About Us

Welcome to Mitigate Stress. We’re on a mission to empower everyone to live healthy lives and mitigate all the stresses in and around us. Started by two friends with decades in the healthy and fitness industry, we’ve taken all our expertise and combine it to create four main pillars to live by.

Welcome to Mitigate Stress!

 

Our names are Nick & Nathan. We’ve been in the “professional” fitness industry for over a decade. We both met each other initially as personal trainers from Gold’s Gym in Herndon, VA, which was known as the east coast mecca, some would say. Nick worked at several Gyms & Rehab Clinics; he got his first training education from the National Personal Training Institute, with hundreds of extra hours in continuing education certifications and shadowing professionals like sports performance, physical therapists, rehab specialists, and more, leading him to eventually becoming a level 3+ trainer at Gold’s Gym where he met Nathan. Nathan was straight out of college working up the ranks, eventually becoming a fitness manager at Gold’s Gym, and also had spent several hours shadowing professionals trying to learn the methods of helping others out of pain and improving athletic performance. We both constantly continue to focus on continuing education, and as Nick’s fire captain once said, “The Day You Stop Learning is the Day You Retire,” so we understood the importance of continually learning and humbling ourselves. Our entire lives, we have spent most of our waking hours learning and applying movement and nutrition modalities; it’s our career and life.

Not everything was always sunshine and rainbows, though; Nick & Nathan had their own set of health problems that forced them to struggle for many years with many doctors, health specialists, gurus, YouTubers, chemistry books, and advice from friends and peers. Some good information, but plenty of misinformation or half-truths as we like to label it. Nathan struggled with Bell’s Palsy and Lymes for several years. He spent several weeks under “intensive care” after experiencing a severe health episode in college. Little did he think that partying, alcohol, processed foods, seed oils, and junk food would lead him to spend several weeks with toxic vaccines and antibiotics being injected into him several times daily. After the intensive care, they administered a PICC line into Nathan, and he proceeded to inject himself with the prescribed poisons, I mean antibiotics. This led to hardly any improvement, with another episode appearing only a few years after eating more toxic food ladened with fried seed oils at a baseball game. It was time to take action.

On the other hand, Nick struggled with severe digestive issues (daily bleeding, constipation, and pain) and extreme adrenal exhaustion as a young kid. His journey was slightly different; it started with a conventional American diet. His family then switched to a plant-based diet, assuming meat was the culprit for most of their health issues. This led to daily anxiety, sleep issues, more digestive issues, severe mineral imbalance, skin problems, extreme teeth sensitivity, and degrading/thinning of the teeth. Everyone in the family experienced teeth, skin, and some digestive issues. We were deceived by various online gurus promising us ultimate health by selling dozens of over-priced products, supplements & books on an extremely deficient diet. They fooled us into thinking that a plant-based diet is the future of health with zero evidence-based claims. All the foods we ate were not local. They were taken from fantasy farms thousands of miles away that ended up having to kill thousands of animals to yield produce. The majority of the diet was influenced by emotion, a sense of moral superiority to others that weren’t on the diet, and guilt that “all animals are being tortured and cause cancer, etc.

Nick spent almost 20 years trying to make the plant-based diet work. Finally, he couldn’t handle it anymore at his breaking point; his under eyes had worsened, and the more he tried to clean up his diet, the more skin problems occurred. He passed a small kidney stone; his under eyes began to sink more; his teeth were hurting and becoming worse. Muscle cramps and tears started forming more often, severe dehydration was occurring, and his blood work showed extreme mineral and vitamin deficiencies.

Finally, he shifted gears. He found a local source of raw dairy, shortly followed up with rare meat, raw meat, raw eggs, etc., and instantly, his symptoms started to disappear. He stopped seeing blood in his stools. His skin started to clear up more, his teeth stopped hurting, his under eyes became less dark (sleep helped), etc.

Nathan was on a zero care standard American Frat Diet while Nick was on a “healthy, fresh, raw, expensive” diet, two complete opposites. Yet, both had experienced severe health issues in their early/mid-twenties. By the time Nick was in his mid 20’s, he had almost spent 25,000-30,000 dollars on supplements alone to deal with the extreme fatigue, digestive discomfort, and deficiencies.

Eventually, we came together and started studying alternative diet solutions. We had already learned basic nutritional practices from our schools and worked with nutritionists, doctors, and specialists, but we were still yearning for more. We just wanted results! We both had great genetics that had just been significantly diminished from our lifestyles, and we wanted to heal from the degeneration we caused ourselves unknowingly. We tried many diets and nutritional principles and were very consistent with everything we tried for several months, even years at a time.

