#29 - Ron Jantz

Ron Jantz is a soon to be 59-year-old trying to stay young! Personal fitness is his avenue of choice along that journey. He shares his personal journey of fitness plateaus, finding motivation, creative outdoor workouts and finding happiness through staying in the moment. 

As a professional, he has spent his entire career as a storyteller. Ron graduated from Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism in 1987. He worked in television news as an award winning sports reporter and anchor in Cleveland, Ohio from November of 1987 to November of 2000. 

Since November of 2000, he has served as the Digital Media Coordinator at Lorain County Community College. LCCC is located in northeastern Ohio. Ron tells the stories of the students and professors at LCCC. 

He has kept his hand in the sports scene over the last 23 years as a freelance reporter and producer, radio broadcaster and play-by-play voice for local college and high school sports. He is also a photographer. Nature is his focus. Ron and his wife Stacy celebrate 30 years of marriage this summer and are blessed with four children. 

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Transcript

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This is Angela Grayson from the Loving Life Fitness Podcast. To help others in their fitness journey. It's all possible! It’s time to wake up. Here we go. Hi, everyone. This is Angela Grayson from the Loving Life Fitness Podcast, where we talk to others about their life in health and fitness to help others try to live a better life. So today I have with me Ron Jantz who is just an ordinary guy, just like me and you. And he's going to tell us about his journey in fitness and how his lifestyle works very well for him. So, hi, Ron. How are you doing? I am doing great. Yeah. So I'm here in Florida and it's not too cold. And Ron is over there in Ohio, but he says he likes the cold weather. Do you like to work out in the cold weather? I do, actually. When I run in the cold, I find that I breathe better. I my lungs enjoy cold air. And I know that's not the that's not the same or the truth for a lot of folks, but I enjoy running in cold air. Yeah. You know, they say that there's more people that have heart attacks that exercise outdoors in cold weather than warm weather. Because I like you for that. No, but if you feel better, you might be, hey, that person where it doesn't affect you that way. But cold. They say constricts are arteries. So that blood flow supposedly is not as good. But if you're in really good shape already, you don't have to probably worry about that because you have great blood flow. Well, I'm trying to stay in I call it relevant shape. And that's that's always my goal to stay relevant, relevant, relevant to what? Relevant to my goals in life. I always say I have three reasons for trying to stay fit. One First and foremost, health. I want to stay healthy. I'm a husband and a father, and I want to be healthy for my children and my wife and myself too. Personal Pride. I think we all have personal pride and I want to remain, you know, what I would consider to be a healthy person, to be someone in shape to to keep that personal pride up. And then the third one is, is not really a truth, but it's more a joke. I always kid my wife. The third reason that I work out and try to stay in shape is so she doesn't find a 2530 year old to run off with a good one. Yeah, that would not be nice. That's where the relevant comes in. Personal Pride. Overall health for myself and my family. And then, you know, I mean, we all want to look good, right? Yeah, of course. Look good. Feel good. You know, it all comes together. And to be able to do the things we want to do in life for as long as we possibly can. Having children, you know, that's a good influence on your children, too. How old are your kids? So my kids are 27, 25, 23 and 20, and they're all physically active as well. They were all runners in high school. They all continue to run. I you're right. I Angela, I, I want to set a good example for my children. And I think that is one of several ways that you can do it as a parent. Awesome. So, Ron, let's go way back to when you were younger, maybe in high school or college. Who were your influences? How did you get involved in physical fitness or is that something that just always came naturally to you? Well, I think maybe the first influence and I've never really thought about it, so you just ask that question. My dad was a carpenter. He was a guy who used to build houses in back in the day in the sixties and seventies, when three guys build a house, you'd have, you know, a couple of carpenters, you'd have a mason and you'd have a plumber. And so he was he was physical every day of his life, and he was in good shape. My dad was a good looking man, in good shape and in good health. So, you know, just seeing him always be in shape probably had an influence on me that I wasn't even aware of. But then when I got to the school and the high school specifically, I was a wrestler. I wrestled in high school and I wasn't very good. I was very average, but I was committed to being in the best shape that I could possibly be in. And plus, I was in high school in the late seventies, early 1980s, and back in those days they had a thing called the president's physical fitness exam, where if you could do 120 sit ups and in 120 seconds, 60 pushups, 20 pull ups, and then there was a shuttle run, I forget what the time