3 Health and Fitness Trends You Need To Hop On In 2024!

January 16th, 2024

These health trends will help you lose fat, improve health, and help you grow as a person.

If you know me or have seen my content you know I am not one for trends. This is mostly due to the fact that when we think of trends we think of things that are not sustainable, and I am all about sustainability. Now, with that being said, the 3 "trends" I am going to talk about today are things you can and should sustain - these trends will help change your life.

Now that you’ve introduced what we will talk about today, let's get straight to it...

Trend #1 - Hybrid Training

If you haven't seen this style of training littered all over your feed you are either (1) not consuming any health and fitness content or (2) consuming the wrong health and fitness content. Hybrid training or more simply put, training including weights and cardio (running specifically) has been the new wave of fitness. While this is not necessarily a new type of training, it has been popularized over the past two years by influencers such as Nick Bare, and since then has blown up. This style of training is what we in the fitness space know as concurrent training. This simply means, as mentioned before, that using this system of training implies you focus heavily on cardio and strength at the same time (other forms of training focus on optimizing for one or the other, not both).

So, why is this trend something you should absolutely do? Well, there are many reasons why I recommend this training style and follow it myself, so let me give you my top 3 benefits of hybrid training!

(1) It helps improve body composition and increases speed of fat loss!

I always want to stress the importance and necessity of your diet on body composition change and fat loss, but when thinking outside of diet, this style of training is ideal for fat loss and composition change. By properly balancing cardio and weights we can gain the benefits of both while not missing out on the other. From a fat loss perspective, we will burn more calories, build more muscle, and help optimize the body for function while dieting. It's a win/win.

(2) It covers our fitness basis for optimal health!

When thinking about what is required from a training perspective in order to optimize our health, I like to keep it simple - "lift weights and do cardio". By following this standard, we optimize all levels of health. How so? Well, according to my definition of health, we need a few things to be healthy: healthy body fat %, strong and resilient joints/tendons/ligaments, a strong heart/cardiovascular system, and a strong/resilient bodily system as a whole. These things can't be attained solely through training, but by training the cardiovascular system as well as the skeletal system (bones and the things attaching to them) we can cover a large majority of these standards. While it's not a perfect system and it is somewhat generalized, the main thing to take away is that you need both strength training and cardio training to optimize for health!

(3) It forces you to get do the thing you don't want to do!

For many people, the reason they don't succeed in their health goals is because they fail to do the things they don't like or they only do things they enjoy and justify it because its not "wrong" or "bad". When it comes to fitness, for some people, the thing they don't want to do is cardio, and for others it is strength training. By following this hybrid style of training, if you have the plan and know you have to follow it, you will end up doing the required work. I love hybrid training because it forces the necessary work to get done (as long as you are willing to follow the plan).

Now that you know insanely beneficial this style of training is, I want to leave you with a resource for getting started in your hybrid training program. Check out Bare Performance Nutrition's free training program and app here!

Trend #2 - Cold Plunging / Cold Exposure

I know you've seen it trending on all social media platforms, but this technique is nothing new. Science has proven "cold exposure" to have tremendous benefits ranging from physical health to mental health. Now, before I get into the benefits of this trending exercise, I want to first break down some myths surrounding it that you may have heard tossed around on social media.

So, what cold plunging and more specifically cold exposure will not do for you is:

Burn body fat - Due to misinformation from some popular "influencers", the belief that you lose fat while cold plunging is a common belief that is frankly not true. In order to lose body fat you need to get into a calorie deficit, which can only be created within your diet, not by freezing yourself.
Fix your health problems - This is also a common belief that gets tossed around and is oddly believed by many, but doing this one thing will not "make" you healthier by itself. You still need to eat better, exercise, sleep, and do all the things required to be healthy. There are no short cuts.
Make you more disciplined - Look, I am all about doing hard things and as a consequence becoming more mentally strong, but just because you cold plunge doesn't mean you will become disciplined. Discipline in one thing doesn't make you disciplined in all. You still need to create system and strategies to be disciplined in other areas of your life. It's not simple: mental strength = discipline

Now, that we go those out of the way, let's break down the reasons why you should cold plunge (or take cold showers), and the benefits it brings!

Cold exposure can increase your metabolic health through the avenue of a slightly increased energy expenditure and conversion of white fat to brown fat (once again, this doesn't mean you lose fat, but metabolic health is improved).
Cold exposure has been shown to improve mood and tolerance to stress (both physical and other stressors). This is largely connected to dopamine and it's effects on mood as well as stress.
Cold exposure has been shown to help improve the immune system through different intricate systems within the body. If you struggle with sickness, cold exposure may be worth adding into the routine.

If you want more details on cold exposure and how to utilize it in your life, check out this article by Andrew Huberman ("The Science & Use of Cold Exposure for Health & Performance"). Now, let's move on to the last trend!

Trend #3 - Sauna / Heat Exposure

Opposing the previously mentioned cold exposure is the sauna or heat exposure. Like cold exposure, this is not a new thing. While the science is just now starting to widely support the utilization of heat exposure, it has been around for years. Much like cold exposure, heat exposure isn't magic and it doesn't provide short cuts, but the health benefits it provides are undeniable. Here are some benefits you may not have known:

(1) When body temperatures reach appropriate levels, the sauna can provide a cardio like effect to the body.

It has been shown to improve cardiovascular health and support longevity over time! While this doesn't mean you can replace your biking or running with 30 minutes in the sauna, what it does mean is that you can use it to accompany your current cardio and to add upon the health benefits you receive form that cardio! The caveat to this is that you have to be in the sauna long enough and allow your body to get hot enough to gain the benefits. For more on this hit the link below!

(2) It has been shown to improve health as well as mood!

If you aren't quit happy all the time or feel a sense of stress often, the sauna can be a good place to start! Studies are not supporting the ideas that heat exposure can positively effect hormones associated with mood and stress (such as cortisol).

(3) It has been shown to have some 'detoxing' effects!

If you know me you know I am not big on the ideas of detoxing because frankly, your body does that regardless if you intentionally detox or not (that's what your liver and kidney are for), but studies do greatly promote the benefits of sweating, which can easily be achieved in a sauna. This can help improve the way you feel as well a the way your body systems are functioning!

As before, if you want to learn more about heat exposure and how to implement it into your life, check out this article by Andrew Huberman ( "Deliberate Heat Exposure Protocols for Health & Performance")!

Conclusion

The last thought I want to leave you with is this...

None of these trends will fix you or provide a short cut for you. You have to keep the main things the main things and these trends are not that. If you want to use these, great! But don't do so without improving your diet, building good habits, and implementing the necessary actions you need to be healthy! If you struggle to determine exactly those main things are, consider joining me for a free consultation call so I can provide you with direction on what those things are for you!

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