Episode 14: Adversity Sucks- How to Deal With It Without Quitting

In this episode of The FitBod Blueprint, Phil and Tyler talk candidly about what to do when life throws you curveballs—and how to stay on track with your goals anyway. Whether it’s injury, family chaos, burnout, or plain old bad luck, adversity is part of the journey. 

Tyler shares a recent string of setbacks with his own training, and Phil dives into the difference between default responses (like quitting or ghosting your coach) and productive ones (like adapting and communicating). They break down practical tools to keep moving forward when things go sideways, plus the mindset shift that separates those who reach their goals from those who don’t. 

If you’ve ever said “now’s just not a good time,” this one’s for you.

Transcript

Phil Pirtle (00:01)
Hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the FitBot Blueprint. Phil and Tyler coming at you once again. How are doing today,

Tyler (00:11)
doing pretty good, how about yourself?

Phil Pirtle (00:14)
Can't complain and if I could, who the hell wants to hear it? I know, I know, that's all. You know, I heard that line from a, it was one of the delivery drivers at my dad's business. I heard that line one time whenever I was like 15 and it just stuck with me ever since. So it's like, can't complain and if I could, who wants to hear it?

Tyler (00:18)
I mean, I would listen to you.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that's, you

know, in a sense it is a good life lesson.

Phil Pirtle (00:42)
So Nutman, what's been new with you this week?

Tyler (00:45)
Um, let's see, not a whole lot, man. You know, just loving life, living life, we're continually getting ready for baby number two. We are like 18, 17 weeks out from the due date. So, you know, just kind of starting to kind of get things, things ready, see what clothes we have, figuring out the bedroom situation, know, Quinn and the baby will eventually share a room.

And so, yeah, it's crazy. It's going fast the second time around. For people who have kids, the first time felt like it took forever to get there. And I mean, granted, it was also COVID. So we were stuck at home the whole time.

So I'm sure that's part of it. We're in a normal pace of life now and so that just automatically makes life go a little bit quicker But yeah, we're it's pretty crazy that we're gonna be there pretty soon W

Phil Pirtle (01:44)
Yeah, well, you know,

I realize I've not even asked you this just like whenever we've chatted. So are y'all, do you already know the gender? you going to leave it a surprise?

Tyler (01:57)
Yep, we did that with

Quinn. And so we're doing that the second time around as well. yeah, it's kind of a cool surprise at the end.

Phil Pirtle (02:09)
Oh for sure man, that's awesome. know exactly what you mean with Jessie. Ellie was a super long pregnancy. Nikki was also, she had morning sickness so bad that I actually had to take her to my uncle's house because my uncle's a medic and he had to give her an IV in his living room just because she couldn't keep even water down. It was like days of it. It's like okay, she's pregnant and

you know, at the time, independent contractor, no health insurance. So it's like, I'm not going to pay, you know, $2,000 for a bag of saline at ER. So that was.

Tyler (02:48)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're like the mom

going to a vet, like using the secret backdoor doctors just for the saline.

Phil Pirtle (02:57)
I, hey, I'll

put my nursing school training to test any day of the week. In fact, I did an IV on Ellie, allegedly, for CPS, allegedly. But no, like that pregnancy, the first one, like you said, the time seemed like it just drags on and Ellie was five weeks premature, like five and a half weeks preemie. So Jesse then comes along.

Tyler (03:05)
Allegedly, Erroneous on all counts.

okay.

Phil Pirtle (03:27)
and it was like blink. But then also because he was born at the beginning of March. Literally, we walked into the hospital without masks on and by the time we walked out, like that was the day that they started enforcing a mask policy. So it's like, wow, two days later, you know. But yeah, the second one goes so much faster. I call me Pony Boy because I am golden right now. Outsiders reference for those who don't get it.

