#8: Nolan Womack (Fitness Coach and Dad of Four) - Thoughtful Approach to Balancing Fitness Goals and Fatherhood

not terribly long ago I was working out 42 hours a week, so it was a full, full-time job on top of coaching and training, because I was just training to be the fittest and I realized that it was taking a lot of time away from the family because that's what I was doing all day, that's six, seven hours a day. During one of the competitions I strained like five different muscles and I went and picked my son up from school and he came out of the school and he looked up at me and he wanted to jump on my back because typically I'd be out there, they'd run and jump up on me. And he came up and he could tell I wasn't feeling good. He was like oh, can I jump on your back? And I had to tell him no. I had to look him in the eye and tell him no, and that broke my heart because it's like what's the point of working out 42 hours a week if I can't even have my kid jump on my back?

This is the ATHLETE Dad Podcast, where we explore the intersection between physical pursuits and fatherhood. I'm Ben Gibson, and if you're an ambitious dad that is pursuing or looking to pursue your athletic passions now while improving the way you show up at home, then this is a show for you. Something that we all love to see in this community of ATHLETE dads is a dad that is on a mission. Today, I'm excited to share my conversation with Nolan Womack. Nolan is on a mission to become the fittest father of four yes, four without sacrificing time with his family, and this conversation came at the perfect time for me. As many of you know, I just came off Denali about a month ago, and this was a multi-year goal that I had been dreaming about and working towards for a long time. But once I came back from the mountain, I kind of found myself in a funk, and a big part of that was, I think, I was operating without a goal in front of me, and I'm someone that typically needs to have something in front of me that I'm working towards at all times to feel like I am optimizing my time here on earth. And since I haven't really had a goal, I've been kind of in a funk, you know, I haven't really felt motivated to get back into the gym. My fitness has lagged a little bit and I've kind of just been wandering aimlessly when it comes to my physical pursuits. And so when I had this conversation with Nolan, you know it was the right conversation with the right person at the right time. And since having this conversation I've really felt like I've started to find my own mojo again, because I know that every day Nolan is getting after his goal. If it's 4 am you better believe he's in the gym working and he's got twice as many kids as I do. So, first off, I've got no real excuses. But secondly, this conversation was so impactful because I just love the way that he is thinking, how thoughtful and intentional he is in the pursuit of this goal, even just in the way he thinks about defining his goal and the success criteria that he applies to his goal. And so thinking about this thoughtfulness and hearing his approach to his goal and hearing how he just has this amazingly positive perspective on all of it, you know, really just kind of kicked things into gear for me and I think part of why we listen to podcasts like this, part of why we're parts of communities like this, with other men, other dads, to have these rich conversations that, in a sense, kind of hold us accountable to things that we're trying to do ourselves. It is because it does just that. It helps us realize that if these folks can do it, then I can do it too. And that's not to take away from anything that folks like Nolan or any of their guests we've had in the podcast are doing Like. If you've been listening, you know that these are incredible human beings, but they're also very real and so there's this closeness to them, there's. It doesn't feel like there's a lot of distance between us and our lives and them in the way that they show up authentically to have these conversations, and so that's why we're here. So I want you to take this conversation and use it as a tool to get you where you want to go, because some of you you're already feeling motivated, you're already getting after your goals. So this conversation, this episode with Nolan, should just add more fuel to your fire. And if you're like me where you know I was in a bit of a slump and in between goals and just not really feeling it Well, this episode should help get things cooking for you too. Nolan is just an incredibly thoughtful guy and a great dad who is crushing in his physical pursuits, and so please enjoy my wide-ranging conversation with Nolan Womack. Nolan, super pumped to have you here. Welcome to the athlete dad, excited to have you.

I appreciate you having me here.

What I think would be most helpful for folks listening is kind of setting the context of like, what does dad life look for you? So if we were to appeal back to Curtin and follow along with you for a day as dad? Like, what does dad look like for Nolan?

So it's gonna look a little different during the summer time and during the school time. Right now in the summer time I still wake up early, I get my me stuff done, so I have my personal time in the morning. That's when I work out. I go to work I've got since I own a gym and I coach all day. I'm kind of in and out of the gym for different blocks. So I do the early morning block and then I come home I wake everybody up, cook everybody breakfast. Once the kids are all awake, then the whole family comes to the gym with me for the later morning block of when I coach. After that middle of the day is pretty open, so we'll go run errands and stuff, typically as a family. Kids have a lot of free time over the summer or we'll go for a nice walk or something along those lines. If the kids have an activity sometimes one of the kids in baseball or ones in gymnastics we'll take them to that as the evening comes around. Oftentimes it'll be 50-50 if they come back with me to the gym again or if they all stay home, let them kind of have their home time. Once I'm back home, then we bring out video games and we play, and we play card games and we go play basketball outside and just kind of try to be present with them and talk about their day and how things went in their world. Then I normally go to bed before they do so. During the summertime In the school year it looks pretty similar where I go early morning, come back, wake everybody up, cook breakfast. Sometimes they're up before I get back, but then they're off for school for the whole middle of the day. In the evening they'll typically come with me to the gym, spend some family time there. Maybe we'll go out to dinner more wall run into the grocery store together then, we'll cook dinner and then kind of catch up on their day as we pick them up from school and get into that stuff.

So quite a bit going on. And you're a dad of four and I have to say I have two, and I am shocked that anyone has more than two. The sheer logistics of having more than two kids has confounded me. So did you know you wanted to have four kids? Did you know you wanted to have a big family? Or how did having four kids unfold for you guys?

So growing up, I knew I wanted two and then my wife, growing up, knew she wanted four. So we compromised and we had four, but really we had the two. We had them about a year and a half apart. A couple years later, we had decided like, okay, let's go ahead. My wife's window she had some things going on where she wasn't going to be able to have kids forever. I don't want to hurt having reservations about not having had a kid that she was hoping she could have had. She comes from a family of four kids. I come from a family of two kids, so I only have one brother and we had two boys already and so we happened to have a daughter. Then she's a few years younger than the boys. I thought we were done and we just kind of it's like, once all the kids were in school and then she's like, well, she really missed having a little, a little her around the house. So then we decided to have another kid and that's how I had the fourth kid. Yeah they were all planned and they're all great. It's like after every one. I think the most stressful was three, because when you have one, it's like you both can give full attention to the one and it's like you can overly take care of the one. When you have two, I think of it as you're playing man to man, so you each have one, and when you go to three, you go from man to man to zone. So now there's one that you may not be able to take. Like if you're focused with one kid and they're focused with one, it's like there may be one that's on their own. But when you go to four, you kind of give up hope that you're going to be able to control everything and you just learn how to like roll with it. So I think four is easier than three.

