Man molds mind and muscle
Parker Hardcastle does curls. Photos submitted
By Tom Victoria
After Parker Hardcastle improved his own fitness, he started working with folks to enhance their minds and muscles.
Parker, 30, of Savannah, Georgia, whose brand is Mind Muscle Specialist, probes into people’s motivations to better help them achieve their fitness goals.
“I am most likely more thorough with inquiring about motivation from my clients,” he said. “I know most trainers ask what their goals are, but not sure if they go further. I try to help people find the motivation within their fitness and health goals. It helps to ask why that's people's goal, something they've usually never done that results in increased self-awareness and self-identity.”
Parker’s first step in helping someone is identifying what’s important to that individual.
“All that I've always required of people is that they just have the motivation mindset,” he said. “As long as you can cover the motivation part, that's really the only thing I can't give people is the motivation. That's where the exercise psychology comes into play is helping people find their motivation. People always ask how can you motivate me? It's not how I can motivate you, it's how we can find your motivation for you. That's really the only part that I require is that mindset to have the motivation to do better. As long as you do that, we can find the right steps along the way for you to recover or lose weight or build muscle, whatever it is.”
Parker employs a comprehensive system, including Deci and Ryan’s Cognitive Evaluation Theory that deals with the psychological facets tied to self-motivation, in working with people.
“I use established goal-setting techniques, organismic integration theory, notions of motivation from Ryan and Deci and aspects of S.M.A.R.T. (Smart Measurable Achievable Relevant Time-based) goal-setting,” he said.
Parker, a new father, is shifting more of his business to online work.
“I started off primarily doing all the in-person stuff,” he said. “Now, I'll do some in-person stuff, but still trying to transition more to online because we just had our first newborn on May 7, so trying to be a little more present for that.”
Parker said having a wife and child makes him a better trainer.
“My family certainly motivates me to provide for them and set an example for my son now,” he said. “I'm more familiar with client struggles that have children. I can empathize better now with that.”
A significant factor contributing to Parker’s decision to help others was his own health issues.
“That's definitely a big part of it,” he said. “People tell me about their nagging small things. I'd be, well, it's probably not the end all be all, because I recovered from this. That's been definitely useful to encourage people to do better.”
Parker got into fitness with a sports background.
“I first wanted to get into fitness after I graduated college and stopped playing soccer,” he said. “I was like, well, now that I'm not running 800 miles a week, I should probably try to do something for my fitness and nutrition for once. I got into that and started learning the importance of it.”
Parker received further motivation due to a family member’s health problems.
“My grandfather was diagnosed with Parkinson's,” he said. “That was another big inspiration for my nutrition side of things was seeing how much like processed foods affects neural inflammation and what that leads to in terms of neurodegenerative disease and how that impacts overall health.”
Parker cited the significance of the gut-brain axis, which links emotional and cognitive centers of the brain with intestinal functions.
“The gut-brain axis is something I came across a long time ago when I was getting into nutrition and it caught my eye because of how it affects neurology,” he said. “I have a psychology background, so it piqued my interest. It's, overall, how the gastrointestinal system and nervous system communicate with one another. The gut biome affects systemic inflammation, including neuroinflammation, which is implicated in nearly all neurological issues and possibly most psychological issues. It also plays a role in the immune system, neurotransmitters and hormones.”
Parker said he altered his diet as a result of this knowledge.
“I started studying that more and started trying to clean up my nutrition more,” he said. “I took a break for two years after my undergraduate and did some of the research with that and some of my fitness training.”
Parker had a setback, sustaining an injury.
“I tore my MCL right as I started trying to get into the exercise,” he said. “It turns out I completely tore it and it didn't heal properly. There's a 5 percent chance I would heal properly and it didn't. I have chronic knee pain forever and just be unstable forever because of the way that it attached. It attached lower than it's supposed to be. I'm always going to have knee instability, not supposed to play sports, not so supposed to do things in the gym. Take it easy, take it light and don't do heavy, crazy things like I do now.”
