Simple Steps to Getting in Great Shape This Year

On October 1st, 1997, at around 6 in the morning, a boy is born. He had his whole life ahead of him. In time, he would grow up and learn to stand on his own two feet. But to learn to stand on your own two feet requires strength. I am this boy, and I feel part of my journey in this human body is to learn how to use it, to learn what it means to be strong, to push my boundaries. Developing strength was far beyond learning to pick up and put down heavy things. The journey of becoming strong includes many things and is, above all, a spiritual one. A journey of self-discovery. This is what that journey is looking like for me. When I was little, movement was simpler. Physical exercise usually looked like running around with a ball. It came naturally and with little thought. But as I arrived at the threshold of adulthood, the rules changed. something different started to take hold. With the stresses of having to figure out what I was going to do with my life, I needed better tools. Too many thoughts were bouncing around my mind, and I needed an outlet. But life doesn't come with an instruction manual on what to do. So I started trying things. I began running because Casey Neistat made it look cool. Halfway out, probably seven miles in. I knew exercise was good for me, but there were bigger reasons that drew me to it. A fascination with learning how to use this incredible vehicle. God gave me. It began as a form of release, to get outside and let go of pent-up energy and the stresses of the day. But it slowly dawned on me that this was so much more than that. Pushing the boundaries of what I knew my body was capable of. When I began, I could barely run. A couple of kilometers and I was exhausted. But something kept bringing me back. And one day, on a run, I realized that my perception of the world shifted as I moved. My mind felt more open and expansive. Creative ideas bubbled and formed. I realized that this was having all kinds of cognitive effects on me. I felt calm and less cluttered. My anxieties melted apart, seeing the trees rush by, the sound of my breath. This quickly began to feel like a drug. I could not run very far, but I was astounded to discover that the realm of what was possible for me expanded as I continued to push myself. Soon, I couldn't help myself. I was addicted. Grabbing my running shoes and heading out the door meant I would feel some kind of strange high. Strength is found in the mind. And slowly I discovered I could direct this strength in any direction I wanted. Like developing my body by lifting heavy things. There's a pleasure in the discomfort. The crisp clarity only found when outside of my safe bubble of comfort. And I came to realize that I enjoyed grappling with my mind. It wasn't discipline or any natural ability that helped me get increasingly fit. It was curiosity and a desire to learn. And it was this mental fortitude that I found within myself to withstand the discomfort, more than my literal ability to lift weights, began to feel like true strength. I say this because I've lived long enough now to know that there are times when life asks more from you. It'll knock you down. Standing back up on your own two feet is not just a physical task. It is a decision. It is an act of will born of a desire for more from life. And it is a decision you have to consciously make every day. The exercise is just practice. Training for facing the unpredictable twists and turns of life. I have a long way to go. But I feel that what I am able to handle continues to expand. Strength is not the absence of feelings. It is not about becoming numb to pain. It is an okayness with pain. It is an acceptance of what is happening. Of not being in control. Of what you are feeling. That is what I originally did not understand about becoming strong. Real strength is choosing to stand up on your own feet, day after day. Real strength is continuing to choose to stand on your own two feet, even when it is hard. And with a willingness to always take just that next little step, there is nowhere you cannot go. Exercise and getting in shape is a very mental journey. Finding the motivation to push yourself and to work out is more than half the battle. And I have found it to be by far the most challenging to do so in the times when I haven't been doing very well. BetterHelp, who are the sponsors of this video, offer a potential solution for this by making therapy a lot more accessible. It helps to talk to someone and especially somebody who is trained in helping you figure out what is going on internally to figure out your emotions and to work through what's going on in your life. Even that is not enough, right? Because on top of it, you have to click with who you're talking with. You have to feel comfortable enough to open up. And that, I think, is one of the things that makes therapy very difficult. I know so many people that go, yeah, I tried a couple of therapists, it didn't work out, and eventually I gave up. Which is a bummer. but also at the same time an understandable reaction. What I really like about BetterHelp is that you can change your therapist for free and as many times as you want. So you can test different people out until you find somebody that you're clicking with. It's also more affordable than traditional therapy and I'll just say for myself, I prefer to do therapy online from the comfort of my home where I feel more safe. It's really easy to sign up and get matched with the therapists and I'll