From Struggles to Strength: Elijah Hines’ Journey to Mental Toughness and Fitness

Brad Minus: [00:00:00] And welcome to life changing challengers. I'm your host again, Brad Minus. And even though this is Season two episode 25, this is actually our 50th episode. And due to the fact that it's our 50th episode, I'm so excited to introduce Elijah Hines. He's a certified personal trainer and weight loss specialist.

He's got some other alphabet soup behind his name that just makes him a expert in the health and fitness arena. But how he got there is. Through adversity, through overcoming obstacles. And that's the story we want to hear today, because we all want you to come up with some ideas that he can bring you that let you take that next step in your life.

So Elijah, how you doing today? 

Elijah Hines: I'm doing great, Brad. Thanks for having me. Happy Sunday. Sundays are good. Sundays in my mindset [00:01:00] system are all about reflecting, reflecting on the previous Monday through Saturday. What went right? What went wrong? What could have been better? So I've been doing a little bit of that, hanging out with the family.

I'm in my wife's bedroom she grew up in, hanging out with my in laws today. But I'm very excited to do this today. 

Brad Minus: Excellent. And we appreciate you being here. So if you were at home on this Sunday, would you be meal prepping? 

Elijah Hines: So we do that like once a month, we freeze a lot of them now.

So it's not a weekly thing. It's about once every like 26, 28 days, but yeah, we'll do it on Sunday. If it does land on that day. 

Brad Minus: Oh, that I want to hear about. Can you tell us a little bit about your childhood, where you grew up, what was the compliment of your family and what was it like to be Elijah as a kid? 

Elijah Hines: Yeah. So been, in Raleigh, North Carolina, my whole life, born and raised here. My brother and I, we were homeschooled, so, didn't have the traditional public school experience which came with its own, pros and cons around ages. 10 or 11. My father [00:02:00] started, picking up the drink again. And, for ages 10 to 16, things were pretty rough. I was overly mothered and underly fathered, as some would say. And then, at 15 and a half, 16, my brother, mom, and I moved out.

We were on our own. And then I, was quick to get a job and just wanted to get out of the house and get out into the world, which was kind of a big breakthrough being homeschooled and isolated for my whole childhood, then I get out into the world and everything opened up. I'm experiencing different people's belief systems, religions, personalities.

And, yeah, that was very transformative for me. 

Brad Minus: So when you said that you were overly mothered and, and underfathered, That's the first time I've ever heard anybody say it like that. Can you give us an example of what that actually meant to you? 

Elijah Hines: That look? Yeah, yeah. So under Lee fathered in [00:03:00] the sense that my, my dad, while he was going through that rough past, which I'm happy to say, we have a great relationship now.

He's, many, many years sober, which is an inspiration to me also as. Someone that practices sobriety and, so yeah, just to get that out of the way, things are all good now, but underly fathered in the sense that during that time, he just wasn't really around that much, he would work and then he would be out at night, maybe out for multiple days or nights in a row.

We didn't even know where he was or what was going on. And my mother and her efforts to be tender and take care of us and let us know things were okay. It was almost like too loose. And too much fun and not enough discipline. 

Let's sleep in. And I can appreciate the loving sentiment that where that was coming from. She's just like, wow, things are, shit's really hitting the fan. How do I, you know, make this the best experience for them? But yeah. So with all that came a big lack of. Discipline, a [00:04:00] big lack of male role models, a big lack of just sturdiness, I guess everything was very loose and relaxed and that definitely had an effect on my personality and mentality, coming up in my early adult years of being too loose, which led itself to, many other issues that came about later that I'm sure we'll get into.

Brad Minus: Did you play any organized sports or anything during that period of your life? 

Elijah Hines: Yeah, that's probably the few things that my dad was still very militant about us want us to do some kind of sports. So I played softball, baseball, basketball, swimming, golf.

Never was that any of them. Which was kind of a bummer. It was like, there wasn't a lot of rigorous training, so to speak, like, oh, this is what we're going to do to get better in these areas. It was like, just go to the games, go to the practices. So I definitely, was always physically unimpressive. Last in a foot race, last in a push up contest.

If there was a [00:05:00] softball game and I got out to bat, I could see everyone relax. Like, all right, guys, time to catch our breath. I was like, damn, y'all can hide it a little bit. Like I can see all relaxing as you're so unconcerned with what I'm about to do. So I think that definitely played a big role into why I craved and pursued physical training and physical efforts later in life.

But yeah, there was sports, but man, I was terrible at all of them. 

Brad Minus: I am right there with you. I finally got into playing soccer and I thought I really loved it and I thought I was decent at it. And then all of a sudden I get to high school and I could barely make the JV team.

These guys are running circles around me until I realized later on in life that the reason I thought I was so good, because I was playing a lot. As my dad was the coach, you know, and as much as he told me, he says, you're in there because you deserve to be in there.

I'm not playing favorites with you. Matter of fact, I'm probably tougher on you because of anyone, anyone else. And then I thought about it and I looked back on it and I'm like, no, you didn't, you put me in there because you're my dad. So yeah, I get it. And [00:06:00] then, you know, play a little softball and stuff.

When I was in the military and realize that I wasn't really good at that. Still wasn't good at that. But I get it. I totally get it. So yeah, you played some sports, which is great, man, you played, you played a lot. And again, I played golf and all that stuff too. Just not great at it.

When did you start going under? What did you find the, the influencing of alcohol and, and, and, and drugs? 

Elijah Hines: Say around 20 to 24, 25 was when I was probably the most aggressive on all fronts.

