Put God First: How Discipline, Faith, and Shredfast Are Changing Men's Lives

There's a question Carl Spellman asked me halfway through this conversation that I still haven't shaken: "If your body stopped being able to perform tomorrow, who would you be without it?"

That's really what Episode 4 of Getting Real with Real is about. My guest is Carl Spellman — a former professional footballer from Liverpool, England, who now coaches Shredfast athletes all over the world, including a European billionaire. On paper, this is a conversation about fitness. In practice, it's a conversation about identity, suffering, and what it actually means to put God first.

From the Pitch to the Trenches

Carl's story starts with a familiar ache. From age four to twenty, football was his whole identity — the only thing that mattered, the only thing he focused on. Then he got released, and the identity went with it.

"I didn't really know what to do with me life," Carl told me. "My whole younger years was based around being a footballer and having this identity... and then once that stopped, I found Shredfast about a year or two later and sort of never looked back."

He didn't walk in chasing a coaching career. He walked in looking for purpose. What he found was a community, a body of work he could actually build discipline around, and — eventually — God.

Believers vs. Followers

One of the sharpest moments in this episode is a distinction that's been sitting with me for weeks: the difference between a believer and a follower.

A believer knows there's a God. A follower picks up the cross daily and actually lives like it. I've got a saying I use with my guys: believers want to do it the Burger King way — their way. Followers do it the Yahweh way.

That distinction is the whole engine behind this episode. It's easy to believe in something. It's a completely different thing to let that belief show up in your 5 a.m. alarm, your grocery list, and the way you talk to your spouse when nobody's filming.

What Discipline Actually Costs

Carl and I talked a lot about the price tag on discipline — because there is one. Time. Money. Recovery. Saying no to your friends on a Friday night. Being away from your family for months at a stretch while you're coaching on the road.

"The cost of not doing it — the price of not doing it — is much higher than investing in yourself," Carl said. "The temporary pain that you cost now is gonna pay off later."

But here's the part that hit me hardest: discipline isn't really about how you look. It's a byproduct. Real discipline is putting yourself through the difficult, unglamorous stuff — the cold shower, the early morning in the Word, the workout you don't feel like doing — because that's what it looks like to put God first in the physical world he actually gave you. Your body isn't separate from your faith. It's the vessel.

The Piano and the Kettlebells

I told Carl a story on this episode that I don't tell often. My dad — my inspiration for becoming a trainer in the first place — was diagnosed with Parkinson's at 63. Near the end, it took three hours just to get him dressed.

But here's the thing nobody could explain to me: if you wheeled him into the hospital's piano room and put his hands on the keys, something in him would wake back up. Same thing in the gym, in front of the machines he'd used his whole life. The second you moved him away from either one, he'd fall right back into the Parkinson's symptoms.

Carl's read on it stuck with me: the body remembers what you feed it thousands of reps of. My dad didn't accept the diagnosis the way his friend — who found out he had Parkinson's the very same week — did. His friend was in a wheelchair within months and passed within two years. My dad kept training, kept playing, kept showing up. He lived twenty more years.

That's the power of discipline compounding over a lifetime. It's not about vanity. It's about what you're building for the day you need it most.

Put God First, and Everything Else Follows

By the end of the episode, Carl brought it back to one sentence — the one he'd want you to remember if you forgot everything else:

"Put God first. Seek His kingdom. Know what Jesus did for you, and everything else will fall into place."

That's the whole show, honestly. Not a slogan — a sequence. God first, then the discipline to actually live like it, in your body, your marriage, your work, and your recovery from whatever's trying to take you out.

If this episode moved you even a little, don't just listen and move on. Carl and I both train with Shredfast — the workout that's genuinely kicked both our butts more times than I can count — and they're letting you try it completely free for 30 days. No gimmicks, just two kettlebells, a mat, and a community that'll get in the trenches with you.

Start your free 30-day Shredfast trial here.

Listen to the full conversation with Carl Spellman on Episode 4 of Getting Real with Real, and if it speaks to you, share it with someone who needs to hear it today.