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Lifestyle Strength
We discuss ideas, principles, and tactics that help people improve their position in life. With a background in fitness, Lucas strives to empower others by sharing amazing stories of challenge, transformation, and growth.
Lifestyle Strength
Zach Johannsen finds Clarity through Fitness (Part 1)
Zach Johanson shares his incredible journey of overcoming trauma and addiction through fitness, highlighting the mental health benefits and life-changing impact of exercise. The episode emphasizes the importance of viewing exercise as essential to overall wellness, advocating for consistency and a holistic approach to a healthy lifestyle.
• Zach's journey from addiction to stability through fitness
• Mental health benefits of exercise and its parallels with SSRIs
• Viewing fitness as medicine for mental well-being
• Client transformations and the significance of consistency
• The return on investment of physical wellness in life and finances
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Welcome to Lifestyle Strength, your guide to mastering health and well-being in the real world.
Speaker 2:I'm Ariel, a massage therapist with over a decade of experience in holistic health, and I'm here with Lucas, a seasoned fitness coach, who's transformed the lives of hundreds in Northwest Arkansas.
Speaker 1:We're here to share real stories and expert insights about embracing a healthy lifestyle while balancing the everyday hustle.
Speaker 2:Join us as we explore practical ways to achieve wellness and thrive amidst life's challenges.
Speaker 1:Let's dive in. Hey everybody, thanks for joining us Today. We're joined by Zach Johanson. Zach's an ACSM certified personal trainer, ace weight management specialist, level one CrossFit coach and IWA health coach Since 2015,. Zach has used a holistic approach to burning muscle and building muscle and burning fat. He coaches his clients using exercise, nutrition and lifestyle to achieve lasting results. You can read more about Zach and use testimonials on his website, muscle and veggiescom. I've personally known Zach for a couple of years now Well, we'd like three years. It was about how long Cause he came back to Ozark yeah, after the accident. Yeah, and that's right when I went to Ozark. So we are competitors, but also friends and trainers alike, so I've got to know Zach pretty well. Over the last few years, zach's got a pretty interesting story, so I'm going to let him kind of just take it from here and talk about. You know how he got into fitness? Um, how long ago, I guess, was man 2012.
Speaker 3:So over a decade now. Yeah, going over, going, almost going on 15 years. So, yeah, I um have an interesting story Came into health and fitness on a long journey of both pain and suffering and drug addiction and a little sprinkled in there, the penitentiary and drug rehabs, you name it. But make a long story short. Early in my life I went through some trauma. My mom died of cancer when I was 12. My dad drank himself to death in the subsequent five years. So by the time I was 18, I was on my own and really that's when a large part of my problems started with drug addiction. A large part of my problems started with drug addiction, alcohol, things of that nature, and it just led me down a rough road. I had an extremely big chip on my shoulder against authority and just life in general, yeah, just kind of making bad decisions, yeah.
Speaker 3:So how I found fitness, though actually in the penitentiary for the third time, so I was in and out for most of my 20s um started lifting weights again, always lifted weights in high school and played football and got back into it and man, it was like. It was like the clouds cleared and I had an outlet that I can channel this frustration and this energy into. And then I wanted to learn more about it, because I saw my body respond, I saw my mental health improve, I saw all these things happen and I just dove headstrong into learning all about this, and strength training was just one aspect of it. At the same time, I started learning more and more about nutrition, um, and just lifestyle practices in general. And man, just like layers of an onion, uh, my life just really started improving and I had an outlet, uh, that I could channel this energy into and, um, you know, eventually that led me to being like man. Why don't I just make this my job, you know?
Speaker 1:what were you doing during, like when you get started like career wise?
Speaker 3:Oh, I've always been in and out of construction as a felon. It's like the one job you can pretty much always get is doing some sort of construction like the one job you can pretty much always get right is doing some sort of construction. Um, and I was so tired after working construction that when I would get to the gym it was like my workouts just weren't the same that was beat up.
Speaker 1:So you still had the desire to like, want to go to the gym, like. Obviously you still develop a passion for it.
Speaker 3:But well, and I knew it was so crucial to my mental health and dealing with, um, the, the mental stuff that I had always dealt with, right, right, um, and so I knew I had to keep it going and so I was like, okay, how do I make this my office? And I'm kind of one of those people that when I put my mind to something, nobody's gonna stop me, and I'm also like an all in kind of guy, which is what got me in a lot of trouble too Right.
Speaker 3:It can be a plus and a minus, but shifting, shifting that focus and shifting that, that ambition and that desire. And you know, something that someone told me years ago stuck with me it's like if you took all the energy that you put into drugs and alcohol and selling drugs and all the stuff you were into, if you put half as much energy as you put into that into doing the right things in business and finance and and your passions and desires, you would be extremely successful. And, uh, that was exactly what happened to me. I'm not that I'm extremely successful or anything, but I am in the sense that my life is totally different and I'm stable, functioning, you know human being, like taxpaying citizen, law abiding yeah, I'm married, I have a baby on the way.
Speaker 3:I mean, my life is just totally, totally different.