It's funny how. Easily influenced. We are based on like coworkers and just people we end up spending time with. Like you hear about that as a kid, like, Oh, you're going to be influenced, peer pressure. And we kind of, it's through one ear and out the other, like, yeah, that's not, that's gotta be BS. But looking back seasons of my life where I drank the most, I was around people that drank a lot and it's just easier to agree to it, then come up with the [00:07:00] idea and yourself.

So that was a lot of factors, different people I was around surrounding myself with. Yeah, as far as. It being too much and me knowing that I think I'd be better off without this. That was always kind of knocking on my back door. There's always this quiet whisper. Like I'm putting all this effort into the gym and the training and the eating, right.

I'm spending half my workouts hung over fuzzy. I just praying like, I hope I can still even lift. I feel terrible and laying in the sauna for like an hour, trying to sweat it out. It's crazy. So after enough years of having that back and forth struggle, ultimately, you would. Made it much easier to walk away from it was just deciding this is a negative thing.

Cause for so many years I could see the cons, but then I could see the pros. Yeah. I did have fun last night. I did laugh a little louder. I did have a good time with my wife or our friends or whatever. So isn't that just life? It's a trade off. Isn't that just kind of how this whole game works.

But once I decided 100 percent [00:08:00] irrefutably, undeniably, objectively, I would be better off without it. It was kind of like this overnight shift to this quantum leap and now it was very easy to walk away from it. So anyone struggling with alcohol or anything like that, people that are in your inner circle that are saying, Oh, come on, relax.

Like it's not that bad. It's, very dangerous to be able to see both sides of it. Cause then you're always going to be torn once, you know, is bad. And it was now it's just bad. And if you constantly choose to do something that, you know, it's a hundred percent negative, let's just.

You're going to feel foolish. It's going to feel more disingenuous. It's going to feel more Like a bad idea. So that was very helpful to me. 

Brad Minus: That's interesting that you said that, that you were going to the gym hungover. I kind of, and this is my bad. I just made an ass out of myself. Because I was thinking that this was part of your life before you had gone to the gym.

So when did you actually start training and starting getting, hitting the gym pretty hard? 

Elijah Hines: I started working out around 18, [00:09:00] 19, lost a lot of excess weight I had through my, young adult life. And then I did different stuff like rock climbing. I did MMA for a little while, jujitsu, Muay Thai, boxing, stuff like that.

And then I really got into strictly lifting strength, training, hypertrophy type stuff around the age 24, 25. My dad being an alcoholic, a lot of other people in my, family struggling with that. I feel that the gym played a massive role in keeping it at bay in the sense that it never got that crazy.

Like in my mind, it was crazy because it's something that. I didn't want to do, but I would do it anyway. So for me, I was like, this is a, this is a big issue. But in the grand scheme of things, I was never waking up in ditches. Or waking up like, where am I? What day is it? So it wasn't that violently crazy.

Like it is for a lot of people that struggle with that extreme side of alcoholism, but I think the gym played a natural deterrent for, for so many years. So that was to my benefit. But even [00:10:00] then it's like, I mean, it's still holding that back. Like I put all my eggs into this basket. I'm constantly looking up new information on training.

I'm constantly thinking about training, talking to family and friends about training. Now it's my career. Even when I was. A few years into being a personal trainer, I'm still drinking a pretty good amount. I would even train clients go home and take a nap Trying to sleep off the hangover and come back and work out.

Eventually, it's like these just do not go together and I tried so hard to convince myself They could I would be out of the club and i'd see something like jack dude with the upper back Just bursting out of a shirt And he's holding his Michelob Ultra or whatever. And I'm like, there is a way to make it work.

That guy's pretty jacked and he's drinking. So maybe it works, but it's just a cop out. It's just finding anything that I can grasp to make sense of keeping it in my life. 

Brad Minus: It. We make those excuses and, and I, growing up the way I did, and I'm just going to tell you, I, I have nuclear family.

And a mother and a father, a [00:11:00] good, you know, good, set of, support on the other side. Grandparents, great grandparents, the whole bit. So I, I was, you could not probably get any more normal, if you want to call it normal, than the way I grew up. So to me, Like, it was always Loserville if you were an alcoholic or a drug, a drug dealer or a drug, a drug addict, I was like, Oh, just stop doing it.

Just stop doing it. But it really is after now then, you know, learning afterwards and being a trainer myself. And being an endurance coach myself, it's not, there is a gene that you have that has a propensity for overindulgence, which becomes addiction. But I absolutely 100 percent agree though, once that, that I think, okay, cause I'm, I don't have any of that in my family, so I don't know.

But it makes sense to me that the endorphins and the serotonin you get from working out. Might, might give you that [00:12:00] conflict of, okay, now I'm going to put this stuff in my body, you know, and then with the, the idea that, you know, in your background that you've got it, you're like, Oh, Hey, I feel really good when I'm at the gym.

And then you play that with the next day you're in the gym, hung over going, there's an imbalance here. 

Elijah Hines: Yeah. 

Brad Minus: That kind of what you felt like? 

Elijah Hines: A hundred percent. And in very much the same way, early on, I was terrible at sports, terrible in the pushup contest, the foot race. Yeah. My years that I've spent in the gym compared to the results I got up to, up to like the last two years.

Now my results have been like 10 X and I can't help but think, man, what if I was doing this the whole time? Like how, how much more insane would my results be? But. Prior to that, all the years I spent in the gym, I mean, I've gotten clients better results in like six months than I got in five years from trying to live two different lives, trying to be in two different worlds.

So yeah, it just didn't make sense [00:13:00] anymore. 

