Thursday, Feb 24, 2022 • 37min
Joe Holder | Break the Fitness Rules
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Since the day Joe Holder stepped on the scene, his innovative training strategies have attracted everyone from executives to supermodels. But this Nike Trainer didn’t become one of the most influential figures in the industry by having a star-studded book of clients. He did it by challenging the rules and continuously working to make fitness more approachable and inclusive. On this episode, Joe explains how his famous philosophy, the Ocho System, enables us take care of ourselves so that we’re better equipped to help others. He tells us why being part of the “Plant-Based Gang” is anything but restrictive, and why exercise snacks can help movement fit on anyone’s plate. He also gets candid about his qualms with the fitness world and lays out a simple mindset shift that can help us reach our goals. Joe’s concepts show that the barriers to health and fitness aren’t so hard to knock down, and that by choosing to better ourselves, we can inspire others to do so too.
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Joe Holder
Jacqueline Beier
Transcript
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Break
Jacqueline Beier
00:08
Oh, hello. Welcome to trained body and mind, a podcast exploring the cutting edge of holistic fitness. I'm your host, Jacqueline Beier. Each episode I connect with the world's leading experts and athletes to talk about mindset, movement, nutrition, recovery and sleep. What we like to call the five facets of fitness today. I'm talking with a health and fitness expert who's determined to help you find a healthier version of yourself.
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Joe Holder
00:38
There's a difference between hype and results, and of course I was creating results which got me a lot of notoriety. But then you gotta ask yourself, it's like, "What am I really doing?" It's like why is training a famous person at the end of the day in terms of output any different than training whatever Joe Schmo off the street, it's still just one person and I know whatever I could improve their health for the better. But for me this has always been a public health mission.
Share
Jacqueline Beier
01:06
That's
Nike
trainer Joe Holder. Back in 2015 he blew up in the fitness industry for being the guy who got the fashion world into shape. But his focus has always reached far beyond the results of any individual. Since the beginning. He strived to create changes that benefit the greater good.Share
01:23
It started during his time as a walk on wide receiver at
The University of Pennsylvania
when Joe sustained back to back injuries. While it did send him to a dark place for a while. It also helped him realize the rewards of holistic health that every part of the self, the physical, the mental, the emotional needs to be given love in order to be healthy.Share
01:44
That's the basis of his famous philosophy. What he calls, "The Ocho system". The O-C-H-O stands for "One Can Help Others, Others Can Help One." And it cultivates the idea that focusing on eight core areas of wellness to better yourself will set you up to be a better person in this world.
Share
02:02
I know it seems like a tall order, right? But I promise you it's not Joe's wellness playbook is not only manageable, it's designed for everyone, no matter how fit or how busy
Share
02:18
Joe. I just want to climb through my zoom screen and give you a big hug right now.
Share
Joe Holder
02:22
It's been a few years.
Share
Jacqueline Beier
02:24
It has.
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Joe Holder
02:25
You gave me my first video shoot?
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Jacqueline Beier
02:27
I know that was fun. I was like, I like this guy.
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Joe Holder
02:31
People still do that workout actually.
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Jacqueline Beier
02:33
Do they? It was solid.
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Joe Holder
02:34
People text me all the time
Share
Jacqueline Beier
02:36
And you made me like almost throw up on the assault bike nearly every time.
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Joe Holder
02:42
Maybe, I mean, it's not my fault. That's because you always wanted to go hard. So I'm like, all right, this is what she wants.
Share
Jacqueline Beier
02:49
Alright. So it has been a while. I do think about you often, though. So I've been a bad friend, but I'm glad that this is giving us an excuse to, to reconnect. What are you most excited about? What are you working on today?
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Joe Holder
03:04
Today? I mean I'm
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Jacqueline Beier
03:05
Just today in general, like not today, literally.
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Joe Holder
03:09
I don't think my work is as based upon being in the gym or chronic output anymore. So I'm really just, I spent the last two years of time on my own terms to do the projects that I want. You know, I've been investing in companies more and just really also community building and management. So if people who want to get healthy, create structures for them to do so and, yeah, that's, that's really it.
Share
Jacqueline Beier
03:34
I'm relevant for a second, if you don't mind.
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Joe Holder
03:36
Yeah, yeah, please
Share
Jacqueline Beier
03:37
One of my biggest frustrations with the fitness industry is that I see so many people, they get certified, and then they act like that's their finish line, but I don't really know a lot of trainers or coaches who really go above and beyond to pursue higher education or to try to use their platform for better.
