The Three Wise Men of Fitness
I like to refer to the three pillars of success in fitness—the three wise men, as I call them. So these are the essential factors you must consider if your goal is to get into elite condition: Resistance Training, Cardio Training, and Nutrition.
To succeed, you need to be a rock star at two of the three, but you must pay homage to all three. They are uniquely connected. Resistance training allows you to build the body that cardio helps reveal. Nutrition provides the materials and the fuel needed for the construction.
That could be the end of the article, but we’ll go into each of the three pillars individually. It’s important to understand them on their own to see how powerfully they work together.
Resistance Training: The Star of the Show
The star of the show, in my opinion, is Resistance Training. Yes, I’m biased—but hear me out. Strength training gives you the most control over how you actually look. It’s the process of constructing and redesigning your physique.
This training puts you in the driver’s seat of the project. If all you do is diet and run, your body will adjust. It’ll decide that you need to be better at cardio and lighter for efficiency. So, it starts getting rid of muscle to help you become that.
The body follows a use-it-or-lose-it rule. Without a demand for strength, your muscles begin to shrink. Movements like squats and hinges become harder. Muscles begin to atrophy, and the functions they support begin to fade.
As a result, your base metabolism drops. This is the number of calories you burn while at rest. When your muscle mass drops, even the calories you burn while moving begin to decrease.
Building muscle costs calories. You burn energy during your workouts, of course. But you also burn more over the next two to four days while recovering. That soreness you feel is the body reconstituting itself. The tiny repair systems inside you require fuel to do their job.
Cardio: The Great Revealer
Cardio is the great revealer. It uncovers the muscle you’ve been building underneath. There are lots of cardio methods out there. For now, let’s just define cardio for our conversation.
When we do things, it costs calories. Muscles store sugar as quick energy. Fat is also stored energy but is used differently. For strong or explosive movements—short in duration—the body uses sugar stored in muscle. But with cardio, the game changes.
Cardio refers to rhythmic movement over longer durations. This triggers the cardiac energy system, which uses oxygen to fuel the body. In this system, fat is the catalyst that transforms oxygen into usable energy. It’s less explosive, less intense, and built for the long haul.
By using this process, your body becomes more efficient at burning fat. And the longer and more consistently you do it, the more efficient your system becomes at using that fat to reveal your physique.
Nutrition: Fuel and Material for the Project
To craft the body of your dreams, you need quality building material. Protein and essential amino acids are your raw materials. I recommend aiming for 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of your target body weight. Without a clear target, you’re more likely to fall short.
Fuel is what runs the entire operation. Carbs, fats, and sugars give you energy. Therefore, too much fuel gets stored. Too little makes it hard to train. During strength training, your body prefers carbs. In steady-state cardio, it prefers fat.
You need to find the right ratio of energy to get through your day and workouts while staying on track. In my opinion, the best approach is to shift how you think about food.
Food isn’t good or bad. It’s a valuable tool—both a fuel source and construction material. Hence the better you understand this, the easier it becomes to build your ideal physique.
There are tons of nutrition strategies and lifestyles out there. What matters most is understanding what nutrition actually is. Fuel + Material = Progress.
Putting It All Together
Once you start to build a healthy lifestyle, you’ll need to stay consistent with training and dial in your protein intake. Divide your protein across 2 to 4 meals per day. However, shakes help hit your numbers without overloading on carbs or fats.
Make your plate protein-heavy, and balance your carbs and fats to energize you without creating a surplus. Think about your food intake like a training schedule—it works in both daily and weekly cycles.
Each week, you’re using nutrition to fuel your workouts and recovery, and to shape your body. Resistance training changes the structure, cardio reveals it, and nutrition supports it all.
Therefore, this process should actually be fun. So think about it: you have to eat to succeed. I’ve got a saying—“the better you can cook, the better you can look.” I used to say, “the more you cook, the better you look,” but I like this new version better.
Once you understand your needs, all you have to do is consistently check the right boxes. So eat at the right times, fuel up properly, and train with intention. Keep those three wise men working together—and the results will speak for themselves.
Maximum Output
