This past weekend was Superbowl Sunday. It was the Eagles vs. the Patriots and truth be told, I couldn’t really care less.  I mainly go to the Superbowl party because it’s a gathering of souls that I enjoy spending time eating food and tossing back a beer or two.

At this party two of my friends had announced that they were expecting a child this coming summer.  Wonderful news!  And along with the excitement comes the nervousness about the amazing life changing journey that lay before them.

Aurora Grace, my daughter

Now my wife and I had a baby 8 months ago and we sat down with the mommy to be to share our collective wisdom. (by the way, here’s a baby hack, when changing a diaper give them an unused wipe to play with so they don’t stick their hands in their poop)

Anyway, a bunch of things came up during the conversation that I think can apply to your strength, health and fitness.

For one, while she was talking about how nervous she was (they’ll make wonderful parents btw), I had said “Don’t worry, humans have been doing this since the dawn of time and modern medicine has come a long way since then”.  There are so many things that have us set up to successfully raise a healthy child.  As I look to my right, I have a barebones basic baby monitor…basic in that it only includes night vision, a 2 way microphone and music built into it, but that’s all.

When I was a kid, I remember the monitor that my parents had for my sister.  It was like a one way walkie talkie, nothing more…and she survived.

Anyhow, people got strong, fit, lean and healthy long before complicated gadgets, gizmos, marketing concepts and supplements flooded the market place.  They didn’t burden themselves down with complicated words like “transverse abdominus” or even have supplements like branch chain amino acids or creatine.

Me holding up a steel bar I just bent. Picture taken by Lynda Renee Photography during one of my strongman performances.

The oldtime strongmen intuitively knew that if you practiced doing things that required strength, you got good at being strong.  Strength is a mindset, and part of that mindset is understanding that it is a skill to be practiced, cultivated and perfected much like a musician learning an instrument.

One of the other things that came up is that crackheads have kids, and if they can do it anyone can. Same thing can also apply here, there are people that were in worse situations than you that despite the odds were able to get into phenomenal shape. If they can do it, you can too with the right mindset.

If you need guidance in this and are looking for a personal trainer in the Boonton Township or Mountain Lakes area of New Jersey, give my trial membership a go. It won’t cost you anything and you may even surpass what you previously thought yourself capable of achieving.