Your Body is the Barrier

You might be more than a body, but you can’t exist without it.

You don’t get to be a human being without a body.

No matter how deep your thinking is… how big your dreams are… or how spiritual your intentions may be—you experience all of it through your body.

And when your body is tired, sick, sluggish, or in pain? Everything else takes a back seat. Your dreams shrink. Your patience thins. Your purpose gets buried beneath exhaustion.

So the real question becomes:

How can you become the person you want to be if your body isn’t equipped to carry you through that life?

The Pyramid

Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is one of the simplest psychological frameworks to understand human need. It’s shaped like a pyramid—because each level builds on the one below it.

Here’s the idea:

• At the base: your physical needs—things like food, sleep, safety, and health.
• At the top: your deepest desires—purpose, fulfillment, growth, contribution.

You can’t climb the pyramid if the base is crumbling.

And that’s exactly what most of us try to do.

We aim for impact without energy.
We pursue purpose without capacity.
We try to climb while our foundation is cracked.

What Training Actually Gives You

A good training program builds that foundation.

When your body breaks down, your ambitions shrink with it. And when your body thrives, everything else becomes possible.

The purpose of prioritizing physical fitness should not be to become obsessed with fitness itself—it’s to create capacity.

Capacity to lead. To love. To grow. To serve. To pursue the higher parts of life.

It starts by removing the physical barriers—chronic fatigue, low energy, preventable disease, nagging pain, or a comfort addiction. When those no longer dominate your attention, you’re free to climb up that pyramid again.

The purpose of physical training is to earn freedom, not just fitness.

The Hidden Power of Training

Training your body, and your mind as a result, can really be summarized as “getting out of our own way.”

As someone whose career is built around health, wellness, and owning a gym, it may sound strange to say, but what’s done in the gym isn’t really about the gym at all.

If we can’t discipline our physical body, we’ll often be ruled by our emotional state, our mental noise, and our external circumstances. Making excuses will become our natural operation system.

Training your body is one of the most tangible, grounded ways to train everything that matters even more— consistency, self-trust, patience, courage, the ability to evolve.

And if you don’t build strength in the physical, you’ll struggle to carry weight in the mental, relational, emotional, and spiritual.

To put it bluntly - if you can’t control what you put in your mouth, how do you expect to control what comes out of it?

If you don’t develop control & temperance in the simplest of things like movement & nutrition why do you expect for your discipline and character to have structural integrity when challenged by things much more complex?

Here’s some of what training builds:

• Self-Control & Temperance – holding the line when it’s uncomfortable.
• Resilience – staying calm and capable in the chaos.
• Confidence – earning belief through effort.
• Capacity – showing up for others because you’ve shown up for yourself.
• Energy – sustaining what matters, longer.
• Health – so you can stay in the game and play it well.

Build from the Bottom, Climb to the Top

When we focus on physical health, we’re not just adding fitness—we’re building a stronger foundation to support everything above it:

• Social Contribution & Connection: Building authentic relationships and meaningful community.
• Esteem, Self-worth & confidence: Developing confidence and a sense of self-worth.
• Self-actualization: Living with vision, purpose, creativity, and clarity.

If you’re serious about becoming the person you’re meant to be, it starts with your body. Your future is built on this foundation. Strengthen it.

You can’t say “yes” to a life that you’re passionate about when your body says “no” for you.

Stay deviant.