Behind the Bluff
Uncover best practices to participate in life on your terms. Every week, hosts Jeff Ford and Kendra Till guide listeners with short conversations on trending wellness topics and share interviews with passionate wellness professionals, our private club leaders, and additional subject matter experts offering valuable tips. Each episode conclusion includes Healthy Momentum, five minutes of inspiration to help you reflect and live differently. Subscribe now and discover the keys to living your greatest active lifestyle.
Behind the Bluff
Train for the Life You Want to Keep Living
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A six-pack, a stress fracture, and a complete reframe. We mark our 100th milestone by unpacking Jeff’s three eras of wellness—how a quest for appearance morphed into performance and finally matured into longevity and capacity you can sustain for decades.
We start with the honest stuff: teenage ab routines, calorie diaries, bodybuilding splits, and the belief that soreness equals success. Then the story accelerates into endurance and functional fitness—fast 5Ks, marathons, Ironman, and the powerful pull of CrossFit community. Alongside the training, Jeff deepens his craft with behavior change coaching, learning how habits and relationships make results stick. The turning point arrives with injury and a hard truth: constant intensity narrows life, and recovery is the engine of adaptation, not an optional add-on.
Today, the focus is training for the life you want to keep living. We break down mobility and breath work as daily anchors, intelligent intervals that respect your joints, and foundational strength patterns—hinge, squat, push, pull, carry, rotate—that bulletproof real-world movement. We share how community multiplies consistency, why ego quietly sabotages progress, and how to design classes and personal routines that balance effort with recovery. You’ll hear favorite definitions of wellness from past guests, reinforcing a whole-person view that values mental, emotional, and relational health alongside the physical.
If you’ve ever confused sweat with success or felt stuck between doing more and getting better, this conversation offers a clearer path: intentional training, smart recovery, and habits that grow with you. Subscribe, share this milestone episode with a friend who’s rethinking their routine, and leave a review to tell us which era you’re in—and where you want to go next.
Milestone And Intent For Episode 100
SPEAKER_04Are you ready to live an active lifestyle? Welcome to Behind the Bluff, where we believe every moment of your life is an opportunity to pursue wellness on your terms. Welcome back to the podcast and welcome to episode 100. Jeff, can you believe that we are here at episode 100?
SPEAKER_08Two years later, consistent, making it happen every single Wednesday. I'm so proud of us.
SPEAKER_04I'm proud of us too. It's a huge, huge milestone. And to think back on where we were two years ago versus where we are now, I'm very proud of us. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Plugging in chords, figuring out how to produce episodes. Exactly. We've come a long way.
Defining Jeff’s Wellness Journey
SPEAKER_04We have. So instead of bringing on a guest today, we are going to reflect on Jeff's wellness journey, which I'm very, very excited about. Throughout these couple of years, Jeff has told me stories when the mic wasn't on. And I thought these need to be shared to everyone. So, Jeff, your definition of wellness hasn't exactly started fully formed.
SPEAKER_08It seems too just like me as a human. I didn't begin fully formed.
SPEAKER_04Did not begin.
SPEAKER_08But just like my definition of wellness took me some time.
SPEAKER_04It sounds like it did evolve along your, you know, your career and as life went on. So why did you want to use 100, the this episode on 100 to talk about your own wellness journey?
SPEAKER_08Well, Kendra, we know the podcast is all about me. So we it made sense for us to spend more time on me.
SPEAKER_06Of course.
SPEAKER_08Second to that, I was talking to some regular listeners of the podcast, and they mentioned or asked the question, what are you going to do for episode 100? You're coming up. And I was like, wow, I didn't even realize we're we're already at 100. And they're like, You're a pretty complex and interesting guy. You could probably do it about you. And then that got me thinking of the question that we've been asking every single guest in every interview. What does wellness mean to you? And we also just hosted our first ever wellness week here at Palmetto Bluff. And I remember going through the eras of cardio and strength and how it has evolved every 10 to 20 years where it looks different. And that was the same for me. You mentioned alongside my career, but it's been more so alongside my life. Fitness, wellness, it's been a part of who I am. And I wanted to share the details behind what has allowed us to craft the program here and the vision that we've collectively built together through like all the years of experience we have. But in particular, as the leader of the program, I've learned a lot on how to do things differently as a result of knowing that I missed something in the past.
