Fitness For You: Building Self-Esteem & Health w/ Ricky Shic's Strategies

Unlock the secret to transforming your fitness and well-being journey with insights from Instagram star Ricky Shic, the mastermind behind Fitness for You. Ricky opens up about his battle with bullying in middle school and how it led him to a thriving career as a certified master trainer. Learn how physical fitness boosts self-esteem and plays a pivotal role in managing ADHD symptoms. Ricky shares heartwarming stories of working with individuals with ADHD, illustrating how a tailored exercise regimen can improve focus and overall well-being. Struggling with motivation to exercise? Ricky’s tips on setting achievable fitness goals will keep you inspired and on track.

In another compelling segment, we explore the powerful benefits of reconnecting with nature and adopting healthier lifestyles. Discover the practice of grounding and how walking barefoot and spending time outdoors can reset your body to its natural state. We'll discuss the perils of a sedentary lifestyle and the critical role regular movement and sunlight play in maintaining optimal health. Nutritional habits take center stage as we advocate for a shift from processed foods to whole, natural foods for better health outcomes. Facing the challenge of willpower in maintaining a healthy diet? Learn the strategies to create an environment that supports healthier choices, empowering you to make lasting changes. Don't miss out on these actionable insights and the motivation you need to revolutionize your fitness and wellness journey.

https://www.instagram.com/ricky_shic_fitness_for_you?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

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Transcript

Aubrey: 0:06

Welcome to the conversation. I'm really excited for our special episode today with Instagram star Ricky Sheik. I am super excited about him because he is he runs fitness for you, which is a personal training business, and he he is lighting it up on Instagram. So welcome, ricky.

Ricky: 0:26

Hey, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Aubrey: 0:30

Yeah, I'm so glad to have you. Will you tell us just a little bit more about how you got into fitness and what it is that you're all about?

Ricky: 0:40

Yeah, absolutely. So long, long, long story short, because I've been doing this for about 15 years now. I got into fitness around I want to say, the eighth grade. I was pretty bullied in middle school and I learned from the very get-go that physical fitness was a beautiful outlet for not only my health but for my self-esteem. So that was my foothold in the fitness industry and business, and I wound up becoming a certified master trainer in 2015. And from there I fell in love with the process of taking people from point A to point B Point A meaning the person that they are currently right now, and point B being the person that they dream of being and that has been something that has been my mission. My mission is to change lives, and it's been an incredible, incredible journey thus far. So that's a little bit about me. That's a little bit about fitness for you and why I got started in the fitness industry.

Aubrey: 1:43

You know I love that, ricky. And just a little fun fact just to note is the current coach that I work with. He is no longer a fitness coach but he is now a business coach. He's working with me directly and he runs a conference called A to B Con specifically around that same concept. So he might be somebody that you'd be interested in knowing Brandon, good friend and my coach.

Ricky: 2:10

Yeah, absolutely, that's awesome.

Aubrey: 2:12

Yeah, I'm so excited to have you and, like, just learn more about this piece and something that I think is really important to note for my audience here. So I I have a lot of clinicians in my audience I also have the people that I work with are mostly professionals with ADHD, and so we're working around a lot of self-esteem related stuff and a lot of people they ask me, like, what's the number one way that I can avoid medication to be able to manage my ADHD? And I'm always telling them you need to move your body.

Ricky: 2:46

Absolutely, absolutely, 110%.

Aubrey: 2:49

Yeah, so I saw you. I saw that you did a video specifically around that. Will you talk a little bit more about like do you see people with ADHD, Do you know if they have ADHD, or is that just like? It's just something that you do and you don't even worry about that?

Ricky: 3:03

Well, you know it's, it's so funny. Yes, I do work with a lot of people who have, you know, adhd. I have a learning to save a disability. I'm dyslexic, so, um, a lot of that what I've learned. I'm also a licensed, certified occupational therapy assistant. Um, with that being said, you know a lot of the realm with, um, people who have these. I don't even want to call it a disability because I don't believe it is. I just think it's a different way of you know, thinking and whatnot.

Ricky: 3:36

Everybody has different temperaments and cadences, you know, especially with people who have, you know, adhd. And what I find is, no matter what the topic of discussion might be, every time exercise gets introduced into the mix, those things get regulated, and exercise is one of the best ways that we can actually organize our body. And when our bodies aren't regulated, we don't have the appropriate amount of dopamine, serotonin, endorphins flowing through our body and a lot of that, most of that, gets released during exercise. So I find a lot of people who have ADHD. They're entrepreneurs, they're clinicians, they're business people and they struggle with just trying to manage a lot of these stressors they have in life.

