What if fitness wasn't about punishment, extreme diets or suffering through endless burpees? What if instead it was about building strength for life so you can keep doing what you love for as long as you want. In today's episode, I'm sitting down with Coach Josh Wood, a fitness expert who cuts through the noise with practical, no-nonsense advice on getting strong, staying active, and making fitness fit your life not the other way around. We're talking about the biggest fitness myths that might be holding you back. What it really means to eat like an adult and why it's simpler than you think. Why burpees and ice baths aren't the magic fix and what actually works? How busy parents and professionals can make fitness work in their packed schedules? Josh's approach is refreshingly realistic, science-backed, and fun. So if you're ready to ditch the gimmicks and build lasting strength, this episode is for you. Welcome to Helping Healers Succeed. This is for you if you felt the call to heal to make a real difference in people's lives. But you also know that turning your gift into a thriving sustainable career can feel overwhelming. You're listening to Dr. Anastasia Chopelas, a physicist turned energy healer, your guide with tips to stories and interviews for building and growing a successful healing practice with confidence and ease. Using practical strategies, science-based insights and inspiration to help you increase your impact and income without burning out for your free quantum breakthrough call, go to scientifichealer.com/quantum. Be sure to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss any of the upcoming programs in store for you. Welcome back, Today, I am delighted to welcome coach Josh Wood, a TEDx speaker, educator, and fitness expert who brings a fresh perspective to health, and wellness with his philosophy of training to become strong for life. Based in Tasmania, Josh has a wealth of experience as a competitive athlete in power lifting and combat sports, a wilderness guide and a father. His holistic approach to fitness draws from his education in health science and strength training, but what truly sets him apart is his emphasis on practicality. And individuality. Josh believes every minute of life is priceless. Me too. And he has made it his mission to help people from parents to athletes thrive in their unique journeys with thousands of clients worldwide. Josh combines science experience and humor to inspire us all to live healthier, stronger lives. Let's take a closer look at his straightforward insights, and I really love these insights. So Josh, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Awesome. So you often emphasize the concept of being strong for life. What does that mean to you and how does it differ from traditional fitness goals? Yeah, it's an interesting one. and that's the name of my business Strong for Life Online Coaching. So it's something I've had to think a lot about and there's a few things I've done with that name. And the reason why I like the concept of Strong for Life one is I like people to try and figure out what it means for them. I have an idea of what it means, but one thing I've, done a number of times is I've talked to people, I'm like, you know what do you think it means to be strong for life? And everybody has an interpretation. Everyone has a thing that makes sense to them, but reality is that the reason that I chose that title, is because I. Want people to be able to keep doing the things that they love in life for as long as they love to do them. the idea is you need to be strong to undertake all of life's adventures, but I also want you to be strong for the duration of your life. it's moving away from this idea of, lifespan being the end goal of all health and fitness stuff, but more health span. How long can we be strong and capable so we can keep doing those things that make life worthwhile? I completely agree with that. I started doing daily exercise when I was 14, so I've been doing it a while. Nice. Yeah. Yeah, since 1967. And I either did running, swimming, jogging, weight lifting, any of those things. I've exercised at least an hour a day since then. And I think that's the point, that you're making exactly that, not just for your practical aspects of being able to do what you want, but being able to do it for as long as you want. Yeah, a hundred percent. And in, and the whole idea, like you mentioned in, in the intro is it's an individual thing. When I'm working with people, it's like, okay, what do you want to do? What do you want outta your life? All right, let's figure out how to get you there. there's no one path through life, so it's like, how do we get you to where you want to be if you're not already there? And then how do we sustain that for as long as you want to sustain it? Yeah. So in your TEDx talk, you introduce the idea of eating like an adult. Can you unpack what that looks like in practice and how it can reshape our relationship with food? Yeah. it's a funny term, when I was putting that talk together, the idea was like, all right, I need to challenge people and what they think they're doing with their nutrition choices and their food choices. And they need to do it a little bit tongue in cheek. so it's not to get people too defensive.'cause when they're defensive, they don't listen. so the title