Era One: Appearance And Effort
SPEAKER_04Well, and I think what's so cool, Jeff, is there's no denying your passion for fitness and wellness and your desire to continue learning. So I'm excited to dive into these eras. We're gonna go through these wellness eras. So take us back to when your wellness journey first started. What did training look like for you? And were you chasing anything? Like, what did this look like?
SPEAKER_08I would call this the wellness as appearance and effort era. If I look fit, I must be healthy. And early in the years of fitness training in a group setting, in a gym setting, many of us approached fitness to look better.
SPEAKER_04100%.
SPEAKER_08And that is still in my head today. And it was especially in my head beginning in my middle school and early high school years. So this is, you know, early 2000s up until about 2013. I stayed in this era.
SPEAKER_06Right.
SPEAKER_08And the era began with starting strength training alone in my room. Before I got a gym membership, at about 12, 13 years old, I would see these commercials for like the ab belt that you could put on. And it would like instantaneously give you a six-pack. I at the time, you know, didn't want to ask my parents to purchase an ab belt for me. So I began, you know, putting my CD player on in my bedroom, and I created this daily ab routine to Chicago, Edmund, Edwin McCain, the I'll be song. All of these very emotional type songs. And I wanted to look good. I wanted to have a six-pack. And frankly, everyone in high school, you've got the popular crowd, you've got the folks who are a little bit less popular. I was kind of like right in the middle. You know, I'm friends with everyone, and yet still had this desire to feel confident in my body. And that came out in wanting to work out hard so I could change my body. And this ab routine, Kendra, like we should still do this ab routine to this day.
SPEAKER_04I am excited to hear about this.
SPEAKER_08I did crunches six ways. Like six. Yeah. You know how some people eat tuna three ways? I was doing crunches six ways. So I had like my oblique crunches, my my leg cross crunch, my reverse crunch, my classic crunch with just the shoulders coming up. You name it. I was figuring out how to get a six-pack, and I'd spend 15 to 20 minutes at least five evenings a week just going at it. And the the cool part is my stomach never changed. Yeah, there was no difference in my stomach, but it felt like I was doing something. I'd also um classify this this era in my life where I was I started to learn about counting calories. So I had this hard copy planner called my diary, my daily diary planner. It had an apple on it, and I would begin logging my food and better understanding uh even what calories were.
SPEAKER_06Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_08And I'd be looking at labels and I'd make sure it was low fat. And it was a part of my being. Once I started working out, I was like, wow, I gotta watch my food in order for this to be effective. Shortly after kind of the ab routines developed, I start analyzing my Danon yogurts to make sure they're low fat. Uh, I was able to get a gym membership. And so my mom bought me a gym membership. I remember working out. My first gym ever was called Excel Fitness. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Sounds like hardcore.
SPEAKER_08It was not really too hardcore, but it was your classic, had all the machines in one section, uh, all the cardio machines in one spot, all the strength machines, the free weight air. It was your typical gym. And it was the first time I had a cart, I got to scan it out in the counter, and I was probably the youngest person going in there. And these were the days of the split routines, the bodybuilding day days. Uh Gold's gym was very popular during this period of time. And I layered on strength training and starting to work out and be a part of fitness within my high school sports. It's it's funny, Kendra. The other day, uh during Wellness Week, a member asked me, Oh, you you played hockey, because I think I shared a similar story. And he's like, You must have been a right wing. And I don't know how much you know about hockey, Kendra, but forwards are usually smaller than the other positions on the ice. I was a defenseman. And he was like, No way you were a defenseman. I pretty much weigh the same that I did in high school. Uh and I I share this because I was doing varsity hockey and golf, and I would also work out on top of this. I made a commitment. Very few people were were doing that at in at my age because I was passionate about this. I was interested in it and started to take some NO explode supplements, just you know, high nitric oxide, you know, pushing through the body some creatine, started to have the protein shakes. I remember going to these stores, they were like the the black markets before GNC where you'd find these supplements. And so for me, this this was an era of training hard without fully understanding. It was discipline without direction. And as I mentioned earlier, maybe I should have got the ab belt. I didn't see any meaningful change during this period in my life. Right. So yeah, it was um it was a good start.