Tyler (03:40)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

Phil Pirtle (03:57)
No man, life is going well. My Bucks are... They've resigned a lot of free agents that I wanted them to resign. Eagles are doing a decent job for a defending Super Bowl champ at retaining some people. Bucks happened to sneak a guy from them, so that's cool. And then the Titans are trying to be the Cleveland Browns in terms of garbage. So... At least...

Tyler (04:07)
Nice.

Well, hopefully, yeah, hopefully it doesn't last as long as the Cleveland Browns have. Big garbage. Yeah.

Phil Pirtle (04:26)
At least my NFC teams are doing well.

Yo, gosh, gosh,

it's perpetual. And I know there's Browns fans that are listening that the initial reaction is, I want to be mad, but then the second response is, they're not wrong.

Tyler (04:37)
Yeah.

Right? What are you gonna do?

Phil Pirtle (04:47)
I'm just saying Baltimore Ravens have two Super Bowls that should have been yours.

Tyler (04:51)
Yep, yep, exactly.

Phil Pirtle (04:53)
I break my heart. Anyways, before

this turns into a full on football free agency podcast and hockey playoffs starting to shape up. So today we're going to be talking about adversity. Adversity is going to come up with any goal, whether it's your health, your finances, whether it's I'm going to take a class or I'm going to do this or I'm going to start painting or I'm going learn a new skill like

Tyler (05:01)
stock.

Yep.

Phil Pirtle (05:22)
you're going to face challenges. And what we want to talk about today is how to keep moving whenever life hits hard. So Tyler, I know recently with your, you know, with your training, you've experienced a little bit of adversity yourself. Care to open up?

Tyler (05:38)
Yeah.

Yeah. and I mean, that was kind of the impetus for, today's topic of, of that. And I think, you know, it's important to, I think, pull from our own experiences, you know, especially on a fitness podcast. I mean, that's kind of the main goal for a lot of people who

are listening and so I think yeah sharing that experience and kind of how we're dealing with things from a fitness perspective is important and so

you know, had a big new goal, you know, getting back into some power lifting and you know, whenever we have this new goal, we're super excited, right? Like motivation is high, we're ready to go. So for, you know, those who might be listening, maybe it's, you know, you finally decided to hire that coach or, you know, start that fat loss phase or, you know, gonna commit to X and you know, of course, you know, kind of Murphy's law, like you start something new.

It always seems like within those first couple of weeks something comes up and you know for myself all of sudden it was like three injuries kind of all at once. You know I started developing some tendonitis in an elbow which you know if you've ever had not fun and then if you have had it and you lift

your elbows are kind of important, right? You use them quite a bit in your lifting, right? And so there was that, and then, you know, there was a back thing, and then, you know, this last weekend, my low back overnight just seized up, could barely walk on Sunday, basically. And it's so tough, right? When you're kind of like ready to go, you get going, these things pop up.

Phil Pirtle (07:02)
a little.

Tyler (07:27)
and you kind of just go, well, what's the point? Or you want to stop working with the coach. I'm sure you've heard this plenty of times, whether they hire you or you've talked to them and it's just, it's not quite the right time. I'm too busy or I've got this going on or I've got that going on. And as I was just kind of working through some of these injuries and dealing with just the...

maybe I should stop or maybe I shouldn't pursue this goal. It was no like this was something that I set out to do. These things are going to happen. you know, something like an injury, use it as a learning experience. You know, I've always found that

when I've tweaked something in the gym, was probably, wasn't paying super close attention to my recovery, my form on some compound movements. it can almost, not as extensive as a big wake up call, but it can maybe bring some things back to the forefront of, okay, like I maybe need to focus on a few other things because this happened. And so no matter what it is,

whenever adversity does come, I think it's important to know like, it's always gonna be there. No matter you start now or you start six weeks from now. Like there really is never a perfect time to start. And I've said this before and I think it's just so important. It's like, life doesn't care if you wanna look a little bit better. Life doesn't care if you wanna eat a little bit healthier.