Speaker 1:All because you, you know and I think you said something that I find interesting because most people start fitness out of a desire to just lose a little bit of weight or, you know, sometimes you get the occasion like I just don't want to feel better, I want to be out of pain. Not that they're not valid reasons for starting, but yours is like you discovered a way for like mental health, like that was the prime desire as to why you continue doing it, and then, like, seeing your body respond was just a result of what you were doing. Just is, I think, inverted from how most people experience fitness.
Speaker 3:And it's actually one of the first things that I coach clients in today is I often will tell them you know, look, in the first two to four weeks of this, you're probably not going to see a whole lot of body composition changes. That's great if you do, but the one thing I want you to focus on is how much your mental health improves. You feel better in your own skin, more energy and vitality, less depression, less anxiety, your sleep improves. All these things tend to happen in that first two to four weeks of working out, and that's what I try to get people to say man, I'm hooked on this. The aesthetics will come with consistency down the road, but man, I can't say it enough, and the clinical research has validated this. If you look at head-to-head studies against SSRI drugs and strength training, head-to-head studies against SSRI drugs and strength, training, they literally perform the exact same outcomes.
Speaker 1:Ssri has been like the standard antidepressant drugs that most people are prescribed. Yeah, absolutely I, you know I'm. I take a similar approach with my clients where it's all about like the mental upfront how do we, how do we win up here so that we can affect what's out around here? Yeah, and that you know, I think that goes a long way to getting somebody to not focus on the number and not focus on the mirror and not just the obsession with it yeah, Right, Rather than how you're feeling in all aspects that are out.
Speaker 3:Well then it also turns into like I got to take my medication Right, and that's what the gym is for me. Yeah, I was on a 10-day trip in Maui one of the most beautiful places in the world and at the time I was doing, you know, I was doing triathlon, I was doing CrossFit, I was really over training and, um, I told my wife I said this whole 10 days I'm gonna take the whole trip off. I'm not gonna work out. Well, by day five my wife looks at me and she's like you need to go find a gym so she needs you to get straight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was.
Speaker 3:I was irritable like the clouds set in here. I am in this beautiful place on a beautiful vacation and I still realize the importance of some sort of physical routine. Yeah, instead of just laying around doing nothing and that's, and that's just from a mental health standpoint, like if, if you can do that on your, on your vacation and it doesn't bother you, great, do it de-stress. But for it doesn't bother you, great, do it De-stress. But for someone like me, I have to take my medicine Right.
Speaker 1:I think part of that, part of that's probably personality.
Speaker 3:It's like leaning into stress, like you know, but it's something that's become so ingrained, just like you said, taking your medicine is a part of your routine, that that that feels normal, that's how you, that's how you operate on a daily basis and feel good and, personalities aside, it's pharmacological right.
Speaker 1:you know those endorphins and yeah, those endorphins and those feel-good neurotransmitters that we get from working out, evidently my mind needs that I had discovered the same thing that you talked about with um when my wife and I went on our honeymoon and you know I had not been on vacation in a decade, I'd just been in school and then worked and never taken time off and exercise, movement, playing, ultimate. It's all just normal. So I was like I'm gonna, I'm not gonna work, I'm not gonna bring workout clothes with me and I'm gonna just relax the whole week. I made it like three days, yeah, three days, and I was like I'm not going to work, I'm not going to bring workout clothes with me and I'm going to just relax the whole week. I made it like three days.
Speaker 1:Yeah three days and I was like I'm wearing my swim trunks to the gym. I got to get a pump. I got to do something. It doesn't have to be crazy, but I got to feel myself because I'm just going to get sad otherwise. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Or restless even. It's not even like sometimes, it's not even sad, it's just restless or irritable, um, whatever it is that. You know, if I can get my clients to kind of focus in on um, realizing that they need to take their medicine and this isn't just a I'm trying to lose weight and get you know stronger or more muscle or whatever, not that those things aren't important as a goal or a motivation, but if, but, if I can get them to buy into I gotta take my medicine, then they're way more likely to stick to a constant routine. And then, of course, it's that consistency over the long term that really pays off the aesthetic benefits and the muscle mass benefits and things like that.
Speaker 1:Has there been any like aha moments that you've seen with clients, Like you said something specific that kind of got them to click, or they did something that they experienced in the workout or in their daily life, where they're like you know what, I get it now, Like I know, Because for me and you, I think it's especially since it's been so long and we're in it we obviously have a passion for it, it, you know it, it seems to come natural. It's like how could you not experience this? Yeah, but you know you, you know as well as I do that not everybody loves it. You know, some people show up and they tolerate it cause they have to, and I used to think that I could get everybody to love it in one aspect or another, but I'm not naive anymore. I've coached enough people to know that some people are never going to love it. So have you seen a theme or like that aha moment where you, you, you've done something, you said something, they experienced something that was like oh, I get it now.