SPEAKER_04There's definitely enjoyed it. I was gonna say, so looking back now, you know, you had your diary with the Apple on it, and you're you were writing down your foods and you had your swipe card for Excel. What was missing? Even though you were, you know, putting in all this effort from your perspective now, what was missing?
SPEAKER_08On a personal side, what was missing is self-confidence. And there's many people out there who I think have begun their wellness journey because they didn't have confidence in their body or in confidence in who they are, and uh that was definitely the place for me. I mean, we've all gone to high school, most listeners have have been to high school. It's a difficult environment. It is, and you don't want to be made fun of, you want to be cool, and that was always me. I wanted to be the cool kid, and I'm pretty cool though. That's why this episode is happening today. Um, but only cool from the perspective of there there was a lot missing, you know, personally, internally, but from a fitness, more tangible understanding of the industry of wellness. I I was missing how training actually worked versus just effort. There was there there has to be an adaption component to your training. You can't just put effort in and get the positive adaptations that you're looking for. Second to this, it was a a time where I was just doing more versus understanding movement quality. So I remember walking in on a leg day, and that's how we did it back then back and bys, legs, chest and tries. Range of motion was terrible.
SPEAKER_06Right.
SPEAKER_08I remember these leg days, I'd do a barbell back squat, and you squat like one eighth of the way down.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_08So movement quality was poor, but I could do, you know, 185 pounds weighing 140 pounds. Movement quality was poor across the board. Those this was the norm for many people during this period of time as well. And uh, I was counting calories versus fueling my body. So those were kind of the three epiphanies of of what was missing.
SPEAKER_04And how do you you know still see this mindset show up in the way people approach fitness today?
SPEAKER_08It's it's still there today. So prevalent. Yeah. I mean, even for me when I work out, there's still the the knowledge that yes, this will keep my body looking good. Is that the main reason I do it now? Not so much. But for so many of us, we've been in a phase of chasing aesthetics as proof of wellness. Um another mindset that I I think still shows up today is we confuse how good a workout is or how good a session is with soreness, how much we sweat, and exhaust exhaustion being the measure. And then I'd also say that for many people approaching fitness today, there is still a focus on doing a lot. But when we do a lot, that doesn't mean we're necessarily getting healthier.
SPEAKER_04That's a good way to put it. And you know, it's interesting that wellness to you seemed like it was about appearance and the effort, but it sounds like the discipline um was at least there.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, it was a positive.
SPEAKER_04It was a positive for sure. And it sounds like you learned a lot about fitness in general during this era.
SPEAKER_08And Boston's greatest hits.
SPEAKER_04Um I'm a little sad you didn't get that ad belt though.
What Was Missing And Lessons Learned
SPEAKER_08I know. I think I I'm gonna go online after our time together today, see if we can find one that's out there. But yeah, for me, my journey began where it was about appearance, uh, discipline, not function, no focus on recovery or sustainability, and effort was there, understanding wasn't, plain and simple. I I wasn't unhealthy, but I wasn't well.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_08We're gonna take this brief pause during our main segment to share a few of our favorite answers from the previous 100 episodes on what is wellness.
SPEAKER_03To me, wellness means whole person flourishing. I think we live in a world where we tend to think of wellness as being diet or exercise, which is certainly a a component of wellness. But I really don't believe that people can be truly well unless they're caring for all aspects of themselves. So I'm talking mental, physical, emotional, relational, spiritual, psychological. And I also believe that if we are sacrificing any one of these areas to try to excel in another, that's not true wellness. So I suppose to summarize, to me, to be well is to be whole and integrated. And to be whole and integrated is really when the flourishing happens.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, wellness. So there's a bunch of dynamics that are involved in wellness. And if you you read up on there's anywhere from seven to 15, some people go even uh broader than that. And wellness is always on a spectrum. We're kind of like in a binary age, like you're either well or you're not. So if you look up the the dynamics of wellness, right? So let's just let's say, let's mention them. So let's just say there's physical, there's spiritual, there's uh emotional, there's intellectual, there's vocational, there's financial, uh, there's environmental, and let's just say there's one more that uh I can't remember right now, but that would be eight, right? Um I can't I can't remember. I mean it's always different out there. Yeah, so yeah, and they're all different. So no matter what article you read, but so if you look at these different dimensions, if you find if you land, if you go look this up and you and you land on how this stuff is categorized, right, in these dimensions, and then you grade yourself on these dimensions with a color code: red light, yellow light, or green light. Green light's awesome. Yellow light, maybe I need some work, red light as this isn't working at all. Then you have to understand how all these interplay with life. So you could be a green light in your physical stuff and a red light in your spiritual stuff, because you have a yellow light in your vocational stuff and you're just feeling really, really you're starting to lose interest in your job and wondering why you're doing what you're doing. Um, so or you're uh a green light in financial, but you're a red light in mental, uh excuse me, in um spiritual, emotional, uh, because you're um not doing anything physically, right? So you the it's it's not one thing, it's a bucket of things.