There's always gonna be something there. You might get weeks where, hey, things are going smooth, you're just rolling, but inevitably, things are gonna come up that you are gonna have to just learn how to navigate. And so I know for us as coaches, we also really focus on the full lifestyle aspect of we're doing this for life.

and we're gonna have those bumps in the road and then it's learning to be flexible with that adversity and to push through because maybe you have to just kind of plateau for a little bit as you work through whatever that might be, but you are also gonna then get back to a point where things slow down, things are a little bit more calm and a way you can go again. And so yeah, it's important, you know, just to have that mentality of

kind of the expectation in a sense, like not that you are always worried and stressed something bad is gonna happen, but just to expect, yeah, I might get dinged up at a certain point. Life is gonna get super busy at some point and knowing that, when this does happen, I'm gonna be flexible, I'm going to navigate that, adjust expectations, adjust my schedule, whatever that might look like and so.

we're always kind of making that progress forward. It just kind of looks different at times.

Phil Pirtle (10:42)
Yeah, people use, people will often look for a reason to jump off. And again, that's, that's something that we put into our own life is that this is a lifestyle. This is absolutely something that, you know, it's going to promote longevity. It's going to promote higher quality of life. Look, you're going to have some type of an injury at some point.

Tyler (11:11)
Yeah, you can't eliminate that.

Phil Pirtle (11:11)
That's just everyday

life like even as dad's I can't tell you how many times I've gone to pick up one of my kids and it's like, Hold on a second that lower back. I'm not in quite the right positioning and if I go through Yep, right or just you know, you wake up one day and it's like crap my back really is not happy with me today you're going to have that or you know, it was you know

Tyler (11:21)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not playing horsey tonight. Yeah.

Phil Pirtle (11:40)
It was sometime over the summer that I was walking down the stairs here and our dog Sadie that she's a Boston Terrier mixed with something else because she's roly-poly-oly. As I'm walking down the stairs she's walking down behind me and I didn't expect that she would go between my legs. I ended up taking a bit of a false step, tweaked my hip, royally sucked.

But it doesn't mean, okay, well, just because I can't lift for a week or two doesn't mean that I'm gonna just completely go crazy with the way that I eat. Doesn't mean that I'm going to not at least try to get in some movement. I'm not going to suddenly become glued to the couch watching Netflix all day long. But you have to always look at like, hey, there's gonna be things that pop up. There's never gonna be a perfect time and guess what?

life typically doesn't get busier. Like if I if I think back to probably my most serious injury was probably my most serious injury was whenever I was training for my last MMA fight and in sparring my knee completely went out on me. I tore my meniscus for at least the second time bad enough that they removed it.

and somehow or another the MRI missed that my ACL was torn and thanks to the American healthcare system because there wasn't prior authorization they couldn't go in and reattach my ACL.

Tyler (13:21)
man.

Phil Pirtle (13:23)
So you know what I had to do? Not quit. I ended up rehabbing my knee. I do not have a meniscus. I rehabbed the torn ACL using physical therapy, using movement, fueling my body. I could have at 19 years old, 20 years old, can't remember exactly, but I could have at that point been like, screw it, I'm never lifting again. That would have been a miserable life for me.

Tyler (13:25)
Would you? Yeah.

Phil Pirtle (13:52)
because if I think about one of the most important cups for me to fill, it is that I exercise and it's because I enjoy it. So everyone's gonna go through something, but what matters is how you respond. So whether it's physical, like an injury or an illness, or emotional, like grief or burnout or depression, or if it's something environmental, work, family, time constraints, like...

Tyler (14:00)
Yeah. Yeah.

Phil Pirtle (14:21)
you're going to go through something, but how are you going to respond to it? So the default response versus the productive response. The default is to quit, to retreat, to stop showing up, to start ghosting your coach. That's the default. And to be honest, the default sucks. It's low level and it's something that everyone should be above.