Share
03:54
And I think, you know, social media makes people come off as experts maybe when they're not, if they're charismatic, they're big personality. And there are a lot of businesses right now that even higher trainers who don't have a single credential in their teaching classes, and so I think it's like total bananas out there in a lot of ways.
Share
04:12
So one of the things I respected so much about you over, you know, the time of knowing it was just like the very intellectual approach that you take to what you do, and you're a bit of like a forever student, and you're always trying to do more, so
Share
Joe Holder
04:26
Yeah, I mean the other industries like the supplement industry, it's not
FDA
regulated, right? There is like the NSCA. There are national organizations, but the thing then becomes the people who hire have to, I guess, ask for those things.Share
Jacqueline Beier
04:41
Yeah.
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Joe Holder
04:41
I don't know, humans are simple creatures, right? It's like you won't do more than is necessary to get done what you need to get done. But I agree with you overall, I think it would give more kind of more respect to the industry if everybody kind of has that.
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Jacqueline Beier
04:55
Okay, so I want to bring it back to you have a lot of identities, you have a lot of things that you're working on. Let's talk for a moment about you as a trainer, you are not training as many hours out of your day as you might have been a few years ago as you mentioned, but you are still training some clients, correct?
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Joe Holder
05:12
Yeah
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Jacqueline Beier
05:12
Who makes up the bulk of your client list these days, and you can feel free to name names, we love that. If you don't have to no pressure.
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Joe Holder
05:18
Just his background I guess with people who don't know me, like I came on with a
Nike
project in 2015 and one of the things that I really focused on was helping Nike
kind of build out their personal training instead of just a class structure. Gen Z kids are listening to, this is like the classes used to be the thing like that was all everybody cared about.Share
05:41
Track was part of the fastest mile program where we like actually taught people within a specific period of time to get somewhere. And I saw with that the ability to combine fitness and performance became super interesting.
Share
05:53
So, during those years of 2015 or like 19 or whatever, I was training everybody like, you know, I was training editors, I was training athletes, I was training top models, I was training entertainers, people from the fashion world, it was
Naomi Campbell,
Virgil Abloh,
God bless his soul. Bella Hadid
, it was Georgia Fowler
. Did some stuff with Lady Gaga,
it was a crazy list. And what that taught me a lot was how to teach people to meet their goals because you know, what made me kind of hot or whatever was basically treated models like athletes and just with women who I thought was important.Share
06:28
Was the empowerment through strength training because we always heard the fears of being bulky or whatever. I looked at that, and I saw that the industry, one, was growing. Second, there are other things that I wanted to do. But third, and you know, Kobe got arrested. So It was like transitioning from the Kobe who wore number 8 to the Kobe who wore number 24.
Share
06:50
So now I basically, I wanted to open sources, so you know, taking on certain projects that allowed me to scale it, whether it was master class or continuing
Nike
work or my work with GQ
, but on the one to one, it's basically old clients who just want to train sometimes if they're in town.Share
07:08
So you know, I still train, you know,
Riccardo Tisci
or Derek Blasberg
sometimes and Naomi Campbell
or people who are essentially getting ready for roles. So if somebody say has a movie coming up or somebody is just trying to get right and wants a little bit of extra work and wants a little bit of jumpstart for a specific goal. That's what I do.Share
07:28
I just think I had a little bit of a, not a coming to Jesus moment or whatever, but there's a difference between hype and results and of course I was creating results which got me a lot of notoriety, but then you gotta ask yourself, it's like at the end of the day, what am I really doing?
Share
07:43
It's like why is training a famous person at the end of the day in terms of output any different than training whatever Joe Schmo off the street, it's still just one person and I know whatever I could improve their health for the better.
Share
07:58
But for me this has always been a public health mission. So just to condense it, I guess it's, you know, people ask me, who are you still training, are you training this famous person, whatever that I'm like, yeah, but that's not the mission.
Share
08:11
Then I had a good time doing that, it took me all over the world and I still do it here and there. But my heart has always been in figuring out ways to create both structural change and be able to scale it to help more people.
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Jacqueline Beier
08:26
When did you realize that was your mission? Like was that always your plan when you started training or did it kind of hit you at a certain point?
