Nick Shaw: How to Pursue Peak Fitness without Losing Your Sanity

How is your routine looking lately? Getting a bit stale?

It happens to all of us, but in challenging times, it’s more important than ever to identify the things that are no longer working and then let them go.

Nothing wrong with shaking things up on purpose. Sometimes the only way to beat a rigged game is to rig it harder, find that bug.

And remember as well, that this game wouldn’t be nearly as fun if it were easy.

Now, today we’re here with a perfect person to talk to you about shaking things up. His name is Nick Shaw, and he is a former competitive powerlifter and bodybuilder, author, as well as the founder and CEO of Renaissance Periodization.

Nick has coached world-class athletes, including CrossFit Games Champions, international medalists, Olympians, UFC fighters, professional athletes, and even Navy SEALs.

Today we’re talking about…

• Bodybuilding and training for peak performance sports
• Getting creative with fitness at home
• The importance of delayed gratification and long-term planning
• How to balance health and fitness while keeping your sanity
• Recharging and why you should consider scheduling a deload
• And tons more…

Let’s go hang out with Nick.

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We have a tendency, myself included, of sticking with a routine for way too long, which leads to wear and tear, or even worse, serious injury.

So it’s important to shake things up every once in a while, and sometimes life forces you into these shake-ups.

In situations like these, sometimes we need to use our weaknesses as an advantage.

Where To Find Nick Shaw

Be sure to follow Renaissance Periodization @rpstrength on Instagram, as well as Nick Shaw, he’s @nick.shaw.rp on Instagram.

You can pick up a copy of Nick’s book Fit For Success: Lessons on Achievement And Leading Your Best Life on Amazon.

Nick Shaw: “You know, here’s the cool thing about it, here’s why it was written. Everyone is struggling after getting through 2020. It’s been a crazy year. 2020 sort of impacted every single person out there.”

“And if you read the book, you’re going to get something good from it. You’re just going to kind of learn how to overcome any adversity. You’re going to be better off.“

“You could probably read it in an afternoon. If you have a flight coming up, grab yourself a copy, read that on your next flight. You’re on the right track.”

Be sure to check out the website RenaissancePeriodization.com for coaching, articles, gear, and to listen to episodes of the RP Strength Podcast.

And you can like, follow and be friends with Nick Shaw on the socials, @RPstrength on Twitter, @RenaissancePeriodization on Facebook, @RenaissancePeriodization on YouTube, and of course, @nick.shaw.rp and @rpstrength on Instagram.

Before You Go…

Here’s a note that came in from Paul. He says,

Greetings, I am a San Francisco Bay Area native and have been under lockdown since March. It’s been a real bummer. 

One good thing happened thanks to you. As a charter listener to the show, I recalled the Chi Running show and barefootIng and earthing kind of stuff. 

My vanity and cheapness keep me in uncomfortable shoes. I went lockdown barefoot and it has been GREAT. My whole body has improved. My gate, posture, and energy. Small price to suffer for loafers once in a while. 

I hope this finds you well. Happy New Year to you and yours.

Paul in Palo Alto

P.S. – The Chi running book had a huge positive impact on my kids cross country joy!

Hey, Paul, I love this note. It brings me so much joy to see that not only you, but the kids are also benefiting from Danny’s work and ChiRunning in particular.

Just quick aside, the most starstruck I’ve ever been on this podcast or even in general, was when I first was introduced to Danny Dreyer, who wrote ChiRunning.

If you aren’t familiar with Danny’s work, just look up ChiRunning or Danny Dreyer in the search bar here on fatburningman.com.

It should come right up for you, but also check out his book ChiRunning. It was one book that really changed the way that I thought about running and movement in particular.

It kinda took me from this “no pain, no gain” way of thinking, and took away a lot of that conditioning and replaced it with more body sensing and being barefoot is a big part of that.

A lot of you may not know that I’m barefoot almost all of the time.

I include the time that I’m sometimes wearing socks or light slippers. But I can feel the ground, and that’s the most important part.