I know it's really easy to listen to us and go, a couple of meatheads, the don't quit mentality, but that's the same way I show up in every other aspect of my life. I don't quit being a father whenever I'm tired. I don't quit playing with my children. I don't quit taking the time to listen to my wife, hear about her day, even if I had a really, really rough day. I'm very blossomed that I don't have very many of those, but still.

Tyler (15:11)
Yeah.

Phil Pirtle (15:17)
you have those days. You know, but what's productive is to adapt, to communicate, to redefine what the current goal is. You're not giving up. You're just saying this timeline needs to be adjusted. The best athletes, parents, entrepreneurs, it's not that they don't have fewer problems. It's just that they fight longer.

Tyler (15:40)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. it's, you know, it's not to say don't have grace for yourself. There's been plenty of times where I would just take, you know, I've just taken a week off from the gym. It was just, it was what I needed. But because of that long-term view of, you know, I'm not going to quit. This is just one week in the long run.

that's gonna be better off for me. It's one of the, similar to you're talking with someone about a diet, right? And still getting the questions of, well, can I eat this? Can I have a treat? And I'll always tell them, I'm like.

If an Oreo a night or two Oreos a night and it fits within your macros allows you to stay more consistent over the long run, then that's going to be better off for us. so it's not, yeah, sorry. Hello cat cat in my lap here. yeah, this is Isabel.

Phil Pirtle (16:40)
Cat in the wall? Now you're speaking my language.

Tyler (16:47)
It's again that consistency that we always like to talk about. If we don't want these super highs and super lows, we want that steady eddy. even when it comes to injuries, I think that's just like the biggest one where people, just find like they'll just, they'll stop. And it's like, you can train around this.

there's so many other things that we can do. I have a thousand answers to that problem. There's so many things we can try. We can work around it. And you kind of mentioned something about getting older and you're gonna have aches and pains and you're gonna get injured. And I don't remember the exact saying, but it was something along the lines of like, would you rather...

if you're gonna be sore no matter what, wouldn't you rather be strong and be lifting and be healthy? Because it's gonna happen anyways. Or would you rather be overweight, barely able to get off the couch and be sore? You know what I mean? And so, again, just dealing with those adversities, no matter when they come, whether it's two weeks into your goal, six weeks, eight weeks, six months, that mentality doesn't change.

If you're able to get through those tougher times, it's gonna make those times when you are feeling good, kinda that much better. Because you're like, well, I can do it when it's a little bit harder, but now it's easy, and that's where you can continue to just really cement those habits and that lifestyle.

Phil Pirtle (18:22)
and I'll even wager this, communicating that through the tough weeks or even just admitting you're having a tough week, like that's more important than the good weeks because anyone can execute a plan whenever nothing goes wrong. But whenever everything starts going haywire, those that still show up, those that take the time to communicate like, man, I am just going through the wringer right now like,

My client Joe had a bit of a, he had a dog bite on his hand.

Could have absolutely been that point that he's like, screw it, I'm not lifting, I wanna just throttle back, whatever, but it's not what he did. Instead it's, hey, let's focus on what we can do to adapt where we need to adapt. Use some fat grips to soften how it's feeling in your hand. Use less weight. Use an ankle cuff.

on your cable system to do flies and chest presses and rows and pull downs like you can still do tricep press downs and cable curls. Just tighten the ankle cuff around your forearm. But also whenever he needed to take essentially two weeks away from upper body altogether, it's perfectly fine. You adapt. So, you know, again, that and this is somebody that typically has phenomenal weeks.

Tyler (19:47)
Yeah. Yeah.

