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WHY IS IT CALLED THE SLOWFIT METHOD®? (PART II)
And what exactly is it the antidote to?
Jul 29, 2026
This is Part II in a series. Best to peruse Part I to catch up a bit, before moving on to this one. Then again, fine to read this one first. Regardless, I’m tackling the question of the name — Slowfit, and explaining why this whole thing is intended to empower you with agency. Choices that belong to you in terms of your health and happiness. All in the face of certain forces, some of which have just sort of happened as we’ve strayed from our evolutionary design in a modern world. And some others of these forces could justifiably be called dark forces. Forces incentivized by things different than the things that are good for you as a human being. I’d argue its important to understand the bigger picture and some common themes at play here, so that we can stand a chance against Big Food, Big Booze, Big Shoe, Big Tech, and the like. So that we can take back control of our lives and and actually flourish.
It starts with the name I chose. Slowfit.
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I hear you, it’s different, a little counter-intuitive, even. Slow? I don’t want to be slow! Isn’t this the opposite of what a fitness brand should be called? Where’s the intensity? The urgency? The before-and-after? Fitness brands are supposed to promise fast. Six weeks! Twelve moves! One weird trick! No pain, no gain! Push harder! Do more! Sleep when you’re dead! Watch this 7-second video! Now this one! And this one! Stress? What stress?
That’s exactly the problem.
The Slowfit Method® is not slow in the sense that it is easy. It is slow in the sense that it is deliberate. Because the interventions that actually work are almost always the ones that take time, require consistency, and resist the cultural pressure to turn everything into a shortcut. It is slow the way a sequoia is slow. The way compound interest is slow. The way building a life you don’t need to escape from by eating something or drinking something or doom-scrolling something to distract you from this moment—is slow. Like slow food. Slow streets. Slow parenting. Slow cities.
Slowfit. Get it?
It is also, quite deliberately, the antidote to a very specific set of forces — forces that are working against your health, your performance, and your quality of life, right now, across every dimension simultaneously.
Here is what the Slowfit Method® is the antidote to. Pillar by pillar. There’s a lot to cover here, folks, so I split the topic into four parts. This one is Part II of IV. (Reminder: Part I lives here.)
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Mouth breathing and over-breathing.
You take roughly 20,000 breaths a day. If you’re breathing through your mouth, shallowly, chaotically — which most people are — you are driving down your CO2 levels, undermining oxygen delivery to your tissues, elevating your cortisol, disrupting your sleep, and suppressing your immune function. Sending a signal of danger to your central nervous system, resulting in a state of chronic arousal. This is not a minor inconvenience. It is a systemic health failure happening 20,000 times a day. All stirred up by overreacting to that email, that text message, that news media alert, that guy who just cut you off in traffic…. We live in a culture of hyper-stimulation, and the vast majority of us are making it worse by reacting with over-breathing through the mouth.
The Slowfit antidote: nasal breathing, pretty much always. CO2 tolerance training. A downregulation protocol post-workout and before bed. The Wim Hof upregulation protocol before training. Paying attention to the breath constantly. Your breath is the only autonomic function you can also consciously control. Use it. Exercise agency over this moment, right here.
YOU TAKE 20,000 BREATHS A DAY. HERE’S WHY MOST OF THEM ARE WORKING AGAINST YOU.
At the end of the last post in this series — the Mindset pillar — I teased what was coming next.
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Smartphone and social media addiction.
In Part I, I talked about Big Food, Big Booze & Big Shoe. Now we’re on to Big Tech. Adam Alter’s research in Irresistible documented the six ingredients that make behavioral experiences as addictive as heroin. In Screen People, Megan Garber warned what happens to a civilization that organizes itself around those ingredients. And in The Anxious Generation, Jonathon Haidt documented what happened to an entire generation of children. The variable reward schedule. The infinite scroll. The slot machine in your pocket, available 24 hours a day, engineered by people who understand the neuroscience of compulsion better than most psychiatrists.