Yeah, oh, that's an interesting perspective. Yeah, four, I just imagine you have to be like on a horse corralling them around just trying to keep them moving in one direction. And I think you're spot on with the defensive coverages. Yeah, we always thought of one as like I got a safety over the top, Like we're totally good, and then man to man and then zone, and yeah, I think that's probably you know, I think just getting kids out the door, just thinking about four, that's. That's that specifically is my my you know confusion spot right there. But that's awesome, man, sounds like you have a ton going on. And tell us a little bit more about your background and what you do for work right now as a gym owner.

Yeah, so my background is I've been a personal trainer for almost 15 years. I did it part time for a long time and then dove into it more full time. I used to run a backflow testing company, so a whole different thing. After that, though, we had moved down to a town, didn't know a lot of people. I started helping coach at one of the gyms in the area, started meeting people. That way I knew that I wanted to coach people. I knew I wanted to be able to help people. I'd done a lot of different things in in fitness, had dabbled in a lot of different stuff, from CrossFit to movement based stuff like capoeira and gymnastics and calisthenics to bodybuilding and strong man and pretty much the whole gamut of everything. So I knew how to help people with their goals. I'd got to the point where I was 217, trying to get to 250. I lost 40 extra pounds of body fat and kept it off for like six, seven years now. So know how to help people, kind of manipulate their body weight to get to a healthy range and just kind of wanted to find a way to help share. So when I started helping coach, I knew I wanted to open a gym. But there's. We're in a small town, so there's already a gym in the area. There's a couple other gyms that are more for just access but not really coaching, and one of my friends told me, like hey, you're in a new area, don't step on toes. That's why I started helping out by just coaching there, and after being there for a couple months, that was the beginning of 2020. So all the shutdown started happening from there. That gym owner was kind of on the way out, and so they just approached us, was like hey, would you be interested in taking over? And naturally that's what I wanted to do. So it was a great opportunity. But we told him only when things can open back up.

So a few months later things could open back up.

But then we took on that risk and started it From there. What we do now is we started off with like a class model. A lot of gyms run that. People come in and it's like a lesson in fitness and you start with the warmup and you have all the different things and everybody goes through the same thing. We used to do that, but then we found everybody coming in had just a little bit different goals and they had different needs anyways. So somebody would come in with like an ankle sprain and they had a totally rewrite the workout for this person. Or this person didn't care about getting faster at this workout or necessarily even getting stronger, they just wanted to move better. So I was like, okay, how do we cater their workouts to them Instead of saying, well, you have to do this because that's what the workout is for the class. So then we opened the model up to just kind of coaching hours and now everybody comes in for personalized training in a group setting. So it's a little more open flow in there. But it's a private gym would be, I guess, the best way to describe it. People come in and they have a personalized training program that they go through alongside other people. So it's a pretty friendly environment compared to a global gym where you go in everybody's plugged in and just trying to do their thing and those are great. It's kind of a hybrid between those different models.

Yeah, dude, that's a really great idea. I don't know that I've ever seen that in any gym and I don't know if that's like a common framework for gyms to use, but I think that's so smart for so many reasons. Like one, I think you hit on it Like a lot of people want the classes because there's accountability, there's the camaraderie and the socialization aspect of it, but everyone needs that personalization to really get what they want out of the workout. I've definitely gone to my share of just group classes and, yeah, you're sort of just like on the literal treadmill, just with everybody else doing the same thing and there's very little customization. So that customization piece is cool and I love that. You keep talking about goals, not just with your life, but with all these other folks, and so it seems like there's a really big emphasis on this fitness. The gym, that's the vehicle that you're using to help people reach their goals, whatever that may be.

Yeah, because their goals. I mean that's the whole motive behind why they're even looking at working out. So the very first step is we start everyone off with like a consultation, just to learn why they even want to go to a gym. And sometimes the answer is super surprising. Sometimes you think you know what the answer is going to be and it's not what you expect. Some of the clients we have one of them is trained into be a ranger in the army. Wants trained in to be an elite level like competitor in the sport of fitness. Some people are just trained in to lose 300 pounds. Some people are working on they just recently had a hip replacement so we're working on getting them mobility back in through the rest of their body to avoid other future surgeries. It's pretty cool to see all these different people coming together and the way they support each other because they all have a goal. This is common ground where, even though their goals are different, they're all working towards a goal. So everybody supports each other because they understand the goals that everybody's working towards. So goals are definitely kind of the foundation of what we do. It makes sense when you wonder well, why are we doing this? Why do I have to be on the treadmill? Well, if you understand why you're being on the treadmill and how it relates to your goal, then you don't have to stay disciplined so much to get on the treadmill because you want to get on the treadmill.

And I love the spectrum of goals yeah, somebody wanting to be an Army Ranger to somebody else dealing with navigating post hip replacement and everybody there to support each other. That's awesome. I mean you, in a way, with what you're doing with your own personal goal, I think are doing something similar where you're creating this community of parents, dads, moms, everybody else that is either. That is kind of like by following, supporting you and your goal, but in the rich value you're delivering, supporting everybody else and their goals and that's one of the reasons I was so pumped to talk to you is your big mission become the fittest out of four and I love that. There's like a new part of it too, and we'll want to talk about that. But help everyone understand what is the mission that you are currently on yourself with your own fitness.