itself, learn to eat like an adult, implies that you're not doing that, that you're probably. Eating like a kid. but when we look at what does it actually mean to eat like an adult, it's a fairly simple thing. I'm not dogmatic about nutrition, like I'm not interested in any particular one diet. So I don't really believe there are good and bad foods. I think there are better and worse choices for where you're at and what you wanna accomplish. so not no dogma there. but the concept of eating like an adult is essentially, as an adult we need to understand. The future we want is created by the choices we make today. Decisions we make today is shaping what our tomorrow and our next year and 10 years from now looks like. And the once you realize that every. Decision needs some thought. I'm trying to take the mindlessness out of eating because so much what we do is habitual. We learned how to eat from our parents or we unlearned that as teenagers and teenager rebellion stuck with us, in lots of people that thirties and their forties who still eat like they did as teenagers because I'm an adult, I can do what I want. It's yeah, I guess technically. like we all know those people. yes. I, and sometimes do ourselves. When I was right when I was little, I thought, oh, my parents always forbid me, candy, when I grow up, I'm gonna be able to eat whatever I want. And then I got to the, yeah. Adult stage and I'm going, yeah, this isn't good. I don't feel good on it. No. That's right. And, and we see that with other behaviors too. It's oh, I'm young and oh, I'm gonna stay up as late as I want when I'm an adult. I'm gonna stay up all night and do whatever I want. And it's no, being, being an adult actually means like going to bed early and taking naps whenever you can. That's what real adults do. But it's this idea of bringing conscious decision back to food choices so that we can take ownership of the outcomes. It's essentially self-accountability around our relationship with food. Yeah, exactly. I really like that self-accountability because whatever you've created in that, in the present, it's your past behaviors and you can also change who you are by changing your present behaviors, and then tomorrow will look differently and it's actually amazing how fast that changes when you change your behavior. Within two or three days, brain fog will clear, water will drop off. It'll feel Yeah. You feel really good. Yeah. Yeah. And I think part of that is also the psychological benefit of actually taking charge of your life. Not letting things just happen to you. Not just living off of reflex and habit, but actually being like, no, I'm building something now. Yeah. And that does so much good for people. Yeah. It's mindfulness really. Absolutely. So you have some unique takes on popular fitness trends, like your strong stance on burpees and ice baths. Yeah. burpees really. Can you share why you think they're misunderstood or misused? And what do you suggest doing instead? All right, we're getting into some stuff here. So I've been teaching, in health and fitness for, since 2012. I taught, massage courses and then personal training courses. So I've been dealing with a lot of folks who are very new to health and fitness, and everyone knows what a burpee is. Once you get involved with fitness of any sort, you understand what it is., most people don't understand what it's for. So there's a basic concept in training about training, adaptation, and it's basically the things you do are what you're gonna get good at. And if you wanna get good at something, you need to do those things. There's some carryover. Getting stronger carries over to almost every domain. Becoming more athletic, becoming more coordinated, makes almost every other movement better. and there's some limitations there, but on a broad scale, that's what it does. Burpees are this like spot where. When trainers and new coaches or established coaches are lazy, but they want clients to work hard and suffer, or it's this toughening idea, oh, this is hard. It's hard. It must be good for you, when really the risk to reward ratio just isn't there because most of the people that are being told to do burpees by whoever they're getting their instructions from are generally. Not well-trained, not very fit people. And so we get these overweight, middle-aged folks who never trained coming into gyms to work with a young PT who thinks they, they're hot shit and they know everything. And they go, okay, we're gonna do burpees. And you get these people who can barely sit down and stand up or do a pushup, told to throw themselves on the ground, do a pushup off the ground, and then jump up in the air. there's a lot of coordination that goes into that. and then the adaptation is minimal. If you can do 10 pushups, you know you're not getting stronger. And this is the thing. People are like, oh, it gets you strong, it helps your cardio. It's no, those are opposite ends of the training spectrum. You're not getting stronger by doing something I. For a thousand reps, a hundred reps, even 15 reps, like you're just not really getting stronger at that point. You need more load, you need more intensity. And when it comes to conditioning, it's okay, good. You're really good at throwing yourself on the ground and trying to worm your way back up. That's not a useful training adaptation. So