Eventually, we both started getting more into local farm products, consuming more raw dairy and experimenting with raw meat and raw oysters. We realized the illusion that the germ-theory-fear-scam placed on the world was based on one man (Pasteur) merely helping his winemaking friends not lose their dying business due to poor quality soil, grapes, and their overall yield. Instead of fixing the root cause, Pasteur decided to “pasteurize” the wine before selling, which “fixed” not only the mold issue but also greatly extended its shelf life. Big Business and politicians favored this false pasteurization theory over Beauchamp’s scientifically sound work. Beauchamp stated that microbes are not the root cause of disease but rather what the microbes feed on. The entire medical industry, however, was based on Pasteur, who later redacted his statements and claims. We also began researching the financial ties between the medical industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the agricultural, and ultimately, the chemical industry and beyond.

We began to lose the phobia of germs, critters, and parasites, relying on antibiotics and injections, and contracting illnesses from others while blaming others for our sickness. In fact, by that time, Nick alone had already done over 100 parasite cleanses without long-lasting results, leaving him in a circle of suffering, and Nathan had already completed dozens of shots at such a young age.

After 1000’s of raw eggs and raw steaks later, why weren’t we dead and filled with parasites? Why are other countries, such as the Philippines, not filling their land with dead bodies from people eating kinilaw (raw fish) all the time? Ultimately we realized it was not a germ issue that America (and other large countries) were experiencing as a collective decline in health, but ultimately a toxicity issue, a chemical issue, from heavy metals, seed oils, preservatives, fortified foods, pesticides, plastics, perfumes, cleaning products, aerosols sprayed in the skies, contaminated water, indoor air, synthetic clothes and fibers, and 1000’s of other chemicals that we come in contact with every day. We had to stop blaming God’s incredible design and start to realize the real lies being perpetuated by fallen man and the disastrous chemical byproducts of the modern world. Evil was amongst us, not by God’s natural design. History can teach us a lot. But let’s get back to when we met at Gold’s gym.

We both started as personal trainers at Gold’s Gym with dozens of clients learning how to manage both a business and always doing our best to yield maximum results with each client. Like any career field, we began to notice the lack of integrity and seriousness within the fitness, rehab, physical therapy, and even the medical industry over the years. Whether it was trainers with a weekend 2-day certificate, physical therapists with a 4+ year degree, or even doctors, all had their shortcomings, and many appeared to have zero passion for helping others. Instead, they were comfortable, set in their routine, and focused on their next vacation.

This bothered us, and we soon ended up moving in together. It was like a mini frat house, not really. Maybe a little. The decision was not mutual at first, but we moved in together thanks to one of our mutual friends who worked at Gold’s Gym. Eventually, we split ways with Gold’s Gym and decided that our skill set was underappreciated, underpaid, and underutilized at a conventional box gym. Shortly after, we moved out of the frat house (maybe because it was time to grow up) and into one of Nathan’s client’s basements-a very upscale, spacious one, for that matter.

We built a mini gym there and began training our own clients. We could unhook ourselves from big box gyms for quite some time. It was a win-win; we made more, our clients paid less, and they received better one-on-one treatment. We were somewhat limited by the number of tools and machines at our disposal, but this forced us to adapt and advance our training knowledge. The knowledge we learned paid off and was the start of optimizing our training philosophy to where it is today (Again, we are continuously optimizing our training and nutrition philosophies).

We began taking more certifications and buying various programs online, such as Functional Patterns and other postural-based rehab/strengthening programs. We also started shadowing more rehab specialists, chiropractors, and doctors. Most of our clients were from failed physical therapy sessions, doctors, and other trainers.

We often found the desire with most clients to build muscle and trim fat. Obviously, we already knew this demographic very well. Still, we wanted people also to understand that the focus should primarily be functionality first and the muscle mass/strength as a byproduct; strength is a relative term. The issue we were experiencing with our new modalities was that we started losing muscle mass a lot, and we were getting lighter compared to our swollen bodybuilding and powerlifting days. We pulled reputable numbers in the past with our strength/weights, so this “loss of mass” was a hit to our pride. Good, we needed that pride check. Although shortly after, we realized we needed to look the part, and Functional Patterns at that time were filled with mostly skinny, mal-nourished-looking individuals. This made obtaining clients increasingly more difficult.

We started to develop our own version of “Functional Bodybuilding,” as we call it. Now, at this time, we had also experimented with 50 or so diets, nutrition protocols, and supplement regimens and working with high-level specialists in this field. It was our career, and we have been taking it more seriously than ever for over a decade, constantly trying to understand how to optimize human movement and nutrition.

So, back to the movement part, our version of Functional Body Building was basically movements that create space that help the body to get longer and taller but respect the length-tension relationship within the body by ultimately improving the biomechanical gait function of the body. Instead of creating tension to create activation in the muscles, we focused on creating length and space (stretch) to create tension and applying tension through the length. Needless to say, it was almost the opposite of conventional training, relax while you strength train rather than overly concentrating on tensing up.