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Joe Holder
08:32
That was my mission even through college, right? Because I look at it like this, I was an Ivy League student, I went to Ivy League School, I went to
U
Penn
,
but I realized that perhaps sports could get me access to their even though I gotta depend on my own. Because of my athleticism, people looked at me different, and then it was like, oh, and he's smart, which is a whole social construct issue in itself. But then it became the situation of, I always want to figure out ways to help.Share
Jacqueline Beier
08:60
Okay, so anybody who knows you will be somewhat familiar with this, but I think it's important that we establish like where all of this is coming from, so break down the ocho system for me, just briefly explain what it is when you came up with it, how you apply it.
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Joe Holder
09:13
The ocho system basically is both my business philosophy, but then also a personal philosophy that simply says, look, instead of trying to make wellness so nebulous and confusing, it's like here are eight areas and if you pay attention to you'll have benefits.
Share
09:29
Very succinctly those eight areas are physical which composes of your diet and your fitness activity. Then there's mental and there's emotional, spiritual, intellectual, occupational, social and their financial.
Share
09:44
It was formulated at my time at
Penn
because I was dealing with football injury that helped me realize just key aspects that are necessary to bounce back. Especially not just physical, but it's my mind. My mind was off. I saw that my healing was off because I was just so sad and depressed. The ocho system basically stands for you. No one can help others and others can help one. It's a feedback loop of gratitude.Share
10:08
For fitness, you focus on endurance, cardiovascular system because you know, aerobic health is connected to longevity pretty intensely, you focus on mobility, your ability to consistently move every day and feel comfortable in your body and then you focus on strength because muscle is protective. Then from there you look at it from the other areas of your personal health that you should take into account.
Share
10:30
So that's basically helping build out people's mental resilience. So it's being able to how do I deal with hardships and emotional is basically, you know like what's my love life? Like what's my relationship with God or anything else that I believe in? What's that deeper kind of emotional connection and then when it begins to spread out, you realize that you can also be a conduit to help other people.
Share
Jacqueline Beier
10:52
I mean you were so ahead of your time though. When were you at
Penn
?Share
Joe Holder
10:56
I was 2008 to 2013.
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Jacqueline Beier
10:58
I feel like I've been embedded in this fitness space for a long time, and it doesn't feel like until recently, even that trainers brands, anybody with influence in this space has connected the dots even between just like mind and movement and other facets. Do you feel like if it wasn't for your injuries that you experienced your mental health at the time, is that how you connected those dots?
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Joe Holder
11:22
First of all, that's a great question. But it goes back further. It wasn't for my parents. My dad was ahead of his time. He was a doctor. My mom raised us, and she juice, still juices.
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Jacqueline Beier
11:33
She has a monastery background, right?
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Joe Holder
11:34
Yeah, that's right.
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Jacqueline Beier
11:36
I mean, I love my parents. I know they're probably gonna listen to this, wouldn't trade you guys, but like you scored the parental jackpot for sure.
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Joe Holder
11:41
She taught me how to read, and I skipped a grade because of her. So it starts with my parents and what they taught me. So not everybody knows this, but I'll share it was after eighth grade, my dad took me out of school because I was good at sports, but I needed to mature more. He took me out of school, and he just had me teach myself for a year.
Share
12:01
He got me textbooks, he got me a couple of tutors, but he also just made me like go out in the world and do stuff. But to your point about connecting the dots, everything is the derivative, right? The whole point of the
College of Arts and Sciences
background is that you connect the dots to different factors through general ed.Share
12:20
And the issue with fitness, is that. Alright, I'm just gonna be super candid for a moment.
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Jacqueline Beier
12:26
Yes
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Joe Holder
12:26
The issue in the fitness world is this, you have people that get into it because they never had any either sort of clout or been to the mountaintop before that period of time.
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12:35
So they probably weren't that good at sports, or they use it to their advantage, but they probably didn't really do anything, or they were good, they didn't make it, and then they're still trying to hold on to the fact that they failed, but they want to feel like they still made it. You see this a lot in fitness and especially also with runners, it's being in the running community.
Share
12:53
My thing with that was like, I accepted the fact that I failed. I did not go to the
NFL
even if I wanted to, I dealt with injuries, I had a solid career, but you know, injuries did stuff to that. And I then thought from this process was like, okay, if all this stuff that I've learned, how can I put it together?Share
13:11
And when I looked at very early on was that the fitness world totally ignored the performance world which everybody is so big into now, right? Fitness, no offense, fitness doesn't inspire me, doesn't inspire me.