Brad Minus: Wow. You know what? That's a great, that's a great quote. We need to put that out there. You get your clients better in six months than you did five years. The fact that you were living in this alcohol. And drug lifestyle.

So, just put some numbers around it. What did you, what would you say that you were weighing in your teenage years before you started training? 

Elijah Hines: Say my softest was close to 200 pounds. Like a very doughy high body fat and under muscled, like one 85, one 90, just chubby pale cheeks and just soft skin, 

Brad Minus: okay. 

Elijah Hines: And how tall 

Brad Minus: Okay, so, and then, let's, so that's that you're doughiest, so let's go to the other side. You're boast ripped, perfectly in shape, exactly if you were to look at your peak. Of where you've gotten to so far, not saying that you're not going to peak out even more.

Elijah Hines: Right now, I'd say right now I'm around 10 and a half, 11 percent body fat at like 163 to 165, depending on the [00:14:00] day. And I'm going to cut just a little bit more and then kind of hit a main gain type of phase coming up next.

But I also was very underweight at one point. I was like one 47 going full hippie, drinking tea all day and smoking weed and not eating my first meal to like, to like five o'clock. So I've been on the other end of the extreme too. And that's kind of my biggest thing is I've been underweight. I've been overweight.

I've been addicted to a number of different things. And every time I've improved any of these areas, this might come as a shocker, but my quality of life improved. Like that's my whole thing is anything that was negative in my life that I removed my quality of life. Objectively elevated. And that's the case for every single one of us.

Like there's no scenario where you take away something negative and you end up worse off or add something positive and end up worse off like personal development, constantly reflecting on where are my weaknesses, what are my flaws, [00:15:00] addressing them, being very brutally honest with yourself and fixing them.

We only stand to gain by gaining. It's only to our benefit to do things that benefit us, which it sounds so obvious. And that's kind of what my whole page is all about is just reminding people of these things.

Brad Minus: Nice. Yeah. You know what? It's interesting. Is it Simon Sinek or maybe it was, Robert Kronos, Robert Kailowski. He said that one of those guys said that you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. The people that you were hanging around with for those people that were going, You know, we're drinking more is that you, and that's actually came just rightly from you, right?

You, those people were drinking, so you were drinking, right? Do you have any of those people in your life now? 

Elijah Hines: I don't. And admittedly, like the personal development, personal growth path. It is a very lonely one. [00:16:00] Doesn't have to be. Eventually, you just, you kind of have to go out of your way to find more like minded individuals like yourself.

We're here having this conversation. Now, this conversation wouldn't have made sense four years ago. If you're like, so what are your habits? And I'm like, oh, drinking ice cream, preferably overeating most of the time. It'd be like, wait, what? I think I got the wrong guess. Like, I couldn't even be here having this conversation with those habits.

Right? So once you, you know, change your habits and change your life, you do have to go out of your way to find. More individuals like that. And unfortunately, they are uncommon and drinking overreading just kind of messing around is more common. So, I mean, these days I train my clients. I hang out with my clients and I have my wife and my son and admittedly, that's pretty much about it.

My inner circle is very, very small. If it even is an inner circle, right? Well, that's, that's fantastic. 

Brad Minus: How old's your son? He's a nine months, [00:17:00] nine months. Oh, congratulations. That's, that's brand new. That's awesome. All right. Let's give us now that you're this super like fit athletic dude.

What's his name? Jacob. Jacob. All right, big Jacob Hines. That's a freaking football player name. It kind of is, yeah. He's gonna be strong. You can just hear it. It has a presence in it. 

Elijah Hines: He told me, my wife and I, we're not religious per se, but he told me in the womb, he was like, I'm Jacob fool.

That's my name. I was like, babe, what do you think about Jacob? She's like, I kind of liked that. I was like, well, good. Cause he's telling me that's already his name. So gotta taking it from him. Love it. 

Brad Minus: Absolutely love it. So, all right, how we were talking about this in a matter of four years, I didn't even realize that, the way you talk and your credentials and everything else makes me think that you're probably much older than you are.

What made you start coaching? Training. 

Elijah Hines: Yeah. Training of [00:18:00] all the different mindset things that I do, meditation, personal development, all, all the different habits I have. Nothing has had a more profound effect on my psyche, my wellbeing, my quality of life than physical training. I honestly think that should be the foundation for, for everyone's practice.

It's a springboard to everything else that is, it's no coincidence that so many people that are into fitness and working out end up diving deeper into, mindset, different belief systems and practices. And it's just like this evolution of, well, I improved this and my life drastically improved.

Where else can I apply that? Can I apply that to my relationships? To my inner dialogue, to the way I eat, to the way I carry myself, to the way I speak. So it really is the foundation of everyone's personal development process. But yeah, when I first started working out again, I mean, not to be too dramatic, but it was almost traumatic being so [00:19:00] physically incapable as a young person.

Like I hated it anytime there was any physical competition. I dreaded it an arm wrestling match, anything and everything that had to do with physicality. I dreaded it because I was so bad at it. Facing the facts, realizing the only way this is going to change is if I start working out and putting myself in this uncomfortable space.

I mean, I had anxiety in the gym for a year. Sometimes I would just freak out and leave like halfway through a workout. If I didn't know what my next exercise was, then I'm looking around. I'm like, Can they tell I don't know what's going on that? I don't know what I'm doing. It was a long process to get to where now it's my favorite place to be and I couldn't be Any more comfortable in the gym than anywhere else on planet earth, but kind of going off on a tangent here Yeah, so Working out all that to say nothing's had a more profound effect a more tangible measurable effect on my own Well being than working out and I was like I I have to This has to be my life.