there's almost. Always a better choice of exercise programmed in a better fashion for almost every goal. if the goal is to increase energy expenditure, you're better off going for a jog or, a bike ride or a walk or skipping rope. Something you could do for an extended duration. You can't do burpees long enough to make the calorie burn really worthwhile. you just can't. And then why would you, when there's better options that have less impact on your body, that take less coordination because as you fatigue, coordination goes down. So we have this highly coordinated. Movement that is done to fatigue generally with populations that don't need to be dealing with that kind of load or that impact or that amount of coordination when they should be learning how to squat well or do a pushup, basic movements. And then they should be doing low impact, low skill based cardio for general health. So it's poorly programmed, poorly understood, where to put it in a program. And I've been looking at this for years and I found basically only two times that someone should be programmed burpees. I. Unless they enjoy them. this is always the caveat. If you enjoy them, great. Go for it. There might be something wrong with you, but go for it. Yeah. But the two instances is only, one, if you want to, I. Win a burpee competition. then specificity applies. You are doing something specific to the competition. And we have a lady here in Hobart who, has set multiple world records for burpees over 24 hours. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's wild. But she had to do burpees to do that, obviously. and then there's one other instance, and that's basically, in combat sports training, grappling, MMA, there's a move called the sprawl. So when someone shoots in to take you down, you drop on top of them and drop your hips to the ground. And the burpee has a lot of carry over there, when trained in certain ways. So that's a very similar movement pattern. And we could train it for explosiveness or we could train it for conditioning. but the burpee itself has come a long way from being a. Fitness test done four times and measuring change in heart rate. Two, we need to make everyone tougher, so let's make them throw themselves on the ground as many times as possible. Yeah, that's long story. Short or short story long. Oh, it could be longer. we could go on all day on burpees. Oh my goodness. And ice baths too. Oh man, it's another one. It's the same thing. It's what's something miserable that we can make people do to get them tougher, that has almost no benefit to them? the thing is, it looks great on Instagram videos. people chiseling ice off of lakes and they all sit together and they're freezing water and hug each other and cry. And it's that's fine as a bonding experience, but as a daily thing, When you look at the physiological benefits, now obviously there's a difference. If we're looking at like systemic inflammation and we're using ICE as a way to reduce that's a therapeutic use. But the common use we see in all the Instagram influencer videos is, this makes me tougher. this wakes me up. And it's okay. So it's an adrenaline rush, and it's miserable. There's some benefit there. And my thing is that's, setting up an ice bath. I looked into this like trying to have a regular ice bath at home. Do I have to buy a bunch of ice? Can I convert an old freezer? Do I need like a big tank? Like all this is expensive and takes up a lot of space. And I finally came to the conclusion that if you want something that's gonna give you that little bit of pep in the mornings adrenaline rush, get you going. If you need something that's gonna make you a little tougher because it's adding a little bit of discomfort in your life. The easiest, most economical, most travel friendly option is just a slap in the face, or even just cold, little cold water on the face. Yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna give you the same basic benefits. And it was just amazing that when I said ice baths are basically useless. And if we have a population of people like, parents and stay-at-home moms and people who are working all the time, the last thing they need is more stress in their life. It's true. We need to reduces the cortisol. We need to reduce the adrenaline response. People got so mad at me, people came outta the woodworks and they're like, this literally saved my life. And why are you trying to make people weak? You know why you want people to be soft? I'm like, I don't, but I also don't want them to be dumb. Yeah. When I lived in Germany, a very popular thing to do in the winter is you go to the sauna, so you sit in the sauna. Then you sit outside for a while, there's snow on the ground. You sit outside for a while, then you come back in the sauna and then to finish it off you dip in a cold bath. Yeah. Yeah. And that's contrast bath. that's a different thing. Like I grew up in Minnesota, and we had the polar bear club in the winter where they put a sauna out on the ice on a lake and they cut a hole in the lake. But that, that contrasting heat cold has more of a, a. Flooding effect on the body. It helps with circulation. there's more benefit there than just getting up, freezing yourself and then going about your day. like I just don't see how that's gonna help most people. But if you enjoy it, again, that