Share
13:24
I don't care about group classes, I don't care about the playlist, I don't care about dancing on a spin bike. It is not inspiring. What's inspiring was the performance world, which was saying, I have an athlete that I have to get across the finish line, because if a coach does not do something correct, that could be the difference between a gold medal and not even qualifying for the
Olympics
at all.Share
13:45
So seeing the work that was done into Michael Johnson Performance Center, it was, you know,
Nike
actually brought me down there for a project, reading more so of famous sport coaches and performance coaches and looking at, okay, if I get an athlete, which Nike
gave me and I say, "Jack, we're gonna run your fastest mile," and I don't get you there.Share
14:06
But after eight weeks, I say, "Oh, but we had a good time," you're like "The hell with that," you said you gonna-. Yeah, and if I put my bed on the line, which I say, okay, a model comes to me and says, I have whatever a fashion show I need to look good for or an actor says, I don't need to look good for this and I don't get them there, that's my job. When it comes to fitness stuff, that's not the case. You give them a good class, they leave, and it's all good.
Share
Jacqueline Beier
14:33
So when you talk about performance and how, that's what excites you through the lens of competitive athletes, that makes a ton of sense. Do you think that's something that the general population should give more of a shit about?
Share
14:45
Like does the average person, you know, if they're excited by going to classes and just like dancing on a bike, are they missing out on not trying to think about their performance. Is there something that, you know, pushing yourself or like how do you apply that just to the average exerciser?
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Joe Holder
15:02
So for the average exercise, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with classes. I'm like saying, yes, please go do it. I don't know if you've read my latest column for
GQ
, where I talk about this.Share
Jacqueline Beier
15:12
I did my research Joe
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Joe Holder
15:13
It's a little bit of a sport of life concept, which is okay, if I realized that my life slightly is a sport, how can I apply either an athlete mindset or a little bit of these performance concepts in my life. So what does that mean? Exactly. All that really means is doing a few key things and to make it a little bit more tangible.
Share
15:33
So you know what you're actually doing. So there's no issue of going to classes. If you say to yourself, this class will get me to this goal within a specific period of time, even if that goal is, I just want to hang out with my friends because I understand the benefits of emotional health or I just wanna listen to some good music, right?
Share
15:49
But the other things that you could do, I know everybody, and it connects back really this everybody's an athlete, if you have a body or an athlete. Look, the body responds very well to regiment. And it also responds at the proper time, that changes if you dose it correctly.
Share
16:05
So the reason why I say sometimes is look at it from a performance lens is because you wouldn't go into work and just do things randomly and hope for a good occurrence. Instead of guessing which workouts will work for you, it's just like set up a plan. It's like for the next four weeks, I'm going to focus on my strengths, so it's, I know I need to do this, this, this and this.
Share
16:28
And it takes out some of the psychic overload, especially if you're new to the game and the difficulty that comes with it, or it's my back's been hurting. So instead of just dealing with the back pain, it's like, okay, I know I sit all day, so maybe I'll focus on some hip openers and some core work. So athletes' mindset is really just a little bit more methodical instead of doing things randomly, do things with a purpose.
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Jacqueline Beier
16:50
Yeah, I was gonna say it sounds too like you're talking about not just going through the motions.
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Joe Holder
16:55
I just don't think you should just live life on a random kind of current. It's like if you can control the wave a little bit, why not do that?
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Jacqueline Beier
17:04
Okay, how's this for a pivot exercise next. Alright, I love this phrase, tell me what it means.
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Joe Holder
17:13
I saw a study in like 2013 or something that talked about breaking up exercise in the snack form, basically they saw with diabetic patients how it helped control their blood sugar a little bit more if exercise is broken up into two separate bouts instead of just one.
Share
17:31
But that just clicked into something deeper, which I continuously thought about. Why does nobody just talk about movement for health? It's always about fitness or performance, which is not most of the country. And if perhaps this was changed a little bit, maybe people would relate to it a little bit differently. And it always sat in the back of my head. I remember when I read it, I even like bought the domain name like exercise snacking. com or something.
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Jacqueline Beier
17:56
See, you are always ahead of your time, Joe.