SPEAKER_08It's all of it.
SPEAKER_02And you don't have to be perfect. But uh, if your wellness scale is drifting toward being not healthy, you need to start looking at these dimensions, going, okay, where you have to pinpoint, right? You have to pinpoint where you're doing if it's hard to do for yourself sometimes. You have to sometimes you have to talk it out. That's why the people come see you guys, right? Um but if they look at this stuff and then you can get like, well, I don't have to be perfect in any of these categories. Again, there's that word, but as long as that needle is above 50%, I'm doing pretty good. Right? Can I do better? Yep. If it starts getting below 50%, this needs an intervention because after it gets my experience, after it gets below the middle of that spectrum, you can jump right off the cliff because you're trending so far, like it it's generally not a slow uh drift. It's usually you are gonna step off the cliff and you're gonna be at the bottom of the you're gonna be in the bottom of 20-30 percent, and it's really hard to dig yourself out.
SPEAKER_08Momentum's gonna go in the wrong direction.
SPEAKER_02It's right. So you once you start fading after that under that 50% mark, you gotta bring the needle back. And you hey, staying at between 60 and 80% most of the time, awesome. Keeping that thing at 90% or above.
SPEAKER_01Wellness to me, hmm. It's a quiet harmony, a way of living where mind, body, and spirit are in rhythm with the natural world. It's the softness of morning light, the nourishment that comes not just from what I eat, but how it was grown and prepared. It's a presence over perfection, the slowness over urgency, and knowing when to rest, when to tend and when to let things unfold. Gardening has taught me that wellness is not a destination, but a relationship with myself, with the earth, and the way that I move through the day, it's returning to what's real and simple, and that's enough.
SPEAKER_08And now, back to the main conversation.
Era Two: Performance, Identity, Community
SPEAKER_04Well, let's dive into this next era. And it sounds like you entered into like an endurance training and functional fitness era. Is that right? Just from what I know of you and this evolution. So tell us a little bit more about how this chapter began and what specifically changed for you.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, let's call era two wellness as performance, identity, and community for me. I I would say this was the most important shift for me because there was a lot going on in a short period of time, not just in uh my own wellness journey, but also in fitness. Because early 2000s, we start seeing CrossFit come on this on the scene, but it doesn't get big until you know 2010. We start to see it everywhere at that point in time. And that's when I first started kind of learning about high-intensity training and how to train hard, perform, and then also this idea of meeting people through fitness. And so early in my career, this were the days of being at Hilton Head Health. This was a resort, my first job. I interned there, and I got hired on after uh graduating from Clemson University. This was a very cool start. Uh, you know, I got to move from the upstate of South Carolina, being from Massachusetts, my first job at 22 years old, living on Hilton Head Island. What did you mean? Yeah, like everyone was jealous of me. Oh, actually. Just like you are right now. I can I can feel the jealousy. And I was pumped. I was around palm trees and I was literally able to teach fitness all day long, personal train, and my job got very occupied very quickly. I became a certified wellness coach through the American College of Sports Medicine. And I love that because I started learning about the psychology of change, of creating habits. And it was probably the most important certification of my life to know that this is more than just the task. It's it's more about how do we make this work for us? How does it become a lifestyle? How does it be a part of who we are? Because I I think that's the magic sauce. Um, but fun fact, during that time, uh I was actually on a few clips in a TV show. These clips never really got aired, but there was this TV show called Heavy.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_08And it was a spin-off of the biggest loser.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_08Yep. And um the show only last one season, but for six months, I was one of the main trainers at, I don't know, 23, maybe 24 at this period of time, training these individuals who who were after making a huge life transition.