leave a link in the description if you want to check it out or you can just go to BetterHelp.com slash Nathaniel Drew. Clicking the link is a fantastic way to support my work. and this channel, but it also gets you 10% off your first month with BetterHelp. Thank you BetterHelp for sponsoring this video and supporting my work. And now let's dive into my simple steps on how to get in shape. Alright, so my entire philosophy on fitness is built around simplicity and enjoyability. It's supposed to be something that you want to do. If I didn't enjoy exercising, I would have never made it this far. I do this because I have found the amount of fitness information out there to be completely overwhelming and also confusing and oftentimes contradictory. It's like people don't seem to agree. I feel like I get 80% there by doing just a few simple things, but I'm by no means a pro and I'm happy to hear your suggestions in the comments below if you feel passionate about this or if you have anything to contribute to what I say here. This doesn't have to be complicated. So having said that, the only gear that I own are a few weights, a kettlebell, and some resistance bands. This is partially because I do a lot of travel and there's obviously no way to travel with weights. Only an insane person would do that. So I had to find another way. I honestly don't like spending hours and hours at a gym. I find that boring. In fact, for most of my adulthood, I haven't even had a gym pass. 95% of my workouts have happened either at home or at one of those like calisthenic workout spots at a park that you can find in pretty much any major city or even minor city. It's just that I'm looking up at a tree while doing it. Like that's so much nicer in my opinion. Gyms can be nice too, but it's like if I can be out in nature, I feel like I get a lot of energy to be active and to do physical things. So it makes more sense for me to do it here. I do things this way also because gym passes can be so expensive and to me it's like not worth it if I can do a lot of the same sorts of things for free. Some of my workouts are as short as 20 or 30 minutes and that might feel like just... such a short amount of time but the difference between doing that and doing nothing is tremendous. A big part of my philosophy as you're going to see over and over again is that movement and exercise is necessary and normal and the less friction there is to do it the more often you'll find yourself doing it. Like give yourself good odds to do this as often as possible and then simply as a result of that you just get in better shape. It's like it happens as a natural byproduct and then it becomes something that's just habitual. At this point, I don't feel like a day is complete. I haven't had a full day if there isn't some kind of movement that is a part of it. It's like you're kind of slowly building off of the work that you've already put in. I have never heard of anyone else talk about it in these terms, but I see my body as a sort of slow, long-term project. Now, I just want to share some of my favorite exercises. I love push-ups. You can do them from anywhere. Push-ups are great because they're very easy to modify. and with different variations you can work out different muscles. Already just doing normal push-ups is great but if that becomes too simple as it did for me after a while then you can take it up a level by doing either diamond push-ups, placing your hands lower down on your body closer to your hips or elevated push-ups where your feet are on some other surface that's higher up so there's more weight on your upper body and to do that I mean all you need is a chair or anything that you can prop your feet up on. form i have found is extremely important you want to try to keep straight lines right so you have to engage your core right and go straight line right it's easy to do either this you know with my back kind of down like this if you're not able to do it properly it's better to do less reps i don't really count reps uh or even number of sets to be honest with you because i find that very boring and i find that the emphasis becomes how many of these can i do Instead of how well can I do them? I just pay close attention to my body when I'm doing the exercise until I get to the point where I'm struggling to properly do the exercise with proper form. Instead, I focus more on a concept called time under tension. How long you're actually working the muscles. So oftentimes I find that you get a lot more out of one long slow intentional push-up than doing a bunch that are just poorly done. I love doing dips great way to work your tries You can do it with as little as two chairs or even when I like in a hotel room one chair and the end of the bed That's all you need when it comes to weights. I'll do bicep curls I used to do it this way, but actually that would create a bit of pain in my lower arm So I switched it to this after a little bit of research. I found it There's alternatives and this works a lot better for me. Bands are a fantastic alternative if you're looking for a lightweight option to travel with. You just loop the band under your feet, you know, tighten it so that it's the right length and then pull. I use my weights to work out my shoulders as well and you can also use them to get your back. I hate working out my core. I find it to be the most unpleasant probably of all areas of the body. I'll do a wide variety of core exercises. For me, you can't go wrong with things like planks or variations