Yeah. So I'm training to be the fittest father of four without sacrificing time with my family. I've come to understand that this is your ability to do something, so you are fit for a task and I'm not. As a dad especially I don't care about being the world's best bench presser, so I care more about the general list for like framework for training than I do about the specialist kind of stance. So I'm not trying to be the best at any one thing, but I care about being able to keep up with my kids and my future grandkids in whatever things they care about. So if they want to play basketball, I want to be just as good at basketball as I possibly can. If they decided soccer, if they decided wrestling, I want to be able to keep up with whatever it is they want to do. If they decide they want to hike Denali, like I want to be able to be there. So for my training that looked like okay, that fitness just comes down to ability, and I realized everybody has ability and everybody can improve their ability. So with my training it's looking like I want the maximum crossover benefit on general ability with the least amount of time and I found it's easier for me. I've dabbled with a lot over the years. So not terribly long ago I was working out 42 hours a week, so it was a full, full time job on top of coaching and training 42 hours a week because I was just training to be the fittest and I realized that it was taking a lot of time away from the family because that's what I was doing all day, that's six, seven hours a day. And then I realized during one of the competitions I strained like five different muscles and I went and picked my kid up, my son up, from school and he came out of the school and he looked up at me and he wanted to jump on my back because typically I'd be out there, they'd run and jump up on me. And he came up and he could tell I wasn't feeling good. He's like oh, can I jump on your back? And I had to tell him no. I'd look him in the eye and tell him no and that broke my heart because it's like what's the point of working out 42 hours a week if I can't even have my kid jump on my back? So then I got help and took courses and seminars and got certs and like, read books and did all the training and stuff I could find, hired PT's and other coaches for me and got as much help as I could get and learn a whole different approach to training that focuses more on, like the joints out. So everybody has everybody with an elbow. Your elbow opens and closes, it flexes and extends and there's certain muscles and tissues that go around the elbow and if you can strengthen those tissues and research shows you can strengthen the tendons. It takes longer for tendons to adapt than muscles but you can strengthen those tendons and your elbow is just better at opening and closing, however that looks like, whether it's climbing a mountain or if it's doing rope climbs or pull ups or if it's carrying groceries. So focusing my training on tendon based work has given me more crossover, more carryover to other pursuits with less time. I'm able to focus on less other stuff because I have more structural adaptation.

Yeah, man, I mean, I think that anyone that has been involved in some sort of fitness goal has definitely been there where you're just spending ungodly amounts of time Doing it, probably unnecessary amounts of time, to a point where I think I certainly know I've pushed past, like the point where you know I started to experience diminishing returns on the time I was spending in a gym. I love the specificity, I love that you had a very, you know, noble, compelling goal of being the fittest, but that through that moment of sort of like I was think people do things out of either inspiration or desperation and that moment of desperation of like man, this is, this, is not serving me anymore you got more specific within that goal and it created something that I'm sure was like so much more meaningful and so much more beneficial for you. And yeah, I was curious about the other piece of, because I noticed in the beginning it's the fittest data for. And then there became the addition of without sacrificing, you know, time with family, which I absolutely love tell me about. But where did that come into this specific goal? Like did you find yourself Loan it again? Or like, what did that look like?

so that came in Because with recording some of my training and getting it posted and trying to share that it takes. It takes me like I'm pretty slow at recording and editing, so it takes me like an hour to two a day longer than it should, and so that means in the middle of the day I'd sneak off into the garage or in the bedroom and try to like make the voice over and get it posted On top of the other training I was doing. And at the time I was like, hey, I still doing some of the different style of training. But I was involved. My dad and I were going to do a triathlon. So I was like, okay, I have how much of this other energy system work do I need to do and keep up with that, to like just crush this triathlon? But you could just see the looks on their face and I told him like alright, guys, we're going to go for a Sunday fun run. And they were just like Dad, do we have to? Like? Like yeah, and typically like a half hour into it they'd have fun. But when it got to the point they were dreading doing it. I was like, okay, I don't want them to have. That example, is like Fitness is something you have to dread and they weren't having fun with that anymore. So then we started, we mixed it up a little bit, where we start going off trail and like climb trees and play around with it. It wasn't the intended workout I wanted, so that drove me a little bit. Came to this dichotomy of do the workout that ultimately I want because it gets them involved, or do the workout I'm trying to do because it's focused on my goal. So that was like, okay, that's fine, well, we'll do what they want to do. They're gonna have fun with it, that's gonna be more sustainable. But there would be evenings where I'd have to go to the pool because the swimming times so be staying up late at night. We'd all go break from whatever we're doing because I had to go swim. And there'd be other times where I'd be on the bike for two hours getting zone to work in and I just be sitting in pedaling and they want to go play basketball and it's like, well, I love to play basketball, but I already did my impact stuff and I need to just get this heart and lung work in, and so you could just see, yeah, it was really came down to looks on their faces where it's like when they started not being excited about stuff. That's when I kind of took a little hiatus and I didn't post a whole lot because I had to redefine what I was really looking for out of it and I'd a tinker with some things to see how can I get that maximum crossover effect with less time. And now I do most of my workouts early morning. So I'm usually at the gym like 345 in the morning and it only takes me 30 minutes to an hour. So typically like right at 45 minutes and the kids are asleep, I'm gone, I'm done. They see that I'm still working out. I thought it used to be super important. They saw me walk the walk and I still think it's important. But to take the time in the middle of the day when we go out to lunch and when we're going and running errands and to say, hey, no, this has to be time that we all have to work out, there's some pushback there, so figured, ok, I know I'll stay consistent if I work out in the morning. They watch my YouTube videos, they watch the Instagram reels and they watch all of that stuff. So they still see me doing the things. So that's still cool. Yeah but it just became more important. That's look, I'm gonna Maximize my ability so become the fittest father of four, without sacrificing that time with them, because that's just time you don't get back.

Right, I love that and I love that you iterated on the process here. You weren't just like, well, kids, this is what we're doing, get on board, I'm gonna be the fittest dad. It's like, ok, yeah, this isn't working, let's let's reevaluate our goal, let's make sure that we're Aligned with that purpose again, and then iterating, tweaking, to make it work. And I think that's Such an important part of being a dad and showing up in two worlds the way we want to show up, of like I want to show up and meet my fitness goals, my athletic goals. I want to pursue these things, but like I don't want it to come at the expense Of the family, or yeah, or have like skiing with dad be a burden, something where it's like we're all gonna go ski and we're gonna have a good time and like this is what we do. And so, yeah, I love the flexibility, I love that you're iterating on it and I love that you are getting up To get it in at an ungodly hour, because what I hear a lot too and this is what I've heard is I've, you know, a four year old and a one year old, so they're not quite yet in, like soccer every weekend and all these things. But sometimes I hear, got it so much easier with the small kids because you don't have all these other activities. But then I look at you and you, you're at the gym at three, thirty three, forty five. So like, how are you? Like, how did you come to the realization that you needed to get up at three, thirty three, forty five to get it in, so that it wasn't Happening at lunch time or other family time? Like, how did you make that work?

