The Men of Iron Minute

by Chad Zueck | Director of Content Creation

Faith-Fueled Fitness: Crafting Your Holy Health Journey  

At age 35, I was sluggish, overweight, and quickly out of breath from walking up a flight of stairs. I am not exaggerating when I say, “I found myself.” This epiphany was a physical, spiritual, and emotional experience. The “big bad wolf” was within me. I liked laziness, comfort, and sugary lattes. This watershed moment shook me to the core as guilt and shame sharply spilled into the voids of my life. I knew the physical shape I once enjoyed, but I felt and looked fluffy in all the places men hate.

My life has been riddled with all-or-nothing thinking that lures bad actions as an alligator lures his prey in the miry swamplands of the Florida Everglades. I resisted the urge to go extreme. At this moment, I took a slower approach to fitness. My habits and mindset toward health needed to change. I was a man that needed a mission. The battle was for my future and the abundant life (John 10:10). I stumbled in the darkness as I walked and jogged the pounds away. I can remember the day I ran four miles without walking. I nearly cried.

For the next foreseeable future, I want to unlock some biblical and extrabiblical keys to better health, choices, and community around the mission of fitness while sharing some of my personal journeys along the way. These blogs will pair well with the latest Men of Iron Podcasts.

Though these larger principles are not my own, they can be widely applied outside the boundary markers of fitness. They have been borrowed from a conversation I had with Errol Doebler, a former Navy Seal, a couple of years ago. I figured that if Navy Seals use similar information to jump out of airplanes, at night, in the middle of the ocean, and swim miles through shark-infested water, only to sneak up on the enemy and execute a mission, we could use this to better our health and fitness. In his book, The Process, Art, and Science of Leadership, Errol provides invaluable tools to execute plans through an acrostic. We will be exploring these further in forthcoming blogs. Now let’s plot our journey with SMAC.

1. Situation

The Situation is the set of background circumstances dictating a need for Action.

2. Mission

A Mission is your goal, what you are specifically trying to achieve.

3. Actions

Actions are the steps that need to be accomplished to complete the Mission.

4. Command

Command designates specific people to be responsible and accountable for completing specific Actions for the Mission.

5. Contingencies

We must plan for what can go wrong by identifying Contingencies for each Action.

6. Communication

Decide who you will talk to, when you will talk with them, how you will talk with them, for how long you will talk with them, and about what you will talk with them.

Dreams Fade.

Executed plans succeed.

Be a mentor.

Find a mentor.

Be a better man.

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