was, but you could get a presidential certificate. And we had a fitness team at my high school. I was a part of that. So with wrestling and trying to stay in shape to be an effective wrestler and then with the physical fitness team that I was on, those seeds were sown very early in my life, like 14, 15 years old. And the coaches have a lot to do with that influence, too. I can remember back in school when I was in high school also, you know, being involved in sports even as far back as middle school, just great PE teachers and great coaches that had a great influence on my active lifestyle and that stayed with me all of my life. Those teachers, well, two of my high school wrestling coaches, Larry Rohan, Tim Daly, I still consider friends today and they are much older than me obviously, and they are still in very good shape. Awesome. Where do they live? They're in Ohio also. One's in Ohio and one is in Florida. So the oldest one moved to Florida after he retired from teaching him and his wife moved down to Florida for, you know, warmer weather, better for, I think their aging bones and you still keep in touch with them. Absolutely. Wow. I don't think I've ever heard you know, people keep in touch with their high school friends or childhood friends. But I don't think I've ever heard of anybody keeping in touch with their teachers or coaches. That's awesome. Well, yeah, when you have a coach that commits to the to the young people that he or she coaches and you as an athlete or as a student or as a young teenager, really feel that they care about you and that stays with you. And I know myself as a as a coach of young people in athletics, I try to emulate those same characteristics, you know, be a part of their lives, care for them, be interested in what they're doing and stay in touch. Absolutely. You're going to have to make sure you let them know about this podcast because they're going to love hearing what you're saying about them. Yeah, Yeah. So are you a coach now? No, just with my children as they were growing up and as we've talked about, they're all in their twenties right now, so they're kind of aged out of that youth type athletic environment. But from the time that my oldest was five, he's now 27 til the time that my youngest was 18. So that was a stretch of, I don't know, 20 years, I think, where I coached everything that was played and I loved every second of it. Awesome. That is great. And what about them? Do they get involved in coaching at all? Well, my son, who's a high school teacher, is a track and cross country coach. So yes. And then the other three, one is just out of college and starting her professional life and two are still in college and no grandchildren yet to have him. No, no, no. Yeah. Oh, okay. That's a near future. Yeah, hopefully soon. My son is engaged. And so, you know, I think that's very near in our future. Exciting times. Very good. Okay. What about struggles? Can you tell me about any struggles you've had in your life to stick to your healthy lifestyle? Well, I think the biggest struggle has been and continues to be just staying motivated. And actually, you know, it's funny that you and I are doing this at this particular time, not in the day, but just in my life right now, because over the last two months, I black motivation and I'm slipping in my fitness goals and and things that I want to make sure that I accomplish. And you know, Angela has as or I should know, I'm 58 years old, almost 59. So it's it's harder to get to a certain level. And it's it's very easy to slip from that level and that it's harder to get even harder to get back to that level. So I've prided myself in staying at a certain level, being consistent in my workouts and in my commitment and in my discipline. And over the last two months, I've really slipped from that and I need to refocus. So your question is, too, has there been any trials or trouble or. Yeah, right now I'm in one and so if you have any words of motivation for me to get me back on it, feel free to. To send them my way. But I'll be back. I'm a fairly decent self motivator. So I do find, though, that having a partner in your fitness journey is very helpful because you're committed to him or her or whomever your partner is. And even when you have a bad day or a morning where you don't want to work out or an afternoon, depending on when you do it, you do it because you know they're going to be there. You need to show up, you need to support them. And that works. And it hasn't in my past. Yeah. So I was introduced to you by somebody else that I recorded with recently. I don't know if you've listened to my my podcast with Nancy Budget. Yeah, wonderful. But she was your personal trainer when she was. Yes. And she helped keep you motivated because you told her what you wanted and she was able to satisfy you in that department and you stuck with her and, you know, maybe some times that's what we need. You know, if things aren't you feel like things aren't going right or things you're getting lazy. You know, you have to have to have somebody to commit to to be there with you for a while. The trainers are awesome. It's just a matter of finding the right one to fit you. Nancy Nice. It it's a good word. I challenged her to challenge me and she did that. I, I am not a traditional style workout person. And what I mean by that, you will not find me in a gym with weights, just pump in weight. I'm not interested in that. I'm bored with that. I want to do