This is my life path is giving this other people and guiding them through this process [00:20:00] because another big part of my trial and error was lots and lots and lots of error. So, again, a big reason I can get my clients. Better results in like their first six months than I got in four or five years is because I know exactly what we're not going to do.

Oh, there's this big emphasis right now. It's like, Hey, let's just show up. Obviously it's required. You can't work out without working out. Like that is part of it. It's just walking in the gym. But once you walk in that gym, there is a lot of dumb shit that you can do.

You can do things very wrong. You can make no progress at all for way too damn long. Or you could change this. Don't do this, add that train this many days instead of this many days and 10 X year results. So the big thing for me was like, wow, I've had all this trial and error. This would be a crime for me not to pass this along and steer people away from, you know, where it's wasted time, effort, and energy, and just put them, this is what you want to do.

This is what we're going to do this and we're going to progress this lift. We're going to progress this [00:21:00] movement So it really really is a time collapse being able to work with the coach and have them steer you away from Their own mistakes that they made did you have a coach ever? Yeah, I had a trainer.

It was like 25 And yeah, it was a great experience. I went from being very unsure of what to do Making progress on my lips being kind of more of a mysterious thing to a very straightforward, not very complicated this whole thing. It's not that there's these secrets on the other side of the veil of like, oh, it's this secret elaborate formula.

It's actually usually the opposite. People make it too complicated. Then what's actually required is very, very simple. So, yeah, my first trainer, he was able to show me that. And then having that accountability, he gave me workouts to do on my own outside of our sessions, too, which was very helpful. And then I got to kind of pick his brain.

I was telling him like, hey, I actually want to do what you want to do. So that was a great experience for me to ask him about the field about how to get started and doing a lot of research on the Internet. Everyone was just saying, just [00:22:00] start training people for free. Like, you're not just gonna.

No one's going to knock on the door and say, Hey, we have a job for you. You start tomorrow. You have 30 clients. Let's get to work. Like you have to start with what you got. So I started telling coworkers, Hey, I can bring guests for free at this fitness connection I'm going to, if you ever want to come with me, ask 10 or 20 people, one or two, take me up on it.

They start coming with me, I'd finish my workout, get out of the shower, get them started on their main lift, tell them what I would have them do, walk them through a few lifts. And I mean, looking back, you could say I wasn't qualified at the time, but it's all the same way. It's trial and error in the workouts.

It was trial and error training my peers and coworkers. Go from there to having some people over at the house in my home gym. A few years later, I'm training people for next to nothing, like very much undercharging, but I didn't have the confidence to charge more. And it's like, Hey, this is where I'm at.

So now I'm training people at my home, getting my chops up. And then when the opportunity presented itself to actually do it legitimately and work at a private facility, I [00:23:00] had two years of unofficial experience. Right. So that was very helpful. 

Brad Minus: Imposter syndrome will get you. And that's a big thing right now is we're actually, delving into that.

There's a lot of mindset coaches right now that are actually diving into imposter syndrome and what causes it and what you can do to about it and everything else. And yeah, that's kind of where I started to my, now I didn't know that I wanted to coach. Until. I was running, I had this one year where I did my first Olympic, triathlon, and then I did my first half Ironman, and then I did my first Ironman, and in between my first half Ironman and my first Ironman, it was one month.

Literally, it was September I did, the half in Augusta, and in November I did the full in Florida. But in October, I had already fundraised and had a team of 22 people that we [00:24:00] were running the Chicago marathon. And I already knew that, hey, three weeks later, I was going to be putting my body to the full test.

So I knew that I wasn't running this marathon to win or to PR or to anything like that. Now, I'm never going to win, but for me, it was going to be a win. But I knew that it wasn't going to be PPR. I was going to be. just going what my legs were decided to do. And, older lady, she was 53 at the time, 54.

She had just done her first marathon six months earlier in France, and she ended up running a five 25, something like that. Well, I took her with me. I says, all right, listen, Karen, you're coming with me and we're going to do this strategy and we're going to finish together.

And we did, we finished together hand in hand. across the finish line, and we did it in 4. 30. Yeah, for six months, for a marathon, for almost an hour, that's unheard of. It's unheard of. Nobody frickin takes, 50 minutes off their time in a range of six months. Nobody does that. But I knew that she had more in her.

So I had to show [00:25:00] her that, so I get done and her friend, comes up to me and her friend's a good runner and she goes, Karen's over the moon. She is all smiles. She's on top of the world right now. And it's all, it's all because of you. And I says, well, she ran the race. She just happens to run with me. I didn't really do anything.

She goes, no, you guided her. I think you should coach. And I said to her, I'm like, I don't have any credits to coach. I got what this one marathon and a couple of fricking triathlons. I got another, well, it was my, I think, I think that was my third or fourth marathon and, that's all I got.

She goes, but next month you will. I mean, once you've got that full Ironman underneath your belt, you will. And that's how I got started. Kind of the same deal. Trained a couple of people for free. And then all of a sudden, running stores, you know, started reaching out and they were like, Hey, I heard what you did.

And we think that you could coach, or that was kind of like, it was a referral, you know, a couple of the people that I ran with knew about Karen and they like talk to these people and they came back to me and said, we heard that you're, you're good at what you do. [00:26:00] So that was, that was, that was my whole thing, right.

That was how I got involved. 

Elijah Hines: That's awesome. One of my favorite quotes is the path. illuminates as we walk it. And it's so true. Like I spent years in that paralysis from analysis phase, spent years thinking, do I look jacked enough? Are people going to trust me with their workouts? Do I look the part?