caveat, if you enjoy it, do it. Yeah. I'm not gonna stop you. Or if you feel like you're getting benefit from it, 'cause it, it's not gonna hurt. That's right. As long as you know you are enjoying it, you're not unduly fatigued during the day after the fact. and there's a big difference between like filling a bathtub at home with ice and jumping into a natural body of water. There's something absolutely primal and fantastic about jumping into a freezing lake, or a river or a cold morning ocean dip that's different. I live here at the Pacific Coast and the water's always cold even in the summer. Oh, same here in Tasmania, it's, average temperature's 10 degrees Celsius. Oh yeah. I think we have a little more, but not much. So as a father and coach, how do you balance the demands of parenting with staying physically and mentally fit? And what advice do you have for parents who feel there's no time for fitness? Oh's? Always the time thing. The key is always priorities. You have to know your priorities and once you do. Understand what's most important and what has to be done. you realize you cannot do everything. And once you realize you can't do everything, you can find the time for the essentials and the, this is this, these are the people I work with. This is me, busy time, poor parents. And it's okay, what do you have to do? you have to take care of your family. You have to do the work required to support them. You have to have time with your kids. Okay? how much time do you need to stay healthy on top of that? And often, it's just a matter of getting in some 10 minute walks, 10 minutes after each meal, three and a half hours of walking a week. That's great. Most people aren't doing that. you just cut it into the smallest chunks possible. I have some non-negotiables when it comes to my fitness. I'm not a runner. I'm not gonna make the time for that. I need to go what's the most minimum effective dose? For what I want accomplish. And for me it's, I have to hit jiujitsu classes twice a week. Everything else is secondary. I work in gyms as well, so I sometimes have 15 minute breaks between clients. I will do 15 minutes of a targeted body part or full body exercise for right now because, last year I tore my pec and had it reattached in November. So for right now it's a lot of just rehabbing that. And so right now I'm about four months out from that. And so if I have a 15 minute break, I'm gonna do dumbbell chest press and I'm gonna swing a mace around my head and I'm gonna just alternate that for 10 minutes, that's all it takes sometimes, but it's something I'm not moving backwards and I'm hitting the essentials. But it takes understanding what is most important and then learning to recognize what is superfluous because everybody wants to do everything. it's not possible. And then they don't get anything done.'cause they're like, oh, I can't do everything. It's not gonna be perfect, so I'm not gonna do anything. that was me 40 years ago. my children are now 38 and 41, and, I still ran every morning. I did it before they got up. Yeah. My, my ex was asleep in bed, so I just got up before they did. I went out for my six mile run. I came back. Then I just did the rest of my day. I'd gotten my exercise and I also lifted some lightweights before I went running to warm up. Yeah, great. Yeah, but you get it in and then the rest of the day is yours. Yeah, And,, before the kids get up after they go to bed. Like those are prime times for parents. Like I, I have a weird schedule. It's somewhat flexible, so I can schedule 30 minutes in here and there across the day. but that's just the demands of my life because I don't have mornings. I still gotta a 1-year-old who doesn't sleep through the night and stick it up sometime between five and six and. I'm like, I'm not gonna get up before that. I already have broken sleep for the last year. my priority is sleep. I have to sleep otherwise I'm not gonna function. So I do a little bit less exercise, but I focus on sleep and I focus on nutrition. Yeah. So you've mentioned the playground test as part of your fitness philosophy. Can you explain why that is and why it's so impactful for evaluating health and strength? Yeah, Again, like my whole thing is practicality. what's a functional measure of health and wellness, especially for people like me, busy parents, business owners, people who just don't have a ton of time. And once we learn to prioritize, we find more time. But, the playground test is such a simple yet challenging thing for parents. The idea is if you go to a playground with your kids, which I'm assuming every parent does, you take your kids to the playground, you should be able to play with them on the playground. You should be able to use the monkey bars. You should be able to climb up all the little contraptions, the webs and the climbing frames and whatever. You should be able to go and do that with your kids. And If you're real good, you should be able to do it better than them. Challenge them. Not likely. It's hard. It's hard, but it's one of those things that's why can't you? and if you can't, that's the question you should be asking. Why can't you? And it's a really good measure of just real functional capacity. Monkey bars are hard for adults. The grip strength, the upper body strength is really hard, but it's like a. Like a partial