on a crunch. I find it helpful to just go on YouTube and do like a 15-minute ab workout where you're following along with the person. Otherwise, I just get so bored doing it on my own. In the world of fitness, you can split up exercises between push and pull exercises and it's good to hit both. And I found it easier to do pull exercises at those calisthenic workout spots. And so that's where I do like chin-ups or pull-ups. And I guess you could also do that... At home, if you have like a strong beam that you can grip easily, I don't, so I don't have that option. I also love doing dips with the bars at these calisthenic spots. And you can also suspend yourself with those bars up in the air and work your core. There's also this lower back exercise that, you know, I don't know what this is called, but I found it extremely important and helpful for me to do. Now, as for legs... I did get lucky with stocky Argentine Maradona legs. So between running a couple of times a week and living on the sixth floor without an elevator, I basically don't even have to think about it. But when in doubt, squats are always great. I also mention legs and back because they're extremely important to work out as well. I think they sometimes get overlooked because the chest or the arms get the most attention. But what I've found is that it's very important to think about the balance of your body if i don't think about this i'm much more injury prone almost like you can become top heavy or front heavy and that's not a good thing one discovery i made is that just doing calisthenics and home workouts doesn't cover everything like you know it can create a little bit of tension in my upper back and i'm also not really working my heart in the same way and so i found that runs actually interspersing them between these home workouts that i do covers a lot of the area that I'm not covering. It works out my heart, but also it removes the tension in my upper back and I don't know why exactly that is. It's just something that I discovered works for my body. This is not a video about diet and nutrition. That's an entire other massive topic, but I will sort of state the obvious here, which is that if you want to bulk up, you do have to think about caloric intake. Like you have to consume more than you're burning. And then on top of it, not all fuel was created equal. So it's important to think about what you're consuming. But I'm going to stop myself there. because I'm on the cusp of entering, let's say, tricky territory because I really am not an authority on any of this stuff. Now, in terms of how I have gotten into shape, I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that I have hardly ever let a week go by without doing some form of exercise. I've just gotten very consistent with it because of the positive association and because of how my identity has become wrapped up in this, right? I am somebody who's active. I'm somebody who doesn't feel like they're living a complete full life without this and it also helps me sleep better at night I mean these sorts of things are huge motivators for me and the mental clarity element of all this is really important as well because I've crafted a life where you know my work revolves a lot around writing and articulating my thoughts and feelings so being sharp to do that is really important and I hardly ever feel sharper than when I'm exercising or right after a great workout and then I think beyond that This is the ultimate or one of the ultimate confidence boosters. I feel like when you put your mind and body through challenges, other challenges that pop up in life feel more manageable. You can take on the world. And that is... Huge feels like you take a more active role in your life You know, you're not a victim to the things that happen to you personally I think it's an obligation if you are healthy and not everybody has this luxury and this privilege right do something with this incredible vehicle that you have use it It is a gift from God I feel and you're not gonna have it forever Entropy is gonna do its thing to all of us and your body will break down over time So while you've got it use it. I think it helped me a lot to stop caring what other people think Feels like there's a lot of judgment in the world of fitness and a right way and a wrong way to go about things. And I was afraid of whatever the criticisms I might receive. But none of that stuff matters. The amount of time you work out or the number of reps or whatever program that you're following doesn't matter. I think what matters more than anything is that you're doing it. And you know, the journey continues for me. I hope that this was helpful. Obviously, this is a vast, vast topic. So there's so much I haven't covered. I'd love to hear all of your thoughts on this in the comment section. Feel free to... rip me up into pieces and if you like my work you like my thoughts consider signing up to my newsletter i'll leave a link to it in the description below i really like to share bits and pieces of advice and wisdom and inspiration that i find across the internet and you can also find me on instagram if you want to follow me along over there as well thank you for watching and i hope to see you very soon

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Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro
1:00 - Part I: My journey
4:40 - Sponsorship
6:07 - Part II: Practical info I wish I had when I was 17
8:30 - My Favorite Exercises
13:02 - Reflections on How I Got Here