Hey all! Shorty here!

We promised this a year ago, and now it’s _(finally) here! A standalone review of Nerd Fitness Academy!

This review will be just Shorty today, as Kendra is a bit tired from work and some new projects she’s plotting.

To start, let me just say that we love the Academy. Let me also say: none of my reviews are sponsored. We’re too small-time to get sponsored at this point. We review only what we’ve used or experienced and liked.

Now, the Academy is an amazing resource. You complete quests to gain experience and level up, just like in a video game. The difference is that you the player are leveling up, not some pixels on a screen.

With permission from the team, I’m including some screenshots from the site. Let’s start with the landing page, to give you a feel for how clean and easy to navigate the academy is.

You’ll see there’s a couple of navigation methods, and a welcome video to help you get into things. Along the top, you’ll see the labels “Start Here”, “Mindset”, “Nutrition”, etc. That’s on every page, so even if you don’t have the sidebar on the right, you can get wherever you need to go.

You’ll also see, in the top right, my character’s summary. It gives you your class symbol, your current level and experience, and your “Epic Quest” level. I’ll explain Epic Quests in a bit.

For now, let’s move to the sidebar navigation. It’s context dependent, and has links to all the main sections from the start page. Once you’re in the modules, it links to the other quests in the module.

Let’s take a look at one of the module screens next.

Here, you can see the “Mindset” module landing page.

This is part of the great thing about the Academy: Nerd Fitness does not just focus on exercising, or even just diet and exercise. No, they go straight to the heart of the matter and teach you how to make the habits you build stick.

That’s the reason a lot of diets fail- You get the short term success you’re looking for, but you aren’t building healthy, lasting habits that will stick with you for the long run.

You’ll notice this is “Module 1.” That’s how much importance Nerd Fitness Academy puts on Mindset. If you look at the sidebar navigation, you start to get a feel for what kinds of things you’re going to be looking at in this module. Setting good goals, finding objective ways to measure your progress that aren’t just numbers on the scale, and setting up your environment for success are just some of the things you’ll learn here.

And if you struggle and fall off the wagon? It’s simple to go back in and pick up where you fell off.

Now, on to Module 2: Nutrition.

Nutrition is, of course, a good chunk of losing weight or even just being healthier. They say you are what you eat, but that’s more true than you think. If all you’re eating, all the time, is food that has little to no nutritional value, you’re not getting what your body needs and you’re going to feel pretty miserable.

I should know, that’s where I was when I started with Nerd Fitness.

Now, Nerd Fitness isn’t about just picking a diet and going. Sure, you can do that, you can count calories, you can eliminate certain things entirely. They won’t tell you that’s wrong, since it does work if done correctly. However, you will learn that you don’t have to completely give up your favorite foods or drinks and be miserable.

Instead, you’ll start by simply seeing what you’re eating and how much of it. You’ll learn not to count calories, but to simply note what’s entering your system. From there, you’ll see if you’re mostly eating non-nutritious foods, and what you might replace them with.

Other quests in this module will help you learn how to meal prep, how to create healthier meals and snacks, and how to handle portions.

Of course, nutrition and mindset, while being a large part of getting healthier, aren’t the only things people are looking for.

To start figuring out what you need to do for exercises, the academy will ask you to start with a benchmark test:

Take note in the instructions about “good form.” Learning to exercise is great, but doing it with good form is important to not getting hurt.

Past that, you’ll just do the exercises it suggests. If you aren’t sure what’s meant or what good form is, there’s a short video for each exercise that you can watch to learn from.

If you can do the exercise with good form for the amount of reps suggested, you’ll hit “Yes” and a new exercise will be listed. If not, you’ll hit “No” and move down to the next option.

This will help you find out about where you are on your fitness journey, and allow you to pick a pre-built workout that will help you build yourself while still giving you enough challenge to know when you’re growing.

After a time, you’ll try a “Boss Battle” that will tell you if you’re ready to move up a level in your workouts.

The Academy also has scaled versions of pretty much every exercise they suggest. There’s also “Bodyweight” exercises versus “Gym” exercises- Exercises that use just your body and maybe one or two outside bits of equipment that you’ll likely just have laying around (like a chair or something to step up on) versus exercises where you’ll want dumbbells, kettlebells, and other exercise specific equipment. Personally, I prefer “Bodyweight” since I don’t have a ton of excess money for gym memberships right now.

Now, if you want a list of all of the quests offered by the Academy, you can find them under the big “Quests” button on the top navigation bar. That will bring you here:

As you see, it will tell you which module the quest belongs to, and how much experience it’s worth. You can click on the quest to get more details, along with a link to the full quest page. Once you’ve completed a quest, you can click the large exclamation point to mark it complete and receive the experience for it.

Naturally, as you receive experience, your character levels up. If you want to see more about your character, you can click on your name in the character summary at the top, and that will bring you here:

I will not apologize for the cheesiness of my page, and you can’t make me.

In all seriousness, though, this is one of the best things about Nerd Fitness. You get so much out of your time and money, and it’s all there to help you turn your fitness adventure into a real world video game.

Let me explain a bit about the classes now. There are several classes to Nerd Fitness, based around what you’re looking to get out of your fitness adventure. I won’t take the time to explain them all here, since Nerd Fitness actually has a full page to explain them themselves. You can find those descriptions, along with examples of who would fit in those classes, here.

As you’ll see, I chose “Assassin” for my class, and that’s because my goals are basically those of move quickly and efficiently. If you click the “Quests” navigation option on the left, you can see more quests than just those of the academy’s and filter them down by what class you’re working on at the time. Naturally, if your goals change, you can change your class. The little character picture there is also something you can change.

Your “Epic Quests” are huge goals for your life. The Mindset module will help you with setting these, but I’ll give you an example of mine. I want to be conversationally fluent in Japanese, so I’ve set my Epic Quest in line with that. I’ve given myself a deadline (that I’ve missed by a mile, so I need to revisit my quests and reset myself if I still want to accomplish that) so that it’s not just a hazy “someday,” but something I can objectively say I finished or did not finish.

This is already getting a bit long, but I hope you can see the value of Nerd Fitness Academy through all of this. I’ve given you just a taste of what is offered, as there’s also a thriving community that you can reach out to for help if you’re struggling or don’t understand something, or if you just need someone to keep you accountable.

To go hand in hand with my review of Nerd Fitness as a whole last year, it’s an amazing resource that I find well worth the money. While Nerd Fitness does have free resources, the Academy isn’t one of them. When I got the Academy, there was a payment plan option at least to make it easier to afford until you’d paid it off, but I don’t know how that’s changed since the introduction of Nerd Fitness Prime, which does include the Academy along with the other three standalone Nerd Fitness courses.

I actually don’t know if Academy is still sold separately or not, but that’s something that you can find out if you’re only looking for the Academy. I personally do love Nerd Fitness Prime at the moment, but I’m not sure how long I’ll have it as I was given access as a “temporary” measure as it got started. I still have access to everything for Prime, but for all I know, that could end at some point if I don’t pay for the subscription at that time.

But, I know the Nerd Fitness team will give ample warning if that’s the case, and I’ll be able to get my reviews of the other courses out before then if that happens. So, stay tuned for my reviews of more of Nerd Fitness’s offerings!