Parker wasn’t satisfied with that diagnosis.
“I was fed up with the orthopedist thing,” he said. “I know I can heal better. I know I can improve my chronic pain conditions. I did some research. People were telling me that I could heal through movement. Basically, someone that's popularized this has been (Ben) Patrick, Kneesovertoesguy. That's who I am on a much smaller scale.”
Parker obtained multiple degrees.
“I got into master's programs in 2018,” he said. “I went to exercise and sports psychology and got a master's in kinesiology because I got really interested in all the benefits that I was experiencing. I wanted to teach other people. So I went and picked up that quick master's degree, and then also I went and picked up another master's in athletic counseling or counseling psychology.”
Parker recognized the value of mind over matter.
“I'm very interested also in the psychological aspect of things,” he said. “With college soccer and my undergraduate, I found out how important confidence and anxiety was and playing a role in performance and also how much that plays a role in rehab and chronic pain and setback after setback, trying to figure out myself, how to persevere through adversity with my knee stuff. That's really allowed me to help teach and listen and understand people.”
Parker, who eventually started his own fitness business in 2021, would have been on a different career trajectory if he hadn’t been injured.
“If I didn't completely tear my MCL and started rehabbing myself, I probably would not have gotten into fitness as much as I did,” he said.
Parker tailors workouts to the individual’s needs.
“It depends on where you're coming from, where you want to go,” he said. “The most important part is meeting people where they are. That's probably the greatest thing for fitness coaches to be able to do because a lot of people just have cookie-cutter programs. You don’t need to start off doing cleans and burpees and all this stuff, but listening to people and putting the time in to get to know where they are and where they want to go and what's best in terms of progressing for them — that's definitely the biggest part of it. I've had people that don't do any cardio that people do. It just should be individual for people.”
However, weights are typically employed to some degree.
“It's typically how I start off is weights with people for the joint health resistance training and then also for the muscle mass and metabolic rate,” he said. “Gaining the muscle mass is important for both of those equally, so that is pretty much always in people's plans.”
Part of Parker’s job is to dispel fitness myths.
“I was going to say the worldwide misconception machine definitely tries to generate what it can,” he said. “The most popular one: lifting weights will make me bulky. Unless you're training and eating to get bulky or even trying to take the drugs to get bulky, you won't get bulky.”
“You just can’t do something without the intent or the aim behind it.”
Parker said identifying what’s the motivation always is the key to success.
“That's a lot of times what people try to struggle with,” he said. “As long as you have the competence, autonomy and relatedness. That's the theory of self-determination. You have to aim somewhere before you do something, because you can't just do something without the intent or the aim behind it.”
Parker explained people are hindered by their minds more than their bodies.
“I'd say 99 percent of the time it's going to be a mental obstacle,” he said.
Parker said one has to set a goal before any work can be accomplished.
“That's huge,” he said. “People haven't set the goal. I'll talk to people, try to get them interested, and it's like, what's your goal? Well, I'm not really working towards anything. Having that clarity breeds confidence knowing where you're trying to go and also wanting to go there and think you deserve to get better. So that's kind of a foundation.”
Parker always enjoyed sports.
“I played everything,” he said. “There's hardly a sport I haven't done. We didn't have any ice in Memphis or snow, so I didn't do any winter stuff. I played football, basketball, ran track. I didn't do lacrosse, but anything competitive in the area, I did it at one point pretty much. I was always doing something.”
Parker and his wife Victoria on a ski trip.
Parker met his wife Victoria while attending college in Illinois before heading to Connecticut for his second master’s degree.
“We moved down to Savannah, so we just made a big rectangle,” he said.
With Parker’s wife recently giving birth to their son James, he is focused on her fitness.