different things. And I told Nancy, I don't want to spend my time in the fitness center with weights. I'm into a lot of body weight type stuff. I'm into unique workouts. And what I mean by that, balancing on a log while lifting another log in a wood chopping, you know, format from, you know, top of your shoulder down to your ankle and back up and forth or doing a bear crawl up a hill, you know, those types of things. And Nancy, I think, really liked that opportunity to be different in the workouts that she planned for me. And we did a lot of fun stuff that kept me interested and obviously kept me in shape. Well, you know, you could always get a hold of her again. She can do some long distance training with you now at work. We remained close. She is a good motivator for me, for sure. That's great. So why in the past two months have you fallen off the wagon? What do you. What do you think is causing us? You know what? It's a great question. And if I. If I knew the answer, I'd probably fix it. I think that at November is a difficult personal month for me. I've had both of my parents in the past have. That has been the month that I've lost both of them. So I have often found my self in November, you know, November has never been a friend to me. So but it's unique that I say that because when I was going through difficult times with my parents health, I found my own fitness workouts therapeutic. I found that the more I ran, the more I would do physical exercise, the better I felt. So this November, though, has been difficult and it's bled into December and hopefully it won't bleed into January. I just need to get back after it. You have a magical mix of things either going right or wrong in our lives that lead to either success or failure. And right now that magic mix is kind of a negative thing. I've talk to you about that November, but then Nancy leaves a woman who I was very close to as a trainer. There's a couple of things going on there that I just need to figure out, but I have confidence in my stuff. Awesome. Yeah. And, you know, once we start get getting back into our workouts and we remember how good it makes us feel, doesn't take very long to want to stay in that flow again. You know, I said to you, or I talk to you about sweating out the poison. That's how I look at a workout from a therapy standpoint, mental health as well as obviously physical health. I think working out is huge for me mentally. And and I use the term I'm going to sweat out the boys. I want to sweat when I work out again, I don't want to sit at a bench with dumbbells and just build muscle mass. I'm not built like that. I'm long and lean. I want to stay that way. I don't think I could be big even if I wanted to be and tried to be. So I sweat. I want to do things that where I'm moving all the time. I have limited rest. I have I'll do an exercise in a count my head for 15 seconds and then go back at it again. So I'm getting that heart rate up of sweating and that works for me. Sweat out the poise that I get out everything in my body that's mentally, you know, taking me in a direction that I don't want to be. So I sweat, I work hard. It works for me. It does. And when you get to that point physically in your workout, you can't think about anything else. You're focused on what you're doing in order to get through that workout. You're right. And it's also cleansing. I don't know. Maybe this is all just my mind creating this in my my head. And if that's the case, then that's okay to write whatever works, whatever gets you to the point you want to be at mentally and physically is what's important. Yeah. And, you know, we need to show ourselves some grace and take a break when we need to. But hey, Ron, two months is long enough. Get back to it. Yeah, I will. Okay. Awesome. Got to stay healthy. You got to stay strong because just like you were saying, as you get older, it only takes a short period of time of not moving around, not using your strength, and things just start falling apart and first it's the body and then that has an effect on the mind also. And you don't want to be in that boat now. And you know what? Well, I think one of the things that's important for me at my age and maybe others at a similar age is the flexibility that comes with a consistent workout. Your body is remains flexible. You are stretching more than you normally would. And when I'm not doing that, when I'm not working out, when I'm not preparing my body for workout or stretching before and after, I feel it, I feel it in my joints. I feel it in those air pockets in my back that, you know, crack where it sounds like every bone in your body is cracking. But I think it's really just the air pockets in between the joints that make those noises. And I feel it in the soreness. Actually, I would make the argument that Angela, I feel more sore my body when I'm not working out than when I'm working out really hard. And that makes it is. Oh, absolutely does I know exactly what you're talking about? So what do you do for flexibility training? Well, back to the unique workouts that I would do with Nancy. And even before her back to my wrestling days, just moving my body in abnormal ways. I mean, I do active stretching. And I learned this through cross-country with my children. And they had a very, very good cross-country coach. What I mean by active stretching is as I won't sit down in a hurdler stretch and just stay there in that stationary position and do a traditional hurdler stretch, I