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Joe Holder
17:58
It was always sitting there, I was sitting there, I was sitting there, I used to talk about it and mentioned it here and there. But it really started to click when I got
Naomi Campbell
as a client because God bless her. But she's either always late or she's always busy, and sometimes she would come in and be like oh I only got 25 minutes.Share
18:15
I started training her maybe in 2018 and old me would have been like, "Oh that's not enough time, this will be a waste." But then I realized I was like no like first off for this woman she's genetically gifted, she really just needs this for stress reduction in health and to feel better in her body.
Share
18:33
So that concept sat with me and then when the
Covid
started in the world went into lockdown a bit, Naomi
wanted to keep training and during one of our sessions one day this was her idea to-. She says, "Let's go on live," and I'm like you don't tell Naomi
no, it's Naomi Campbell
, she's like, "Let's go on live," and I'm like, "Okay." And she wanted to do it every day, and we probably did it every day for like three plus months.Share
19:01
People still wanted the workout. So that's when I just fully launched like the exercise snacks concept. Because I talked about previously impressing stuff, but then I just made a database because all the
IG Lives
with 30 minutes or less and I just made a database that had all the workouts and then help people have these short routines.Share
19:19
Because people were locked in their homes and if I could play a good role in that and helping people understand not just this concept but to get them through this when in my opinion I know a lot of people have a lot of feelings about it, but that's one of the times I thought we could have totally shifted the way in which people view their health as a country.
Share
19:39
And even if whatever companies in the country didn't latch on that long term, I latched onto it and people say I helped change their life. You could literally every hour or two hours just stand up from your desk for three minutes and do light movements and that can offset some of the negative effects of that.
Share
19:59
So it's basically a thought process of meeting people where they are, the only place where extreme guilt really works is church and that doesn't really work anymore, and I don't want to meet people and make them feel bad about their situation.
Share
20:12
I want to say look I'm going to make it as easy as possible for you to start moving. And I also just want to have more fun with it. It doesn't have to be such pageantry, it could be low-fi we're just moving or having a good time.
Share
Jacqueline Beier
20:28
I think a lot of people just have this idea in their mind that like, "Oh my workout needs to be an hour, it needs to be 45 minutes," like you can break it up throughout the day.
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Joe Holder
20:37
So basically, whatever you wanna call it exercise sex or movements next or movement breaks all it really is, is just consistent contraction of muscles to help thread blood throughout the body to have a slight increase in heart rate, that has some sort of molecular benefit now.
Share
20:52
Well, you have more benefit if you move a little bit quicker. Yeah, for sure, but it doesn't have to be a sprint, you can just power walk, or you can basically do interval walks without having to run. It's just that you speed up for a second, slow down for a second or things like that.
Share
21:07
Some studies do look at it from a very intense hyper movement standpoint. But the overall concept of exercise snacking really is just, it's just moving, it doesn't have to be overly intense.
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Jacqueline Beier
21:21
When we come back from the break, Joe makes the case for an elimination diet, challenges our notions of self-care and accidentally brings up a sore subject.
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Break
Jacqueline Beier
22:16
Alright, let's talk snacks in the literal sense. You are proudly plant based. Talk to me about your diet. What are you eating these days?
Share
Joe Holder
22:24
Yeah, I mean, I think the easiest way to think about my diet is basically, you know, vegetarian or vegan before dinner and the dinner if I want, sometimes I have some fish or something lower on the food chain that isn't super heavy metal rich.
Share
22:36
I still don't eat meat, but for me, I look at it like this, you know, I'm big in a-. Alright, it's not intermittent fasting, it's just time restricted eating.
Share
22:46
I do time restricted eating too.
Share
22:46
It's just like, it's just basically do circadian rhythm eating, but for me focusing on the digestion is the best thing, you know, in the morning, I eat lite, I even have some cup of tea, or I'll just have some fruit, or I'll make myself a juice or literally just some vegetables.
Share
23:02
I found that when I started movement and treating myself well in terms of not eating heavy in the morning, I feel better. Because whether as gross as it is, it's like if you had a bigger dinner the night before you were then sedentary for hopefully your eight hours of sleep, why are you putting food in without stimulating the digestion to go to the bathroom without necessarily having coffee?
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Jacqueline Beier
23:24
Yeah
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Joe Holder
23:24
So I'm very big on essentially treating my digestive system well, but I don't overly complicate it. I don't really like doing like the day in the life eating thing. I just try to eat whole foods.