You want your foot to have some sort of intelligence with what it’s attached to, or with what it’s inside of, or what is moving over.

And we lose that ability, we lose a whole bunch of different built-in skills that we have that help us navigate the wild natural world when we’re trapped inside, and when we’re trapped in shoes.

Especially when we’re wearing shoes that are unnatural for our form.

So even if you do wear shoes, which of course I do sometimes too, it’s really important to get in touch with your natural posture and make sure that you’re engaging the right muscles.

When I switched from using running shoes to barefoot style running in minimalist shoes while running in a barefoot style, I went from running 7, 8 miles at a time to less than a mile because as I recall my calves and kind of like this whole line of muscles up my legs and my back felt like it had never been used before. Even though I was running almost every day at the time.

So as you do transition into a new way of walking, barefoot running especially, be sure to take it easy on yourself.

Barefoot running on cement or concrete is not something that’s really going to serve anyone.

I know some people who have gotten away with it. It’s not something that I do.

Keep in mind that it’s something where you want your foot to be in the natural position and moving in the natural way on natural surfaces.

So when the surface is too hard, that can lead to injury. Make sure you’re not doing any of that.

Anyway, go check out Danny Dreyer’s work, one of my personal favorites.

And Paul, thank you so much for writing in.

If you’d like to write in, you can always leave a review for the Fat-Burning Man Show podcast and video show—iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, Tune-In, or wherever you’re watching or listening.

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And if you sign up for our newsletter, then we’ll send you a Wild Quick-Start Guide and a bunch of goodies and discounts to Wild Superfoods and some of our other projects.

So be sure to share fatburningman.com with anyone you think would appreciate it.

And then finally, if you’re in the United States, another way that you can support the show is through Wild Superfoods.

If you look at the numbers, a lot of us are frighteningly deficient in many different nutrients across the board. So we started up Wild Superfoods to help literally feed people.

And these are the nutrients that my wife, my family, that we all take ourselves and have been taking for years now. We’re really proud of what we offer.

One thing that you might want to check out is called Future Greens. It’s kind of like a whole food multivitamin.

It’s a combination of powerhouse plants, like beets, broccoli sprouts, blueberry, raspberry, cranberry, kale, nettle leaves, spirulina, and much, much more, all combined and shelf-stable so that you can have this on the road.

If you’re trapped inside under lockdown, you can’t get fresh veg. For us up in the mountains, sometimes it’s hard to get fresh, certainly fruit and veg as well. So Future Greens is a great thing to have around.

You can just put a little Future Greens in your water or your smoothie. Some people put it in yogurt, but I like it just in water. I usually have it in the afternoon as a way to break my fast.

And then another powder that we’re extremely proud of, that offers a lot of high quality protein and what we believe is one of the best tasting powders out there. It’s called Collagen Cocoa.

We’re offering a lot of different recipes that are coming out soon as a part of our challenges.

And Collagen Cocoa is one of those protein powders that you can actually use as an ingredient.

You can combine it with water, have it as hot cocoa. You can drink it cold, put it in smoothies, but also brownies, puddings, custards, pies and all sorts of fun things like that.

It’s really a versatile mix, something great to have around.

So check out Collagen Cocoa. Now you can get Collagen Cocoa 3-packs and Collagen Cocoa 6-packs for an even bigger discount.

You can also Subscribe and Save which gets you a really good deal.

And then finally, if you want to join us in our next challenge, whether you’re international or in the U.S., we have a 14-Day Low Sugar Challenge that’s getting started right now.

You can join our latest challenge by going to fatburningman.com/app.

And when you sign up and you get one of the Subscribe and Save packages from Wild Superfoods, then you get entered into the challenge in our community for free.

So we’re doing a lot of fun things to gamify health this year. It’s going to be a really, really solid year. I think a lot of improvements, a lot of things to look forward to.

Getting out of the doldrums of the past is an important part of moving forward, and that’s what we intend to do.

So come join us for a fun challenge by going to FatBurningMan.com/App, and wherever else you might find us out there.

What did you think of this interview with Nick Shaw? Drop a comment below!