will walk and stretch at the same time. I will have hip rotation in a fluid movement while I'm leaning up against a tree or something like that. So active stretching is big for me, working on my posture a lot. It's been bad. It affects my lower back. I think it really kind of set me back and I don't mean, you know, having cold it. What I mean by is when when the world shut down and everybody was working from home and I'm an active guy, so suddenly I'm working from home and I'm sitting in a chair looking at a computer screen every day, five days a week. And that hurt my posture, that affected my lower back. I'm still trying to get back from that, still trying to change the way I feel in my lower back because of all that sitting. I'm an active guy in my job. I'm a videographer and a photographer and a writer. I do visual marketing type stuff, so I'm not in an office sitting there at a computer. But when COVID hit and we were all forced to and I mean forced, forced to do that, it was difficult physically for me, very hard to stay still. I can agree with that. I'm very active person myself, too. Always moving around and wanting to do something different and go. And it's just hard to sit still for a long period of time. Yeah, COVID messed with a lot of people's minds and bodies. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Did you try to stay active though, at home? Yeah, the running got me through it. I mean, I would I would go out and run and that would sweat out, you know, the mental boys and that would get into your head during that time. Absolutely. That was key for getting through that time for me, for sure. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Running at push ups, you know, body weight type stuff. Push ups, pull ups, running are probably my three main fitness staples and many pull ups. Can you do it? I could. 16 probably right now Just jump up on the bar, do 16 and they're true pull ups. I will say this is like I'm I am not a fan of the pull ups that I see people do where they're tipping their body the entire time. You're not doing a pull up. My father was a marine. You have the Marine Corps pull up where your hands are over, not under you Take your body in a straight up and straight down. Straight up and straight down. It's not this kip. And you get a big swing going. You're not doing a pull. That's not a pull up. I thought I sound very opinionated on that. In I am. No, that's okay. That's awesome. Well, somebody tells me they can do tempo ups and then they jump up on the bar and they're kipping and they're swinging. I'm like, You're not doing a pull up that doesn't even count as one. If I'm judging you, you haven't even done one pull up yet. Give me one good one. Zach Right. Just give me one good one. Let me see if you can do that. I'll tell you a quick story about that. My son, all my children have gone to Ohio State in either their junior or senior year. I take them up to that school up north that's located in a place called Ann Arbor for that Ohio State game against that team from up north. And my senior year, my son's senior year, we're walking around the stadium in Ann Arbor before the Ohio State game against that team from up north and the Marine Corps is there. They're doing a pull up contest and they're giving out t shirts daily. But he didn't get 20 pullups. You you get all these college kids that are jumping up there and they're trying to do pull ups and they get five or three or ten or whatever. And I jump up and I say, I want to try. So they said, Go ahead. So I get two, I get to 90 and and these guys are just blown away. I think these two Marines are blown away. These two like 22 year old guys that this this 50 something guy has just done 19 pull ups and I couldn't get to 20. I couldn't get to 20. I couldn't go straight back up. I just couldn't do it. I'd get about halfway up and I just couldn't do it. And I dropped in the bar and and they gave me it gave me to a t shirt, which I thought was pretty cool. So. Slide 19 that is. Sure. Yeah. You said be so tell me about all aspects of your healthy lifestyle, because it's not just about working out and staying all right. I try to eat right and I'll say what I'm about to say. I'm not being judgmental at all. I just I don't drink. It's not because I look poorly on people to do I That's not the case at all. I just choose not to drink because it's something that's not for me. And I think Angela, that has helped me with my weight over the years, never been a beer drinker. I haven't had to deal with drinking beer, adding weight to my body. I don't drink, pop. I did when I was in my early twenties. I was in a job as a sports reporter at a television station in the Cleveland market, where I was working nights, weekends, holidays, night, late nights, you know, lots of pressure deadlines. And I drink a lot of Coca-Cola. I drank a lot of coke in my early twenties, and that was not good for me. So I stopped in my late twenties, Don't drink alcohol, don't drink pop. Potato chips are my worst vice in life. We all have a vice in life, right? Mine is potato chips. I am addicted to them. I cannot put them down. Look it up to me and I would fail every time because I would. I would eat the chip. But I tried to do that in moderation, try to eat healthy. Obviously, you know, we all fail sometimes. Maybe that's part of my last two months. It's been the holiday season and I've been eating things that I don't typically eat. But you're right, it's not just physical fitness. I try to eat healthy. I wouldn't say that I'm really, you know, off the charts with it, but I do pay attention to what I eat. I don't eat fast food. You won't find me at McDonald's or Burger King or any of those places. Fast food to me, the worst comment I think that I do have would be a sub at subway with a bag of chips. I stay away from OP, I stay away from beer, I fail at eating late. I do eat late because of our lifestyle and our family. I will oftentimes eat dinner