“Just progress slowly and then increase range of motion over time and then you can bear a little more load,” he said. “That's been a new realm recently is postpartum health. It's been interesting. And baby health. I didn't know how much I didn't know about babies until we had one.”
Parker said expectant mothers can exercise, albeit mild, up to the end.
“You can exercise to the day of if you're walking,” he said. “You can do that until you're about to give birth. It's really heavy squats and deadlifts you should probably back off of in your third trimester because then you're just going to get into some pre-labor issues. When you're lifting when you're pregnant, you don't want to do crunches and stuff to harm the position of the baby.”
Parker already is thinking ahead of a time when artificial intelligence may become a business competitor.
“People are just going to be able to pump those videos out and take over space from other people,” he said. “That's already something I'm planning on is what am I going to do when people are just turning to AI trainers and AI fitness influencers. That's going to be hard to compete with. It's going to be pretty rough to market yourself when you're just going to have AI doing it automatically. Are you going to get in contact with real people? The better that AI gets, you're not going to be able to tell it's AI in the next three, four years probably. That's something scary that I'm paying more attention to that I know I'm going to have to compete with, so I'll definitely keep that in mind.”
The couple welcome their son James.
Parker said strength training and cardio have to be set at the appropriate ratio.
“Cardio is secondary a lot of times,” he said. “I try to place their cardio within the workouts. So circuit training and head training, that's shown to be really beneficial in terms of cardiovascular health. Usually, I try to do that. If people want more cardio, we'll do more cardio at the end or a different session, something a little more hit intensive and less focused on weights.”
Parker doesn’t advise extended cardiovascular training for such goals as weight loss.
“I don't want people doing steady state cardio all the time,” he said. “Just diminishing returns. You can only do steady state cardio for so long before you have to run because you have to run farther and farther to get the same effect. You're doing steady state cardio for five years, you're going to have to run a marathon to get the same result or the same metabolic calorie burn that it took the first time you did two miles. If you like steady state cardio and doing more cardio for your mental health, cool, you can keep it. But I don't force people to do the endless cardio type of thing. That's not my philosophy.”
Parker said now, not later, is the time to become fitter.
“That's one of the biggest things,” he said. “There's a mindset barrier to entry. It's all wait until something gets really bad. Their automatic self-talk is saying you're still able to move, you're okay. You'll get to that later when you really need it. But you should be a little more aggressive with that a lot of times than you think, because the best time to start was 20 years ago in a lot of cases.”
Parker warned folks to beware of ineffectual fitness programs.
“You want your hook when you're online to get people interested, but you shouldn't take it too far to where you're lying to people,” he said. “If someone says if you look like this, you have this hormonal profile, so you should eat exactly like this and avoid carbs and do this kind of cardio. They don't know. Even with a hormonal profile, you don't know. Biochemistry is much more complicated than that. Physiology doesn't always have the same patterns. So if anyone's saying this is what you have to do if you're this person, they don't know. I would watch out for that. And someone who doesn't ask you detailed questions about yourself before you enter a fitness program. They don't care. They just have a program that they sell to everyone, no matter your circumstance. That's a huge thing. That's not how it should be. That's probably the number one issue in the space: the charlatans, people like that.”
Parker noticed the overall impact improved fitness had on his daily life.
“For the first years, I noticed that I would have more joint pain than I should,” he said. “That's what led me down the path of proper biomechanics and lifting form and everything like that because I was getting stronger, but also random elbow, hip pain stuff. That wasn't the knee issue. I was like this shouldn't be happening. I don't know what's going on. So looking more into the biomechanics side of things and proper lifting form, I noticed joint stuff get a lot better. Once I learned that movement should be medicine and you should treat weightlifting like really intense rehab to improve joint health, my joints got better over time. I noticed that that definitely improved more than I thought it might.”
Parker stressed proper training only benefits the body.
“That's something that also tearing my MCL helped me find out is that weightlifting should be the best thing for your joints,” he said. “That pain decreased unexpectedly as I did things right. That's how it should be. But in terms of lifting cars off of baby deer or something like that, unfortunately, I don't have any cool Superman stories.”
