Shredded on the Side
Side hustles go better with physical conditioning
These days, everybody needs a side hustle.
A professional house painter oversees fishing expeditions on the weekends. A nurse practitioner sews baby clothes in her spare time. A financial talk show host moonlights as a physique transformation consultant—not that that’s ever been done, but if it had, it would probably be housed at livefcubed.com.
Whatever the specifics, side hustles just make sense. In today’s economy, job security isn’t what it once was, and those entering the workforce today seem more than happy to exchange the security of a stable salary for the flexibility of several sources of income. Fair enough. Diversification in a career path is as sensible as diversification in a stock and options portfolio.
But what second career should someone choose? An avid weightlifter who’s also a dedicated nutritionist might do well to choose physique transformation as a side hustle. It’s a matter of getting shredded on the side.
Side hustles fill several voids. First, they afford the opportunity to do something one truly enjoys and feels passionate about. Second, they raise the possibility of enhancing one’s quality of life by bringing in income and opening doors to greater accomplishments. Third, they can turn into perfect main hustles. Win. Win. Win. Now add physical conditioning.
Take the example of a professional painter and suppose he teaches how to catch bass on Saturday mornings. With impressive bicep peaks he’ll paint houses better and reel in a bigger, badder bass. That nurse practitioner who strings togethers onesies on Sunday evenings will provide better patient care and stitch up even cuter baby garb with a polished glute-ham tie in. And that financial talk show host who goes full throttle on people’s fat loss? With a sculpted serratus, he’ll be able to spout more strategic adjustments and steer more clients toward radical transormation.
Ask anyone who has fundamentally altered their own physique, and they will say the same thing. Was it hard? Yes. Was it challenging? More so than they ever imagined. But was it worth it? Yes, in ways they could never have imagined beforehand.
Confidence crashes into totally new categories. Energy abounds in quantities unknown since those days of frollicking through the fields
as a whippersnapper. And clarity rivals that of Bradley Cooper’s character in Limitless (when he’s “on,” not during the train wreck scenes when he’s “off”).
Turning on the faucet of extra income always helps, too. It’s no different from strategically diversifying a portfolio into different assets, across different time frames and with different products. But the beauty of getting shredded on the side?
It could be an accountant who doubles as a hitman or a second-grade math teacher who weekends as a nanny. Both would be far more effective in their main hustles and also their side hustles—ending lives or shaping lives—with feathered tris, separated quads or abs that have abs.
Jim Schultz, Ph.D., a derivatives trader, fitness expert, owner of livefcubed.com and the daily host of From Theory to Practice on the tastytrade network, was named North American Natural Bodybuilding Federation’s 2017 Novice Bodybuilding Champion. @jschultzf3
