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• Jump to Joe Holder's travel tips for staying healthy on the road.

THESE DAYS, THERE are about a million and one wellness sages out there, particularly since the pandemic created a hunger for health tips and home remedies. They’re shouting at us about what not to eat, which muscles to work, and how many supplements to swallow. But Joe Holder, the thinking person’s fitness expert, doesn’t scream his advice so much as summon it, calmly, without hyperbole or pretension — and always with a practical understanding that most of us are just doing the best we can with what we’ve got. “People in health and wellness like to proselytize. They stand up. They tell you what you should be doing,” he says over Zoom, recovering from running a half marathon, cocooned like some athleisure monk in a hoodie pulled over his forehead and a cup of tea held with two hands to his mouth. “For me, it’s about elevating the way people think about these things, so they can develop a system that works for them. I call it the sport of life. These are just really fundamental life skills, and I don’t think we should try to overcomplicate it. It’s not my desire for you to think of me as the specialized guru who you follow forever. I’m your favorite high school teacher who has connected with you emotionally. You have learned, and now you can go and continue to graduate.”

To be clear, Holder does utilize some of the conventional methods of health and wellness. He acts as personal trainer to stars like Naomi Campbell, designs free exercise programs for the Nike Training Club app, and writes articles for GQ, holding court on topics like what to put into your smoothie and how to develop a solid daily routine. He is undoubtedly a paragon of strength and fitness, enviably ripped in all the right places, and a proponent of a clean, plant-based diet who can run great distances and do umpteen pull-ups. Additionally, he offers classes on how to kickstart your whole life with HIIT and mobility exercises as the first instructor in MasterClass’ wellness portfolio.

It’s that Holder also urges people to think so much bigger, to build a life that’s healthy in mind, body, and spirit. To his over 140,000 followers on Instagram, he’s just as prone to encourage people to take time to read a book as lift a weight. He regularly spotlights the macro social inequities that create health challenges, like the fact that the U.S.’s SNAP benefits (better known as food stamps) don’t cover vitamins and hot food. And he’s adamant that a balanced life has space for all kinds of choices, even ones outside the rigid confines of “healthy.” “It throws people off that I don’t just work out — that I sometimes party, or I meditate, or I’ll do an exercise then join you in drinking,” he says. “What I want is to give people personalized freedom to feel good.”

All of this falls under what he calls the “Ocho System,” an eight-pronged philosophy that focuses on the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, social, environmental, and financial aspects of building a life. It includes advice on everything from how to find someone to help you manage your stock portfolio to the science of why sound baths produce a relaxation response in the human brain. “We’ve condensed it too much into superfoods and going to the gym. Yeah, that’s your grounding point, but it definitely doesn’t end there,” he says. “Maybe you need to work on relationships, every week for the next four weeks finding a friend to connect with. And you’d be surprised how much better you’ll feel.”

That is, in the end, what’s so refreshing about Holder’s approach to health and fitness — there’s no magic formula that promises you perfection, no ultimate end stage when you can sit back and bask in just how in shape you are. Instead, Holder believes health is a state of mind, an ongoing process rather than a goal to achieve. He’s simply trying to get us to be more aware of the world around us, to be conscious enough to make little decisions all day, every day, that lead to a more wholesome existence. “A lot of that is just about being present. With all the things that we’re bombarded with, the only thing really that I have is what’s right in front of us,” he says, sounding every bit the seasoned Zen master. “Active body, still mind. It feels good once you’ve unlocked that.”