carpet of the living room floor.

To this day, I still do a modified version of the first day in the entire series—chest and back—twice a week. It’s just a…