About Me

Fit FOR A PURPOSE

Roam Strong is my experiment in creating a “heroic body”, the fit, but powerful type owned by warriors.

I do this using ancient and modern bodyweight/calisthenics training to build strength, endurance, mobility, and agility that trains heroic traits.

What do I mean by heroic? A heroic body can move quickly to any place it’s needed, and has the strength and conditioning to to overcome obstacles, lift itself, and protect itself and others.

A heroic body has the freedom to meet any challenge.

My training philosophy combines training from many disciplines to create this type of body:

• Martial Arts: Martial artists are fit, powerful, flexible, and agile. They have durable bodies that can produce power at many angles, with the conditioning to match.
• Parkour: “Traceurs” are modern ninjas. They climb, crawl, and flow across obstacles with ease. They have the joint strength and technique to fall from heights without hurting themselves.
• Bodybuilding: the science (and art) of creating muscle and losing fat. Good muscle is the foundation of all movement. Without muscle, movement cannot occur. Bodybuilding gives you raw strength, enhanced durability, and a healthy metabolism (so you live longer).

Why Bodyweight Training?

Bodyweight training (also called “Calisthenics”, from the Greek for “beauty” and “strength”) is the origin of all fitness, letting anyone with a body level up their strength, stamina, and endurance. Here are a few of the reasons why I train with bodyweight:

1. Freedom to Effectively Train Anywhere: Calisthenics lets you train anywhere, any time. You don’t need to hit a gym to train (but you can if you want). You can train in your home, hotel room, or at the beach. It’s this freedom to effectively train anywhere that makes calisthenics so powerful.
2. The Best Warriors in History Do It: Warrior-heroes from every culture (from the ancient Greek hoplites, to the Chinese Shaolin monks, to the modern US Special Forces) have practiced and honed these skills with the wisdom that they make them stronger, faster, healthier, and more durable. Whenever I want to push through the workouts harder, I just remember how these workouts trained them, too.
3. Creates a “No Excuse” Mentality: Freedom from conventional weights, machines, and objects make bodyweight training not just effective, but liberating. It teaches self-reliance: that you don’t need more equipment, more supplements, or more motivation. You just need your body and a plan.
4. Insanely Fun: Calisthenics teaches you how to manipulate your body in impressive ways that you never thought possible. It’s almost a spiritual experience how focused a person can become when training. Even Shaolin warriors call their calisthenics training “meditation”.
5. The Easiest Way To Get The Lean and Strong: Calisthenics teaches your body to become efficient. Fat makes exercise more difficult (more bodyweight = harder to do). Muscle makes it easier (more muscle = more strength). Training, then, naturally forces you to lose fat and get stronger.

Modern science is now catching up with the health and strength benefits of calisthenics. And as both scientist and warrior, I love it.

Ancient training meets modern sport science.

The Heroic Training Theory

My training style falls between conventional fitness’ “functional” and MovNat’s “explorational” philosophies. A heroic body seeks to master 3 broad movement skills that manage one core interaction: between ourselves and our environment.

• Locomotive: skills to move through environment.  (Crawling, walking, running,  jumping, climbing, balancing,swimming)
• Manipulative: skills to move environment (Lifting, carrying, throwing, striking)
• Stabilizing: skills to move against environment (Resisting, stabilizing, grappling)

And to get better at these skills, we need 3 traits:

1. Strength: Strength is the core of all movement. Good muscle and good movement = effective strength. And, more muscle + less fat = an aesthetic body
2. Endurance: both muscular and cardiovascular endurance. To be able to exercise our strength continuously, not just “one and done”. A hero doesn’t gas out.
3. Mobility: to be flexible and mobile enough to use strength at more angles, creating an adaptable body

Start Training the Heroic Body Way

Does having a physique that has the capability to adapt to any situation sound good? Welcome to Roam Strong.

The important stuff:

• “The System” – RoamStrong’s Bodyweight Workout (no gym required)

• The Nomad Diet – My soft guide to eating. Most lose a lot of fat using this diet’s principles.
• My Body Composition – See my body fat levels, my blood work, and my medical genealogy (aka, family health history). Spoiler alert: I am not genetically optimized for athleticism.