Do I know enough? And it was all just a waste of time. If anything, it just added to the anxiety I had my first day. I did step on a gym floor officially as a trainer. Any action is better than no action. Imperfect action. Start getting you to where you want to go. It's like, just make a move, just make a move.

And then you're either going to learn what to do or what not to do. And both of those are valuable. And then you do it again and then you do it again. And that's the whole game that imposter syndrome you were talking about, it's really normal. Like it's totally normal. Now if someone's like 15, 20 years into their field, And everyone recognizes that they're at the top of their game and they still have some confidence issues.

That might be its own separate, [00:27:00] unique thing that they have their own hangups. But as far as imposter syndrome in the beginning, I'm not very confident. Have you done it before? No, not even once. Well, there you go. I wouldn't be very confident either. Like, yeah, but I just, once I get the confidence, then I'll go do the thing.

It's the other way around. It will always be that way. 

Brad Minus: I agree. I agree. But the, you know, and, and people kowtow this, this cliche, which is fake it till you make it. They kowtow it. But what, what I think fake it till you make it really is, is the power of yes.

You ever heard of, Laura Langmyre? I'm not sure. I don't think so. Okay. So Laura Langmeyer is another one of the self development coaches, but she talks about her first, her first job out of school and she was a fitness instructor. She learned, you know, exercise science. That's what her, that's where her degree was in.

And she got offered a job to create fitness centers on oil rigs or for the workers. Didn't know anything about it. Her big [00:28:00] thing was that if she never said yes, she probably wouldn't be the person that she is today. She said, I just said yes, and I figured it out on the way, 

that's where that fake it. I always thought fake it to make it actually works out. 

Elijah Hines: Sometimes. Absolutely. She would have learned. She would have learned a lot. It's like, it's a win win, but people will look at things.

It's like, either we're learning or we're actually pulling it off to our surprise. And we're realizing everyone's kind of figuring out this whole thing as we go along. We're not some unique, exception to that. We all share that 

Brad Minus: there is no success without failure.

Absolutely. Failure is where we learn. So I I've been having the same ring through my head because you've been really big on talking about mindset. What are the things that you practice today to put you in the right mindset? Either for the gym to coach, to be a loving father and husband?

What are some of the things that you practice daily? 

Elijah Hines: One of the biggest ones is just taking inventory. Okay, I said this thing to my wife. How did that make me feel? Was I proud of [00:29:00] who I was in that moment? If it's a yes, that's a green check mark, I need to do more of that. If it's a big red X and I felt bad, she didn't like it, I didn't feel good.

It was clearly the wrong thing. Well, I have to be sure to do less of that. 99. 9 percent of the time, if we feel really good about a thing, even the next day, no regrets, it's probably a good thing to do.

And on the inverse of the next day, we carry some regret or some shame. Well, that is an indicator. That's not something that's in our best interest to do like negative emotions, like regret, shame, even depression, anxiety. I feel like these are directions. Of where not to go, but we get really hung up and focused on all of these negative things 

what are you depressed about? Oh, I haven't really done anything i'm proud of in like five years. I'd be very depressed five years. Like this, if you weren't depressed, that would be a red [00:30:00] flag because now we're totally if it's full apathy, now we're screwed.

If you're feeling depressed that your internal guidance system is saying, stop it. So what's that Michael Jordan mean? We're like, stop it. Get some help. It's like, go do, go do that. These things are telling us what to fix. So, so yeah, I get entertained about all this stuff. That's one of my biggest things is just, just monitoring what's going on.

Like your wake up time. Did it give you enough time to get a headstart on your day and you're going into work with good energy and you're able to have a little meditation in the morning or work out and now you're feeling better or. Was it enough time to fly out the door and you're frantic and your heart rates up?

You're seeing it on your Apple watch. Oh shit. I'm freaking out. Well let's wake up 10 minutes earlier, 20 minutes earlier, an hour earlier. Boom. Now once you figure out that perfect wake up time, there's no reason to change it ever, ever. You now have figured out the perfect wake up time to set up your perfect morning.

Next segment, your first meal. Is that [00:31:00] first meal aligned with the outcome you want? Is it getting you towards the body you want or further away from the body you want? Fix that. Okay, boom. Have that meal every day or most days. Or if you have a option B and option C, they're in the same category as far as like calories and yada yada.

And literally like, This is what I do with my, my elite clients. We build their entire day from the ground up. And once you have your morning, your afternoon, your midday, your evening, all of these things lined up, it's like now we just live the same day every day. And I mean, this is heaven on earth.

You can literally create the life of your dreams, have heaven on earth. If you feel good. about the majority of your decisions. Like that's the whole game. And it's just, Oh, I'm glad I did that. Oh, I'm proud of that. Oh, I liked how I felt after I said that to that person. Like, that's my biggest thing.

Take, take an inventory, assessing, being judgmental. I love being judgmental. Judge being, being, judgmental is like this negative, very triggering [00:32:00] frowned upon thing. I'm like, we should all be judgmental. We should all be making judgments and assessments at all times. This is how, We get better. If someone spent one day doing what I'm saying, they could get more personal development in that 24 hour period than in five years of just kind of spinning their wheels, going through the motions.

Brad Minus: Yeah, I agree. And that's where, Life Changing Challengers came in to start with, was challenging yourself to be better, but you've got to exactly do what you're talking about. You've got to take inventory every day of, Hey, did this certain aspect, this meal, this training session, this, bedtime.