The Slowfit antidote: intentional technology. Use the smartphone. Don’t be used by it. State a purpose before you open any app. Switch to greyscale. Tape your mouth at night and put your phone in another room (that sounds a little weird, but the taping is for improved nasal breathing, not to prevent you from talking on your phone—though I suppose that’s a nice side effect). Remember that your attention is the most valuable thing you own. Defend it accordingly. Don’t give it away to things that don’t deserve it. Again, agency. We have agency.
SAME PLAYBOOK. DIFFERENT INDUSTRY.
We made it! Ellie and I covered about 3,000 miles from one coast to another. Whew. A week behind the wheel offers up a fair amount of think time. And the next couple posts here will be a product of 48 hours in the driver’s seat and a lucky backlog of Audible credits.
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Requiring constant stimulus. Being held hostage to a chronic state of arousal.
What might we call this one, Big Attention? Probably still Big Tech, for the most part. The modern attention economy has trained an entire population to be incapable of tolerating silence, stillness, or unstructured time. Standing in a line without checking a phone. Sitting with a thought without immediately reaching for distraction. Being in a beautiful place without photographing it for an audience. The inability to be present in a moment that isn’t performing for anyone is one of the most consequential health crises nobody is naming.
The Slowfit antidote: presence. Meditation. Long walks without AirPods. Books instead of feeds. The deliberate cultivation of your own inner life, which turns out to be where performance actually lives.
Meditation, for example, is backed by so much research now, folks. It’s a huge miss not to be doing this on the regular. I wrote about the benefits of a meditation practice here.
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Across every Slowfit pillar, there is a version of the world that is working against you — a faster, louder, more addictive, more profitable version of health and fitness that extracts value from your attention and your body and returns chronic disease, fragmented focus, and a vague sense that something is wrong.
And across every pillar, there is a choice.
You can eat the food that was engineered to make you eat more of it. Or you can eat real food.
You can pour yourself a drink to numb the edges of your life. Or you can learn to be comfortable in your own skin.
You can breathe through your mouth, shallowly, without thinking. Or you can close your mouth.
You can let the back pocket slot machine rent your attention. Or you can be present in your own life.
You can run on the hedonic treadmill until your knees give out. Or you can find a reason.
You can outsource your social life to a platform. Or you can show up for the people in front of you.
You can grind yourself into cortisol-flooded exhaustion. Or you can dose yourself intelligently and recover like it matters.
You can live as though sleep is optional. Or you can train in your sleep.
That’s the Slowfit Method®. Not a program. Not a protocol. A framework for making the better choice, pillar by pillar, day by day, for as long as you’re here.
Slow. Deliberate. Yours.
Stay tuned for Part III.
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There’s an App for that! Want to dive deeper into nutrition, breathing, movement, or any of the other Slowfit pillars? I built an app for that. The Slowfit Method® app puts Coach Keir AI in your pocket — trained on all ten pillars and with an ever-growing knowledge base—the whole sh-bang. Ask it anything about managing your health and happiness. More than one hundred people have already downloaded this app without a dime spent on marketing, and I’ve got nine 5-star reviews on the App Store. Check it out!
Call Me. Curious about 1:1 coaching? I’ve added an easy way to book a free 30-minute introductory call with me to learn more about the Slowfit Method® and/or my AI Coach app, to discuss your training goals, or to explore what a private coaching relationship might look like. No pressure, no pitch — just a conversation.
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Stick around.
Best,
Keir
Keir J. Beadling is a human performance coach, founder of Foghorn Fitness, and creator of the Slowfit Method®. He coaches athletes and everyday humans in San Francisco and worldwide. More information is available at foghornfitness.com.
P.S. A heartfelt thank you to the folks who have already donated to this year’s Napa Ride to Defeat ALS—Donna, Ryan, Beth, Morley, Jeffrey, David, Jeremy, and Doug. Thanks to these fine people, I’m halfway to my fundraising goal. The ride happens in September. If you’d like to add your support, you can do that here.
Foghorn Fitness is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid Substack subscriber.
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