I tested it, so that's probably the best answer is over the years I knew fitness was going to be a cornerstone, like just have it, and it's gonna be something I had to do Before we moved down to where we live. I used to have to drive like a half hour to the gym and it was on my way to work, so I had to get up early because if I didn't do that I knew I was gonna be too tired after work. Then they were all gonna be awake and I was gonna work out while they were awake to then get home. So, playing around with it, I found OK, the morning's a time that that's kind of always been my time. I've played with different sleeping patterns to make it work where I have that time in the morning, but I found once I have that done, it doesn't seem to have a negative impact on the rest of my day. Now I don't stay up as late as a lot of people, so 9 to 10, like, I'm usually in bed, but it's not much much earlier than my kids, so during the summertime. So I found that's sustainable for me, I'm already heading to the gym because I'm coaching, so that's a big win. That's easy. Before I started coaching, though, I used to just work out in the garage or the dining room, and I would still wake up early and get it done, because it would only take 45 minutes or so, like even 20 minutes. I learned that your workout doesn't all have to be done at once, so if I'm focused on a couple of movements, it's like I can knock those two movements out, and then I can pick back up later. And I can do the next part of my workout a little bit later and I learned that from studying some of the fit people out there and like the way they train for competitions. And there was a guy that broke down how this other dude was training and how his clients smash it all into one really long session, but this dude just broke it up throughout the day. And I thought well, why couldn't you just break up each part of that throughout the day? So there's times where I'll sneak in like a five minute workout and it's not the only workout I do during the day, but oftentimes I'll have a minute or two when we're waiting for the kids and it's like, ok, I can get some calf raises or tibialis raises or something Waiting for them to tie their shoes on and then we can get out the door and it's not the most complete workout, but it's activity and that's how I learned. So I just learned that if I was going to get it done, I've had too many days where I would wait to try to do it later. And then some Aaron came up and then we were too busy for me to go and get it done and then I'd get upset because I didn't get my workout in. And then I learned OK, that's not good that this has become a crutch where I have to get my workout in. It's less so. That way now I can handle not working out in a day. It's hard, but I've gotten better at that.

Yeah.

And when the gym used to run like the class based model, I would try to jump into different classes throughout the day. So we had other coaches and I would try to jump in. So I worked out with everybody at different points. So I just tested when I work out best and I've always been a pretty early morning person. So that's just what's worked really well for me logistically. My wife is a night owl so she's up way later than me. I'm up earlier. So whenever the kids have like had rough nights, one of us is usually up and then it's just done, it's out of the way.

Yeah, I hope people hear all the criteria that you just threw out, that you're evaluating in making these decisions. Like it might seem on the surface, like so, like such an easy decision of like why, just, I guess I got to get up earlier, but what I'm hearing is OK, I don't want it to overlap. On family time this is an important thing that I want to make sure I'm getting in, but I'm also aware enough to realize that when I don't get it in there's there's also this you know this feeling that I'm using the workouts as a crutch. You know I'm trying to get the maximum return for the least amount of time. You know where can I configure all this? And so, like that is so great to hear that there's so much intentionality behind this decision to get up early. And I think if, if my guess at least, is that what keeps more people from doing that is that level of intentional talk through all the why hasn't, why haven't I done this and what do I want to make sure that I'm not sacrificing? And like, what does success look like? I guess that really what it comes down to. It sounds like you're really clear on what success looks like for you with that goal and then your willingness to get up at three thirty and get it done, you know is is reinforced because you have a clear why you're very intentional with that process. So I got to give kudos to you, man, because that is, that is no easy feat and you're not you're not just doing it, you know, like jocco, just to get the likes. It's like this mission that you're on. That's really, really compelling. So kudos to you, dude. Tell me about where, because I think the thing that's so impressive is what day are you on as of today? Like, where are you at in today's? forty one, two forty one. So the consistency is admirable and that's got to be the hardest thing, like I think, for me personally, like I'm kind of a creature of habit, so once I get into something I can do it consistently. But starting that consistency is hard and I guess that, like with fitness generally, that's probably one of the hardest things for folks and you, being a trainer and a gym owner, you probably see people cycle in and out of fitness all the time, but it's like the hardest thing. So tell me about, like, how do you make it works so consistently? Because I'm sure there's been times when you haven't been motivated and you're talking yourself out of the workout. So like what, what are you doing in those times to continue working so consistently?

So, even though it's 241, since I decided that that's what I was gonna start saying at least, I mean, we're going on 14, 14 years of probably no less than four or five days a week. I learned early on, fortunately, that consistency is the most important part. And when exactly I learned that I don't really know, but I know that Every day is probably Will Smith, how I talked about like every day you have like one brick and you're building a brick wall and you move that one brick and you get a lay it down and you should lay it down as perfectly as you possibly can, and then the next day, like you're laying your next brick down. I've studied jocco and have listened to him and his idea about, like a discipline's freedom. So you know, I've definitely learned from him as well. That's like, look, it's in the doing of the things that, whether you want to or not, like you still do it. And when I Decided that, what success meant to me was the, the pursuit itself. It wasn't the achievement of any specific thing, it was the pursuit of something worthy of pursuing and and there's a pursuit of a worthy ambition. So the idea that I was going to these were just what fit people did is I don't know a fit person that doesn't work out. It's like, okay, I'm gonna work out, and how am I gonna make that work? Because I knew that was gonna be a must. So on the days that that I don't feel like it, I Just kind of do it anyways, and I know it sounds really simple and I know it's nothing groundbreaking and it's like, oh well, that doesn't really help, but it really was that. Just, despite not feeling good, I'm gonna work out today and I broke it into a little framework that I found useful. I've learned that fitness, your given ability on a specific day you have like the floor of your fitness and that's like what you can do on your worst possible day. So when you don't get enough sleep, when you're extremely stressed out, when you're not eating well maybe eating some bad food as a kid's birthday or something and You're dehydrated and all the things that could possibly go wrong or going wrong, and your ability of doing things on that day, that's the floor of your fitness and the opposite of that's the ceiling of your fitness. So when you're perfectly hydrated and well rested and the pre workouts hitting just right and all the things are like the right song goes on On your speakers, like all the right variables possible are going right, that's the ceiling of your fitness and we're always in this gap. Well, I decided that on the days I don't feel like it, that's my opportunity to raise the floor of my fitness. So, by improving the floor, I'm still raising the ceiling because I'm raising the baseline and I've just had to understand that I'm not going to set a personal record. Every workout, some workouts, I Approach it more like practice, so I'm going in and I'm practicing these movements. I'm not trying to set a record, I'm just trying to move better than I did the last time over these specific things and Controlling the variables of the workouts. I know X reps it, x sets, with this much rest is going to give me this kind of stimulus and maybe I can't do as much as I did the last time. That's okay. Maybe I just didn't sleep as well with enough persistence, though, like you'll break through those plateaus. And Then it's hard to not be excited about working out after a point. Once you've built the momentum in your favor, it's hard to stop it. So momentum works both ways, where, once you have that consistency down, it's just ingrained. I Think it's ingrained into, like my internal identity, like the way I see myself is just, this is what I do, and it's hard to break what we believe we truly are. So I know I work out. That's that's what I do. I love finding out what I'm capable of. So when I try to cartwheel and I get one, and I get the hands-to-hand push up and I get these, these fun things, it's like, well, what else can I do? So it's a matter of curiosity and kind of exploring this Instead of feeling like it's a chore and it's something I have to check off because I have to do this or have to do that. It was switching it to. I get to do this Because that's helping me pursue that worthy ideal that I'm chasing.