Share
23:34
So like I just try to stay away from processed foods, I try to eat it within a 10-12 hour eating window. I try to focus on my sleep. I think that's really the most important thing. But if people are just interested in figuring out a diet that works best for them.
Share
23:49
Everybody should do an elimination diet at least once. Like, you don't have to go do the whole blood test thing if you can afford it please, but just do an elimination diet. So then when you reintroduce the food, you actually then pay attention to how it makes you feel. And my big things are, and you know, whatever. If we had to go,
Michael Pollan's
food rules is.Share
24:07
Reduced sugar, focus on digestion in the morning, don't eat too close to bed, hopefully about three hours before bed, make sure you hydrate, increase eating your fruits and vegetables. Vegetables, especially dark leafy greens, aren't that easy for you to steam them or sauté them. That often breaks down certain components of the food. That makes it easier on the digestion.
Share
24:29
If you choose to eat meat totally fine, just make sure the source is good and the way that you cook it, it doesn't have additional negative health impacts. That creates compounds that aren't the best for you. That's just really it for me, it's just like, I don't think it has to be that crazy. But the one key thing is there's no such thing as a healthy food. So it's basically food is nutrient dense. Then how that food relates to you is then becomes what's important.
Share
24:51
There's two things I want to stress because I don't know if people talk about this enough. Ultra processed food is not food, it's foodstuff. So when you eat, you're telling your body that what I'm consuming is safe and if you put something in your mouth that literally causes disease, it is not safe. And ultra processed foods puts your body in an inflammatory state, literally like your body processes it as sickness, so just reduce that or don't eat it at all.
Share
25:16
Then the next thing becomes food is not a reward. So you have to think of just making sure you eat to keep your body operating as it should. Even if you have a desk all day because that kind of is low intensity work, and then just pay attention to how food makes you feel.
Share
25:35
And I think once you create more of an eating plan that's around that, whether you want to call it intuitive eating or whatever, that's the wave. I mean my eating plan is pretty simple, and then I've been supplements here and there as need be, or focused on certain foods that might have increased efficacy. But there's no one size fits all for everyone.
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Jacqueline Beier
25:54
So before you started exercise snacks, you started the plant based gang.
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Joe Holder
25:58
I did, I gotta bring it back. Everybody wants me to do you have one of the hoodies.
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Jacqueline Beier
26:01
Joe, this is really important. And I'm glad you brought this up.
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Joe Holder
26:03
You have a hoodie, I think
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Jacqueline Beier
26:04
I don't Joe.
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Joe Holder
26:05
Oh, I thought you did.
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Jacqueline Beier
26:06
Okay. I checked the mail every day for my first edition of Plant Based Gang hoodies.
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Joe Holder
26:11
Yeah, a'right, it must be a storage. I need to look into that.
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Jacqueline Beier
26:14
You said you got to bring it back. So it's that kind of what?
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Joe Holder
26:17
Yeah, it's gon' relaunch. I mean, everybody's just so interested in what I eat and it's so fascinating to me.
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Jacqueline Beier
26:22
Well, I think'cause you're-. You run marathons, but you also lived heavy, you are a former athlete, you're like fit as hell. And I think that there's a fascination and like still some sort of like a disbelief that people like you can be plant based.
Share
26:36
You know what I think it is, and maybe I need to keep looking into it, I don't even know if science has cracked it yet. It's like we're tearing away the calories in calories out thing, and we're looking more at a triage theory of food which looks at how nutrients impact the body if you don't have enough of it. That's just not subclinical but also like suboptimal.
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Joe Holder
26:58
But the thing that I often question to which I don't fully understand it is like I could also keep my mass without necessarily eating a lot which becomes a situation where I think talks about the protective effect that protein basically has, and it's you know I get in a couple of shakes today, or I try to get protein in or look at it kind of as a supplement.
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27:19
But yeah, I mean to your point that a person who's plant base can't do that. it's simply, Plant Based Gang is basically an eating philosophy that says how can I get 75 plus percent of my diet from whole food, relatively unprocessed fruits and vegetables. And it looks at fish and meat and animal sources basically as a supplement instead of as the main aspect of the diet.
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27:46
So I started that when plant based wasn't fully in the zeitgeist, and now it's been so muddled up, and it's basically just helping people understand here's how to get more fruits and vegetables in your life, here's how to get have food that tastes good.