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00 at night and then go to bed an hour, which I know is bad. I think that's one thing that I have to change. But my lifestyle doesn't really allow me to do that. So I pay attention to what I eat, I pay attention to what I drink. I try to do things like photography is a big part of my mental physical health journey. I get out. As a matter of fact, I am at a place right now where I'm on Lake Erie as you and I talk, and there are seagulls that are just flying all around me. They're here to try to eat the little minnows that are up on the water trying to find bugs. And so I get out therapeutically in nature. I get lost in the woods. I climb a mountain or a hill. I get I go along a stream or an old stone quarry and just and just lose myself. And mentally that helps me too. So you asked what were some things that I do to stay healthy other than the typical things of working out? Those are things and photography's a huge part of it. I get lost in nature. Nature is important to me. I breathe better. I feel better when I'm in nature. Very nice. Do you live near Lake Erie? I do. I live I live three and a half blocks from Lake Erie. Wow. Very cool. What's that like? It's beautiful. I do not take it for granted. I see many sunsets and I see many sunrises views. And I find beauty. Even in the gray cold days, which we are in right now in northeastern Ohio. It's been real foggy here lately because the temperatures have been kind of fluctuating between warm and cold. And and that mix with the water and the warmer temperatures of the water, the cooler air, you know, sometimes creates fog. I get out at night and I find beauty even in the fog. I mean, you can find beauty even in fog and gray days if you look for it. Sure. Absolutely. A rainy day. Yeah. Light storms, it doesn't have to be sunny and gorgeous outside. It's so good for the mind and the soul to be out in nature. It's gets you to a meditative state. Especially when you're alone out there. Yes. Yeah, yeah. You're in your own thoughts. My wife laughs because I'll when I'll come back from something, she'll say how to go, and I'll say, Well, there was this person who stole my silence. I don't know if I created the terms, Don't steal my silence or or a stealer of silence, but the example I'll be out in the woods, you know, enjoying the quiet moments of the wind or the rustling of the leaves or the pitter patter of a squirrel running over, you know, the pine cones. And then somebody will come walking along and they're talking on their cell phone. And not only are they talking on their cell phone, but they got the speaker on. So I can hear everything they're saying and then I can hear everything that the person they're talking to is saying. And and I call those silent stealers. And I don't know why. If you're out in the middle of the woods trying to enjoy nature, that you have your cell phone on, talking on it. And again, that's just me being opinionated about something like that. But my wife chuckles at me. She thinks I'm overly opinionated on that type of thing, but I don't support violence. You agree with that? Yeah. Yeah. I was with a friend a couple of years back. We went on a trip to three places Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce Bryce National Park, and I had to tell her, When are you going to put that phone away? It's like, put it away and enjoy the time that that's You're here. We can talk later. Doesn't have to be that way. But so many people do do that and they're not focusing on the moment where they are and taking it all in. You can't you can't if you're on the phone with another human being who's not there with you, enjoy it. Right. You don't know when you're going to do it again. You don't know what's going to happen next out there in nature. I always say in order to enjoy the moment, you've got to be in the moment. And what I mean by that is, is what you just said, you know, be focused in the moment, but also put yourself out there. Don't spend time sitting in front of your computer at all and go out and go for a hike, take a walk. Just simple things. Go sit in your backyard, watch the birds fly around. I tell my kids this, Angela, walk through your life with your head up and your eyes wide open and you'll be surprised at what you may see if you think of how you get to work every day. Angela Or how you go to the grocery store or what Think of something typical in your day and how you got there If the next day, what if you do it and you have your eyes wide open in your head up and you're not solely focused on getting to work, or the first thing you got to do when you get there and you actually observe what's going on around you and the things that you pass every day, you may see some things that you'll go, Oh my God, I never knew that was there. Oh my gosh, look how pretty that is. I never have noticed that before. We're all guilty of it. I know I have been. And I work really hard not to be. I try to