How to Get Fit When Life Gets Busy | John Davis on Fitness That Actually Lasts (S4 E17)

Sunday SoulDay

In this episode of Sunday SoulDay, host Damesha interviews performance and nutrition coach John Davis about building sustainable health habi

Key takeaways

• John Davis recommends 2-3 days of training per week for 30-45 minutes as a sustainable goal for busy adults.
• The concept of 'habit stacking' or layering is used in nutrition to add healthy elements like protein before introducing restrictions.

Main topics

• Athlete identity transition
• Sustainable fitness scheduling

Notable quotes

Consistency beats intensity.

Conclusion

The episode offers a refreshing perspective on fitness as an additive,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) For many of us, going further isn't a choice. It's a feeling we can't ignore. Because ambition has a way of outgrowing where it began. Turning dreams into direction. Every journey brings us closer to the life we imagine. So, where will your journey take you? Etihad. Beyond Borders. Speaker 2 (0:29) Welcome back for another episode of Sunday Soul Day, fueling your mind, body, and soul with soulful conversations and life-changing insights. Your health shouldn't require a perfect schedule. It should fit into your real life. We spend so much time building our careers, businesses, families, and lives. But is your body strong enough to support everything you're asking it to carry? On Sunday Soul Day, we talk a lot about pain, pivots, purpose, and mindset that shape our lives and what it means to fuel our souls. But today, we're talking about another essential part of the equation, the body. I'm joined by John Davis, performance and nutrition coach, former collegiate football player and founder of Precision Performance for a conversation about what it really looks like to build health around the life you actually live, not a perfect schedule. John helps clients move beyond an all or nothing fitness mindset to build sustainable strength, nutrition habits, and consistency that fits into real life. He's right outside the gym in between sessions. Let's welcome him to the show. Welcome to Sunday Soul Day, John. Speaker 3 (1:48) Thank you for having me, Damesha. I appreciate you. Speaker 2 (1:51) Yes, thank you for saying yes. I am so excited to talk to you. So much I want to learn about you and have the audience learn about you because you have such an interesting background with all the pivots that you have done throughout your career in life. And I can't wait to talk a little bit more about them as well as dive into your business and talk all things body today. Speaker 3 (2:14) Absolutely. I'm excited. It's been a journey. I'm happy to share it with others. It's something that, you know, I really look forward to talking about with a lot of people. People always ask me questions about my story. And it's something that I'm more than willing to be open and have this dialogue with because I've always felt it's very necessary and it helps others. Speaker 2 (2:34) Absolutely. I mean, this is why I do the show. It's like, you know, anytime you're sharing your journey, your struggles, you know, just the highs and the lows of John Davis, you know, it's, you're really a light for someone else. And so I just appreciate you saying yes, you know, as I do with all of our soul feeling guests that come on the show. Thank you. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you Speaker 3 (2:53) so much. Speaker 2 (2:55) Well, before we dive too deep, take us back a little bit, because where did you grow up? How did football become a part of your life? And who was John before he became a coach and a business owner? Speaker 3 (3:07) So I grew up here in the Bay Area, San Francisco, California. My parents are from the Bay Area. My mom and dad were both born and raised in San Francisco. Very diverse, multicultural family. My dad is Black and Filipino. My mom is full Portuguese. I should say, wait, Cape Verdean. My mom is Cape Verdean. Those who watched the World Cup. they are very much in tune now with Cape Verde and where Cape Verde is and everything. So I'm very happy now that I no longer have to tell people I'm Portuguese. I can say I'm Cape Verdean. And they're like, okay, I know where that place is now, right? Speaker 3 (3:46) So for me, just growing up as a child, we had a very active household. For the most part, my dad played sports, played basketball. My whole family played basketball. My mom was a little bit of an athlete herself, played a little bit of high school basketball as far as that she got. But it was for the most part, my parents looked at physical fitness as just something for us to do, to stay active and also to keep us engaged. Speaker 3 (4:12) That's where my journey kind of begins. My dad started me off at eight years old playing football, but I played almost all sports as a Speaker 2 (4:19) kid Speaker 3 (4:19) growing up. And so for me, sports was just something that I did for entertainment amongst, you know, my friends, the things that we did along that time. And I grew to love it because of the part of the challenge, right? That was the part for me that I truly gravitated towards sports was just the challenge that it had of testing yourself on a daily basis. And then along that time of playing sports came the friendships that I got. And that was a big part of me is the relationships that I was able to build with a lot of my friends out there on the various avenues and sporting competitions that really helped me become the person of who I am today. So I tell people oftentimes, I encourage parents to put their kids in sports, not so much for the physical side, but more so for the relationship building. that it brings. Speaker 2 (5:11) Yes. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I could not agree more. You know, I have two little ones, which you, you know, them Huntley and Harlan and, you know, I put them in sports, not just for those things that you mentioned, the relationship, you know, but, but also the confidence building, you know, and it, they don't necessarily have to be great in the sport. You know, there's some kids that just aren't naturally athletic and that's okay too, but. it is nothing like constantly testing yourself and challenging yourself in a new way, you know, that you wouldn't have had you not signed up for that sport. So I love that your parents, you know, got you into sports early because it. probably built a lot of those core values that you bring into your business, which we'll talk a little bit about. But one thing I'm interested in, and, you know, again, this is such a common human experience, is, you know, the identity shift, you know, because there's a real identity shift when an athlete stops competing. You know, you go from having practices, coaches, teammates, you know, a reason for training to suddenly having to create that structure for yourself. What was that transition like for you? And how did you ultimately, I guess, lead down the path of strength and conditioning and entrepreneurship? Speaker 3 (6:30) I would say first, Speaker 2 (6:31) it Speaker 3 (6:32) was hard. It was very, very hard. And I think it's, I'm happy that it's a conversation that more athletes are open to now. For me, when I was done playing, I decided to make the decision to end my career earlier than people thought I should, because I was able to see that the future wasn't there for me, right? And then oftentimes a lot of athletes struggle with this is they'll continue to try and try. Because, you know, there's something you've always done. You've only known being an athlete your entire life. And so I started to look at myself and say, OK, I can continue to try this thing or I can start to build a second act of my life. Speaker 2 (7:10) Now, I Speaker 3 (7:10) had no idea what that second act of my life would be. Even after graduating college and getting my master's degree and things, I still had no idea what that would be. And so initially I did go through a depression period. I want to say for about six months. a year, year and a half, I was depressed. Had no identity outside of sports. There was a lot of weight that I carried on me from my years of being an athlete that my family looked up to me as the person who would be the breadwinner and potentially get to the pro level and, you know, all those kind of things that you have growing up, right? So my fallback at that time, my mom had me working at a hospital where she was working her whole entire career through the hospital settings for us at her health. And every summer I would work there as different jobs, everything from doing stocking room to any job that they had as a summer kid can have. So I started to work in the hospital. And during that time that I was working at the hospital, I went through the radio, the nursing, not nursing program, the x-ray tech program. And so I was on my way to becoming an x-ray tech and even becoming a nurse. A lot of the nurses told me, hey, if you go through nursing school, we've got a job for you here. I started to realize it wasn't a passion of mine, of being there in the hospital setting. I'm having conversations with a lot of the nurses. I'm seeing things play out on a day-to-day basis, and I'm realizing this is not what I wanted to do. And so now I have the struggle of, what do I want to do? My mom is telling me, you need to get a sustainable job. I'm not really enjoying the job of being there at the hospital. So that's when I had a little bit of another pivot where I started to go back to one of my old college coaches here and say, hey, can I intern underneath you for a little while? And so what I was doing is I was working the night shift at the hospital and I would get off after the night shift and go do an internship first thing in the morning. So I would go get off work, go home, take an hour, two hour nap and go do an internship for three to four hours just to try to figure out. if this was the job for me of what I wanted to do. And so did that for a couple of years and finally decided to make the leap, much to my mom's chagrin, because she's checking my bank accounts and my bank account is going down. She's like, hey, where's your money going? You're not making any money right now. I'm losing money. But I knew there was part of me of like this is something that I really wanted to do and my coaches always told me you're a natural leader. This is something that you're really good at and you should try it. But during that time there was no money to be made as being a coach and a trainer. It's like so how is this even a viable option to have a job? And so for years, I struggled with making money, building up a clientele and things like that. And so, you know, I got lucky to land an opportunity that I met some people along the way that led me to kind of where I am now. Speaker 2 (10:05) Thank you for taking us through that. And I can imagine. I mean, it's very difficult when you don't have a ton of imprints. Speaker 1 (10:12) You Speaker 2 (10:13) know, like, and here's how to do this. Now there's so much, right? There's a lot of coaches out there, a lot of great content. I mean, yours included, you know, that are helping people kind of lay out, this is how you should charge, you know? But I even imagine