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28:01
You know, one of my original thoughts that I still might do is like, I want to just do like a breakfast veggies cookbook because we often overlook breakfast as a way to get vegetables in the diet. But also just showing you kind of like the artistic history and the conceptualization around eating and its impact that could have because what you eat can also have an impact on the world.
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28:22
I know everybody focuses on the whole factory farming type of thing and global warming, but even with your water footprint depending upon what you eat, can also reduce the water usage and things like that.
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28:37
So I don't really believe in veganism, but I don't think you can honestly look at food and only think of the animal and I just look at it from a concept of how do you balance like nutritional requirements with taking care of the world with probably just being honest that we don't need as much as we do. But yeah, I can talk about this all day, but I just want people to get more life force, like just get more life force in your diet.
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Jacqueline Beier
29:01
So much of what we've been talking about and really the ocho system as a whole sounds like the conversation that we as a society are having around self-care, and you posted something on your story over the weekend that really caught my attention. It said, "Eating breakfast, drinking coffee, they're not self-care, they're instead basic human needs. And we as a society, you need to stop telling women that taking an uninterrupted shower is taking care of yourself." What inspired you to share this?
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Joe Holder
29:28
Those words weren't distinctly mine. I was reading an article basically where somebody was commentating on a post that a famous actress had put about being a mother and that she then, you know, was saying how she finally got to eat breakfast by herself and had interrupted coffee and was like, "Women, remember this is self-care."
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29:49
And it's like what the, what is this? And this is a celebrity. So somebody who has money and time, and we've been able to create basic human needs as self indulgences or self-care. For me, I look at it like self-care is more so like self-preservation. It's saying, how do I take care of myself? Because again, like we relatively live in a world that unless you have the means doesn't want you to do that, and then how can I do that?
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30:16
So I could say look within the structures in which I live, my main viability is often seen as just what I could do for work or just what I could do to keep society moving instead of it saying that, and especially a little bit as a black male or anybody really, it's you often have to be recognized by what it is that you've done instead of just you being.
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30:39
So self-care shouldn't be this situation where you just are able to take a moment for yourself because you've earned that. When self-care really should just be, how can we look at taking care of ourselves, so we could be better vehicles I think in the world.
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30:54
And then, especially for women where self-care is often looked at this situation where a makeup tutorial because I need to look more beautiful, or I'm in the gym because I'm getting a good sweat, when it's really that, it's then. Women are looked at for the aesthetics, women are looked at what for their childbearing, women are looked at for kind of the veneer instead of just a personhood, especially as it pertains to motherhood.
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31:17
I'm like we should be helping mothers, right? Women could take care of themselves if say maternity leave is a little bit more extended or different things like that. So if we look at more of like the communal aspect or the bureaucratic aspect of self-care, that with the swipe of a pen, both companies and governments can make it a lot easier for people to take care of themselves. I don't think we will look at it from such a self-indulgent standpoint.
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31:40
So I just want people to kind of, it's not necessarily wake up, but I, I don't know, I imagine you get tired of it too. It's just like, how many more pretty food photos can we see? How many more shirtless workouts can we see? How many more makeup routines can we see it?
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31:55
Just like there has to be a bigger message here, and it's sad that when we think we're doing basic things such as taking time off from work, it's very American or being able to eat or being able to chill that is like self-care instead of just a human right.
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Jacqueline Beier
32:13
Well, in a lot of what you're saying to it, it could be interpreted as like it's an individual thing. Like it's my self-care, it's my way of eating, it's my way of moving. But ultimately these are the components that make up what you describe as intergenerational health, right? The things that kind of come together and the ripple effects that it has on society and community. Can you dig into that a little bit and what you mean by that?
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Joe Holder
32:39
Yeah, so, you know, I think during quarantine I sat down, and I wanted to come up with a more robust health platform to be able to elucidate and share with my vision is for health, right? So often times we get into these talks about health, and you bring up race.
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32:55
People always feel some type of way when it's like look like black Americans are Americans too. It's just like take care of your people. So this thought process of intergenerational health was just looking at what are the biggest health gaps that often exists within black
America
, but also impact Americans as a whole?Share
33:12
And what I saw then, was that alright, what are the things that I want to focus on to be able to tear that down? And for me, that's like access to general health and mental health care, it's access to good food, it's access to movement, and it's basically access to proper environment.