chin up. and the chin up is a really good measure of where you're at in your relation to your weight and your strength. So proportional strength, and the number one thing that makes things like chin ups and monkey bars easier is losing unnecessary weight. that's usually the limiting factor. It's if you have a lot of extra weight, especially on your lower body or around the belly, and you can't hold your own weight. that's a sign that probably needs to go. so it's just, can you play on the playground? Can you go and enjoy it with your kids as opposed to sitting on the bench? And I came up with this because I just kept seeing parents sitting on benches, playing on their phones and going, no, I can't do that. Oh, I'm too old. Oh, I can't hold myself up. And I'm like, what are you talking about? It was ridiculous. even parents are like, I can't push you on the swing. You're too heavy. I was like, your kid's four. Unacceptable. Yeah, I've joined Fitness Challenges when I was, sixties, mid sixties. And then these 40 year olds would come on, am I too old for this? No. Then I go, I'm 64. I can still do it, so can you? yeah. But yeah, the. It's interesting. I even when I weigh 117 pounds, I'm slightly more than that now, but even when I weigh 117 pounds, I couldn't pull up myself more than once or twice ever. That's still pretty good. Yeah. But I could do the monkey bars, where you go across this really easily. I just would go right across and then back, and I had people commenting to me on the playground like, whoa, I could never do that. Why not? Yeah, that's right. That's what people should be asking themselves, when did we become boring? I like that. Can't be boring. Yeah. So your approach to fitness includes elements of wilderness and adventure. How's your experience as a hiking guide influence the way you coach clients in achieving their fitness and health goals? For a while there. Yeah. I worked as a wilderness guide here in Tasmania, and my big focus was working with other people in the industry. And I've done some work with guiding companies for education, for guides, whether it's recording, videos for guide training, or whether it's in person, training for guides to get them to understand what's actually required in the job and how you can actually make it a career if you look after yourself.'cause most people burn out. It is not something that a lot of people continue for very long. They do it for a handful of years and then by the time they're 30, they're broken and burnt out and they have to get a desk job. so for a while there I was really focusing on that. And then realized that industry is so resistant to the idea that you actually have to look after yourself and look after your guides if you wanna keep them around. It was the wildest thing. so few people were actually interested in that. So I started focusing on. On that at an individual level, offering training to, to, backpackers and guides. Anybody working in the industry got an industry discount, like focusing on just Hey, if you wanna keep doing this past the age of 25, you have to look after yourself. Look at every person in the office. They're former guides with bum knees and sore backs. Like you don't have to go down that path. And after a while. I started branching out into like, how do we apply this to recreational backpackers? How do we apply this to weekend hikers? How do we start working with, and one of my niches is, tactical athletes.'cause I've got the background in combat sports and guiding, tactical athletes like, military, fire, police, prison guards, that kind of thing. There's another group of people I work with. I don't really advertise that, but. Word of mouth. I do work with a number of those folks. and there's a lot of crossover there. if we're looking about the demands of the job, like backpacking, hiking, back country hunting, military, there's a lot of crossover. so there's that side of stuff with the more like technical, adventure athlete realm. And then there's the people who just don't get outside enough and a lot of people. are afraid of going hiking. They're like concerned about walking outside or doing things outside. And so a big part of what I like to do is just try and promote people, get outside more. that is our natural environment. my wife runs a nature play business, so like our kids and everyone she works with is outside all the time. But we lose that. Just, it's like the playground test. we do all this stuff as kids and then we lose it as adults, but I want people to be outside, get outside, have that exposure to the sun and real fresh air and green spaces, because it's part of who we are as a species. We need that to be healthy in the healing world, the. Outside air, the sunshine and the earth it brings you to a place where you start forgetting all of the, your troubles and your worries and you're out there. It's very healing and it's soothing for people to be outside and they forget that. And the other thing is, you touched on a really important point for. Practically every industry. I noticed it, as a professor, as a researcher, and now as a healer that people just don't take care of themselves. And you would think that. Healers, like I have a chiropractor friend who developed a technique to help eliminate pain out of the body using, a chiropractic, activator. And he asked a group