However, Parker did become the de facto moving help for people he knew.
“Hey, we're moving,” he said people would comment. “You seem like you lift things.”
Parker has set long-range goals to reach.
“I'm in the midst of trying to build up myself as an entrepreneur.” he said. “I want to keep helping people online because that represents a lot more outreach as opposed to just doing things in person. I also aim to open my own sport performance facility as something that would be sport-performance focused, but also rehab and mindset focused. I would want kind of a one-stop shop for sport performance, weightlifting, recovery and the sports psychology, exercise psychology aspect of it. That's the overall dream. Have in-house physical therapists and other coaches that do the physical training and the mental training. That's where I'm aiming.”
Parker’s wife also has a love of sports.
“I met my wife in grad school in our exercise and sports psychology program,” he said. “She would love to do stuff with softball. She coaches softball. That's the dream, having a family business where we're having kids in and out and people doing fitness and reaching their goals and recovering and doing the mindset training. That's the ultimate goal.”
Parker acknowledges the risk of being self-employed.
“That's a big thing about going to work for yourself and being an entrepreneur when it's all on you,” he said. “That's what I wanted is have that freedom and that autonomy, because I value that so much more than some other people do. You have to work more, and there's a lot more risk involved. You don't get things like PTO or benefits. When it pays off, it pays off big. Then when you lose, it loses big because you're all on your own. You don't have anything to back you up. It's definitely something you have to have a lot of confidence and faith in yourself and to do. But that's something that I'm okay with is working harder and putting that all on myself if I have the extra freedom.”
Having a family motivates Parker to succeed.
“What keeps me motivated right now is my family first and foremost, because we just had our child,” he said. “That's a lot more motivation to get more outreach and start more conversations with people so that I can help more people and also generate the income. I have a terrible business model, because I want to make myself useless to everyone out there. I want to get you started on the right track and get you independent where you can do things on your own and trickle down to where you need me less and less until you don't need me.”
Parker is prepared to service clients from across the globe.
“If I run out of people in the United States, I'll move on to another country,” he said. “If I make everyone reinvent the western medicine system, then my goal will be accomplished. I'll go on to the next country and help, so that's how I may stay motivated.”
Parker dispensed advice to aspiring fitness trainers.
“I would say the vast majority of personal trainers don't take it upon themselves enough to meet their clients where they are and learn independently of what they're taught or what their certification says,” he said. “Put the client first. Ask yourself what's the most important thing for my client? And then adjust your behavior according to that. If you ask yourself that all the time, then that'll stoke a fire in you to work harder to find things that best fit your clients. It will keep you accountable and stop you from following the status quo of I hope I pick up a client so I can give them the same thing and do as little work as possible and learn as little as possible. Client first.”
Parker stressed those wanting to start working out need to know their motivation.
“Find out why you wanted to get started and why you waited so long,” he said. “That should help your motivation. That motivation is going to be the main thing to help start that behavioral change. You should identify your wish, the best thing possible you want to come true. Then the outcome, the thing that you want to do to make your wish happen. Then you should identify obstacles, the thing that's going to stop you from that outcome and your wish.”
Parker said there needs to be a fitness plan.
“You also need a plan,” he said. “What's your next action step? That's called WOOP (Wish Outcome Obstacle Plan) goals. That helps people identify where they want to go and then plan for what's going to come up and be the biggest barriers for them and then the plan, which is the step-by-step actions. If you're actually taking a step, what matters is just taking that next action step to get you closer to initiating that behavior change. For some people, that's as simple as just going on a walk after you eat a meal.”
Parker said the vital part is to take action.
“Everyone has to start somewhere.”
Parker’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mindmusclespecialist/
Parker’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mindmusclespecialist
Parker’s programs: https://linktr.ee/mindmusclespecialist