Resources
Since starting our fitness journey we have collected a large number of great resources. Instead of hoarding them in our browser bookmarks we figured we should share them with you. If you have any great resources please let us know and we will happily include them.
Health & Fitness Resources
Health Research
- Google Scholar – My first stop for finding published research.
- SSRN – An “open” research paper repository that doesn’t charge to download.
- PubMed – Huge database of published biomedical research papers
- CDC Health, United States – Annual report on health trends in the United States in a really easy to use format.
- Center for Health Decision Science – Resources – Lots of health data in an easy to browse format.
- World Health Organization – GHO (Global Health Observatory) data.
- Pew Research Center – Lots of research and surveys about lots of different topics.
Fitness Books
Here are our top 5 health and fitness books that we would recommend to anyone. All links below are affiliate links to Amazon.
- Practical Programming for Strength Training by Mark Rippentoe
- Bodyweight Strength Training Anatomy by Brett Contreras
- Science and Development of Muscle Hypertrophy by Brad Schoenfeld
- The Spartan Way by Joe De Sena
- The Complete Ketogenic Diet for Beginners by Amy Ramos
Other Fitness Books We Recommend
Blogger Resources
Hosting
- We are hosted on WP Engine (not an affiliate link) and Love it. I wouldn’t use anything else for dedicated WordPress hosting.
- We have also had great success with BlueHost (affiliate) and can also recommend them as well.
WordPress Theme
We are using Ashe Pro (affiliate link) and really like it. They have a free version that we used when we launched. We liked it enough that it was worth paying to upgrade to the Pro version. One of the best WordPress themes we have tried and the first one we have ever paid for.
Newsletter
We use Mailchimp (not an affiliate link) and are still on the free plan. When we grow too large for that we might take a while to evaluate our options. For now it does everything we could want and it’s free.
Writing Tools
Almost every blog post we write begins in Grammerly (not an affiliate link) . I am not always the best writer and Grammerly helps to make me better. We still use the free plan. Their pro plan is a very good value and has some really powerful tools but the free plan does enough.
We also use the Hemingway App (not an affiliate link) . In fact, I’ll often write in Grammerly and then paste that into Hemingway because it catches different things. Hemingway is also free.
Organization Tools
We used to use a bunch of different tools but we have now consolidated all of that into dynalist.io. Dynalist (affiliate – use for free month of pro) is basically a list tool on steroids. We use if for our ToDo lists, scheduling, taking notes, almost everything. Now this one free tool is used for everything we need to keep OthFit organized and running.
Graphics Editing
Currently we are using Adobe Spark (not an affiliate link). It’s not free and it isn’t the most powerful but it is very good at making simple graphics really fast. All of the post and Pinterest images you see on this site are made with Adobe Spark.
Here are some good alternatives to try out (No Affiliate Links).
Social Media
I’ll admit that our social media is a bit of a nightmare right now. We have tried a lot of tools and still haven’t found exactly the right combination. There are a couple of tools that we love and recommend.
Tweetdeck: This is a free tool from Twitter that you can use to split up your twitter feed. We have it set to show a column for each of our groups and that way we don’t miss as much. It also allows you to schedule Tweets but we use another tool for that.
Buffer (not an affiliate link): This is a great tool for scheduling out social media messages. We use the free version but with the pro plan we could use this for all our social media scheduling. We don’t do a lot of scheduling for Twitter or Instagram but we do schedule out Pinterest. Buffer is great because we schedule posts we want to share directly from Feedly.
Tailwind (affiliate link – use for free month): This is the best tool we have found for scheduling our Pinterest. Buffer would be better but Tailwind also has a social sharing element. Their tribes really allow you to get more exposure to your pins. If not for that feature we would probably replace Tailwind. However that feature is so nice it makes paying for Tailwind a no-brainer.