That's great and I love the framework too. I think that that is such a Helpful way to think about it, where, yeah, I mean, I've certainly been there on days where you're up all night with the kids and, for whatever reason, the lack of sleep makes me just want to eat a bunch of garbage, and so then I go to the gym and I'm just like like I really feel like it's almost not, not even worth working out because it's it's gonna be such a horrible workout. But thinking of the idea of raising your floor and subsequently raising your ceiling by just putting your body in motion, I think that's a really helpful, helpful way to think about it. I think the other thing you said earlier about Breaking it up throughout the day, like that's huge, you know, and there's so many things like the calf raises while they're putting their shoes on that's that's sort of just by. You know the sheer capacity that I have in life right now, how I've had to think about it. So it's reassuring to hear that that's an approach that that you take to. I'm literally doing like lunges on on the way to the bathroom and then, between calls, all I'll go hammer out some, some kettlebell swings and I'm just like man, I hope, I hope some of those sticks. So I think the doing it throughout the day Eliminates a lot of pressure on people too, where it's like, hey, do you have a minute, you know, can you just do? Do air squats for a minute, you know, do as many push-ups as you can for a minute, you know, do your lunges on the way to the bathroom, and I think that that helps people Get it in so they don't feel like they, well, I don't have an hour, so I'm not, I'm not gonna get to work out today that that like zero some Principle or you know, I don't have, I don't have my headphones, so I can't work out today. It's like, yeah, just get it in anywhere you can, any way you can. I love that and I really like what you said. Around your internal identity, like that that's such a big part of it is that it feels like there's a Almost like a sense of responsibility in it to yourself, because you have this great external goal where you're doing this for, for family, for kids, for future grandkids, but there also feels like there's this like responsibility to yourself in that. Is that something that you feel is kind of a part of that?

Yeah, so growing up I mean I was small, I was weak, I was constantly in pain, I was extremely slow, and I Remember feeling that way. I remember being dead last in every single race I ran in high school Like I remember the total being the total opposite. And I remember when I learned like hey, you can actually Work out and change this, like this isn't a fixed trait, like this is developable and I was like oh snap, okay, I'm gonna develop this and Then learning like you're capable, you, you can undo some of that. Like you can get stronger, you can jump higher, you can run faster, you can get out of pain. I was like, okay, that's, yeah, you feel compelled to do that because I remember where I came from. I remember not liking it, it was, it was miserable. And then I've seen both sides of that. So One just for my duty to myself. Someone framed, someone put the question out on something yesterday and they're like, hey, if imagine the person that you love the most and you were forced to swap bodies with them for a year, it's like think of the way that you would take care of them. Now do that for yourself. I was like, okay, well, yeah, I love myself. Like, so I'm gonna take care of myself because this is the only place I got to live.

So Dude, that swap. I think that perspective is huge, yeah, and I think for a lot of people, yeah, they'd probably Almost be surprised that they might be willing to do more for somebody else than they'd be willing to do for themselves, and I think that's a really good practice to think about. You know, if we were to swap with the person I love the most, or my kids, you know how, how well would I nurture that, that body, that mind, their spirit, through living a healthy lifestyle, and I think you know, I'm always Hearing and, I guess, playing Devil's advocate too. You know, I think one of the common reasons why people might not, though, is that they are feeling like they're giving everything to their kids, like I don't have time to prioritize my own fitness and my own health because I'm taking care of my kids, I'm getting them ready for school, I'm driving them to school, maybe they're homeschooling their kids. I got to go to work, you know, nolan, I got to put food on the table. What would you say to somebody that is struggling with creating the space for themselves To be a priority, in terms of their own health and fitness, but also their own goals and pursuits, if they're struggling with that sort of mindset. Yeah, that's a super fair question because that's a very common problem.

People believe that they need to Give all of themselves to their kids, but I've come to realize that I'd question if being if it's important to be A healthy example of what, or to be a good example of what, health and fitness should look like for their kids, and if that would be more powerful than the example that they've currently been setting for their kids. So when people aren't eating well, because they're cooking what their kids want to eat and they're cooking just mac and cheese and chicken nuggets or something they're not like their kids don't eat, have never tried vegetables They've never like, they don't eat me, like whatever nutrition looks like, if they're not leading that example for their kids, I'd question that when it's, we'd walk down the road. What's that going to look like for their kids? Ultimately Like? Is that going to set themselves up? Is that going to set their kids up for the future that they want for their kids, or is it just going to reciprocate back to the reality they're living? Where their kids are then going to? It's like not putting your your air mask on first when you're in the airplane. Before you've you've got a you can't pour from an empty vessel, so I Was looking for a way to make sure that they're not going to be able to eat. Was looking at examples. A long time back when my wife and I got married, I was looking at some of the adults of my life and I came to this conclusion that there's a hierarchy in our own identity and while the highest priority, like the self actualization, may be being a parent, it may be being your kid's parent. Um, the base level of that is that you're an individual. So the greater your capacity of being an individualist, the more Self-sustained of an individual you are, more optimal of an individual you are. The better partner you can be To your spouse, the better partner you are for your spouse, the better of an example you are for your kids. So part of this is I want to show my kids what's possible in life and you have to take care of yourself so you can take care of others. So that would be kind of the way that conversation I try to steer.

