Steve Kamb founded his online fitness coaching company, Nerd Fitness, in 2009.
Mackenzie Laroe
Picture the scene: Last month, you set yourself a goal to work out five days a week. You bought a new pair of sneakers, reactivated your gym membership, and even ordered some creatine off Amazon.Everything was going swimmingly until you had a week of early meetings, a birthday dinner, and a sick toddler, three weeks in. You missed one workout, then two. You started to berate yourself for failing, and, feeling disheartened, threw in the towel then and there.If this scenario feels familiar, Steve Kamb, a fitness coach and personal growth writer based in Nashville, wants you to try something different: giving yourself some grace.Kamb, 41, is a personal trainer and the founder of Nerd Fitness, an online fitness coaching company aimed at busy people who struggle to stick to their health and nutrition goals. His upcoming book, "How To Try Again," is based on the lessons he's learned over 17 years of helping people create a consistent workout routine.In the book, Kamb outlines a simple formula he encourages people to turn to when their brains default to all-or-nothing thinking and self-criticism. He developed it with fitness in mind, but says it can be applied to any new goal or habit."I wanted to come up with something that was really memorable that people can go back to when their brain starts to spiral and say, 'I'm a loser. I couldn't follow through. I'm never going to make changes stick," he said.While Kamb is not the first to champion a compassionate approach to goal-setting — he says his methodology draws from the work of behavioral science leaders and self-improvement writers — his formula serves as a helpful reminder that trying harder isn't always the answer. "If tough love for ourselves worked, it would've worked already," Kamb said.
