First Things First

There’s an image I can’t get out of my head.

A man—healthy, capable, disciplined—mowing his front lawn. The grass is green. The house is beautiful. Everything looks orderly.

Except for one small detail.

The house is on fire.

Flames are raging. Smoke is billowing. And yet the man keeps mowing—focused, committed, busy—completely missing the obvious emergency behind him.

As absurd as that image sounds, I see some version of it every single week in the world of health and fitness.

People obsess over pre-workouts, peptides, and the latest supplement trends—while ignoring sleep.

They debate which biohack is best—while skipping cardio and lifting inconsistently.
They chase shortcuts—while the fundamentals quietly burn down behind them.

It’s time to get back to first things first.

The Big Rocks Matter More Than the Shiny Objects

I’ve long described health as a five-legged stool. When one leg is weak—or missing—the whole thing becomes unstable. No supplement, drug, or gadget can fix that.

1. Exercise: Strength and Cardio—Both Matter

Are you doing strength training consistently?
Are you doing intentional cardiovascular work?

They are not the same in the benefits offered to your body, and you must give each the proper attention. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because lifting weights can elevate your heart rate, you don’t need to do cardio specifically. The mechanics that elevate your heart rate from strength training are entirely different from cardio training.

Why Strength Training and Cardio Train the Body Differently

For a long time, I believed that because strength training elevated my heart rate, it must also “count” as cardio. That assumption turned out to be wrong—and understanding why has been a game-changer for how I train and coach.

As a world-renowned conditioning expert, Joel Jamieson explains, the heart rate increase you see during strength training is driven primarily by pressure and stress, not by sustained oxygen demand. Heavy lifting creates high muscular tension, restricts blood flow, spikes adrenaline, and dramatically increases blood pressure. The heart responds by working harder against that pressure, which over time leads to thicker, stronger heart walls. This is a powerful adaptation—but it is a pressure-based one.

Cardiovascular training works through an entirely different mechanism. Instead of pressure spikes, cardio creates a sustained demand for oxygen delivery. The heart rate rises because the body needs to move large volumes of oxygenated blood to working muscles for extended periods. Over time, this trains the heart to pump more blood with each beat, improves stroke volume, and enhances the body’s ability to use oxygen efficiently. This is a volume-based adaptation.

Both adaptations are valuable. Strength training builds muscle, bone, and structural resilience. Cardio builds endurance, recovery capacity, and cardiovascular efficiency. But one cannot replace the other—because they train the heart and nervous system in fundamentally different ways.

When these two are balanced appropriately, the result is not just better performance but also better recovery, a lower baseline stress, and a cardiovascular system that supports long-term health and longevity rather than constantly working against it.

Recently, I was exposed to a new gym concept based on two twenty-minute workouts per week. Are you kidding me? Two twenty-minute workouts per week might be better than nothing—but let’s be honest: that’s not a serious solution for building strength, protecting muscle, improving cardiovascular health, or aging well.

Optimal fitness requires regular exposure to both resistance training and cardio. Not randomly. Not occasionally. Consistently. Two thirty to sixty-minute total body strength training sessions plus an equal amount of cardio training should be a bare minimum if you’re serious about maintaining a high quality of life for the long term, and more would definitely be better.

2. Nutrition: Foundations Before Fine-Tuning

Are you eating enough protein? One gram per pound of your ideal body weight is a great start.

Are you paying attention to vegetables and micronutrients?

Are you drinking at least half your body weight in ounces per day, plus extra for exercise?

Do you have any method for tracking intake or body composition?

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Further, if you’re seeking to change your body composition without a system for tracking results, how do you know what to change?

Supplements absolutely have a place—but they are called supplements for a reason. Whole, minimally processed food comes first. That said, most people struggle to meet protein and micronutrient needs, which is why foundational supplements exist:

A quality multivitamin
Fish oil
Vitamin D (often with K2)
Magnesium
Digestive support when appropriate
High-quality protein powder

If someone is stressed about pre-workout formulas or advanced compounds but isn’t covering these basics, they’re mowing the lawn while the house burns.

3. Sleep and Stress: The Silent Deal-Breakers

You are either sleeping enough—or you’re not.

For most adults, that means seven or more hours per night, consistently. And unless your sleep is truly exceptional, guessing isn’t good enough. A basic tracker—Fitbit, Apple Watch, or a smart ring like Oura—can provide invaluable insight into duration and quality.

Stress matters just as much…maybe more.

As Joel Jamieson has said, “It’s not the few hours you spend training each week—it’s what you’re doing during the other 22–23 hours of the day that determines recovery.” Poor sleep, poor nutrition, unmanaged stress—those things quietly sabotage progress, no matter how good your workouts are.

4. Recovery: Train With Feedback, Not Guesswork

Going purely by “feel” sounds intuitive, but it’s often misleading.

Recovery is measurable. Tools like HRV-based systems can act like a tachometer for your body, helping you adjust intensity, volume, and cardio targets based on readiness—not ego.

I’ve been using the Morpheus Training system for the past few months, and it’s been a game-changer. While other fitness trackers, like an Oura Ring or an Apple Watch, offer their version of a recovery score, there’s no way to translate this information directly into your training. Morpheus provides actionable feedback on how to adjust the volume and intensity of your training daily.

How do you hit a target you can’t see? I would compare this to driving a high-end sports car without being able to see the dashboard. You would never do this for the risk of trashing the engine, so why would you do anything less with your body?

Why would you expect any less from your body?

When you train without feedback, you’re guessing. And guessing is rarely a long-term strategy.

5. Medical and Emotional Health: Ignoring These Is Living in Denial

If you never look under the hood, don’t be surprised when the engine fails.

Regular doctor visits and blood work matter. You cannot manage what you refuse to measure.

Emotional health matters too.

If you’re chronically stressed, working unsustainable hours, lacking meaningful relationships, and running on empty, your health plan—no matter how “optimized”—will eventually collapse.

A Word on GLP-1 Medications and Shortcuts

Let me be clear: medications like GLP-1 agonists do have a place—especially for individuals with significant metabolic dysfunction, prediabetes, or type 2 diabetes.

But they are not silver bullets.

If eating behaviors don’t change, weight loss won’t last. Appetite suppression does not equal skill development. These medications don’t teach planning, emotional regulation, grocery shopping, or meal preparation.

I watched one of my best clients lose approximately 25 pounds last year using Trezepitide. Then, in a relatively short time, he regained it all. These drugs can be a great help, but you still have to change your eating habits.

Unfortunately, we live in an instant-gratification society where modern-day convenience lets you have pretty much everything you want in a flash. But that’s not how success works in any area of your life.

Health does not work like a microwave.
It works like a crockpot.

There are no shortcuts that bypass consistency, effort, and daily decision-making. The rent is due every day—especially when it comes to your health.

“I Know What to Do—I’m Just Not Doing It”

I hear this all the time.

And here’s the truth:

“To know and not to do is, in many ways, not yet to know.”

If knowledge alone created change, we’d all be healthy.

Logically, everyone knows:

Grilled chicken & veggies beat
cheeseburgers & fries.

Yet, the last time I checked, donut shops, burger joints, and pizza places are crushin’ it!

Why?

Because nutrition—and health in general—is not a logical problem. It’s an emotional discipline problem.

When the gap between where someone is and where they want to be becomes too large, willpower alone usually fails. That’s where structure, accountability, and coaching matter—not as a weakness, but as wisdom.