Phil Pirtle (19:58)
And it's, again, easy whenever things are going right, but whenever things go wrong. That's where especially if you've got a coach in your corner, message them. Because a good coach who cares about you is going to adapt your program based on what's going on. So like, again with Joe, hey, he's got a young baby at home, his other son is in baseball and doing.

really really well like things really impressive so it's like hey all these other things that compound on a week like that or on a couple of weeks like that would have been perfect reason for anyone to just quit but whenever Joe says he has goals he has integrity and he follows through with what he says he's going to do whenever he sets out to do it

Tyler (20:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a great way of saying it. I mean, I don't know how much more we wanna expand on. think at this point it's simple, right? Like it's gonna happen and yeah.

Phil Pirtle (21:07)
Well, let's think of some goals, like some tools

that people can use. So number one is a mindset shift. Success isn't about how perfect your plan is, it's how flexible can you be without breaking. That is success. Or adjusting and setting some micro goals, like shrink your goal down. If your goal is that, okay, I wanted to lose a...

If I wanted to be able to do 10,000 steps, but you just sprained your ankle, maybe the goal shifts to just, I keep my nutrition locked in until my ankle is feeling better? Or relying on systems. This is something that you and I talk about extensively is create systems so that you don't rely on motivation. When life sucks, don't try to feel your way into action, act your way into feeling better.

Tyler (22:03)
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that's you know, kind of reminds me of I was working, you know with a nutrition client and they asked me does Do I is it important to eat my meals at the same time every day? And My answer was well from a biological, you know body comp perspective Probably not. I mean not the worst thing in the world, but you know if there's some change whatever but what we

me and her are really working on is getting her to eat breakfast, having a more consistent lunch and dinner and having those systems of well then in that sense, yes, it is important to eat roughly at the same time every day because as we're starting out, it's gonna be hard because we're nailing this habit, this new habit down and it's just not something you're used to but then

Phil Pirtle (22:38)
Hmm.

Tyler (23:00)
The more that we do this, the more just second nature it's gonna become and you're not even going to think about it. yeah, having like working out at the same time every day, trying to work out the same days of the week and having those systems where they can keep you in check when things out of your control, get out of control. You can still kind of come back to those things that you can control. You still can control your food intake.

you still can control when you go to the gym. You still have control over what you can do at the gym. It might look different, but that doesn't mean that you can't go to the gym. I mean, unless like, you know, a physio or a doctor saying, no, you definitely can't go to the gym. A different story, but relying on those types of things to still kind of keep you moving in that forward direction is going to be paramount to that success.

Phil Pirtle (23:58)
Yeah, 100%. And I think if I had to just give like one last thing on the idea of how do you handle adversity, I would also add that the worst thing you can do is to just isolate and shut down. Ghosting your, whether that's your coach, your friends, you know, if you've got a training partner that you typically train with, like the worst thing you can do is ghost.

Don't ghost, just reach out. Hey, I'm really struggling right now with this, you know, insert problem here. Hey, I'm really struggling right now because my back hurts and it's hard for me to, you know, it's hard for me to miss the gym right now. I wanna be in the gym, I wanna be training, I wanna be working towards my goals, but it's really messing with my identity or it's messing with my stress relief. Like, communicate that.

to people. Don't just bottle it all up. So oftentimes growth is going to come from adversity and one of my favorite quotes is, I can't think of a time that I've had a breakthrough without first having a breakdown.

Tyler (25:13)
Yeah. Yeah.

Phil Pirtle (25:15)
Use

it as fuel to grow to your next level. Use it as your catalyst in your story. So if you're struggling, you're not weak because you're struggling. You're strong whenever you keep going in the face of a struggle.

Tyler (25:20)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah from someone's know, who whose default is to isolate don't do it Don't do it. It's it is good to reach out and communicate and you know Just from even like maybe we wrap it up here. But like from a coach client perspective You're not complaining to us. You're not a burden to us when you're coming to us with these things like

this allows us to coach you better and to help you reach your goal in a much better manner. Like we're here to meet you where you're at, not from where you start, but on a week to week basis, because that can change. And so you never feel bad, at least you shouldn't, to come to your coach with these types of things where we can help you out.