Speaker 3:I'll give you my favorite one that I always look for, and that's around that three or four week mark. Most of the time people have they've done a certain level of nutrition and supplements and workouts and things like that, right and lo and behold, it's usually on a monday. People come in over the weekend and I'm like what's up, man, you know, and it's like come in, they look dejected, they look tired and and they're like man. I ate really bad this weekend or I drank way too much this weekend, whatever it is. But they had been feeling so good for three or four weeks and that deviation proved to them the physical aspect of how much their body said I don't like this, I don't like pizza and beer all of a sudden, Whereas before you may not have noticed it because it was something you did all the time, but I'm just giving an example.
Speaker 3:It's like they came in and had something that they used to do three or four weeks ago that never bothered them and now they're like man. I feel the difference from this and that's always. I always think it's so fun personally, because you can see the light bulb in their head where they're like man. I was feeling really good and I kind of took that for granted and went over here. And not that that's a bad thing, we all do that and I actually coach and preach my own podcast. I tell people man, enjoy the weekend. Right, you may pay for it a little bit, but you know, that's why we own our monday through friday right, right, I think that's a good one.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know, it takes an element of experiencing something and then going, you know, without it, to know what it actually does to you. It's like anyone that's given up fast food yeah, for any amount of time that one hits hard. Yeah, because then you have it and it seems like such a good decision at the time. And then, as soon as you're done eating, it's like immediate regret because your stomach hurts, you sitting on the toilet and that doesn't feel good either, and then, even like when you're really in touch with your body, like your sleep gets disrupted and everything doesn't feel good. But I think a lot of people are just like wearing blinders you don't know what you don't know. You haven't experienced life without it.
Speaker 3:Well, the body is such an amazing adaptive creature that it will get you used to eating that kind of stuff and you don't realize that you're only running at 70% capacity of what you could be running at. So you know, it's like having a Tesla out here that um just doesn't get up and go, like a Tesla should cause it's only running at 70% capacity. Well, as soon as you clean everything up and kind of take the bog off the system, then you realize how fast this car really is and how good this car feels to drive. And that's how the human body is Um, just removing that burden from whatever, whatever toxic environment, toxic food, um, and just giving the body what it needs nutritionally.
Speaker 1:It's funny because if you I think for 100% of people if you said hey, here's a pill that uh will make you operate at 20 to 30% better than where you're at now, I think everybody would take it. No negative side effects, you just have to. You gotta be willing to sweat for an hour, but you'll get a 30% boost. Everybody would take it. That's exercise.
Speaker 3:I was literally just saying this on my podcast a couple weeks ago. If you could take all the benefits of strength training let's just take that one thing and you were to combine it into a pill, all the benefits, the mental health benefits, the metabolism benefits, the hormonal benefits, the bone density, you could just go on and on right. You could take all those benefits, put it into a pill. It would be the best-selling, most profitable drug ever produced by the pharmaceutical industry in history and everyone would take it. You know and that and we can take it for free in our backyard, right.
Speaker 1:You don't even need anything.
Speaker 3:Do pushups and sit ups and go run, or with a cheap $40 investment at the gym and then just that investment in time or whatever.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. Yeah, I love that word investment for exercise. Because if you can relate back those benefits of what you get in performance, in energy, in recovery, just by taking an hour a day, even if it's only three or four days a week, how much more money can you make in your life because you can work longer or you make better decisions? Those are all kinds of ways to tie back to why doing it is beneficial, not just for your mental or physical health but like for your, for your finances, your family, like you, become a better person overall for it yeah, the roi is huge.
Speaker 3:I mean the return on investment for the time that you're putting in for physically, uh, training your body and then feeding and nourishing your body. Man, I can't say it enough. I mean, it's literally the difference of who do I want to be in five years or 10 years, because the decisions that I make today dictate the way my body is going to be made in five or 10 years and the way it functions in five or 10 years. So, for those who are listening to this, who doesn't matter if you're 30 or you're 60 or whatever age you're at like, think about in terms of ROI, or return on investment, and what you're investing into your health right now. Look at it in terms of who. Where do I want to be in five years? Where do I want to be in 10 years?
Speaker 1:I think that's the hardest part for people to wrap their heads around, because we want it now. Yes, we want it right now, but even not taking that broad scope, like you said, at three or four weeks somebody goes and just spends a weekend doing relaxing or something that's off off the plan, and then they feel it, yeah, and they kind of wake up to that like, okay, well, this is what's going on. This is why that investment is worth it.
Speaker 3:yeah, it does actually make me feel better well, and not to mention the financial part of it. Um, you are more productive, you have more energy to do more, but then, on top of that, I mean, you talk about the united states being the the highest health care costs in the world, but we're also the most technologically advanced and have the best medicine in the world. So tell me, how does that add up? You know, and does the? The thing is is what you're investing in also saves you ton of money, because you're not going to the doctor all the time, right, and you're not having to spend all this money on pharmaceutical drugs, conventional medicine doctors, this, that and the other, plus the time, yeah, where you have to go.
Speaker 1:Spend the time now yeah, doing that, whereas you could have been working or spending time with your kids or whatnot. Who knows, the last thing I want to do is spend my time in the hospital. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. We want to invite you back next week as we continue the conversation, and be sure to follow us on social media to get all of our content and clips and anything you might've missed. Again, thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.
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