Is it closer to getting me to the start line of this challenge that I'm taking upon myself? I've had numerous, numerous clients. I've had one client that decided that, Hey, you know what, I'm going to climb Everest, and we devised a plan.

I had a, actually for her, that was a little bit out of my, that was [00:33:00] way out of my, out of my, my education. But so I hooked her up with somebody else. But it was, Hey, is this going to get me up that mountain? I need to get up to that mountain. I need to get up to that thing. I need to get everything.

So we started with just basic strength, and endurance, because it takes a ton of endurance to get up there. You got to have a good VO two to escape, the imbalance and altitude if you've got good VO two. So when we got her there, then she, then she went off with somebody that could actually.

Get her to where she can adapt her body to getting up this frickin mountain. Everest is like, it's weeks of going to a base camp and coming back down, going to a higher base camp, going back down to the first bay camp, going back down, going up to the third base camp, go back to the second base camp, going to the first base camp and coming back down because you can't just go right.

You've got to adapt, adapt, adapt, adapt. You can't adapt. Without coming back down to sea level. When you [00:34:00] finally get all the way up to the top, I think it's exactly what you said there, every little thing, every little meal isn't getting me closer to my goal, 

Elijah Hines: Absolutely. And that might sound like a very intense process.

People are like, so what I got to measure every aspect of my life, front to back, top to bottom, like every thought, it's too much, but the end goal. Is you living a higher quality of life? So how is that not worth it? If the end goal was ending up barely any different Yeah, that seems like a lot of work for not a lot of gain but if the gain is a happier healthier more vibrant more energetic individual, I mean, it's got to be worth it if we attack it in small chunks and just make these small improvements over time And this is what really pains me at the end of the day, like everyone has to have their own breaking point or their own come to Jesus moment, their [00:35:00] own realization of Ah, I think I need to make some changes.

My life could be better. And before that happens, a lot of the stuff falls on deaf ears, which over my years of coaching, I've just kind of come to accept that at the end of the day, the end goal is you being a better you. Everything in your life is better when you're better. It's just a fact your interactions with strangers at the grocery store, the thoughts going on between years when you're filling up your car with gas, like this is your life we're talking about.

So it's 100 percent worth what might seem like its own Mount Everest of like, ah, this is a lot of work. This is a lot of effort. It's like, yeah, it is. And the reward is indescribable. It's priceless. So let's get to work. 

Brad Minus: Yeah, no. And Hey, and you single guys out there. You know, when you feel good, when you're doing something you actually enjoy when all that, hey, you can walk into any fricking bar with any fricking girl and you'd be able to talk to them and not without issue.

Then there's the other guys that, hey, I've got a little self doubt, [00:36:00] or I got some self esteem issues. I got a little pudge. I got all that. It's a lot, lot more difficult. That rejection feels like it's, you know, like it's everything, but for a single guy that's in a good headspace that feels confident, that feels like they look good.

They might not even look good, but they feel like they look good. That rejection is not that big of a deal. It's like, Oh, next, you know, Hey, there's another girl out there. That girl saying no to me just means that she wasn't the one for me to start with. Yeah. But when you're talking about that quality of life, that everything is good.

Yeah. It's not a big deal. You walk in, you can meet as many women or as many guys as you want. Absolutely. So, so I take, I definitely take that to heart. So what does a day in Elijah Heinz's week look like? A normal day where you work and you're with your family and everything else.

What does it look like? 

Elijah Hines: Yeah. Normal day is wake up 3. 30 AM. I have my pre workout breakfast shake that was made the night before or the day before. [00:37:00] So it's ready to go within my first 8 10 seconds of being awake. I already have nutrients coming in. I have affirmations going into my ears. So I have affirmations going on drinking my shake.

Finish that. Hit a couple teaspoons of honey. Go straight into a 15 minute meditation. Goal is to be out of the house around 420 430. Get my workout done. It's about an hour, 90 minutes. And then usually I'm running up to my first client of the day around 6 30 AM. I'll train clients from 6 30 AM all the way to 6 30 PM.

Some days with some breaks in between, I'm usually cracking content, working on videos, outreach, checking on my online clients, making sure they're all doing what they're supposed to be doing. And then nighttime is a little bit of family time. And then, that's pretty much Monday through Saturday.

And then Sunday is even more so dedicated family time. 

Brad Minus: Nice. So you do have one full day where you're like, Nope. Not talking to [00:38:00] clients. I'm not doing this. I am going to strictly go out and take family time, except if you want to be on life changing challengers, then you've got to be available for an hour or so.

That's absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. So at which, so you talked about, you just said it, you made the shake the night before. So you prep some things. When did you do that? Did you do it right before you go to bed or how does that work? 

Elijah Hines: Yeah. So I used to do it the night before my wife, she, she makes it now for me at some point the day before.

She's great. She does my meal prep. She makes my pre workout shakes. I pretty much eat the same food every single day. I've had a meal replacement shake for breakfast. seven days a week for like over a decade. Once you find something that's so outrageously beneficial, there's zero temptation to deviate.

I'm never like, Oh, shake again. The thing that gives me the perfect amount of energy, perfect amount of carbs, fats, and proteins. I'm not too bloated, but I'm not too hungry. This perfect shake. I have to have it again. No, it's like, why would I have any hangups on it? When it's in every way to my benefit.

[00:39:00] So, yeah, she makes that a day before. That was another big hack. I used to make it right before. And admittedly, it tastes a little better, but consistency is a little better when it's like straight out of the blender, but being able to wake up and it's ready to go, you can't beat that.