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33:27
So it's basically kind of like just a lifelong mission platform where how can I help him improve those gaps through the work that I do? And then I want people to realize it's just we don't like to talk about money, but if we all talked about money, and we're more open to it, I think especially with our financial health, we will probably look at the government's budget a little bit more and be like, "Yo, what do you actually spending this money on?"
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33:50
And we want to look at it from such an individual standpoint. So when it comes to health, if we were to look at it also from the communal and overarching cultural structures that make this different, that could make things a lot easier.
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34:02
So that's how I look at it, like kind of an overall social impact strategy and it kind of makes health bigger than just oneself, but still connects back to if I take care of myself, can I then be a better conduit to then help others do the same, which I think is important.
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34:17
That's the kind of basis of intergenerational health and, you know, I think again we start generation by generation, how then can we leave a better impact down the line?
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34:28
So you know, that's what I'm focused on. It's exciting, but it's also overwhelming, but at the end of the day, like what else is there to do? You know, as Tom Sachs says, and you know, he's a partner at
Nike,
and it's like, you know, the reward for good work is more work. So here we are.Share
Jacqueline Beier
34:44
So do you have a call to action then for everybody listening? Like, how might they be able to play a role in promoting positive intergenerational health?
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Joe Holder
34:53
Yeah, company probably has a donation matching platform if you work for a bigger company. So companies may, you know, double or sometimes during certain periods quadruple the amount you donate show up your community, right?
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35:05
Because a lot of us think we got to go to, you know, whatever
Africa
or India
or some far corner of the world to make a difference when there's probably somebody that's just hungry down your block. Get involved in your local politics and government.Share
35:18
But the one thing again that I think you could do is take care of yourself, that's what confuses me, I think, you know, as weird as it sounds, I think the revolution starts at the middle class, the middle and the upper class because they have free time and free money now, everybody who's listening to this, you probably already take care of yourself, I guess, or you're interested in doing so.
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35:38
But if you could also just tell a friend or whomever, take care of yourself. So you realize how good that feels, and then you're gonna want to spread that to other people, and it doesn't necessarily mean you have to dedicate your life to it.
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35:49
You just have to hold people accountable that should be doing that. Yeah, I think there's a revolutionary aspect of taking control of your health and then if you can spread that a little bit, that's cool too.
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Jacqueline Beier
35:58
Alright, well, this feels like a perfect mic drop moment. This up, Joe, my friend, I have enjoyed this a lot. Thank you for giving us the time for giving us a little peek under your hood. Just a big heart emoji for you.
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Joe Holder
36:12
Thank you for having me, definitely a pleasure to be here, Jacq. Thanks for chatting again. And yeah, you know, you gave me probably my you know, first little light of the wick to help get me to where I am now. So that does not go unappreciated.
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Jacqueline Beier
36:26
And I'll just continue to check the mail, you know.
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36:36
Joe's ideas are meant to break down barriers in a wellness industry that's increasingly dogmatic. Everyone's body is different. Everyone's financial situation is different. Our relationships, our environments, our spirituality, they're all completely unique to us and everyone should be allowed the space and the tools to approach their health in the ways that are exactly right for them because each one of us deserves that.
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37:00
So enjoy those exercise snacks minus the side of guilt for not training for an hour. Pay more attention to how food makes you feel than what you quote should or shouldn't be eating. Because when you're at your best, you'll be better able to help those around you achieve the same, whether that's your family or people in your community. As Joe's philosophy goes, we're interconnected, and we have that practical and moral responsibility.
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37:25
If we approach health with the notion that we can all thrive, then we will all thrive on the next episode. I'll be talking with Dr. Jeffrey Dermer, sleep performance director for the
US Weightlifting
team, about how to sleep like a champion. This has been Trained. Talk to you soon.Share
37:44
If you've enjoyed this episode of trained, help us spread the word by rating and reviewing the podcast. That way we can keep making great episodes for you to listen to. And it helps other people find us too. If you've got a question for me or my guests or a topic you'd like to see covered, email me at trained@nike. com, and I'll see what I can do.
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38:09
Thanks for listening to trained. Just a reminder. Always talk with your doctor before starting any training or nutrition program. The information we provide isn't a substitute for any medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, and the individual opinions expressed here are just that opinions.
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Jacqueline Beier
Joe Holder