About
Hi. My name is Steve.
I’m the rebel leader here at Nerd Fitness. I help desk jockeys, nerds, and average Joes level up their lives.
Maybe you’re here because you’re overweight and frustrated because you haven’t found success quite yet. Maybe you’re here because your doctor told you that you’re in danger of some serious health issues if you don’t make changes. Maybe you’re here because you just had a kid, and the reality that you being unhealthy could make THEIR lives more difficult just hit you like a ton of bricks.
Maybe you just want to wake up, look in the mirror, and feel better about yourself.
Whatever reason you have for being here, thank you.
My goal is to inspire the Hell out of you to make positive changes and live a better life. I want to educate you on how to work out properly, cook a decent meal, and consistently improve your health and well being.
The tagline for this site is “Level up your life, every single day.” If I do my job right, you’ll wake up every day a little healthier than you were yesterday – eat a little better, get a little stronger, run a little faster, and feel a little better about yourself.
As we’ve learned from Optimus Prime, small changes can eventually add up to huge results.
I want to share with you a few stories from people like you, normal men and women, young and old, often with families and children, and full-time desk jobs. These are people that found a way to get in incredible shape while still doing all of the things they love. These people followed the lessons learned from Nerd Fitness to level up their lives with pretty drastic results.
I’m showing you these stories because I want you to know that you’re not alone. Everybody tries to get in shape and fails many times before finally breaking through. If you are willing to work hard, educate yourself, and stay consistent,
- Saint’s Success Story: 60 Pounds Overweight to 6 Pack Abs
- Tony’s Success Story: 4 Months, 46 Pounds Lost
- 6-Week Success Stories
You are capable of great things if you’re willing to put the time in. If you’re interested in learning how you can start living better today, why not take the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes?
So, why Nerd Fitness?
I started exercising back in high school without really knowing what I was doing. Through high school and college, I made every training mistake known to man and got zero results.
It wasn’t until I graduated college and learned the right way to train that I started to see positive changes.
So, I figured if I needed six years of mistakes to find success, there had to be thousands of others who were struggling to see positive change as well, whether it was weight loss or muscle gain. On top of that, if I had been intimidated by gyms, a complete newbie in the kitchen, and completely overwhelmed by too much conflicting and confusing information, there had to be others who were paralyzed by these same thoughts….and I wanted to help.
I’m a nerd, I like fitness…so why not combine the two and turn life into one giant video game?
And thus, in the fall of 2009, NerdFitness.com was born!
The overarching theme of Nerd Fitness is to “level up your life, every single day.” Focus on getting stronger, getting faster, having fun, and eating right…and your appearance will start to change as a result of that.
I am NOT a fitness expert. Although I obtained a basic personal training certification from AAAI a few years back, I run this site not from the perspective of a fitness expert with every degree known to man, but as normal guy down in the trenches with you – a nerd who sits at a computer all day long, loves to play video games, and really enjoys staying active while pushing myself to be in the best shape I can be.
If you want to lose weight, I can get you there. If you want to build muscle and mass, I can get you there. If you want six pack abs, it’s going to take a LOT of hard work and almost flawless dedication, but I can get you there. If you just want to feel better about yourself when you wake up in the morning, I can get you there.
Let me help you level up your life.
The Nerd Fitness Training Philosophy
Here’s the basic philosophy of Nerd Fitness in a nutshell (a more in in-depth philosophy can be found here):
Fitness
We exercise because it’s fun. If the idea of running on a treadmill for three hours sounds miserable, then don’t do it! If you don’t want to lift weights, don’t do it! There are so many different ways to burn calories that any and all methods are acceptable, provided they get you results and put a smile on your face. Yoga, karate, weight lifting, ultimate Frisbee, cycling, Belegarth, whatever it is – I want to help you find what it is that gets your heart racing, and help you get better at it.
Now, if you’re up for anything and want to burn the most calories in the most efficient manner possible, I’d recommend looking into starting with the Nerd Fitness Beginner Body Weight Circuit, and then progressing onto the Advanced Body Weight Circuit once you’re in good enough shape. If you’re looking for more of a step-by-step guide, I’ve created a product specifically for busy people who want to get in shape without a gym membership: The Rebel Fitness Guide.
For the reasoning behind my strong belief in weight training over cardio, read about my research here.
Diet
We understand that 80% of our success in losing weight will be a direct results of what we eat. I’m a huge fan of the Paleo Diet (fancy terminology for eating REAL food) because it makes complete logical sense to me from a scientific standpoint. I also understand that sometimes our lives, jobs, and families often make it difficult to eat healthy 100% of the time, so we do the best we can with what we have.
To explain just how important your diet is to getting in shape, I recommend reading “How to Lose Weight Without Doing a Single Minute of Exercise.“ I’m not advocating doing zero exercise, but i just wanted to highlight how important eating well really is. It comes down to a few basic steps:
- Eat real food as often as possible.
- Cut back on fake foods and processed foods.
- Eat in moderation.
Mindset
Now, possibly more important than both fitness and diet when it comes to getting in shape is your mental attitude. Gandalf said it best: “all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” Everybody can make excuses why they’re overweight and out of shape. It’s the successful ones who shut their mouths, play the hand they’re dealt, and take care of business!