Eventually, yet again, we parted ways for a little bit. Nathan went on to train at Boutique Box Gym, and Nick returned to a Big Box Gym (Lifetime Fitness this time) to try and obtain a real career with benefits. Again we weren’t able to showcase our skill set quite to its potential at these specific gyms. We really wanted to see how these skills would apply to all of our clients in the real world.

Around this time, we also had been let go from our jobs due to the scamdemic and began experimenting with our Magnesium Bicarbonate product. We realized most magnesium products out there were either entirely outsourced, had some filler or nasty product involved with it, and/or were not bioavailable. We worked hard searching for the ultimate source for our product and began shaking at home with a very unique concentrated, slow co2 drip process, which later turned into a professional facility where we still handshake our own product to this day. We truly believe in our product and are certain that we have developed the world’s best magnesium product by far. We still recommend magnesium chloride, malate, and bi-glycinate and encourage others to use all of them (just avoid oxide and some forms of citrate).

Around this same time, we were yearning for something more than just movement and nutrition. Was there another missing component to health and wellness? Was there a deeper root for people’s suffering? We were new age for many years; at one point, we were atheists. Could some of our issues, illnesses, anxiety, stress, and even pain be rooted in something deeper? We both had some fairly life-changing experiences that, in short, led us to Christ.

We began changing and filtering our thoughts more. We started praying more from the heart. We started researching more about apostolic tradition and ancient Christianity, which was unbroken. We started asking, what did the Church look like over 2,000 years ago? Why was there such a massive split in Christianity and over 40,000 different denominations based on their own interpretations? We had so many questions that weren’t being answered by many New Age Christians. A proper Orthodox Church answers all these questions, such as what is our purpose in life. Let’s continue with the rest of our story.

So finishing up with our movement philosophy, this was also the same time when we ran into a huge problem; our routines and training philosophy were only applicable for gym bros like us, people who had time and no family to attend to. The issue we ran into is that 99% of our clients were busy parents with, sometimes, multiple jobs. This was an issue, a huge one. Sure, some of our busy clients were Type A personalities and really did the work we asked; we don’t know how, but they did. We kept asking ourselves, how can we reduce a program to make it the most efficient, effective, yet time-saving routine possible? In fact, how can we make a routine that yields more results than any other routine but can be done in half the time?

It wasn’t until recently, last year, that we were able to finally start reducing our training style and our routine into a practical, applicable, and realistic lifestyle. Why? Well, because we started becoming way more busy ourselves. Busier with our wives, with our future family planning, homesteads, business, you name it. We began realizing that we had to make a realistic routine because we were increasingly becoming more and more out of shape as the weeks went by. Training clients all day while working in a gym setting and having to look the part daily really paid off in making it easy to obtain a high level of athletic strength and overall performance. We were no longer in that setting, and everything changed; reality set in quickly.

Now, this change isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and we will get into that. We went so hard for so many years with our training regimen that, honestly, it was a blessing and a nice break for our nervous systems, our joints, and our overall stress; the issue is we went to the opposite side of the spectrum, physical laziness. We began experiencing tightness, fatigue, even worse digestion, and blood sugar imbalances; we looked worse, more tired, and felt more anxious.

Where was the balance? Did we really have to maintain a 2-hour, 6-day-a-week, hyper-intensive strength and athletic performance routine? Where was the stability? Everyone in the fitness industry would go hard and then fall off the bandwagon; rinse and repeat. This wasn’t healthy, this is not at all healthy, and yet most professionals write programs like this that are not at all sustainable nor realistic for the everyday citizen.

The real question was, how can we make a foundational routine that no matter what lifestyle you have, whether you are on a strenuous workout regimen, a highly demanding career, or an extremely busy Mom, whatever you are doing, how can we create a regimen so you always have a consistent 3% grade of improvement. How can we make a routine that is based on a somewhat general biomechanical human blueprint? How could we make a routine that is sustainable for everyone? No matter how busy you are, no matter how difficult life becomes, you still have something to fall back on that not only helps to maintain and build muscle mass but also to regulate stress levels, hormones, blood sugar, increase hydration, mobility, readiness- not just incredible athleticism performance, but mental performance as well.

Well, we had to start with walking. Then we molded our trigger-point/guasha, corrective exercise, and strength training philosophy all around this. We started optimizing our own walking routine as well as our clients’ routines. How can we walk more relaxed but also at the same time improve posture and speed, reduce pain, increase space and fluidity, cardiovascular health, and overall performance just from walking?

That was our goal, and today, we continue to focus on improving and optimizing, praise God. We hope to continue to improve our Mitigate Stress Routine as well as our nutritional products for everyone. We want to thank all of our customers and clients that have trusted and supported our company since the beginning, before, and now. God bless you all!

In Christ,
Nick & Nathan