#350 THE MINIMUM METHOD: The Least You Can Do to Be Stronger, Healthier and Happier - w/ Joey Thurman

Joey Thurman (0:00)

Think of yourself as like a car. Like you need to take care of your car. You get one vehicle. So you need to do consistent oil changes and checkups and all that sort of stuff. So you need to do a checkup with your own body and your mind.

Siim Land (0:08)

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land. Today, our guest is Joey Thurman. Joey is a celebrity trainer and coach. In this episode, we're going to talk about his new book, The Minimum Method. The least you can do to be a stronger, healthier, happier you. Joey, welcome to the show.

Joey Thurman (0:22)

Well, thanks for having me, my friend. I mean, you were on mine and I guess we're going back and forth here. So I appreciate you having me.

Siim Land (0:30)

Yeah, and I'm excited to have you on the podcast. Congratulations on the book.

I think it's your first book, right?

Joey Thurman (0:37)

So first, with a publisher, this is my second book, technically, but the first one was self-published. So this was an entirely different process going through a publisher.

Siim Land (0:49)

Yeah, well, I've never published through a publisher.

Of all my books have been self-published, but I guess the book writing process generally is still the same. It's just that the marketing and publishing is a bit different.

Joey Thurman (1:01)

Yeah, I think you've got definitely more hoops to jump through when you're with a publisher, and the time frame from me signing the deal to publish a day is 18 months.

When I did my first book, I had the idea in October, and it was out in January. So you've got less roadblocks along the way, I should say, if you're doing self-publish. But the publisher has its benefits as well.

Siim Land (1:23)

Yeah, absolutely.

But yeah, so the minimum method, like what made you, first of all, we can talk about like, what is it? Or what's the main idea behind it? And what made you want to write a book about this topic?

Joey Thurman (1:40)

Yeah. So honestly, it kind of came beginning of COVID, world shut down, I couldn't travel anymore, and I wasn't basically living in a gym, and I had to kind of put some stuff in my garage, and I started getting all these general questions from clients, like, what should I do? I've got these kids that are going to online school, and I got to take care of them, and my work is at home. And so I started looking at what's a minimum effective dose for all sorts of things, whether it's sleep and gut health and working out, and what can consistently get results for people just based off of the minimum. So minimum doesn't necessarily mean easy. I think sometimes people think it's easy, but just like, what's the little things that you can do? And you write about this a lot. What are these little habits, these lifestyle optimization things that you can do? And eventually, then you add more things to that as opposed to just doing like two hours of working out and making sure that your nutrition is 100%. And all of these things, it becomes overwhelming for most people. So that's why I took these different kind of minimum mentality archetypes in the book. Like if you fit in the let's go category, you're kind of this person sort of starting. If you're a level up, you're sort of in the middle.

If you're max out, you might be more like you and me or your listeners too that have done a lot of things, but they're looking to do maybe a little bit more and optimize their life just that much better.

Siim Land (2:55)

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's a good, let's say, or a very important misconception that more isn't always better.

Like working out two hours a day probably, unless you're an actual athlete, then you probably just are either not having things optimized with your workout or you're just over training and something like that. So yeah, like it's this very, I don't know, human mentality to always, you know, want to do more and always think that more is kind of better. But yeah, like that's not always the case.

Joey Thurman (3:29)

Yeah, absolutely. And I fell into that mentality too, when I first started training. I apologize in the beginning of the book for the entire fitness and nutrition industry, even myself at 23 years old. I thought like, let me just kick the crap out of these people, make them feel out of shape. But then again, they're good, they're CEOs and they're running multi-million dollar businesses.