Phil Pirtle (26:15)
And if you ever do feel like you can't reach out to your coach, that should be a red flag. All right, so today's would you rather.

Tyler (26:19)
Thanks.

Phil Pirtle (26:26)
Would you rather have to fight off a raccoon every time you go to the gym or always have one sock slightly wet?

Tyler (26:39)
But raccoons have rabies.

Phil Pirtle (26:42)
Okay this one doesn't have rabies but it still has teeth and claws.

Tyler (26:45)
Those things are vicious man.

Phil Pirtle (26:48)
and they

like curl up and they're pretty agile.

Tyler (26:51)
Yeah, yeah, but like be like ADHD in me if I had like I changed socks like three times a day, right? Like so Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, I don't like anything So I might have to go with just fight a raccoon because I only go to the gym three four times a week So, you know, it's only three or four times, you know where I got a quick fight a raccoon and then I'll take that

Phil Pirtle (26:59)
Seriously?

No, like, okay, hang on. Right now I'm just envisioning, remember in Forrest Gump, whenever they were in Vietnam, they were like, change your socks, keep your socks dry. Like, I'm envisioning that to you like every day right now. man. I like I change my socks like after I get back from the gym or if I go for a walk, like yeah, but man, like three times a day, socks are the worst part about laundry. That's, man, I learned something about you today.

Tyler (27:22)
Yeah.

That would be me,

Yep. Yep.

Phil Pirtle (27:47)
I too am gonna go with fight the trash panda because similar reason like I I train three four days a week But also I feel like you're gonna get very efficient at fighting a raccoon even if it's a different raccoon every Single time like if it's the same raccoon, then you're gonna learn his moves. You're gonna know his opener You're gonna be able to be like pump kick right out of the gate. It's done

Tyler (28:03)
would learn.

Yeah.

Yeah, like the chicken

from Family Guy. Yeah? Yeah.

Phil Pirtle (28:18)
Just walk

out go to go into the gym and there he is just waiting for you just see him like take one long drag on a cigarette throw it down and just give you the just bring it like That'd be kind of cool. Actually, like I'm kind of You know, I've not seen a raccoon here in Tennessee. I'm sure they have them

Tyler (28:28)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Sure they're around,

yeah. We've got lots around where we live.

Phil Pirtle (28:41)
I've seen more foxes, actually. I've seen foxes, I've seen a lot of deer, but I've not seen a raccoon. And my neighbors had a skunk trapped twice in her yard, so it's like, why is it that I'm getting everything else? I'm getting Bambi, I'm getting the fox from Fox and the Hound, I'm getting Pepe Le Pew, but I can't.

Tyler (28:43)
Okay. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, well, you have to be on the lookout.

Okay.

Yeah.

Phil Pirtle (29:10)
Nope, can't get, who was it? Was it Mika was the name of the raccoon in Pocahontas? Yeah. Yeah. I loved that movie as a kid.

Tyler (29:14)
Yeah. Yes. Nico. Nice. Yeah. Good callback.

That

was one of my favorites, yeah. Yeah, maybe not culturally appropriate anymore, but.

Phil Pirtle (29:25)
dig and dig.

Like I used to love that movie. That was that was one of my favorite Disney movies growing up.

Tyler (29:31)
Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, that and Peter Pan. Aladdin.

Phil Pirtle (29:37)
yeah, Peter Pan was great.

All Aladdin. Dang. We might have to do a deep dive on Disney one day. All right.

Tyler (29:43)
Yeah.

Yeah, we'll do our top

five Disney's.

Phil Pirtle (29:50)
Yeah, let's do that. I'm so down for that. Just technically Star Wars is now Disney, so... Come on, Princess Leia is a Disney princess. All right, well, as always, thank you all for giving us a listen. Please feel free to reach out with any questions that you got, and we will see you all on the next one.

Tyler (29:51)
Yeah, that'd be five. That would be fine.

That doesn't count. Original, original Disney, yeah.

Bye.