Jacob McMillan
Reading, CA
Editor of Uncompromised Men, Marketing Director of CoachTube.com
1. What fitness practice/concept/guidelines have you learned and totally embrace? People typically have one of two goals when working out. Either they are looking to gain muscle mass or cut fat.
I’ve learned that the following two rules are true for both goals:
90% of fitness success comes from your diet. Are you eating the right amount of calories to cut? Are you eating enough calories to bulk? Is the core of your diet healthy, nutritious foods whether you’re cutting or bulking?
Weight lifting should be the core of EVERY workout schedule. The types of lifts you do and the range of sets/reps will change depending on whether you’re trying to cut or bulk, but if your workout schedule isn’t built around weight lifting, it’s probably worthless.
A lot of people make the mistake of trying to compartmentalize fitness in their life. If your goal is simply to maintain your current body or fitness level, that’s fine.
If you want to significantly change something, however, whether that change looks like the cardiovascular capacity to run a marathon or the body-fat percentage to show your abs, it’s going to require a major life shift. You can’t compartmentalize it. It has to touch every part of your day, from the foods you eat to the time you make available for working out and sleeping.
If you want change, you HAVE to be all-in.
2. How do you tell others about it and get them to get excited about it too?
Getting people excited about reaching their fitness goals is fairly easy when you have legitimate answers to their problems. If all I have is nice things to say and vague descriptions of the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, no one really cares.
But if I’m talking to someone who is uncomfortable with their weight and wants to get in shape, and I’m talking about EXACTLY what they can do to achieve their dreams, they’re excited.
If I’m talking to a naturally skinny guy who has always wanted to increase his weight but nothing seems to be working, and I tell him the exact workout and eating plan I used to gain 30 pounds of muscle in 3 months, he’s pretty excited automatically.
The question is really just, “Do you have a solution to their problem?” You can’t convince people they have a problem, but if they think they have a problem, and you have the answer, they’re excited.
3. What component(s) of your faith are you most confident about?
The thing I am most confident about is that Jesus came to bring us abundant life (John 10:10). He came to bring the Kingdom of Heaven and introduce us to the Father, and everything about the Father and the Kingdom is life, wholeness, and goodness.
The Gospel is Life. Abundant Life. If I know nothing else, I know that.
4. In what ways do you communicate this with others and how do you feel you could share it more?
For me, it’s the exact same as sharing about fitness, in the sense that if you have a solution to people’s problems, they are excited. People really, really want an abundant life. They want life and wholeness in their relationships. They want life and wholeness in their careers. They want life and wholeness in their physical bodies.
The Holy Spirit can bring abundant life into every area of our lives, and by far the best testimony, in my experience, is a Christian living an abundant life.
Like I mentioned earlier, we can’t convince people they have a problem if they don’t see it that way. But so many people already realize they have marriage problems. They already realize they are unfulfilled in their career paths or day-to-day lives.
If my life is broken and shattered and I’m telling them about Jesus, I’m just another person with problems theorizing about possible solutions, like the overweight guy in the gym trying to give advice on getting six-pack abs.
The Gospel is life, and the Holy Spirit is the tangible power to transform broken lives into wholeness. Once we believe that and allow Him to make us whole in every area of our lives, we become really, really attractive to other people wanting to live whole lives.
So I don’t go around looking to preach Jesus to random people (although sure, that happens sometimes). I go around looking to partner with the Holy Spirit in bringing wholeness into people’s lives. Oh your marriage is struggling? Let me speak affirmation of you and your wife and talk about how my wife and I worked through something like that. Oh you’re struggling with self-loathing. Here’s who I see you to be (aka here’s what the Father is speaking over you).
Sometimes we think Jesus is unattractive to the world, because the world doesn’t always like Christians. I would argue that everyone wants Jesus, but few have seen Him in the lives of the Christians they know. We can change that, and it starts by being “selfish” enough to let God bring wholeness into our lives.
JASON’S TRAINING TIP Jacob brings up a great point about the “Abundant Life.” The abundant life can look very different for each of us. I will never forget a client running into the gym after our 6th workout together. She was giddy with excitement. She exclaimed, “Guess what happened this weekend?! I dropped a spoon on the kitchen floor, and easily bent down and picked it up!” What we take for granted, might create an abundant life for others. Her joy about a simple life movement confirmed that our training was working. It’s the same way with our belief in Jesus. Think about the lady that said, “If I can just touch his garments, I will be healed…” (Luke 8:43-48) It was a small simple action, but it was backed-up with tremendous faith and produced an abundant life. What small action could you completely commit to with tremendous faith to produce an abundant life?