Ricky: 4:19

And one of the best things, once we start getting training and once we start exercising and moving our body, all of the other life stressors become very organized, right. Everything in their life starts to mitigate itself and it starts to organize itself and they're like wow, I feel like I can finally think clearly. I said I totally get it because I am all over the place too, but when I exercise I can focus. So that's been a big game changer for a lot of the people that I work with the place too, but when I exercise I can focus. So that's been a big game changer for a lot of the people that I work with. Yeah, absolutely.

Aubrey: 4:48

Yeah, and so I think another one of the barriers that I run into is people is like I'm so tired after all of these different things Like I've. You know, how do I get the motivation to do this? Like, what do you tell people?

Ricky: 5:01

Okay. So I tell people that everyone looks for motivation to do certain things, and I think that's so important. And one of the best ways to find motivation is to find an actual goal, like a lot of people listen, some people don't want to be bodybuilders, some people don't want to be runners, me being one of them. But the goal is trying to find a way to move your body. Let's just say, sally, I'm going to make up someone. Sally, she's a clinician and she loves to run. That is a outlet for her to move her body.

Ricky: 5:33

And I would say Sally, listen, I know you love to run. That's the fitness that you love to do. You have just accomplished the first goal. You found something you want to do. That's the first step to motivation. Number two let's find a goal within that realm. So I'll tell Sally hey, maybe we can prepare for a race, or maybe we could have a goal set out for us, for something to achieve. Because when things get measured, they get improved right and when you have a goal to shoot for, that gives the parameters right and the map space to have that discipline and consistency. Because now you can say, hey, why are you going for run? Ha, I have my y, I want to run x amount of miles or I want to compete in this race, and that is a huge motivation factor. And once people get over that hump, everything becomes a lot more easier in that kind of sense with motivation yeah, yeah, because I Cause I.

Aubrey: 6:24

I hear a lot of people talking about like trying to get motivation first and then take action, and I try to tell everybody. It's like it doesn't work that way.

Ricky: 6:37

It does not work that way.

Aubrey: 6:40

So how do you talk to people about that?

Ricky: 6:43

I tell them, I say listen, baby steps first. A lot of people I find this with a lot of entrepreneurs very highly successful people. They want to jump in the rocket ship, they want to build the rocket ship and they want to fly to Mars. I said hold on a minute. I said, let's ride a bike first, let's figure this whole thing out. So it was actually really funny.

Ricky: 7:25

No-transcript. I said hear me out, why don't we have it stack? And you just go for a walk for 30 minutes, buy that, listen to a podcast, take some phone calls, learn to put this in your schedule, learn to find the time. Let's find space in your schedule where we can put this walk and then that'll be our baby steps. So the biggest thing is baby steps. Once they get their foot in the door and they get comfortable with being uncomfortable, then we can start adding more bricks in the layer. Because I find when you overwhelm people with all of this wonderful information like even in your practice, I know like you have so much information you can't just give everyone you know the entire casserole altogether. You got to give them a snack first. So when you give people the stack, I find that they're able to stack more bricks in their home and better. So I believe that's what's 100% helps people with that.

Aubrey: 8:17

Yes, yeah, for sure. It's like the people who come to me and they want to be able to talk to their partners better and communicate better and all of that, and I'm like I can give you tools for that. But if you can't even identify what's going on for yourself, then it's going to be really difficult for you to communicate that to your partner.

Ricky: 8:46

Right, right, right right. Exactly 100%. I couldn't agree more with that. I find that a lot of people they take on way too much, way too soon and they get burned out and they never do it again and then they'll tell somebody they'll be like you know what. It's just really hard for me to find motivation. When they jumped, they literally jumped into the pool and tried swimming you know a million miles, instead of saying, hey, let me dip my toes in the water first.

Aubrey: 9:04

Yeah, yeah. So you're saying like you definitely need to like take it one step at a time and build that habit, and that's something that's really hard to do when you have ADHD, because of just like the sustained mental effort involved in doing that and finding like the motivation. I know that that's like not the right way to put it right. It's like finding, like, how do I keep myself going day after day when it's hard to feel like I'm moving forward? You know, you just want those instantaneous results.

Ricky: 9:40

Right and you know what. You don't have to do it on your own. That's what I'll say. I think a lot of people want to do things on their own, but having an accountability partner, maybe a friend, somebody you can talk to, maybe you can get a running buddy or somebody to keep you accountable because accountability comes into play when motivation dies out right, motivation dies out, accountability comes into play. That's why I that's why I believe trainers are superheroes, because we're the people that text you when you don't want to get up or like hey, sally, it's time for your training.

Ricky: 10:13

You know what I'm saying Don't be late, let's do. This Keeps you excited, keeps you motivated and helps you along that journey. I mean, it's like a therapist. Somebody like you wouldn't like. For me, with my mental health, you know I wouldn't want. If I'm seeing a therapist right, or before I even see a therapist, why would I try to figure out the therapist's job, right? So there's probably things I can research and look up, but if I call and make an appointment with a psychologist or a therapist, I'm going to gain so much more out of that than if I were to just try doing this on my own with no accountability. Am I right on that?

