The Ready State Podcast

Nic Gill has been the head strength and conditioning coach for the New Zealand All Blacks for the last 11 years, a time of great international success including World Cup titles in 2011 and 2015. In addition, Nic is a wellness and fitness consultant to numerous international corporations as well as a limited number of individuals. He continues to refine his philosophy through research at the University of Waikato. Nic recently released his first book, Health Your Self, that aims to give practical knowledge to enable readers to build their own health and fitness plan. We talk with Nic about fitness, nutrition, and simple tweaks that are both reasonable and effective at improving health and wellbeing, all through the lens of raising healthy kids.

For more information on Nic, check out his website, blog, and follow him on Instagram.

Katie Wells is the founder of WellnessMama.com, an online resource for women and moms (and dads!) who want to live healthier lives. Katie works with a team of researchers and medical advisors with the goal of making every post a simple answer to a single question. In this conversation we get tons of practical advice on raising kids with a focus on prioritizing nutrition, sleep, and bringing healthy habits into our homes. We were blown away with the system that Katie has created in her own home and the amount of responsibility that all kids can and should handle to become truly valuable members of the team we call family.

For more info on Katie, check out WellnessMama.com, her podcast, or follow her on Instagram.

Dr. Mark Benden is an associate professor and department head for the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Texas A&M School of Public Health, where he also serves as director of the Ergonomics Center. Mark has done extensive research around kids and standing desks and actually is on the Board of the Starrett's non-profit, StandUp Kids. We get into tons of info on the negative impacts of sedentary lifestyle, and he offers up a ton of practical advice on how parents can work to combat this cultural trend.

For more info on the work that Mark is doing, check out the Texas A&M Health Science Center website, the Texas A&M Ergonomics Center website, and StandUp Kids.

Gray Cook is a physical therapist, lecturer, author, and instructor. He founded Functional Movement Systems which promotes the concept of movement screening and assessment. Gray has been a seminal figure in how we think about and quantify movement, and how we communicate the language of movement. We get into the state of children's health and what's missing from global agreement about movement after a child passes the 21 month old mark. We also get some great takeaways about free play and how a half foam roller can change everything.

For more information on Gray and Functional Movement Systems, check out his website, the FMS website, or follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

Dr. Stacy Sims is an exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist specializing in sex differences in response to exercise heat stress, recovery, and nutritional adaptations for health, body composition, and maximizing performance. She authored one of Juliet's all time favorite health and fitness books, Roar, which is a comprehensive guide to nutrition and training designed especially for women. We talk about all our favorite topics as they relate to kids and really start to get an understanding of why kids aren't just little adults and how girls and boys are inherently different.

For more info on Stacy, follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

Dr. Jose Greenspon is a board certified pediatric surgeon with a special interest in metabolic disorders, obesity, and bariatric surgery. He gives us a thorough and rather shocking state of the childhood and adult obesity epidemic, as well as a ton of practical takeaway advice for all families. We also get into the specifics of TeenLIFT, a multidisciplinary adolescent weight management program that was carefully designed to increase the likelihood of compliance, success, and long-term sustainability. Additionally, we put the fructose debate to bed once and for all.

For more information on TeenLift, visit their website or follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

John O'Sullivan is the founder of Changing the Game Project, whose mission is to ensure that we return youth sports to our children by providing the resources needed to make sports a healthy, positive, and rewarding experience for kids. After two decades playing and coaching soccer, John is an expert at training high-performing athletes by creating player-centered environments. He is also the best selling author of both Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High Performing Athletes, and Giving Youth Sports Back to our Kids and Is it Wise to Specialize? John offers some really practical advice on how parents and coaches can help bring the fun back into youth sports.

For more about John and Changing the Game Project, visit their website, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Mark Verstegen is the founder and president of EXOS and one of the world's foremost experts on human performance. Mark has coached some of the most elite athletes on the planet and has also worked extensively with the NFL, corporations, and the military. EXOS is built around four pillars of performance - mindset, nutrition, movement, and recovery - and Mark takes us through it all. He has trained a ton of kids and gives everyone from parents to coaches a lot of great takeaways. We were so excited to have Mark in-house to talk about his philosophy and experience training youth athletes.

For more information on Mark and EXOS, check out the EXOS website, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Season 3 of The Ready State is here and it's all about KIDS! We wanted to understand how to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted kids without mucking it up. We talk extensively about nutrition, fitness, sleep, the current state of childhood obesity, sports specialization, what we are doing right, and what we are getting wrong. Our goal was to provide parents and coaches with tons of practical advice and takeaways that are both actionable and reasonable. Check out these fascinating conversations with Mark Verstegen of EXOS, John O'Sullivan, Dr. Jose Greenspon, Dr. Stacy Sims, Gray Cook, Dr. Mark Benden, Katie Wells, and Nic Gill of the All Blacks.

Amelia Boone started her racing career by winning 2nd place female (11th overall) in 2011’s World’s Toughest Mudder, her first ever obstacle race. Since then, she has become the most decorated obstacle racer of all time with over 50 podiums, all while working full-time as a corporate attorney. In 2016, Amelia suffered a debilitating femur fracture and subsequent sacral fracture that kept her from racing for over a year. Amelia talks to us about how she manages pain during competition and gives us an honest look into everything she feels she did wrong while recovering from her injuries to return to an elite level of performance. Amelia joined us via Skype.