Body Reset - Olly Wood

When life gives you lemons, great people show you how to make lemonade 🍋

You would never let someone you love run themselves into the ground the way you do.

That was the pattern in the room at the retreat. A group of high performers who hold everyone else to a standard of care they refuse to give themselves.

They notice when a friend skips meals, runs on no sleep, or talks down to herself. They step in. Then they do all three to themselves and call it discipline.

For the women it showed up as self image. Never lean enough, never enough, full stop.

For the men it was provision. Never earning enough, never doing enough. Same word at the end. Never enough.

Different story. Same root. Worth made conditional on output.

Here is the part they did not expect. This is not a mindset problem. It is a physiology problem.

Constant self-criticism keeps your nervous system stuck in threat mode. Cortisol stays elevated. Recovery drops. That is the exact state that stalls fat loss, breaks sleep, and flattens your energy.

Self-compassion moves you out of fight or flight and into the state where the body actually repairs. So it is not soft. It is the mechanism.

Three things we practiced:

Talk to yourself the way you would talk to someone you are coaching. If you would not say it to them, stop saying it to yourself.
Take the compliment. No deflecting, no "but." Just thank you, and let it land.
Care for yourself on the bad days, not only the good ones. Self-care you have to earn is not self-care. It is another performance review.
The strongest people in that room were not the ones with the most control. They were the ones who finally stopped auditing their own worth.

There is so much more to life than fitness, but fitness adds so much more to your life.

Another incredible group of Body Reset members at our Bali Health retreat now complete.

Workout tweaks, DEEP mindset chats, healthy meals, adventures, beautiful resort and expert yoga teachers all in once place 👌

As a coach, I used to focus on tracking steps and weight. But I was ignoring one of the key markers that told me if ANY of it is actually working.

HRV (heart rate variability) is the real-time readout of your nervous system's resilience. I.e. how well is your body working.

HRV tracking is more available than ever before with wearables like WHOOP, Oura and even Garmin.

But most people are STILL completely ignoring this number and I think that's a mistake.

Low HRV = high cortisol load.

You're running on fumes, under slept and everything feels like a big task.

Body is in survival mode, not fat-burning mode.

High HRV = High resilience.

Body is well recovered, digesting well and aerobically fit. Able to tolerate what you throw at it with a busy day.

Instead of approving health blind, shift your focus to improving your recovery capacity and what your digestion, metabolism and enjoyment of life all improve!

I have been weight training for over 15 years.

And I am YET to see someone in better shape from fitness classes instead of weights over 30.

The ones that are in shape?

They're weight training on the side to make up for what is missed in classes.

Here are the top 3 reasons I hate gym classes:

Your following a movement, instead of listening to your body. The more you tune out from your bodies signals (gut, muscles, breath), the less in control of your health you are.

The workouts are random collections of exercises with no progression, personalisation or mechanical understanding. More time is spent on the promo picture than what is done in the class. This means more fatigue not less.

Most people would be a lot more consistent if they trained on their terms instead of when the class is booked. Consistency is reliant on a timetable lining up instead of when would be the best time for you.

I can appreciate the addition of 1-2 classes in your week for the social side and community. But if there is no targeted weight training outside of this environment I can guarantee you'll have more injuries, body fat and fatigue than if you made this shift.

Train for your body, not for the gym timetable.

First month on the farm.

Summed up by Maya yesterday: "I forgot how much being in open space like this is good for the nervous system."

Loved every moment of it, from the power cuts to the morning walks, from the rolling hills to rotten fence discoveries, couldn't be happier 🏡

Last day of school pic 📸

Today my wife, Maya, wrapped up more than six years in the public sector.

I've watched her grow into someone who knows exactly what she brings to a room. She's leaving as a completely different woman than the one who walked in, and she should be proud of every bit of that.

Now she's making the jump back to agency, and I couldn't be more excited for her.

New challenge. New pace. Same determination!

Onward and upward. Couldn't be prouder of you.

Swipe to 5 years ago!

The bar always moves. That's the point.

What once got you praised now barely gets noticed. Tying your shoes was a milestone. Now it's just Tuesday.

The same thing happens with everything you build. The win that thrilled you last year is the baseline you barely think about today.

That's why so many successful people feel like they're failing. They're not behind. The bar just keeps rising faster than they can celebrate.

That ache is chosen. It's also the price of going further than most people are willing to go.

It shows up in three places: your health, your business, your family.

And here's the part nobody tells you. Your bar isn't set by you. It's set by the room you're standing in.

In the wrong room, gaining a few kilos every year is normal.

In the wrong room, always being a little behind on money is normal.

In the wrong room, your kids slowly tuning you out is normal.

Surround yourself with people further down the road and your standard rises without effort. Surround yourself with people behind you and you quietly lower the ceiling on how far you could have gone.

This is why driven people choose a community like Body Reset.

Not because they "need" motivation, but because they know their standards are raised when they are around the mind of people who invest in themselves.

Selecting who you surround yourself with is the highest form of self care.