SPEAKER_06That's cool.
SPEAKER_08Uh, I actually had the opportunity to be part of a final episode. Again, they didn't air me. I think I looked too young. Um, I was I was the trainer, but they had another couple trainers as like stand-ins. So it's very interesting to see like how it all worked. But I I flew to Athens to complete a half marathon with one of the participants of the heavy TV show.
SPEAKER_06Wow.
SPEAKER_08And so basically, these participants were staying with us for six months to lose weight and to change their lives. And then at the end of the six months, they all had their own incredible goal uh that they wanted to achieve. And for this gentleman, it was completing a half marathon. We did it together, he had to walk away. Lot. Um, but at that time I was in that endurance phase. So uh from kind of that first job at Hilton Ed Health, this is where endurance picked up for me. I got into marathon training. I discovered that I was fast, ran my first 5k in 18 and a half minutes, and I started doing high mileage. So I do 60, 80 miles a week, and I was still doing that classic strength training that I told you about earlier, a little bit more intelligent, I think, at this point in time. Uh, but that was my then my first introduction to CrossFit on the island, where I started to learn changes in range of motion, technique-based training, functional movement versus going in and working on body parts. Uh, from there, there was this evolution of approaching training more efficiently, starting to do less, but a high focus on intensity. So during this period of time, I completed over 10 marathons, three Iron Man triathlons, uh, qualified for two Boston marathons. And it was a big analgamation, is that how you say it? That's one of your terms, of transition from volume, volume, volume to more technique, more intensity, and starting to learn how I could be intentional with training, but also like the community feel that a CrossFit gym gives to folks, very similar to our group classes here. That's where I met all my friends. That's where I had social interactions as well. So it was kind of all coming together at that time.
SPEAKER_04I love it. And it sounds like your wellness coach certification that you obtained early on in your career really helped to shape this.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, it helped to not focus so much just on what we were doing, but more about how to talk to people and how to go about change.
SPEAKER_04Love that. And what did the did this particular era teach you about performance and capability?
SPEAKER_08The main thing was the power of intentional training. I had started off endurance training, doing the classic high mileage, and then I quickly learned that you can do less but better. Second of this, confidence very much developed for me personally during this period of time because I was doing a lot of hard things. Running 50 miles is not an easy task. And so when you go through experiences like this, I think it helps me be more confident in myself, my ability to endure and be capable in in all areas of my life and just confident in who I am. And then uh the the we touched on a little bit community as a performance multiplier. This was the first time that I trained hard with strength training with other people, where typically in a traditional gym setting, you'd go in, people have their earbuds on, you're doing your own workout in that traditional gym, whether it was Excel for some of us or Gold's gym for others. This was the first time where it was like doing hard things with other people and they're having those experiences in a group setting. So it was really powerful to see the connection that people were having. And and all my friends during this period of time, they were either at CrossFit or they were at work.
SPEAKER_04That's awesome. That's really, really cool.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And what, you know, at what point did you realize that intensity alone wasn't a sustainable definition of wellness?
Confidence, Community, And Overdoing Intensity
SPEAKER_08Yeah, because that very much emulates this period of my life. Intensity, intensity, intensity. Not only was I doing endurance training, but I was layering on the CrossFit. So I was, I was doing a lot. And where I learned that intensity could not be the long-term route of the essence of my entire training was when I was running a bridge run on Hilton Head, and I remember the last mile I feel my foot completely transfer into this excruciating pain. And so I had stress fractured my foot in the middle of this race. And I remember the weekend before I had done a half marathon, and I probably did CrossFit five to six days that week. And it was this sign where I was like, wow, you know, when you're pushing yourself at high intensity and you're doing too much of it, it's gonna have diminishing returns despite the high effort that you're putting in. I I definitely during this period in my life learned the difference between being fit and being resilient. Um, being fit takes a lot of restraint. We have to acknowledge the recovery component. That's very much where we are today. And recovery being more of a non-negotiable, we though we've say this a lot on the podcast. You you don't get better through the actual training, you get better through the rest and recovery measures and the fueling that you put around the training. And then uh finally, I I realized that you know, constant intensity narrows life instead of expanding it. And what I mean by that is I was just racing all the time. That was my my life, my world. And uh, you know, shifting at the tail end of this time period, this is when I got married, shifted up to North Carolina, and my mindset was very different moving forward because my last Ironman triathlon was in 2015. So it was a while ago, and that's where I started to kind of back off the intensity and back off uh this amount of training.