That yeah, I love that. Yeah, and I think you know to your, to your you know. First point about when you're not, you weren't able to pick up your son or have him jump on your back. You know, if you're not taking care of yourself, what kind of energy are you even showing up with to play with your kids? Are you able to play with your grandkids, or are you, you know, have you, have you become immobile to the point where You're not able to sit on the floor and play blocks because it hurts your knees and your back and and so, yeah, I love the idea of, uh, you talked about. You know you've got to put your, your oxygen mask on first. You can't help others until you've helped yourself. And I think you know there's this. There's a struggle with it. People feel like it's a selfish thing. But, yeah, if you're not taking care of yourself, what kind of energy are you showing up with with for others? And I think that you also hit it too in the way you described it, where you want to show your kids what's possible. Like, man, if only our kids just like, listen to everything we said, it would be so much easier. But the challenge is that they're watching us right and and Showing them is so much harder because they're always watching, and so what are we showing them? What are we teaching them about the way they should navigate the world if we're Not taking care of ourselves so that everyone else is served? Is that something we want for our kids? You know, if we were to ensure that for their future, would you want them to live in a way where they're never taking care of themselves? Like no way? So, yeah, I love the perspective there and the thing I'm curious too, as you mentioned this idea of internal identity with yourself. But you're focusing a lot of this with how you're sort of showing and educating your own kids. How do you think about developing that internal identity With your kids and helping them realize that, like fitness and health isn't like a thing, that's like a special event, but it's just. It's just the way we live our life.

So I think I've been blessed with a unique advantage, since we're always at the gym and I think there's some easy things somebody can do in their own house too, to do some of the same things. Like we put monkey bars up in our house. We have some jungle gym stuff in the garage, I think just instead of trying to tell your kids what a healthy, fit person does like, show them and body it, go for walks after dinner. Like show them like it, just make that, normalize it. So normalize what health looks like. Get on the floor and play blocks because you can go for walks. Challenge your kids two things Like see if they can climb that rock, see if they can climb the tree. Have them do calculated challenges. Right, there's calculated risks. Some things are just okay. It's probably not smart to challenge them to something. But if it's the rocks too slippery like, but part of that would be don't undermine their internal confidence. So don't tell them to be careful. Versus like tell them like hey, watch your step. So help them learn to pursue challenges. And when they start pursuing challenges, that builds their confidence because they realize what they are capable of. And when you make that something physical, like hey, can they pick this rock up? And they pick the rock up and you chair them on and everybody's happy and it's great. And the other day our baby, she climbed up the stairs for the first time and so all of us were like surrounding her and cheering her on and she went every single step and she like looked around and then she like climbed up another step and she got all the way to the top. She looked and she was like, yeah, like she did it, and she like clapped for herself and like we all cheered. You could just tell like she was proud of herself and even at almost 10 months old she feels that that's, that's a part of human nature. So you have to. It takes practice to learn how to cultivate that and to be aware of opportunities for helping your kids cultivate that. But you just got to seek them out.

I love that and it seems like a lot of it is rooted in play, you know, like you know finding ways to not just make it like we're going on another hike, but it's like let's take a tree, climb, break on the hike, let's climb that rock along the way who can get to the tree the fastest, you know? And rooting these things in a lot of play. But I'm totally guilty of the oh, be careful, even on things that I'm like like I'm like my son is trying to climb a rock and I'm like just be careful, and it's like, oh, actually, make sure that you're pointing your big toe, like I'm trying to like, yeah, be a little more mindful of it. And yeah, I think just so many of those things you know are good things to be aware of as we're doing it. But yeah, I love that. It's just like find opportunities, make it rooted in play, make it something enjoyable and model it. And I love that you have those things around your house. We found that to be really helpful too is that, you know, you know is sometimes we'll go do our workout and then we'll have like the little baby weights and they're doing the baby weight workout with us, or you know mom's doing a Peloton video workout, so we've got you know the mats for the kids and they're just flailing around on the mats but like they're seeing that this is just like a way that we live, this is a part of our life and that we're you're included in this. This isn't just something that mom and dad does, this is something we all do. Yeah, I love that. I want to come back to something that you've kind of rooted all this in, which is, again, goals, and I think that you know my hypothesis with a lot of these things and I know I've shared a lot of my hypotheses. I just hypothesize all day, but a lot of it, I think, comes back to the lack of goals, and you have talked about people coming in and having specific goals, but I know that for a lot of people, they're sort of like they don't know what their goals are, they don't know what they want, they don't know what they should be going for. Like you have spent a lot of time it sounds like thinking about your own goals. How do you think about helping people find their goals so that that intrinsic motivation is there and you can just build on it?

So a little bit about how we'll go about that is, if you ask someone why five times, you typically get pretty deep rooted into an underlying motivation behind something They'll say like oh, they want to go to the gym. It's like, well, why do they want to go to the gym? It's like, well, you know, maybe they want to. It just the chain of that gets down to, like the deeper root. Maybe they have they want to fit into their genes. Maybe those genes are because they have a high school reunion coming up and like. So some of those, those will kickstart the motivation to like to get that habit going and get that consistency going. But to keep it going, that's where I think that having appropriate challenges and then overcoming those challenges and then stimulating their creativity and getting them excited about seeing what else is possible and like stimulating their curiosity about what they're capable of, that's how you keep them hooked and it's got to be fun. You have to approach it in the right manner, but I think that that's kind of whatever their goal is, it's going to probably change and it's okay that it changes, but a part of their goal changes. They're still going to want to work out. They know they still probably want to work out because that's the healthier thing to do, like they just understand that that's what they want to do or should do and that that's probably going to help them get to their goal. So you have to find ways to gamify it. So even with adults we gamify things. We give them targets to beat for their specific workouts and so when their pace hits whatever their pace was supposed to be, and then we get to improve their score, and then they get to see and measure that and they get to improve it over time. Or they realize like, hey, even though they just had a hip replacement and they just started going on this hike and they can step up higher than they've ever been able to before. So they realize like, whoa, that's crazy. And you just see that fire going up, like, oh, what else can I do? And then they start exploring more things. And when they find themselves running along the beach, and even though it burns because they're running through the sand and they're running up a hill, but they think back to all the hard workouts they've gone through, they're like, oh, that's why you had me do all those squats If I didn't do those squats they find confirmation that the squats helped them perform what they were really trying to do, which was running at the beach with their family. I try to pull people's buttons so they push them themselves, because when somebody owns that, they're doing it for their own reasons. Then they'll really stick with it.