encourage my children. Walk through life with your head up and your eyes wide open. Absolutely. Okay. I wanted to go back. You had mentioned something about posture. How do you work on your posture? All right. Well, you just mentioned it. I adjusted the way I'm sitting in my right. You know, there's a person in my life who has dealt with my posture. And she took me to the woodshed about a month ago on And what I mean by that was very aggressively telling me that I have not been paying attention to her and not been have not been a good patient. And she was right. How do I deal with posture? I, I tend to slump when I'm seated and like kind of like your back. The spine is supposed to be like like a it's like a seahorse, you know, like an ass. It's not supposed to be like an arch, you know, hump mine because of the way that I sit or to lean forward all the time. Bad posture. When I walk, I tend to, for some reason, squeeze my shoulder blades together. Like, you know, when you're cold, Angela, and you kind of bring your shoulders up, kind of like, you know, near your jaw or your ears and it tighten your body. I find myself walking like that a lot, and I don't know why. Bad posture. My favorite way to sleep is on my belly. Bad for your posture, bad for your lower back, bad for your spine. So these are all muscle memory habits, body habits every day. This is the way you do it, you know, and we all know that when you break something down, you try to fix it or you try to change it. It takes time. And so posture has been a constant struggle for me. And as I grew older, it it affects my lower back and that then in turn affects my ankles, It affects my feet, it affects my neck, and then up through my neck and out the back of my up my back of my head. Now, through my my right high ball. I mean, there's it posture is it's the thread for everything in your body. It really is. Yeah. Everything is connected of course. And that's why it affects so many different things. I've I've noticed that men more so as they get older. And I know, of course it has something to do with gravity, but they're not aware. They're not aware of how they're slouching in their heads are coming forward. I've worked with so many people as a personal trainer trying to get them to just stand up against the wall and take their arms up and down and they can't even keep their arms back against the wall as they go up, because having those rounded shoulders becomes such a permanent thing for them, they don't even realize it. Don't look in the mirror and notice it. And it's not until you start having issues like you were saying with your back, with your ankles, with your neck and your shoulders, everything going forward. You know, you may start pinching some nerves. And it's it's very important to stay on top of that posture and try to do things to correct it. I started taking ballroom dancing classes last year. It's been a year now, and that's something that that really helps with posture. You have to stand up straight for that type of dancing. And if you don't, you can't dance correctly. And what a way to be constantly aware of what's going on with your posture. And you try to correct that when you do your strength and strengthening the muscles in the back of the body to help yourself come back again takes time. Your body doesn't feel natural when you sit up straight right? Right. You just said something that hit home for me and it's the weakest part of my body. The muscles in the back part of my body lower back, my back in general always have been weakest. Part of my body continues to be. And I think, Angela, it's the reason for or well, one of the reasons for bad posture but it's also weak back muscles is also you know it's a reason for bad posture. But it's it's also a it's a result of bad posture. It's one of the things Nancy worked out with me with was, you know, back exercises, back strengthening as I grew older. I want to have that core, that strong core, especially in my back. And you're exactly right. I'm weak back there and it affects me in many ways. Yeah. So many people, when they work on their core, they're so spoke just on the front of their right. And that's an imbalance. You know, if you've got the front of the body strengthened, the back of the body is suffering. So we've got to strengthen those muscles in the back of the body so the front stretches and opens up. You feel better, you breathe better, you look better. Yeah. The other thing is maybe you should take up ballroom dancing. You need You can experience that. I would like that. You know, I have three daughters and a son and three daughters. And one day when those three daughters get married, I want to be a very good dancer in the father daughter dance. And I. You saying ballroom dancing? I One of my goals in life is to become a good dancer, or at least a represent a ball dancer, someone that will know and embarrass his children. And as those three girls get to the age where they're going to be, where marriage is in their future, I want to be a good dancer. So maybe if it helps my posture, then it's a double win for me, right? I guarantee you it'll make you more aware of your posture, not only while you're dancing, but out in the real world every day, too. You'll be more aware of it. You'll be holding those shoulders back more holding that head up straight. Yeah. See? Look at two already when I'm right now. And how much would your daughters appreciate that. That's so wonderful. Yeah. Would your wife do that? Would she be interested, you think? I think so. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's not many guys that are that are willing to do ballroom dancing. Most of them that I mentioned that to do. You know, most husbands and no, but I would hope that I'd be coordinated enough to do it. I mean that I think that'll be a challenge too. I mean dancers are so coordinated with their the control of their body is is really something to be recognized and respected. Yeah I'm learning it's it's different muscles to your work muscles dancing that you don't ever work so it's a different kind of a workout definitely you get out there and try it. Yeah. Don't wait till those daughters give you their wedding date. Start now. Yeah, that'll be fun. Yeah. So is there anything new in 2024 for you? Run from a fitness journey. I want to continue to challenge myself in different ways. As I've said before, I get bored easily with the same old thing I tend to create when I'm on my own. Create workouts that are different every day. If I'm with somebody like a trainer, like Nancy, or if I have a partner and I have had those in the past and am a big fan of that, I generally take the lead in creating the workout and it's always different hitting the places that we need to hit, but doing it in a less traditional way. So I guess my goals for 2024 are to continue to nontraditional in my workouts. Yeah, I'll be I'll be the same in my creativity, if that makes any sense. I'll be consistent in my inconsistency of workout styles. Awesome. Yeah. Okay. So when you start thinking about that, that should excite you so that you want to get back get back to those workouts. You know, here's here's something fun that we did, Nancy and I, I embrace the elements rise above the elements I say and what I mean by that is the weather that's outside. I would encourage on rainy days that we would go out and work out in the rain. And so one of the things that we did there was a there was a huge ditch on the campus that we both worked at, and it filled up with rainwater one time. And I said, Look, I said, I want to do push ups in the ditch in the water. So you got to you got to explode out of that water. If you've never done a push up in water, try it. It's it's difficult, especially if you do a push up where you explore, load yourself out of the water high enough over the water to make it clap and then catch yourself. You should go back down. So that's what I mean by taking something typical. A push up and figuring out a way to do it a little differently. The challenge is you if you could do, say, 50 push ups without stopping and you tried to do it in water, I challenge you to get ten. I mean, it's it's that much different. And pressure. The pressure, Yeah, the water coming down on you. But can you down, you know, not letting you come out, you know, trying to trying to fight through that. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Did Nancy get in the water too? She did not know that. She was like, I'm your trainer. Go wrong. So we would take that soccer crossbar, you know, the soccer goal, the crossbar across across it on a wet day when it's wet and it's raining. And we would we would go out and I would jump up and grab that and then hand over hand, go the length, the crossbar and back and you know, work on your hand strength plus your core balance and it's wet so it's harder. And you know, then do a pull up, you know, in between. If you could just stop it. If anybody's listening to this to this interview today, if you get anything out of it, maybe it's be creative with your workouts. You know, don't don't do the same thing all the time. I Mean we have to confuse our body anyways. That's good, right? You have to break down your muscles, give it muscle confusion. And so if you're if you're doing your workouts a little bit differently, you know, creatively, it keeps you interested. And it also still, you know, you get the means to the end of work in your body. I love your ideas. Tell us about some more of your creative things that you do when you work out. Now, let's see. I told you about the logs, you know, so, you know, get pull log, walk through the woods, walk in your backyard, pull a log and put it down and stand on it. And so so it and it's going to rock that round. So you got to work on that core balance. And then while you're on it, depending on how comfortable you feel, maybe put a ball in your hand or another log and do those woodshop or exercises or do squats on a log back up just an air squat, don't have to have any weight with you. You know, you're working your entire body as you were squatting air because you're trying to stay balanced on that log that naturally wants to move back and forth. That's a fun one going up a hill. And it could be it could be simple as a mound in your yard or a park, but using nothing but your like, your elbows, like if your legs were paralyzed, you know, do not use your legs at all. Your feet, your knees, nothing. Just pull yourself up that hill with with your upper body. There's a couple of others that that I think are fun that I like to do. I just want to say that when you were talking about the log, I'm picturing in my mind, have you ever seen on TV the competitions that the Lumberjacks have with in the water? They've got the logs in the water and they're running on the logs and stuff. But I that's what he reminded me of. I have seen that. And that would be very, very difficult, I think, to