Aubrey: 10:49

Yeah, no, completely. I mean I had this come up recently where somebody was like, yeah, I mean I wouldn't try to just read a book and I mean there's a lot that you can gain from self-help books and I recommend reading to the clients that I'm working with.

Aubrey: 11:04

But, then, when it actually comes to like there's blind spots that we all hold, and I think this is the same thing with exercise. I'm actually kind of in this boat myself. Right, I was at the gym yesterday at the YMCA and I saw somebody that I know there and she is.

Aubrey: 11:21

She's very well fit, right, she has muscles on muscles, but like really attractive muscles for a female Right and um, and I see her working out and she's like lifting the weights and she's like restacking the weights and she looks like she knows what she's doing. She's got all of her, her things there and everything and I'm over on the treadmill. I spent like like 50 minutes or something on the treadmill. And I know, while I'm there, I'm like I know that I should be going and lifting heavy weights because I know that that's going to improve my basal metabolic rate.

Aubrey: 11:50

And I know that that's going to, you know, get me to my goals faster. But right now I'm just getting myself into the habit of just being. But I know that in order for me to get myself to like, get to the next level, I'm going to need, like somebody to push me.

Ricky: 12:09

Right, exactly Like push me and like I go to tackle those weights, like I know I need to do something, but it's like how do I even get there? What do I do? You know, I can go on research, all these research articles, but are they accurate? Is it the right thing? There's almost too much information out of there. So, yeah, I totally get that, you know having that accountability partner to help you get to where you need to be 100%. So let me ask you a question in the field of exercise. Right, and with your background being a therapist, do you find, like, where do you, do you find that a lot of people who do participate in exercise find an increase in their better mental health and well-being?

Aubrey: 12:49

Yeah, actually, there's like statistics around it. I don't remember them off the top of my head, but the statistics say that the number one way after medication for ADHD is to exercise. They also say the same thing about depression and anxiety, that they go down with exercise. So I mean, not only do I feel it anecdotally, do my clients feel it, but like there's also data that supports it.

Ricky: 13:16

Right, 100, 100 percent. And I mean even in my own life. I can attest that I immediately feel a million when I'm bogged down and I feel really just like run down or even burnt out. When I'm bogged down and I feel really just like run down or even burnt out, if I get my body moving, I get a cocktail of endorphins, I get serotonin, adrenaline, all that good stuff, dopamine, and I immediately feel like I can think clearer, I'm happier, I'm in a better mood and I think a daily dose of that is perfect for the human body.

Aubrey: 13:46

Well, what I always think back to is and this is what I talk to my clients about as well is, like we have to think about what is natural for us. Like we, the the industrial revolution happened like two less than 200 years ago, Right, so it's like, as far as a human species like we are used to being outside, like either hunting, gathering or farming right and being in the sunshine, being out in like nature so those.

Aubrey: 14:13

Those are the things that are like when we talk about grounding. Right, grounding is the practice of like getting your body back to a baseline, like grounding literally is like connecting with the ground, like the earth, you know, like being being connected and feeling like like you are one with the earth. And we, as an industrialized society, have like literally put all of these barriers up in place and then called that comfort, like totally like rewired our brains around what comfort is, which is really silly when you think about it 100% Like.

Ricky: 14:51

Do you remember when you went out camping and you sat around a campfire? How euphoric was that Staring under the starlight, how amazing was that. How did you feel afterwards? Oh, wonderful, right, right.

Ricky: 15:04

And I believe 110% that getting out in nature, getting out in the fresh air, is essential to any human life. We were not meant to be in our houses. You know sitting down and being sedentary and that comes back to you know what I do? My job is to get people from not being sedentary, right and not moving. Being sedentary is literally one of the number one killers in America right now heart disease, it's equivalent to smoking and a lot of people they have desk jobs. I work with a lot of people who have desk jobs, who don't move, who don't get out in the sunlight, and one of the biggest things that we do to help them get the results that they want, to help them get into a better mood and feel good about their lives, is yo, you need to go on a walk outside, not on the treadmill, but get outside, get that vitamin D, get that sunlight on your face, because, like you said, there's something unbelievably natural about that and something we were meant to do as a human society. So I totally agree with you on that.

Ricky: 16:02

And one more thing about grounding. It's actually really funny when I moved to Asheville, right, we were moving, and my wife at the time my wife was she was laughing at me because when I would move things I would do it barefoot, right, and I believe in grounding, I love grounding. I think it's amazing. And she asked me she's like why do you walk out outside, you know, with your bare feet? I say I I feel 100 regulated when I am walking barefoot on the ground. So that was something that we did and she she found it a little funny but I told her I was like hey, you should try it sometime. Don't knock it till you try it.