We all have lives, jobs, families, pets, friends, and more that can keep us from getting in shape. Rather than use those things as excuses or shirk your other duties to get in shape, instead why not find a way to incorporate your changes into your daily life?
Your exercise and diet can become part of what you are, but not at the expense of who you are.
I’d love for you to join the rebellion and help us turn things around. Here are the best ways to connect with me:
- Sign up for the Rebel Army Newsletter or subscribe via RSS Feed.
- Join us on the Nerd Fitness Message Boards – 2400+ rebel soldiers and growing daily.
- Be a fan of Nerd Fitness on Facebook – even my mom is a fan, so you KNOW it’s cool.
- Follow me on Twitter - I dish out daily doses of rebel wisdom along with links to cool stuff I find on the Internet. You never know what you’re going to get!
- Subscribe to the Nerd Fitness YouTube Channel - Any day now I expect to be picked up for my own show on G4, but until then…watch me be an idiot on YouTube! You might even learn something.
I’d love to hear your story – email me at Steve@NerdFitness.com and let me know if I can help in any way.
My personal story
I always wanted to be Superman.
You’d probably think the picture on the right was taken on Halloween…but honestly it couldn’t have been a random Tuesday – that’s how much I wanted to be the “man of steel.”
However, genetics didn’t exactly agree with me growing up; I was always the skinny, weak kid that got pushed around on the playground.
Fortunately, I was pretty quick and managed to stay pretty active throughout middle school and junior high, playing sports with my friends, going on hikes, and participating in Cub Scouts.
Then I went into High School.
I entered high school at 5’0″ tall and probably 100 pounds. By the time I was a Junior, I finally hit puberty (finally!) I shot up to 5’11″…but still weighed around 100 pounds! My brother and all of my friends were on the basketball team, so I decided to try out, figuring that my dedication and determination would make up for my lack of talent.
Nope.
I didn’t make it past the first cut.
Devastated, I vowed to return the next year with twenty to thirty extra pounds of muscle. So, I immediately joined a gym…because that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? I walked straight to a bench, loaded up 45-lb. plates on each side of the bar, and lowered it down to my chest.
….
Crap.
I DEFINITELY didn’t have the strength to raise the bar, so I tilted the bar to the left until a weight slid off (because I was
DUMB enough not to have put a safety collar on there), at which point the bar was so out of balance in the other direction that the right weight flew off.
CLANG. CLANG.
I sheepishly raised the bar back onto the supports, hoped nobody noticed, and sat up….to see forty pairs of eyes staring at me as my weights rolled across the ground. I have honestly never been more humiliated in my life. Luckily, I decided that things couldn’t get any worse, so I came back the next the day, and the day after that, and so on.
Through high school and all four years of college, I worked out in a gym, trying to get stronger and bigger…with no results.
After college, I moved out California, signed up for a gym, spent five sessions with a personal trainer, changed my diet and my workout plans, and packed on a bunch of healthy weight and got very strong in 30 days.
From that point on, I became hooked on learning as much as possible about health, fitness, strength, and power.
This site is the culmination of that information and my experiences.
Still reading?
Here are some random facts about me:
- Favorite movie: The Shawshank Redemption (and here’s why). This is the greatest movie ever made in my opinion, right behind Spice World and Glitter.
- Favorite TV show: Can’t narrow this one down. Lost, the Wire, the Shield, Friday Night Lights, Ninja Warrior, and Arrested Development are the ones that usually rise to the top.
- Favorite song ever: “If it’s the Beaches,” by the Avett Brothers.
- Desired super power: Flight, duh. Why do you think I went as Superman for Halloween for half a decade and jumped off my roof holding an inflated trash bag? Because I’m an idiot mostly, but also because I’ve always wanted to fly.
- Favorite guilty pleasure food: Chicken parm – pasta, sauce, cheese, and chicken. Terribly unhealthy and it does a number on my stomach. Still though, win.
- Favorite game: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - just epic all around. Although the graphics don’t hold up too well by today’s standards, the gameplay and story is second to none. The rest of my top five would be Metroid Prime for the GameCube, Super Metroid for the SNES, Assassin’s Creed 2 for the Xbox360, and Everquest 2 for the PC. MMORPG’s are my Kryptonite.
- Favorite book: Other than the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Harry Potter books (yup, read em all – don’t hate), I’m going to go with the Giver.
- Talents/hobbies: Let’s see…I’m a decent piano player, less-than-decent guitarist, “not awful” break dancer, kinda okay surfer, respectable artist, pretty good golfer, dismal singer, terrible cook, and a Ninja Warrior in training.
- Claim to fame: I once organized thirteen people to spell the last name of Vanderbilt’s Polish center, Dawid Przybyszewski, across our chests. He checked into the game, we ripped off our shirts, and he had the game of his career while leading Vandy to victory over Kentucky. He started every game after that. Here’s the picture, I’m the P.
- Hometown: East Sandwich, MA. Yes I’m serious. It’s on the bicep of Cape Cod. Shut up.