SPEAKER_04Interesting.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, like get married, things change.
SPEAKER_04Things change, things change, priority changes, time where it's going changes. So what it does, it sounds like this wellness era became a lot about your learning more about your identity, and I like that sense of community that you learned through this era as well.
SPEAKER_08We're gonna take another brief break to hear a couple more of our favorites.
SPEAKER_00For me personally, it is very intertwined with happiness. I think we can be doing all of the things that look like wellness. We can go to Pilates, we can have our special diets, we can consume all the protein on planet Earth. But if you are unhappy and stressed inside, then it doesn't really have that effect that we're looking for. It's kind of like we discussed with skincare and stress. So I think wellness is finding peace and happiness and working from a place of purpose.
Injury And The Limits Of Constant Intensity
SPEAKER_05So wellness to me, one word is wholeness. To me, wellness is consciously inviting all aspects of myself online. Wellness feels like I am in contact and embodying my mental world, my physical world, my emotional world, my spiritual world, and honoring them all as fully as possible.
SPEAKER_08And at this time, we will hop back in to finish our 100th episode.
Reflections On Priorities And Change
SPEAKER_04So let's go ahead and transition to this third and we'll say final era. Final era, because that's where we are right now. This is where we landed. This is where we are, and things look very different for you. Um what specifically shifted for you in this era so far? And how did that how did it influence the way you started to build wellness programs, not only you know, here at Palmetto Bluff specifically?
More Perspectives On Wellness And Wholeness
SPEAKER_08Yeah, yeah. I mean, this was an era marked by starting another wellness program up in North Carolina called Sky Terror Wellness. And I I will call call this the longevity and capacity integration era because I learned that and and started to approach things to train for the life you want to keep living versus the the outcomes that you might be after. So I had the opportunity to be a part of a startup team. We would prior, you know, a year right before I got married and moved up to North Carolina, we would drive up to Asheville for these secret meetings in the uh in Biltmore Park. We'd all come together in the hotel uh like conference space, and we'd be there for a couple days just starting to build how we wanted this program to look. And so SkyTear Wellness still exists today. We began it from scratch. It became a profitable company, and and more important than that, it became a business, a resort that makes a difference in people's lives. And um, one of the coolest approaches that I remember us integrating really quickly was this class called Connect. We called it Connect, and it happens, I assume, still to this day, but it was very much focused on starting your day with mobility, breath work, uh, you know, centering for 25 minutes. And it would happen right after breakfast every single morning. And so this was an error for me of slowing down, focusing on the things that can be part of a holistic program versus just driving the caloric burn, driving the intensity side of things that came from the previous era, but taking the good of what we we knew about high-intensity interval training and applying in a way where people could create routines to train for the life that they want. And um, mobility, breath work, that was a big focus, intentional movement. So not only doing functional movement, that that's what I give props to CrossFit. CrossFit got people moving better, moving in positive ways with full range of motion. But this is the same philosophy that we've carried through into our program here. And I think we're still working on the slowing down component, you know, the mindfulness piece of this. Um, but my time at SkyTearra very much guides how I like to approach things here, uh, not just from a schedule perspective with what we decide on, but more so from a holistic nature of being educated on why we're doing what we're doing and knowing what's the right effective dose for us. So during this time period, it's been a bit more about less hit, high intensity near role training, but intelligent hit. And I'm so excited, Kendra, because have you heard we're gonna be opening up a new wellness facility soon?
SPEAKER_04You know, I have heard it.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, it's coming. And we're gonna have an office.
SPEAKER_04It's gonna be great.
SPEAKER_08We might move the podcast room over there. Um, but yeah, I it leads me to uh kind of preluding to member listeners that we're gonna have a class called PB Cardio. We're gonna have a class called PB Mixed, and then there that PB strong class, which you know and love, is gonna divert into more intentional strength training. And so it's fun to watch kind of and and to reflect on where I've been, where our program's been, and where we're taking it. One of the biggest things, you know, in the last three or four years for me has just been the focus on six foundational movements, Dr. John uh Ruson's work and you know, approaching training from the perspective of what are the movements that get us bulletproof for life. Um, I think one thing that's kind of gone from error two for me into error three is this connection, this rope tie of community and how important it is that we come together and we have opportunities to train in the capacities that are gonna get us living life on our terms.