of chiropractors to come to his hotel room if they needed help. And he said the line was out the door, down the hall. And that just means that. That whatever your chosen profession, people aren't taking care of themselves. Yeah. And so this is a really important point for everybody to take in, Yeah. not just people that wanna do wilderness, if you wanna stay a healer and not get sick. From your connection to other people. Self-care is utmost. That's the first thing I teach people is self-care. It's so important. And like when I worked in manual therapies, like just the amount of un care people had for their primary professional tool themselves, their hands like there, there was better. It was better in that industry. People worked more on their self-care, but at the same time, it's like. Nobody cared about their nutrition. Nobody cared about getting stronger. They're just like, oh, I'll just massage my forearms and then I'll be able to go forever. I was like, no, there's, you have a whole body that needs a lot more than that. Yeah, without the proper. health building blocks that Yeah, you it. Without the proper nutrition, without the proper rest, without the proper hydration, without the proper movement, movement, strength, flexibility, and endurance, they're all so important. Absolutely. And it just gets, it gets forgotten, and it's wild to see Ian. Physical realms, if you're working in like manual therapies or even in, personal training or coaching, people forget that we need to be doing the same things that we tell our clients to do. Exactly, one of the ways I get exercise is my daughter and grandson live here part-time and my grandson goes to school up. Up this hill. It's all the way up the hill here, and it's about 25 flights of stairs up this steep hill. Nice. So I walk up with him every morning and then back. Yeah. Great. And we also get a chance to talk. Yeah. And sometimes he'll ask me, do I know about something? And the other day he goes, oh, you need to learn so much. Always. Always. Yeah. He's, he's nine. Yeah. That's great. And then he says, tonight you're gonna look this up, and tonight I'm gonna come home and test you on it. he is keeping you on your toes. Yeah. You get to look forward to that with your kids as they get older. Yeah. Oh, I've been, my, my 4-year-old has been talking since he was like, 18 months, two years, and he hasn't stopped since, just. Perpetual, like stream of consciousness talking all the time. It's wild. The things that, that he thinks about and comes out with and asks about, it's awesome, but it keeps you on your toes. It keeps you learning too. Yeah. Yeah. This kid talks like an adult and he talked like that since he could talk like, that's great. I told him, stop running water down the sewer, and he looks at me. He calls me Yaya. I'm Greek, so that's Greek for grandma, and he goes, Yaya. It doesn't go down the sewer, it goes to the water treatment plant. I think he's probably right. Yes, he is. He was like two and a half when he told me that. Amazing. I couldn't stop laughing. So do you have something to offer people like. Do you have a place, a website, or anything that Oh, yeah. Come to and visit. Absolutely. if you come to Hobart, Tasmania, I'll offer you a cup of coffee, but if you're gonna stay abroad, a great resource is my TEDx Talk Six habits to eat like an adult. if you don't wanna spend 14 minutes watching that, I do have the Eat Like an Adult Guide on my website, which is just a free infographic. Originally, I designed that, for my sister and her husband to put on their fridge. I've refined it over the years since then. but it's, it's just a simple, going through the habits of eating like an adults and what they mean and how to do them. I've got heaps of free resources. I've got to eat like adult guide. I've got some different recipes. I got the beginner gym guide, like if you're not sure where to start going to the gym, I got a whole guide on how to get started and what you should look for and what you should bring and what you should do, all sorts of free resources. So it's strong for life.online, so you can Google Strong for Life Online Coaching or Coach Josh Wood. my website has lots of great resources there. alternatively you can find me on social media Coach Josh Wood, I'm on. Everything Instagram is probably the best place to reach me though. If you wanna chat or if you have any questions, just Instagram coach Josh Wood, or just have a Google for coach Josh Wood and I pop up most places and always happy to chat. love answering questions. Okay. And I'll have all that on the show notes so people can, so people can just go on the show notes and easy and click on it and I'll put all of your social and everything in there so they can find you. Awesome. Yeah. So thank you so much for a really great conversation about the practical and important, aspects of staying fit and healthy, like you said, strong for life. That's it. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. Thank you for tuning in to Helping Healers succeed. You'll find resources and show notes on our website at helpinghealerssucceed.com. Until next time, I'm Dr. Anastasia Chopelas, sending you Golden Healing, light and success vibes on your journey to becoming a powerful, confident healer, coach, or intuitive. Remember, your gifts are so needed in this world.