The surprising link between creativity and physical movement

On unleashing your inner athlete with Jace Derwin

Say you’re a writer, and the last thing people visualize is someone doing dumbbell curls at 7 am.

Yet that’s exactly what’s been happening for the last four months, and I have Jace Derwin to thank for my newfound love of strength training. He’s the Head of Performance Training at Volt Athletics, an adjunct professor at Seattle Pacific University, and the founder of

AXIOS FITNESS COACHING

. We recently sat down on

The Write-Life Balance

to discuss:

• The three variables he considers when designing custom workouts for the non-athletically inclined

• How creativity is intrinsically linked to physical movement (Hint: It relates to flow states)

• Why looking good in a bikini isn’t a strong enough motivation to exercise—and what to do instead

On Unleashing Your Inner Athlete with Jace Derwin

Photo credit: Volt Athletics

WRITE 🧠 (9:05)

In addition to his musings on Substack and Twitter, Jace is a regular contributor to the Volt Athletics blog, the USA Football blog, and the NSCA Coach journal. He cites a litany of research that looks at the parallels between cognitive function and physical activity, explaining that movement of any kind makes the nervous system tissue more malleable, which helps the brain create new neurons and connections.

Bottom line: If you’re trying to maximize your creativity and not doing something physical, you’re leaving something on the table.

LIFE 🏋🏻‍♂️ (1:39, 20:22)

Jace spent his childhood at the weightlifting gym his parents own in North Bend, WA. He was a dual-sport college athlete in soccer and track, and earned his B.S. in Exercise Science from Seattle Pacific University. He sees physical fitness as part of his role and obligation as a husband and father to his three children, and applies that principle to his work at

AXIOS FITNESS COACHING

:

[My clients want] to be physically capable to respond to something that is unknown—so we train in a manner that supports our ability to be resilient in the face of potential chaos.

BALANCE 🍎 (27:50)

It’s impossible to have a conversation about fitness without dipping our toe into nutrition. The principles Jace has settled on include choosing whole foods vs. processed ones, shopping around the perimeter of the grocery store, and cooking the food yourself to control the variables and practice self-reliance. However, he points out that it doesn’t mean you can’t order takeout or imbibe in a so-called “bad” food—it just means designating a certain time to enjoy those foods before returning to those principles for the remainder of the week.

“There’s no biological free lunch—you’re always going to be making tradeoffs somewhere.

PARTING ADVICE 💭 (27:35)

For anyone overwhelmed by the terrible (and conflicting!) health advice, Jace points that the practical tips extracted from scientific research studies have a tendency to turn into trends that aren’t sustainable for the long-term. He recommends posing questions specific to your specific environment, individual physiology, and time constraints; testing and evaluating what works and doesn’t; and developing your own framework and principles from those results. In other words?

Find ways that work practically, and build steps for yourself.

THINGS WE DISCUSSED 🗃

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

• King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette

• Red Boat fish sauce

---

To learn more about Jace’s coaching programs, you can:

• Visit his website

• Subscribe to

  AXIOS FITNESS COACHING

• Follow him on Twitter

Hope you enjoyed this episode,

Sophia :)

---

P.S. If you haven’t heard it, last month’s episode with

Charlie Daly

would be an excellent accompaniment—I can only imagine the gym workouts he’s doing to prepare for his second attempt to kayak around Ireland.