SPEAKER_04I love that. And, you know, it's interesting hearing your errors and you walking us through the evolution for yourself. How is the way you define wellness now different from earlier in your career in that first era of, you know, just hitting it hard, counting your or writing down your foods, all the those details. How would you say your definition has changed?
Era Three: Longevity And Capacity Integration
SPEAKER_08Well, I still believe in having a six-pack. It's very important to me. Um, I do the aesthetic is still important. I'm not gonna lie about that. I enjoy having a six-pack. So for the record, I I want to say it has shifted from appearance, but I I want to be completely honest and vulnerable on the podcast that appearance is still in there, but performance and capacity and longevity is definitely more of my focus now. Uh, we we've I've I've made this joke before, folks see my home gym. Uh, in uh I live in a poulty community, houses are very close together, and my neighbors think I'm training for the Olympics with the setup I have, but nowadays and and how we how we go about putting the classes we do on our schedule here is is about longevity. It's about the capacity to be able to live life to your fullest because we don't know how long we have. We could get hit with a diagnosis, there could be a catastrophic accident that happens to each of us tomorrow. And we have to always approach life knowing that we may not have a breath tomorrow. And that's so important to me that folks don't overdo their fitness. I mean, I can be guilty of this be because of that search for appearance, the search for achievement. And and now I'm in this place of wellness being more intentional, it being an integrated practice, mobility, breath work, recovery are just as important as cardio and strength. And um, creating training programs that support life, not identity or ego. Uh, first two areas of my life, there's a ton of identity, a ton of ego getting in the way. And and and identity. My identity has been wrapped up in my work since I I began wellness. And I I think that's what makes me good at what I do because it is so connected to me as a person, but also um it is my career. Um but leaving ego at the door is a big thing for the for me these days. Um, it's it's hard to do uh for for all of us, and it's hard to do in in fitness when when you know like what your body is capable of. But that's that's what's important to me now. Helping people create sustainable, lifelong habits. And same goes for my own training. I want how I train today to support my long-term health.
SPEAKER_04And I'm curious, just one final question on this era. How do you believe, or I guess I should phrase it as why has longevity and sustainability become such a huge anchor on your approach? Like what's what has um, I guess, influenced this specifically?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I mean, I've seen firsthand the impact of overtraining and burnout on myself and on others. I think there are people we work with who who still struggle with with overdoing it. Um I've also anchored my approach in this way because long-term movement patterns are more valuable than short-term results. If we can get our found, why do we have a class called foundational strength? Because these are the long-term movements that when we get good at them, allow us to live that best life 10, 20, 30 years from now versus just short-term results of building a couple pounds of muscle so that my in-body looks better. Uh, also building community and programs that last instead of quick transformations. You know, I think the coolest part about being here at Palmetto Bluff, we have the same people coming back day after day. And so there's this community around um being focused on uh sustaining our routines. And uh I I want to continue to teach wellness so that people know that they can adapt as they get older. And just like these errors for me have evolved, your your life is gonna evolve as well.
SPEAKER_04Wow, Jeff, we're getting close to the end of our time here. And this has been a lot of fun running through these eras with you. And I must say, you are as intricate and complex as you said you were earlier in this episode. You know, going from the ab belt and you writing down what you're eating every day to almost being on a TV show in the second era, doing the Iron Man's triathlons, and then now in this current era of training for basically your health span and longevity. Um curious, given now that we know your journey and we know more about you, what does wellness mean to you today?
SPEAKER_08Wellness is not just physical. It's mental, it's emotional, it's our capacity to fully live for not just today, but for the decades to come. And wellness is about having intention behind everything we do, whether that's our relationships, our finances, the fun that we put into our life, our faith. We have to have intention behind the actions and the time that we spend every day. And so wellness is all about having that plan, moving with intention, training patterns, not just bits and pieces or parts of your body, recovering without guilt and then living with this understanding that your definition of wellness will always evolve, just like mine has. Be open to change and embrace it.
