Matt has been a coach for over 15 years, and has been a staple of the Nerd Fitness Coaching program since 2018. He helped build the Nerd Fitness coaching program from the ground up and loves helping Rebels from all walks of life build sustainable healthy habits that work for THEM (while having fun along the way).
Matt started his career while living abroad in Japan. After suffering a severe ankle injury, he became OBSESSED with all things movement, nutrition, and behavior change – especially focusing on moving to feel good in his own body again.
Trying to put all that he was experiencing into words, he reached out to someone else who had recently started an awesome fitness website: Steve Kamb, and asked him for some advice. (That Steve guy seemed alright.) Soon after, he started training fellow school teachers on the playgrounds of Japan, and hasn’t looked back.
Matt specializes in behavior change, functional fitness, mobility, nutrition, and play. Matt’s style of coaching is empathetic, thoughtful, and strategic. He loves breaking down challenges and providing real-world, practical tools to overcome them. He’s helped clients lose over 100lbs, eliminate non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, discover their love of movement, and build the strength to do their first-ever pull-up. He makes sure this is all done with sustainable systems so that once you achieve results, you can maintain those results and understand the why behind each decision.
He loves getting super nerdy and technical about the ins and outs of movement, but balances that out with a penchant for play and “shenanigans.” He’s used these systems to help everyone from folks competing in the World Spartan race championships to people just starting on their fitness journey for the first time.
If you meet Matt in person, he promises to teach you his super-secret dance to Dragostea Din Tei (a.k.a. the Numa Numa song). He loves crawling on the floor with his two kids, helping others fall in love with movement, and dancing as much as humanly possible. He truly believes that training can be your key to restoring balance to the Force and within yourself.
Want to know what it’s like to work with Coach Matt? Have a look at one of his client’s real-life transformations here!
Star Wars or Lord of the Rings?
Okay, setting aside the LOTR books which are obviously the correct answer, let’s rank all the movies, in order. Stand back while I prepare to nerd out on this.
- Star Wars Episode V (the greatest “I’m home sick with the flu” movie of all time.)
- Star Wars Episode IV (props to the original)
- Fellowship of the Ring (such good world building – + Boromir!)
- Return of the King (some think this is the best of the series – but Fellowship still has my heart.)
- Rogue One: A Star Wars Story – the most underrated of the new Star Wars Films and the best one!
- Star Wars Episode VI (I can’t help but love me some Ewoks!)
- Star Wars Episode 1 (Hear me out – I know Jar Jar and all that, but Darth Maul was THE BEST evil guy in the whole prequel trilogy. I only wish they had kept him around longer.)
- The Two Towers (for me, the weakest of the LOTR trilogy. I think it just bothered me that it didn’t cover all the material from the books.)
- Star Wars Episode 3 – I know some people love it, but I just couldn’t get over “meh”.
- Star Wars Episode 2 (the wooooooorst!)
I can’t make up my mind about where Episode 7 and 8 sit in this list yet. I need time to rewatch and reflect. Episode 9…we don’t talk about Episode 9.
Favorite Video Game of all time?
Ocarina of Time. Super Mario Maker. And Pokemon Arceus!
What are you passionately nerdy about?
Ninja Warrior (American and original Sasuke versions), Settlers of Catan, Anime (this is a whole different conversation – probably love FullMetal Alchemist the most), epic sci-fi and fantasy books, and of course, all things movement.