It makes sense with the goals changing too, like you know, as you've seen, with your own like, you're iterating and getting deeper and getting more specific and the motivations are changing. But I like what you said about the curiosity too. I didn't realize that until you said it, but I think that's a big piece of what keeps me going with my own goals, of this curiosity Again, specifically with climbing of like, and I wonder what that would be like. I wonder if I could, you know I shoot, how would my body do at 20,000 feet? I'm super curious to find out. You know, I wonder what it would take to do that. And I think that curiosity, that's such a great point that that really is what keeps somebody going. And really it's like two part yeah, getting somebody just to get moving on it, and then that curiosity and their own abilities, and stoking that curiosity helps really hook them and make it sticky for them so that they're just naturally continuously curious around. Cool, now what? Now what, what could I do? And yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm curious, like, what are you curious about your ability to do now? Like, what gets you interested in seeing what you can do?

Yeah, I want to see if I can do a one arm chin up and I'm getting closer.

So I think I can.

Everything, pretty much everything besides that that. I've been curious if I could do like I've gotten between stuff with handstands and cartwheels. There was a little while where a tumbling gym rented out the back of our gym and it was for a couple of months and they had an adult tumbling class, I was like I want to do a back flip. So I took their adult tumbling class and within four lessons she had me doing back flips and I was like what I could do a back flip. So then I was like, boom. She's like, hey, let's try back hand spring. And she had the block set up and I went and my first time I just like dove straight back, like straight down and like crashed into it. And she's like, no, you got to like jump up as you do it. So then I went and I jumped up and I jumped over the mat and did like my first back hand spring. I was like, well, that's crazy, what else is possible? So I don't totally know what's out there. I'm learning how to juggle now. I'm getting better at juggling. A lot of what I do people, it's kind of like circus tricks to a degree. So between juggling and working on juggling with my feet too, I haven't done that. I'm not very good at that yet. Something called rope flow, where you're like spinning the rope around, that's a lot of fun Handstand stuff I know I can get a lot better at that stuff, but the one arm champs like that's. That's been a goal for a long time and I'm starting it like I'm getting closer and closer to that one, so that one's really cool. I thought it'd be cool to see if I could get to dunking. In high school I had probably the record lowest vertical jump that they've ever recorded, so I thought that. I think it was like 16 inches. It's pretty bad.

That's amazing. They're like jump. You're like I just did.

I just did jump.

That was my job.

The best part was they messed up when they put my score in. No, it was 14 inches. And they messed up because they typed the four before the one. So it said I had a 41 inch vertical jump. So it put me at the top of the leaderboard on the sheet they printed out like everyone knew it wasn't really like. Everyone is so embarrassed. So I think it'd be really cool now in my 30s to get back to actually dunking a ball and just being polar opposite of everything that I was in high school, like slow small week in a pain. And then now something I'm working on is the knee over toe squat where you keep your hips up the sissy squat right. The Sisyphus squat and one of my goals is to always be able to do that with our baby. So Ellie May, she's currently like 10 months, she's somewhere around 20 pounds and I can still do it holding the baby. I can still do it holding her. But even as she gets to three and five and seven and 10, I want to still be able to doing that holding her. So kind of the idea of Milo, the guy that carried the bull across the mountain range, back in like the Greek mythology, so something along those lines like I think it'd be really cool. I call it the Ellie May squat, because if I can always do that with her, that'd be cool.

So well, you're certainly modeling the rooted in play. Like I can just see the excitement as you're talking about these things and I love all the things that you're getting to like there. The I mean the backflip for me and I'm sitting there going like man. I've always wanted to backflip. I wonder what that would be like. And I hope people listening like just take 30 seconds to just like dream a bit and be curious about like what's something that you've kind of always known in the back of your mind that you thought was just cool, that somebody did generally, and imagine that for yourself. And I think that that seems to be a big, important step that you have made is you're like man, that's cool that people do that. I wonder what that would be like if I could do that and then taking that action to, to, you know, make progress on it. So yeah, dude, you're getting my brain spinning on all kinds of interesting things. Hopefully I'm backflipping here in the next six months. So I just have one more thing around. You know sort of like the origin story, because you mentioned your background of you know being slow and weak and small and being in pain. So you know fitness hasn't been a thing. That has been a part of your life, your whole life, and I'm curious, you know, what do you feel like, whether it was something like your, your own dad did or your own parents did to help nurture that, or were there things that were absent from the way you grew up that you realized, like man had? I had that earlier from a father, parent, mentor. That would have been really helpful. Just curious, like where did things shift for you? And and again, what? What do you think was done really well from the adults in your life as a kid that helped nurture that and where do you think you might do things differently as a dad yourself?

So I remember being back with, like as a kid, my parents I feel they did a really good job of forcing me to be consistent with things and my brother and I we went to, we did karate and we took it for years and we got all the way up through the belts and we got right to the point where we're about to test for our black belt and then the professor he tossed in like oh, here's a new belt that you have to test for before your black belt, because he just wanted money for two more kids in the classes. So he kept adding it. My parents are like no, you guys know everything you need to like. So they pulled us out. Um, after that, I they, my dad required me to do sports. It was like in middle school, it was like I had to do at least one sport a year.

My teacher.

