Eric Whitman
Minneapolis, MN
Lead Pastor, The Exchange Church
1. What fitness practice/concept/guidelines have you learned and totally embrace?
Be Willing To Fail – By fail I mean not be perfect in all we do. We all have checklists and how we want our day to go. Fitness forces you to rearrange your life to make it a priority. Now if I can say, I spent time with God in the Word, ate healthy, worked out, and got enough rest – that’s a win for the day. The other stuff – work, projects, all seems to naturally just fall into place and if I don’t get everything done, I don’t stress out about it because I took time with God and care of myself. As a result I’m a better husband, father, and pastor.
Treat Your Body Like A Car – Fuel Matters – When I first started out, this idea from James Grage that your body is like a car and what you put into it matters, all of a sudden changed how I looked at food. I changed from thinking I should just eat healthy to whatever you put in your body should give you energy and be useful. So most of the time I know what I eat is going straight to power my body to perform at its best. As a result I don’t need soda, energy drinks, or even coffee. It was weird, when I first started at one point I realized I had went months without having a soda which I used to have 4-6 a day. Rest is also vital. A car can’t go forever, shut the engine off, give it time to recuperate and let your body work it’s fitness magic while you sleep and recover.
Go Intense – In the gym it doesn’t matter if you are doing low reps or high reps, LISS or HIIT or Tabata. The intensity you bring determines the pace of your evolution. You can’t afford to go soft and get hardcore results.
Drop Your Ego – I remember the very first day I got back into weight lifting. I started a program and one of the exercises was skullcrushers. Simple basic exercise, but I had never done them when I lifted in high school. Instead of trying those out, I just skipped the exercise because I didn’t see anyone else doing them and didn’t want to look weird. Since then I’ve learned those who make the progress are willing to leave their ego at the door. It doesn’t matter if it’s cardio-acceleration between sets, dying from Tabata sprints on the treadmill, DTP style training of 300 reps of curls or leg press, or even doing partial reps because you’re doing them for a purpose. Be willing to do stuff no one else is doing if you want to see progress no one else is making.
Trust The Program – If you are doing a program you have researched, understand, you have faith in the trainer, and it’s gotten proven results, trust it, even when you don’t see the results at first. That was one of the things I learned from a friend on Bodyspace. She was working towards a show and wasn’t seeing the results as quick as she had hoped – she simply posted “Just trust the program, trust the program.” Loved that.
2. How do you tell others about it and get them excited about it too?
Talk about health and fitness with people who don’t practice them and you see their eyes glaze over. When people physically see a change, such as in a transformation picture, or personally over time, it speaks louder than words and then they ask questions. I send them to sites like bodybuilding.com since there is so much info there and they can easily find the plans, information, really everything they need to get started based on their body type, current knowledge, goals and fitness equipment accessibility – or lack of. The hardest part for people I think is there is a mystery to health and fitness. They don’t know how to be healthy and there is so much conflicting advice because while they see one healthy friend pile a plate full of carbs, protein, and healthy fats, then they read another article saying Keto (low carb) is the way to go.
If I can help people understand there really isn’t that much of a mystery to it, it’s basically nutrition, exercise, and rest, they start to understand how their body works and the mystery starts to disappear. Suddenly food, especially unhealthy food, isn’t scary. In fact, it’s comfortable. You know how to put fat on, you know how to take it off – that changes the game. You understand how to enjoy both unhealthy and healthy food. You can enjoy a slice of birthday cake without feeling guilty. You don’t have to do endless amounts of cardio and eat 500 calories a day to drop weight. It really makes you so much freer to enjoy life because the mystery is gone. When people have a plan (especially nutrition more than exercise) that they understand and feel comfortable with, they can persevere.
3. What component(s) of your faith are you most confident about?
The component I’m most confident about is that because of our identity in Christ, that He is indeed for us. In what has become the verse of our church, John 10:10 says “The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, I came that you might have life and have it to the full.” So many people feel like their life has been stolen, killed, and destroyed by past mistakes, present circumstances, and in many ways health and fitness even plays a role in that. They wish they looked different, felt different, etc. It just adds onto the other struggles and difficulties in their life. But Christ came to give us a free and full life. We can have hopes and dreams because with God all things are possible. You may feel like a dream is dead, but we worship a God who raises dead things to life. He empowers, guides, loves, and leads. Whether it’s fitness or finances, debt or dreams, our failures don’t define our futures, our identity in Christ does.
4. In what ways do you communicate this with others and how do you feel you could share it more?
Many people may not feel like God is, or even want Him to be, a part of their life – because of what they know or think about Him. Kind of like how many people don’t want to eat healthy, or work out, because of the mystery or perceptions that to get fit it’s endlessly running on a treadmill while starving themselves. You can tell people they need Jesus, like you can tell them they need to eat better, but that often falls on deaf ears and gets blank stares with the occasionally nod. But, show them a transformation picture and people love those, they’re drawn to them. Because it connects with a wish/desire they have to be healthier and fitter. A lot of people can identify with a “before” picture, but it’s the “after” pictures that give them hope and where they say to themselves – I want to do that. I could do that. Give them the “how”, the information to fill in the mystery and they start to believe it can be done.
Likewise, I find a lot of people feel like much if not all of their entire life is a before picture. Things aren’t the way they want because of a troubled childhood, failed relationships, layoffs, financial burdens, addictions/habits, their hope is gone. They are stuck on the “before” picture of their life, but Jesus came to give us the “after” picture. He continually brings hope into peoples lives. He tells his disciples, “You’ll see greater things than these.” “You’ll do greater works than what I do.” Jesus wants us to focus on the after picture, and live it. We can have life and have it to the fullest. The tough part is helping people see that because of grace and the beautiful work of a horrible cross, in Christ – they already are the “after” picture. They just need to learn how to walk in it with confidence and swagger … the “new you” one could say.
In that way physical health and spiritual health are the same as we share it with those who don’t know Christ. In both cases it’s not those who are a “before” picture and focus on that “before” picture everyday who achieve the results, – it’s those who though they might be the “before” picture, they live the lifestyle and identity of the “after” picture. They achieve the results, physique, faith, etc. The only difference is speaking physically in health and fitness we earn it, speaking spiritually Christ earned it for us, we just get to live it.
JASON’S TRAINING TIP Eric shares a key insight about trusting the program. Often we struggle with wanting immediate results and we forget that we didn’t get _____ (fat, slow, immobile, etc.) overnight, so it will take time, patience, and perseverance. Most diets and training programs work, it just depends on how much you are willing to commit to them, and see them through to the end. If you know me, you know where I am going next…the same thing is true with your faith, church, and relationship with God. Do you trust God with your dreams, fears, and full life? Are you willing to put in the work (church attendance, bible study, prayer life, mission trips, etc.) that it takes to fully engage in a deep relationship with Jesus Christ? Trust the program…trust your minister. Trust the program…trust God’s word. Trust the program…trust God to hear and act on your deepest, most vulnerable prayers.