A lot of early morning workout people. They just train fasted for convenience sake. Cause they're like, I'm already waking up early. I'm not going to prepare this big solid meal and then wait for it to digest and then get out the door. So it's like you find these little, these little hacks along the way.

Yeah. So I'll have half of the shake before the workout, the second half after the workout, I've been doing that for so many years. 

Brad Minus: Wow. Okay. So do you ever have something different just for, I don't know, let's call it fun or for, just as a special, a treat, you know, maybe, do you ever go out just for balance?

That's the thing that I preach is. Yeah. 

Elijah Hines: Yeah, definitely it admittedly is usually more so to appease my wife Like I recognize that a lot of my monk mode same day every day type stuff isn't appealing to the masses per [00:40:00] se my I mean my wife she thinks i'm insane She's like, I don't know how you feel She's like, do you want me to try a different fruit?

Like, do you want me to switch out the strawberries for some mixed berries? I'm like, no, she's like, damn, you don't want it to be more fun. I'm like, for me, and this could be related to my addictive personality and things that I've overindulged with in the past, but for me, I don't need it to be like fun.

I mean, I do enjoy eating out. We'll go out every once in a while and I'll indulge a little bit, but I operate so well with militant routine, same meal. I usually have the same lunch and this year has been a little more flexible. In 2023, I literally had that same breakfast, a cup of rice and eight ounces of red meat for lunch.

And a cup of rice and eight ounces of red meat for dinner. And I had that every single day, all of 2023. 

Brad Minus: And nothing in 

Elijah Hines: It's just like four meals, two shakes, two meat and rice meals. [00:41:00] The gym bros dream. 

Brad Minus: Yeah, well, it does do one thing. It's like Einstein, right? Einstein, had the same set of clothes.

He had seven, sets of the exact same pair of clothes. Because don't think about it. Decision. There's enough brain power that I'm using in my work. I don't want to frigging fuss on what I'm going to wear. So he just bought seven exactly of the same thing. When I was in the military, never had a worry during the week.

I knew exactly what I was wearing every day. Never had to worry about it. Most people complained about it. I was like, no, I know exactly what I'm wearing. So I get that. I totally get that. And that's using that, you know, your addictive personality to your benefit.

I'm stealing monk mode by the way. I'm stealing it. I love that. I love that idea, I think you'd go monk mode for five days. And then seven days, you have a little bit of change on one day and a little bit of change on the other, and you go right back into monk mode come Monday morning.

Elijah Hines: Yeah, I like that. [00:42:00] It's kind of like the 80 20 principle, but I feel like, for me, it almost sounds unrealistic. And in a way it is. And so in those moments of right now, it's not realistic. I'll deviate. That 20 percent kind of happens naturally. I find a lot of people that intentionally do 80 20.

Really, it's like a 50 50 or like a 40 like, well, I had the salad. So now I'll have the donut. It's like, unless you're. Tracking calories and making it all work, then yeah, at that point you can, you can literally eat whatever you want, as long as you're hitting your daily numbers and it's all good, but if you don't know exactly how it's balancing out on the scales, a lot of times that 80 20 is not a true 80 20.

Brad Minus: Oh, I get that. And that's, I think, so for some of my clients, I deal with the same issues, especially because, we deal in time. So if you're going out. Like you really don't need [00:43:00] anything but water even out here in Florida for 60 minutes for a 60 minute run, You really don't need anything now You might want a little bit of water just to wet your mouth, but you really don't need anything for more than 60 minutes But once you get past that there's a certain amount of carbs a certain amount of salt and depending on the temperature dew point humidity and Everything else that you gotta have Otherwise, you're not going to get the quality workout in, 

so I get that because every workout is going to have that exact same, combination. And most of the time, that same combination comes from a couple of different products that you have that work for you. So I totally get that. So, it's regimented. But I will say that I also had, my example of what you were saying about what works and what doesn't and the things that make you don't feel so good is if I had a three hour ride in the heat.

It always felt good going down that because a three hour ride, bicycle ride in the heat here, I, I'll burn 2, 200 calories without even thinking about it. Right? Wow. But I used to love to like have [00:44:00] an ice cold Coca Cola.

It's just something about it going down, going down would be great, but I'd feel like crap later. And then one time I didn't have it and I felt better. And I think that's exactly where you were talking about. As far as, Hey, you put in your body, you take something, you go in a certain direction.

That's going to get you to how you feel the best. 

Elijah Hines: Absolutely. Are your actions in alignment with the outcome you want? And if they are, if it really is an outcome you want, there's going to be a lot of incentive to do that. So a lot of this stuff starts with having that goal too. Like if you have nothing you're aiming for, then making these positive changes doesn't really seem important.

And it's not, you have no direction. There's, you don't even have any desired outcome or desired thing you're trying to attain. But once you do, it's like, well, now there are better and worse decisions to make. What are the better ones? Let me do a lot of those. What are the worst ones? Let me do very few.

If at all of those, and now we're golden. [00:45:00] Beautiful. 

Brad Minus: Can you give me a couple of examples? I don't need names or anything like that. Can you give me a couple examples of some of the outcomes that you help your clients with? I mean, it can't all just be weight loss. If you get fitter, blah, blah, blah.

There's gotta be, I would think that you probably have a more stricter metric in there someplace. 

Elijah Hines: I would say a big one is getting enough protein in. It's very like bodybuilder Jim bro. Metric like bro protein, but it really is important. And I've had clients that are chronically under protein. And once we get it up to a consistent number, somehow, some way magically their lifts are like skyrocketing.

