GET FIT

Jared Prudoff-Smith was born and raised in Washington DC and has been involved in athletics and coaching/teaching his entire life. He grew up playing various sports, including collegiate basketball and has always appreciated the impact physical fitness has on performance. After college, he taught middle school earth & space science and coached high school basketball in Miami for two years.

He started CrossFit in 2010 and immediately fell in love because of it its ethos and methodology. He began coaching in 2011 and has been a coach at CrossFit 5th Ave since 2012. He also has his own signature workout class B.A.M! on the NEOU Fitness App, https://go.onelink. me/KV6T/bam.

In addition to his pursuits in fitness, Jared also is an actor, fashion, and fitness model. You may have seen him in a recurring role as a SWAT Commander on the CBS show FBI, and in print for Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, Men’s Fitness and Runner’s World. He has been a featured contributor with Ask Men.

It is safe to say he has an unusually ridiculous but endearing disposition and sense of humor, and he loves to infuse that into his classes. He believes that no matter what the circumstances are, a well-timed movie quote can only improve the situation. This will become quickly evident in any class of his that you take, although “well-timed” might be a bit generous.

Mid-March brings several things, the NCAA tournament, usually a blizzard in NYC, and the realization that summer is coming. Which for some sparks a panic of, “oh shit I need to get my body on point before I’m the guy who keeps his t-shirt on at the pool or beach.” As a result, this time of year also brings a plethora of “beach-body” articles. This won’t be one of those. In my years of training clients, coaching Crossfit and my own brand of H.I.I.T. classes and lifetime of athletics, one of the most simple adages has and will continue to ring true: consistency is key. So if you’re looking for a quick but temporary fix, look elsewhere. I’m looking at simple adjustments that will make lasting impacts to serve you not only for beach season but for life. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let's get to work.

When thinking about how to improve, you need to know where you stand. Get a physical, measure your body fat, do some basic health diagnostics, so you know exactly where you stand. If you want to step up your diagnostics, wearables now track your HRV, calories burned, sleep patterns and more. Are they necessary, no, but can they be potentially transformative in how you approach your health and wellness? Absolutely. Now to all of you out there who just like to wing it, and play things by ear, that’s cool too, IF you have a foundation upon which you can successfully and safely do that. The people who are capable of successfully winging it, generally are only able to do so because they once operated with a ton of structure and determined what works best for themselves, or they’re the rare anomaly. Frustratingly, you almost always see that exceptions-to-rule looking freaking phenomenal on Instagram. F them, we’re going with structure here.

There are three main areas when trying to improve someone’s health and fitness: work, fuel, and recovery. First thing I want to address is your nutrition (or fuel). I say fuel because I once had a friend make the analogy of how if we were cars, the food we eat is our fuel. You want to fuel yourself for optimal performance. If you’re happy with your weight and just want to perform better, improve the quality of your food, and keep the quantity the same. Think about a racecar, you don’t want extra gas in the tank at the race’s end because of excess weight unless you want to add muscle and mass, and oppositely, you don’t want to be running on fumes, unless you’re trying to lose weight. Tracking your food and your caloric intake is critical for determining whether or not you should be increasing or decreasing your consumption.

Many people hit the gym 5+ days a week but don’t have the physique they want. That's because you can't outwork shitty nutrition. Meanwhile, it’s possible to improve your physique and health solely by improving your nutrition. Fortunately for many of you, this will be amazingly simple, especially if you’ve been omnivorously approaching eating because any attention to improving this will have a big impact. Revisiting the fuel analogy, go through what you eat on a daily basis, and ask yourself, is this good fuel? Yes? Then great, keep it. No? Then cut it. Sugars - out, fried food/fast food/aggressive boozing - out …to the best of your ability. You don’t need to become a food puritan and strictly eat whole thirty in perpetuity, never drink and hate yourself because you haven’t had ice cream in three months. What’s the point if you aren’t enjoying yourself. That being said, most of us could make massive improvements to our diets just by applying some common sense. If you really are struggling, sitting down with a nutritionist can be huge, or trying something like the whole 30 is a great way to 1, clean things up over a month and 2, expose you to dietary habits you may want to continue.

As it comes to training and recovery, again return to your goals, what are you trying to achieve? You aren’t going to become a fitness model working out 3x a week, but you also don’t need to live in a gym. Every day honestly assesses whether you did anything to make yourself fitter. If you can say you did, you just took a step forward towards a healthier version of yourself, awesome. If you can’t; you took a step backward. Do better the next day. It’s not rocket science. Now if you’re trying to go to the Crossfit games or training for a scholarship or roster spot, you aren’t reading this for fitness insight, you should have a coach, and can just enjoy my mediocre writing. As for the rest of us, start by trying to do a little bit more each day, the rule of 1%, might not seem like a lot just on March 15th, but if you do 1% more each day until June 15th, guarantee you’ll look back like “damn, that shit works!”

If you’re thinking every day is extreme, it’s not, we were built to move, so move! Does that mean you have to do hellacious Crossfit workouts everyday? No! Overtraining is real and you don’t want to burn yourself out, but on an off day instead of doing nothing, actively approach your recovery. NYC has multiple recovery-centric studios. Take a recovery session, yoga class, or spend 30 minutes stretching and doing low impact core movements like planks. If you’re feeling more ambitious run/bike or swim, or apply your fitness, and play sports, just do something. Next, if your fitness routine is just that, routine, then mix it up. If you run all the time, get in the gym and lift some weights once or twice a week. Always lifting? Take something more bodyweight focused, and mix in more cardio. The more you leave your comfort zone, the more alive and healthier you will feel and be.

If there’s one takeaway I hope you get from this, it is that every day you can take a step closer towards being the version of yourself that you want to be, so do what you can to take that step. One day that might be crushing a workout, another day it might be drinking a tiny bit less when you’re out with friends, and not drunkenly crushing a pint of Ben and Jerry's when you get home. You don’t have to win everything every day and little victories add up and are just as important as the big ones. So yes expect more from yourself but don’t forget to be kind to yourself and accept and acknowledge where you’re at. Maybe you don’t hit your target right on schedule, but if you shifted your way of thinking and being for the better when you do hit your health and fitness targets, those gains will be there to stay!