He was the wrestling coach, so he talked me into wrestling because we were studying ancient Greece and he's like, oh, the ancient Greeks wrestled, You'd love it. It's like, okay, I don't love it. Uh, at the time I didn't love it. It was like I had to eat to make weight for the lightest weight class. I was like 70 pounds. And then going into when my brother was going into high school, he really wanted to play football because my dad's loved watching sports. So he knew he wanted to play football and impress my dad. And my dad got him a personal trainer. And then my brother's football coach said he didn't want him working out with a trainer, he wanted all of his workouts to be with the team. Well, my dad prepaid for all these sessions and somebody had to deal with him. So I had to fill in the sessions and so I started working with a personal trainer and I couldn't stand it. It drove me nuts it. I did not like the gym. I didn't like working out. It was something that I was forced to do. I had to be bribed with chicken sandwiches and milkshakes afterwards. And my trainer he the only thing really in fitness he really understood. He was, he was a bodybuilding like coach, so he really understood bodybuilding. And it was at this kind of hoity toyy athletic club and it was a really nice facility but it really catered to a very niche part of fitness and I thought the whole point you worked out was to get big. That was my entire understanding I worked out with him. And then high school came around. Once I got into high school, my dad said, no, now you have to do three sports a year. He's like great. So then I started doing. I had to do three sports a year. I learned being allergic to grass and small and slow football was not my favorite. I did that for two years. But wrestling I realized that I had gained a little bit of weight. So I was a little bit bigger now and I was no longer gaining weight to make the lightweight class I can do to be better than my opponents. I can practice harder. And I learned, oh, I can strength train and I can be stronger than I can be Stronger than them. Some kids are stronger than others and I can get stronger and I can run and I can build up my endurance and these are things I can do to have an edge on who I'm wrestling and this guy or I wasn't. And once high school was coming to an end, I was like well, I'm not going to wrestle anymore. So now I found like the sport of fitness and I got into like hey, there's performance based training. And I got more into like, oh, you can do things for time and you can turn this into like its own competition. And I was like, wait, because still at the time, even though I knew you got stronger from lifting weights, I thought it was only correlated to the size of your muscle. So I still only understood it as bodybuilding and an aesthetics approach, so this was gearing into a performance approach. So then I dove deep into that and I realized like, hey, I'm getting stronger, I'm getting faster, I'm getting in better shape, but all these things that I wanted are happening. And then I started. I started training and I started training other people and I started seeing how it helped them. And one of my first clients was a. He was like 74 and I remember he walked into the gym with a cane and his goal was to play basketball. I was like an 18 year old kid and I was like, yeah, we can do that. And it was just like eternally optimistic. Well, within like three months he was back running on the court playing basketball and we played one on one and as a wrestler. So I wasn't very good, so it worked. But I was like holy smokes, like we can take somebody that can barely walk and we can get them to this. And when I saw the power that there was in helping people with this, I realized, like what I wanted to do, so that sparked the cure. Like that sparked that big curiosity of like what's possible out there and if something's possible for somebody I can't, it means it's possible for one and it means it's possible for me to get better at it and it's just a matter of if I'm going to put the time into doing what's needed to get all that, to get to that distance in it. So if I don't get to the one-arm chin up, it's because I didn't commit enough time relative to my other goals and that's okay. That's. That's kind of where the base of all that's from. So for my kids, what what I'm trying to model is I have workouts for them where one of my sons they both want to dunk. They both like playing basketball. So we have a little eight foot hoop in the front and they want to dunk. So I have speed and jumping workouts for them that we're doing and I don't force them to do it. So a little bit more lenient than my dad was, but I try to make them want to do it and by asking the right questions and framing things, I hope that more often than not, they do do the workouts and when they're excited about it, I try to remember like, okay, this is when it's really important, is when they're excited about it. Then they do the workouts and then, like my one son, they had field day at school and they had to like see who could jump the farthest and he smoked all the other kids in his class and I was like that's cause you worked out and he put those pieces together. He's like, yeah, okay, I want to keep doing this and so modeling the stuff. I feel it's been pretty easy where, showing them how that connects to what their goals have been, and then it's just a matter of flowing with it. Is their goals change? We'll mix it up, but that's my plan. Thanks, dude.

I think, as a former wrestler, I think the big takeaway is make sure your kids wrestle, right. No, I love what you said about you know there's a shift for you where it was no longer about external motivation, but it was intrinsic. It was like I'm actually fully in control of this and that's what makes it interesting, because now I'm, I have a lot of experience and I have the power to do whatever I want to do with this. And that is such a cool moment, I think, for people when they make that shift of like wow, this is. It's like the best responsibility you've ever come to realize. So you're like wow, like if I'm the problem, I'm the solution, if the only way this gets better is me doing something, then like that's perfect, because that is 100% what I can control. And I love that. With your focus with your kids, it sounds like you're really focusing in on that intrinsic motivation, like they are going to want to do it. And I think you hit on something else too with the success your son saw in jumping the farthest is like sometimes all it takes is just sticking with it until you see some success, like just man, just keep going, keep going until you see progress or success or a little win, and then it's like you're hooked, you're you're, you're clipped in, you're now ready to do this. You know, at the highest level. You can, you, you, you felt that. So, man, that's awesome. And yeah, I love the. I love a good wrestling origin story too, so that was a near and dear to my heart. You know you're training and I want to come back to where. Where can people follow along on the journey? Where can people find out about training with you? Like, where can people, where can people do that?

The best place is probably Instagram at nwfitnolan. Tiktok is just Nolan Womack. I'm on Facebook too, but Instagram is probably the best place. That's where most involved. I'm on YouTube at nwfit.

Got it Awesome, yeah. So follow along. I'm certainly follow along, and it's my daily reminder to make sure I get my workout in in any way possible, and I'm excited to see you know how many days you're going to get in. I'm sure we'll be in the thousands at some point, based on your years of consistency. And I want to just put it back to you you know we've talked about kind of a wide array of subjects, from from goals and process and logistics to you know, a little bit of philosophy dabbled in. But if you, if you were to leave other dads with any piece of advice, whether they are currently pursuing their goals or not, you know what, what, what do you think you'd want to leave them with? That's been really helpful for you being able to put yourself in the position that you have so far.

So I would want to remind them of memento mori. And that's what makes it beautiful, because our time's limited, so live like it.

I've taken away so much greatness from this, and I know other dads will as well. So, nolan, thank you so much for for all the time and again excited to continue following along. This has been an episode of the athlete dad podcast. As always, we'd really love your support in helping to get this podcast out into the world. You can do that by sharing it with somebody you care about, who you think would really appreciate the content of what we talk about. You can also like and review on all podcast platforms, so go give us some love. It's much appreciated and it certainly helps us out keeping the show going. It's also important that you give us a follow on Instagram at the athlete dad. You can get all the access to all the pictures and content and more from the podcast that we talk about, and, of course, I'm a visual person, so I love what we get to share on Instagram and it keeps you up to date on all the things happening with the podcast. So go give us a follow on Instagram and actually all other socials at the athlete dad If you want exclusive access to content that we do not share publicly on the podcast or socials themselves. You're going to want to sign up for our email list. Go to theathletadcom, sign up for the email list, become one of our exclusive subscribers and you'll get access to things like more bonus episode, deeper dives, other content that we just don't release to the public, things that I think, if you really enjoy this topic, you're going to love, because we just get much more into the weeds on all of these things. So go to theathletadcom, sign up for our email list and grab yourself some of that exclusive content.