Aubrey: 16:36

Yeah, no, I'm always barefoot, mostly in the house. There's like some bugs and stuff outside that all exactly. Um, do you talk to your clients about the gut microbiome?

Ricky: 16:47

yes and no. Um, I think that is when we get into more advanced stuff 100 and I think, like we talked about, like layering in the bricks, when you, when you get people in the beginning, a lot of them are they're eating processed foods. They don't have the the baseline yet of understanding, like what exactly and why exactly we're doing it. So a lot of things that we do do is get everybody off processed foods. We get them off processed foods. We get them with whole natural foods, because that has a dual effect to it. Number one you're going to get a ton of micronutrients into there, right? So you're going to start feeling a million times better, right, you're going to get your health markers are going to go through the roof.

Ricky: 17:28

Number two the thing is about processed food is it's very low in micronutrients and, listen, everyone likes junk food. I love a snack every once in a while, right, it's not the worst thing on planet earth. However, we can do better, right? And I tell them, I say, hey, listen, let's regulate the amount of processed foods that we have, right, let's start switching to whole foods. And what they find is they can eat. They can't even eat the same amount of calories in whole foods than they do processed foods, because one, it has a lot more volume, right, so you can eat a lot more and take in a lot less calories and you get more micronutrients in that, you know, versus processed foods. But I don't know about you, but if somebody sets a bag of chips in front of me, I'm eating the whole thing.

Aubrey: 18:15

It's designed that way. They specifically sit in a food lab and they design the food in a certain way that it is literally addictive.

Ricky: 18:27

Yes, 110%. And that's why I tell my clients if you're on a weight loss journey, or even a health journey, don't even have the stuff in your house, because your environment, your environment, will dictate your success level. If you have junk food in the house, you don't. I don't have the willpower. Nobody does no one's Superman like that. You're going to have a time when you're going to be super stressed out. You're going to be tired, and what are you going to do? You're going to have a time when you're going to be super stressed out. You're going to be tired, and what are you going to do? You're going to go to that junk food.

Aubrey: 18:56

So not having it in your environment is also key so I want to ask you one question that I ask, like a lot of different coaches. Um, I want to know, like where and this may not come up for you right but like, do you ever run into a situation where you're like, you know what this is. This is not something that I can work with in what I'm doing here. I'm going to refer you out either to OT or to mental health or to something like that. Like, do you run into that every once in a while?

Ricky: 19:28

Yes, In the beginning. In the beginning I ran into a lot of that because a lot of people really good question, by the way, Wow, Excellent question. Yeah, I ran into that a lot in the beginning. You get a lot of people who need physical therapy but they think they need a personal trainer. Right, we are. I always tell people, personal trainers are the front line before you need to go to either OT or PT or the doctor. Right, we're the superheroes that keep that away. Right Before you need to jump on medication, you know, before you get injured, you know things like that.

Ricky: 20:05

So I would have a lot of people who in the beginning, you know, when I was starting out my business, we weren't too niched down in what we do and we were taking a lot of people generally to help them out with their general fitness, and we found a lot of geriatric population would come in and they would have, you know, a replaced hip, a replaced knee, you know things like that, and they were trying to use us for rehab. So I would say, hey, listen, let me refer you to a great PT, Let me refer you to some OT. I would really, I would really recommend you do that. It's not that we couldn't help them, but you would get so much more out of PT and OT versus what you do, versus what we can do. So that was one thing that we did to really help you know, push people in that population. So it's not that we couldn't help people, it was that they would have to be better off if they did another thing other than personal training.

Aubrey: 21:03

Yeah for sure. Yeah, it's, you know, and I asked that question of coaches as well because there's, there's it's not a distinct line, right, like you're saying, there's sort of this gray area place, but there is a certain place where it's like, for example, like if a coach were working with somebody who then said, like I've had thoughts of ending my life. You know, it's like. You know, like there are people who are more qualified than me, who can, who can handle something like that.

Ricky: 21:32

Exactly 110%. Yes, you don't have to be the superhero that handles every situation. You know we're here, we're in the business of helping and serving people and sometimes that's right Delegating that to somebody else, yeah for sure.

Aubrey: 21:47

Well, ricky, it has been so great having you on the show today. Can people? How do people find you?

Ricky: 21:53

Yes, thank you so much for having me. You can reach me on Instagram at Ricky Schick fitness for you. I'm the first person that pops up. You'll see my beautiful face and that is where you find me. That's where we do all of our social media and, um, yeah, thank you so much for having me on today.

Aubrey: 22:08

You're so welcome and I hope to get to run into you again soon. Take care.

Ricky: 22:12

Take care Bye.