As Father Dave begins his 30-Day Challenge to instill healthier habits, we welcome Chase Crouse to discuss how faith and fitness are connected. Chase is the founder and CEO of Hypuro Fit, a Catholic-based personal training and nutrition coaching company, and the co-author of “The God of Endurance: A Practical Guide for Incorporating Exercise and Nutrition into your Spiritual Journey.”
Chase describes how he and a group of college friends first combined DVD workouts with spirituality. He says, “We’d go to morning Mass, then do one of those really hard workouts. That was actually the first time in my life where I connected these dots of saying Man, this is really hard. Maybe if I can mentally force my body to do this thing it doesn’t want to do — namely, exercise and eat well — maybe that’ll help me avoid or resist [other] temptations.”
RELATED: Faith and Fitness: 3 Spiritual Lessons I Learned From CrossFit
Chase further pursued this connection after his experiences working in ministry and as a personal trainer. “I got certified training at a big box gym, and quickly realized I loved working with people in this way, but I hated working for a secular gym for a lot of reasons. One couldn’t talk about Jesus, and that bugged me,” he says. “It forced me for the first time to ask the questions like, Why do I care so much about health, exercising, and nutrition? Is it my inner Americana, or is it my inner Catholic?”
Chase asked himself if he could make physical fitness a holy endeavor. “That’s when I turned to St. John Paul II’s ‘Theology of the Body,’ which I had studied formally for my undergrad and my masters degrees,” Chase says. He notes how St. John Paul II built upon the Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et spes. “[Gaudium et spes says] man finds himself through a sincere gift of self. What St. John Paul II adds, in his brilliance, is that you can’t give what you don’t have; self-donation is impossible without self-mastery. So that was my light bulb moment; The purpose of my life is to be like Jesus Christ in all things, and that includes his total and perfect gift of himself to the Father on the cross. I need to cooperate with grace and give him myself fully.”
Father Dave and Brett discuss how they struggle with motivation to exercise even though it is good for them. “I think part of it for me, and maybe other people resonate with this, is that I’m not good at it. People like to do stuff that they’re good at,” Brett shares, noting that a personal trainer may help teach him some basic tips.
“One of the ways we train a lot of people is this idea of minimal effective dosing,” Chase responds. “A lot of times people come to us, and maybe they did a sport in high school or something like that, and it’s the last time they worked out. They have these memories of the good old days of the puddle of sweat on the floor and questioning their life choices [while working out], and that’s what they envision exercise needing to be. We have studies and data; That’s simply not the case. The thing you need to build muscle is to go from zero to one.”
LISTEN: Strengthening Your Body and Faith With the Founders of SoulCore
Chase describes the Catholic aspects of Hypuro Fit. “We have hours of educational content on exercise, nutrition, and what we truly believe is the Catholic approach to fitness. We talk about asceticism, Theology of the Body, and St. John of the Cross,” he says. “We have different habit trackers, as well as a community board where people can encourage each other, pray for each other and grow together as a community.”
“We never say that somebody has to work out to be a saint, because most saints never touched a dumbbell,” Chase says. “But every saint did practice temperance and self-mastery for self-gift. That’s the position we want to take.”