And they're like, I really didn't think it would make that big of a difference. So before we even get too deep into, their calories and the whole overhaul, it's like, let's just make sure you're getting 140 grams a day or 160 grams a day, whatever it [00:46:00] is that person needs. That would be a big one.

A pre workout meal. I've had actually had a client just recently. I told him about my daily shake. I've had for over a decade. He's been working out fasted with me for like two years and he's always, holding a stomach like, man, I don't feel so good. I'm kind of getting the cold sweats. Endurance is kind of up and down.

And I'm like, dude, make it the day before it'll already be ready. Have it an hour, 90 minutes before the workout. I promise you, you'll feel better. You finally did it. And his weights are going up more rapid than they ever have, even though we've been at it for like two years now, he's like, why didn't I do this sooner?

It's like, yeah, this works. So the nutrition is a big one. Just setting people up for success with. When they eat before their workout, what they eat, their daily intake. Yeah, that's a big one. Small victories. Absolutely. They add up. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. I like that. It's small victories. So what about big outcomes?

Give me a couple of examples of some of [00:47:00] your clients. What's their ultimate outcome at the end of a program? Or, you know, what they're hiring you for in the first place. 

Elijah Hines: Yeah, like something more specific and an exciting one for one of my longest running clients Joel He wants to squat 400 by the age of 40.

He's 37 right now about to turn 38 and right now he's in like the mid 300 so very attainable There's no reason we can't Add 50 pounds in two years, we'll probably go way above that, but pretty exciting goal. He got into this lifting stuff later in life, like mid thirties, he was like 35 or 36 when we first, got started together.

So that's a really exciting, specific goal. He weighs one 65 right now. So squatting well over double his body weight. It's pretty rare, so excited to help them pull that off. And that's something that comes with very specific training, like, yes, obviously we're going to squat, but it's [00:48:00] not just.

Let's squat every week with random weights and random sets and reps that's something that's has taken a very methodical approach and methodical process. So that's an exciting one we got coming up. 

Brad Minus: I love that, dealing with somebody that I deal with habitual racers, like we've got metrics of, if they want to do a triathlon, they want to do the swim in this, the bike in this and the run in this, and they want to come in at this final.

A time goal, that, you know, coming from that to somebody that just says, no, my metric or my outcome is I just want to squat 400 pounds. I am amazed at that. And I think that's a great goal. Great metrics. Specific a little bit. So if those are the kind of people that you're training, I will send everybody I know in North Carolina to you.

Thank you, Elijah. This has been absolutely amazing. And I think we've come up with a lot of great stuff that from number one, from inventory down to metrics, mindset and nutrition, [00:49:00] you pretty much ran the gamut with us and gave us ideas for things that we can use in our lives to help us with that outcome that we want.

Elijah Hines: Absolutely. You have a really cool show and the way you run this. I caught up on a few episodes before jumping on and it reminded me of the first time I read David Goggins, Can't Hurt Me. As I was reading that, I was like, Oh, my childhood wasn't shit.

I didn't go through anything hard. And just catching up on some of your episodes, listening to some of your other guests. I think that's, something we should all realize. As we listen to other people's stories and their tough upbringings, we can always find someone that had it worse and has done more.

And then they can find someone that had it worse and they've done more. But a lot of people, they like to kind of define themselves by their childhood trauma, by what didn't go right, by what wasn't fair for them. And just stay there and be very stagnant. Yeah, I could have [00:50:00] very easily ended up in overweight, unhappy, addicted to entertainment, movies and shows and video games, addicted to substances that could have very easily been my life path based on my childhood and it's just about just making a conscious effort, making a conscious decision. Like, do I want to live a higher quality of life?

Let's say I did. What would I do different than what I'm doing now? What would I do different? Immediately your brain will start firing stuff off. Oh, I definitely wouldn't do this thing I do every day. I wouldn't eat this thing I eat every day.

I wouldn't think this weird thought about that person I see at work every day. Our brains are ready to give us what we need if we ask the right questions. But again, that all comes back to just having that goal. So I think it's really cool what you do. All the listeners is to y'all's benefit to hear other people's stories and like, okay, people have really gone through some shit and what separates [00:51:00] them from people that went through some shit and are still in some shit is they made a choice.

They decided I, this isn't going to be my story, like, what do you want your story to be? A lot of people, they hear personal development. I can tell you and I can vibe off of David Goggins type stuff. And a lot of people that kind of roll their eyes at even the idea of personal development.

And that's really sad to me. It's really a shame. Cause again, forget David Goggins, forget Brad, forget me. It's your life. It's your life. And there are things you can do differently today that will make you a better you, which will make you enjoy being you more. That sounds absolutely worth investing the time, effort, and energy required to do it.

So 

Brad Minus: I couldn't have said that better myself. So, Elijah, thank you for being on the 50th episode. I think it was the. Perfect 50th episode for life changing challenges to have Elijah Hines on here. So [00:52:00] Elijah, we're going to put your socials in the show notes so people can contact you, all you people out in, Raleigh.

Seek him out, slide into his DMS, ask him if he's got some availability and start training with him. And of course, there's the rest of you out there, that he also coaches virtually as well. So, reach out, find him and, get your plan together he's going to have the outcome assessed for you and ready to go. So again, Elijah, thank you so much for being on this episode. I so appreciate you and what you do. Thank you for listening to the other episodes. If you can, I would appreciate share.

If you're on YouTube, like, and subscribe. If you're out on Apple, Spotify or any of the other programs, please just give us a review. And if it happens to be bad review, that's fine. At least we can take feedback and we can make it better. The next episode you listen to will probably be better let us know how we're doing.

We'll see you in the next one. Thank you, Brad.