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21d •
What We’re About
Fatherhood is an amazing thing. You get to take part in the raising of a young life that you had a hand in creating and you get to show this wonderful little person whom you love with all of your heart the world and see them experience it with fresh eyes. It’s nothing short of amazing. It’s also an awesome responsibility. Being a dad comes with so much responsibility, and not just making sure the bills are paid and the family is safe. As a dad, you’re one of the two greatest role models in your child’s life. It is you, who is responsible for showing your child what a man is and what it mean to be a man. I tell all my dad clients that one day your son will turn into a version of you and your daughter will bring home a version of you and it’s on you to make sure you don’t hate that guy. Once my daughter was born I began looking at myself through such a microscope to see where I could improve (spoiler alert: just about everywhere) and I’m still working on improving those areas. It just sucks, as everyone here knows, that this happens at a time when you’ll be short on time, short on energy, and often short on patience too. But the responsibility and duty remains. I think as parents we often try to give ourselves a pass. We say things like, “I’m doing my best,” but are you? Are you really? I can’t speak for any of you but I know there were lots of things in my life I worked way harder to prepare for. When it came to parenting we tend to just kind of wing it. The best thing we can do for our children though, is to model that good behavior. I want my daughter to see me as being such an amazing and strong man who’s so loving to her and her mother, that it’ll be really fucking hard for her to find someone who measures up, and that way I’ll also protect her from being with someone who won’t treat her as well as I do her and her mom. And if I one day have a son, I want him to look at me and be inspired to follow in my footsteps and become the same kind of man. These are some of the things that I want to tackle with this group. I want it to be a place where dads looking to become their best selves come to share experiences, advice, cautionary tales, all of it, and I also want to be able to help you all become those best versions of yourself.
4d •
Be Resilient to Build Resilience
This is a subject that I’m going to come to again and again because it’s THAT important. Partly as a reminder to myself, but the best way to deter your kids from ruining their lives is to be a model of what they should be. Like I’ve said before, our kids see everything. One part of this that I’ve never mentioned though, is that you don’t need to be perfect. If anything, you shouldn’t be. One of the most important things our kids can see us do is fall, so they can watch us get back up on our own two feet. Our kids undoubtedly will face setbacks in life. It’s inevitable and they’ll come in all shapes and sizes. If we want kids who can handle that, then we need to model how to overcome failure and adversity. We need to let them see us struggle, and overcome it so they can see that struggle as being normal, and then have the blueprint for overcoming it. It’s hard because we want to be these paragons of virtue for our kids, but showing them that it’s okay to take one on the chin and get knocked down, because then you get to get back up, is one of the most important lessons we can teach them. Now in order to do this, we have to actually put ourselves out there and give ourselves the opportunity to fail. That means whatever goal, dream, or bucket list thing you’ve always wanted to do but always talked yourself out of it? Do it. Swing away, and if it’s hard? Good. If you fail? Also good. There’s so many lessons to be learned from the journey.
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11d •
“I Don’t Have Time…”
One of the biggest complaints I hear from dads, especially ones with really young ones at home is “I don’t have time.” I don’t have time to train, I don’t have time to eat better, I don’t have time to learn something new so I can make more money, I just don’t have time.” I’m here to tell you: that’s crap. Now you might be thinking: “but Ryan I have to work, I have to be on dad duty, I have a million things and blah blah blah.” And I’m sure you do. But the thing is, as a parent your health and wealth need to be top priorities because that’s going to be how you protect and provide for your family. It’s mandatory. For fitness—if you’re on a time crunch, you can hit easy and brief HIIT workouts. Even if you don’t have any equipment, just grab your phone, pull out the stop watch and do a simple circuit like: jump squats, pushups, sit-ups, plank shoulder taps, and mountain climbers. Do each for :30 seconds, take :60 seconds off between completed circuit rounds, and do it 5 times. The entire workout, with the breaks factored in is under 20 minutes, clocking in at 16 minutes and 30 seconds. Do that daily and you’ll be well on your way. Hit 10,000 steps per day and that’s even better. For nutrition if you don’t have time to cook and you just end up eating crap on the road, use a meal prep service. I use Nutre, I’ve actually become an affiliate of them—they’re awesome and I’m saving money each week because I used to just eat on the road. https://www.gonutre.com/?_ef_transaction_id=&oid=1&affid=1257 Use code RWFitness for 40% off your first order To make more money you have several paths: learn a new skill to make yourself more valuable in the marketplace that to either get a raise from your current job or start a side hustle. You can easily start side hustles even without necessarily having to learn a new skill. For example, I would flip comic books since I’ve been a lifelong collector whenever things get really tight. But you can also, though this does take time, go on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace and pick up anything people are giving away for free, and then sell them. It’s not always easy but it is simple and these are things you can scale for time.
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14d •
What Was Your First Inspiration to Go to the Gym?
I want you to take a look back into your childhood memories—what was your first motivation to workout? I actually have 2. The first, like I suspect will be true of many in this group, was I saw my dad lift regularly as a kid. Being strong was the norm in my house growing up. This is important. My second was actually a tv show, an anime specifically: Dragonball Z. I’ve always had a real nerdy bend to me, and grew up loving American comic books and superheroes. DBZ introduced me to a new type of storytelling however. In a Superman or Thor comic, they always tend to have just the amount of strength they need to stop the bad guy and save the day. Sure, they may need to tough out some adversity and dig deep, but they always had what they needed within themselves. Characters like Spider-Man or Batman maybe at least had to outsmart them, but they always had what they needed within themselves. In DBZ though, the heroes would often get their asses kicked, train really hard to get stronger, and then overcome the villain, often after an emotional breakthrough that leads to a transformation. It still gets me fired up to train, and as a kid that was tenfold. There are two important lessons here: you modeling healthy behavior for your kids is critical. It shouldn’t be weird or special that someone in your family works out—it shouldn’t be the expectation. The second is the media that we consume is critical as well and I think about this a lot as my daughter is getting older. My wife and I are only going to watch shows with her where the characters demonstrate traits we want her to have. It’s still modeling, just in a different form. But I am genuinely curious—what first got you into working out?
15d •
Why We Lift
Last night, I was at a baseball game and outside of the stadium, during the pre-game festivities, there was a father struggling to get his daughter up on his shoulders- it wasn’t because she was wilding out or having trouble balancing, but because the father was having trouble getting the weight up. Eventually, he did it but it was a struggle and he needed help from his wife. That is fine and somewhat normal but, for me personally, being able to execute complex movements like this is a point of pride. I preach often about why staying in shape is important for our families’ wellbeing and for our own longevity but this hit me different. Just food for thought.
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