do, especially because those logs are wicked wet and I don't think they're wearing shoes with spikes on them. So yeah, you could do a pull up anywhere, you know, walk through. I see beams going across the like a lot of offices or whatever have been brought across it. I look at that and I say, if I could jump up there and do a pull up, wouldn't that be fun? Just look at everything. Things in everyday life. You could do dips in your office. And I do this, you know, you take your chair and you put your feet up on like a like a table or a counter or a shelf or whatever. And you take the chair that you're sitting in and you and you go to the edge of it with just your hands and you do dips, you deep dips, you know, don't go down to the chair, go past the chair. You know, it's weird when somebody walks by your office and they see you doing this, but, you know, so what? You don't need a fitness membership to keep yourself in shape. Yeah, sure. Yeah. You shoes astroworld use everything that's around you every day. Yeah. And think like a child, right? I mean, you watch kids, what they do, where they bounce around, going from one thing to the next. You have, you have boys. You know, girls are the same way. I mean, my granddaughter's it's incredible. Especially the the younger one. She's like a constant gymnast, you know, at home. We're all crawling up doorways, the frame of doorways hanging off the side of the bed with her hands down on the floor, bringing her feet up to the back of her head. Just because, you know, not doing anything special. So she's her body is just constantly, you know, being challenged. And it's all stuff that she comes up with by herself. Just think like a kid is amazing what she can come up with, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So do you read it all? It's funny, I, I have a room in our house. It's got bookshelves in it, and I buy it at books. I put them on the bookshelves and my wife laughs at me. She goes, Right. She says, You're not even you know, you're not even reading. What are you what are you doing? And I said, Well, someday I'm going to and I want to have books in order to do that. So because my life has been so active and so busy up until this point, the honest answer, I don't read a lot. But do I want to I have a curb book right now called The Boys in the Boat, and it's about the 1936 Olympic team from the University of Washington crew team that went to Germany, Hitler's Olympics in 1936. And I won't spoil it for you, but, you know, it's a great story. And talk about personal fitness and talk about natural personal fitness. A lot of these guys were just normal, everyday guys who came from the Washington area who were lumberjacks or fishermen or different things like that. And they built up natural strength in their body with just doing normal everyday things. But the long answer to your question about books, I, I like to read, I don't read as much as I want to, but I, I buy a lot of books. So one day I have plenty of options. Very good. Yeah, a lot of good information out there and it helps to inspire us and help our minds think in different ways. Yeah. All right. So, Ron, I like to ask my guest to give my listeners a challenge. Go do something to help them live a better life. So what would you like to say to our our listeners? Figure out a way you can sweat out the poison? I think all of us, no matter who we are, whatever age we are, whatever stage we're at, life deal with our own mental anxieties or pressures, and that us physically, if we can figure out each individual way to sweat out our own personal poisons and I do mean sweat. So find something in your life that you will get a good sweat doing work really hard at whatever that is on a consistent basis and sweat out the poison. It's going to make you feel better, not only physically, but mentally awesome. I love that. Good advice. And when you're sweating out that poison, you won't be thinking about anything else but your workout. Nope. Yeah, you don't. And when you get done, you just. You just feel better mentally. Say that you feel better mentally. When you get done working out, you feel better mentally. Now, whether that's just all in your head or if there's a reality and a truth to it, it really doesn't matter because all that matters is how you feel. You know, it's like the what's the pill that they'll give you? It's called a that's not really anything but a placebo. It's what people you're right. But whatever that placebo or a line from my favorite movie, Bull Durham, one of my favorite movies where Kevin Costner says to Susan Sarandon about Timothy Robbins, who she is having a sexual relationship with, and he has stopped Timothy Robbins having that with her because he feels that he's pitching better if he's not having this relationship with with Susan Sarandon. And Kevin Costner says to her, he says, if if nuclear luge feels better or feels like he is winning as a pitcher because he's not in your bed, then that is what is right this. Ed So whatever we got to go to mentally, you know, to make yourself feel better, do it. Absolutely. Love that. All right. Well, thank you, Ron, so much for that of the time to be on. And I know that listeners are going to gain some insight from everything that you've had to say. All right. Well, thank you so much for having me. This is Angela Grayson from the Loving Life Fitness Podcast. To help others in their fitness journey. It’s all possible. It’s time to wake up. Here we go.