Growing up, we were both highly active. Julie would do hours of dance practice as a kid and swam competitively in high school, which, in the state of Florida, usually meant a minimum of four hours of practice in the water plus another hour of land work five days per week. Charlie played basketball competitively all through college, often working out five hours a day between team practices; individual skill workouts; and additional weight lifting, plyometrics, and conditioning work. However, by the time we both reached our early twenties, our bodies were broken.
Julie couldn't exercise for more than three minutes at a time without getting horrible headaches and feeling completely lethargic. Charlie couldn't go for a run without the entire right side of his body tightening up to the point that he would have to stop and walk within ten minutes of starting.
Not only that, but the stress of moving across the country, living in an area where we knew nobody, and opening and running our own small business was taking its toll.
Because of this, the role exercise played in our respective lives began to change.
For Julie, she essentially stopped exercising altogether. For Charlie, he had a "push through at all costs" mentality and continued to exercise despite his body breaking down.
Until one day, it all became too much and we knew we had to change.
We couldn't keep approaching exercise with the mindset and methods we had been. We knew we needed to find a way to exercise that would build the health and function of our bodies, not break it down. And we knew we needed to prioritize exercising in this manner, no matter how different it seemed from what we used to do.
We started by asking a simple question of ourselves and of our bodies and began building from there. And it was by continually asking and answering this question every day that we began to be able to exercise in a way that built our bodies, not just used our bodies and broke them down.
This question became one of the cornerstone principles of how we began working with our clients, too, and the changes we all started seeing were astounding! From there, we began implementing other principles within our own workouts and our clients' workouts, and the results went to a completely different level.
And we want to teach these principles to you, too, so you can find a way to exercise in an appropriate and sustainable manner for your body. But not only that, we want to help you implement these principles every day so you can feel what it is like to build the health and function of your body through consistent exercise.