Meet Jeremy Schulz (Wandering Monk Fitness)

The Reset Magazines welcomes Jeremy Schulz and puts him under the spotlight.

At some point in mid-life, many of us feel the quiet pull to reassess.

Not because everything is broken — but because something deeper is asking for attention.

Jeremy, embodies that moment of reckoning.

Once a professional drummer and creative immersed in the intensity of city life, Jeremy reached a point where momentum no longer equalled meaning. Instead of numbing that discomfort or pushing through it, he chose something radically simple — movement, solitude, and reflection.

In his mid-50s, he walked over 3,000 miles across America, alone, on foot, carrying only what he needed and shedding what no longer served him.

That journey didn’t just reshape his body. It reshaped how he understands discipline, identity, resilience, and purpose in the second half of life.

Today, through Way of the Wandering Monk, Jeremy works with men navigating change — physically, mentally, and emotionally — helping them rebuild strength, clarity, and self-trust without chasing extremes. His approach blends fitness, mindset, and lived experience, rooted in the belief that transformation doesn’t come from doing more, but from listening better.

In this interview, Jeremy shares what walking taught him about ageing, why simplicity often beats optimisation, and how movement can become a practice — not a punishment — as we move into the next chapter of life.

Many people feel restless in mid-life without being able to name why. Looking back, what was the first sign that something in your life needed to change?

The first sign was subtle—but unmistakable. The very thing that once gave my life meaning had turned hollow.

I was living what most people would call a dream. I was a professional touring drummer and drum teacher in Seattle. The gigs were getting bigger. The lifestyle was fast. From the outside, it looked like success. But internally, something was rotting.

What began as passion and purpose slowly mutated into addiction to external validation. Every win had to be bigger than the last—another show, another city, another party. I wasn’t creating value anymore. I wasn’t serving anyone. I was chasing approval, stimulation, and distraction, and calling it a life.

The environment became toxic because I had lost direction. I was busy, celebrated, and empty all at the same time.

That restlessness people feel in mid-life? I know it well. It’s what happens when you confuse motion for meaning. When your identity becomes performance instead of purpose.

That realization didn’t just tell me something needed to change—it made it impossible to keep living the way I was.

You chose walking — not running, not extreme endurance — as your vehicle for change. Why was walking the right pace for that moment in your life?

I lost my career. I lost the band. I lost my marriage. Everything I had built my identity around disappeared. I found myself alone, traveling the world with nothing but a backpack, searching for answers I didn’t yet know how to ask.

At some point, the inevitable happened—my life collapsed.

While living in Bangkok, I watched something that stayed with me. A singer named Toon Bodyslam was running across Thailand for charity, and the entire country was captivated. In an interview, he said that through the physical suffering, he had found peace, clarity, and a kind of awakening. That idea planted a seed.

A year later, I was sitting alone in my apartment in New York City, staring out the window, wondering if transformation required speed—or if it required something else entirely. I asked myself a simple question: What would happen if I walked home?

Walking was already therapeutic for me. It was familiar. It was grounding. And for reasons I can only describe as intuitive—maybe even divine—I knew I wasn’t meant to run. I was meant to slow down.

Walking stripped life down to its essentials. The monotony. The silence. The long hours alone with my thoughts. That rhythm created a moving meditation that reshaped how I think, how I live, and how I see the world.

It was in that quiet isolation—step after step, mile after mile—that I finally heard the answers I had been chasing everywhere else.

What did long stretches of solitude teach you about yourself that busy life never allowed space for?

Long stretches of solitude taught me that most of who we think we are is built on noise.

Out there, walking through vast, empty landscapes with almost nothing, I came to a realization that stopped me in my tracks. I physically had nothing—but spiritually, I had gained everything. When you remove the distractions, the possessions, the identities you hide behind, you’re left with something far more honest.

I realized that the answers I was searching for couldn’t be found in worldly things at all. They only reveal themselves through stillness and breath. Busy life never allows that kind of space. It keeps you chasing, accumulating, proving—never listening.

In solitude, everything I had been was stripped away. And in that stripping, there was a kind of death. But what emerged wasn’t emptiness—it was a return. Back to the essence of who I was before ambition, before performance, before expectation. A complete spiritual being, simply asking for love and the strength to keep going.

That’s what solitude gave me: clarity. Not by adding more to my life, but by removing everything that wasn’t true.

During your 3,000-mile walk, was there a moment where the journey shifted from physical challenge to something deeper?

Of course. And it didn’t happen just once—it happened repeatedly, in moments where the walk stopped being about endurance and became about surrender.

Over the course of 3,000 miles, I survived six near-death experiences. I fell off a forty-foot cliff. I was caught in flash floods and tornadoes. I got lost in the Oklahoma panhandle, alone at night, surrounded by coyotes. I even managed to accidentally bear-mace myself. There were long stretches where the skin on my feet was gone, and I was walking with blood-soaked shoes.

At some point, fear stopped being the teacher—pain became it.

What surprised me was that I didn’t break. Instead, something deeper opened. The suffering stripped away resistance. The pain slowed my mind until it became quiet. And in that quiet, I found something I wasn’t expecting: peace.

There were moments of genuine bliss in the middle of the hardship. I stopped seeing suffering as an enemy and began to recognize it as a gateway. It became a companion—one that demanded presence, humility, and honesty.

That’s when the journey shifted. The walk was no longer something I was enduring. It was something that was shaping me—teaching me how to stay calm inside chaos, how to move forward without needing comfort, and how to trust myself when everything familiar is gone.

That understanding still guides how I live and how I lead today.

Mid-life is often framed as a decline. How did your experience challenge that narrative?

Mid-life is only a decline if you accept the story you’re handed.

I walked across America at forty-seven years old with no mapped route, no prior experience doing anything like that, and no support crew. Completely unsupported. Just me, the road, and whatever I could carry on my back. On paper, it was irrational—maybe even irresponsible. According to the cultural narrative, that was supposed to be the phase of life where you play it safe, scale things down, and manage your limitations.

The walk shattered that illusion.

What I learned out there is that everything we’re searching for, clarity, strength, resilience, purpose, already exists within us. I wasn’t discovering something new on the road; I was uncovering what had always been there. The strength to keep going. The ability to endure discomfort without quitting. The realization that I was enough. That I was worthy. That I didn’t need permission, validation, or ideal conditions to move forward.

That’s why my philosophy is simple: the power is within us.

Mid-life isn’t the closing chapter, it’s the moment when experience, discipline, and self-awareness finally converge. At fifty-three years old, I’m not declining. I’m a bodybuilder. I’m shredded, lifting heavy, competing, and coaching men over forty to reclaim their bodies and their confidence.

What the walk taught me is that abundance isn’t external. We all have access to far more strength, vitality, and potential than we’ve been led to believe. Mid-life isn’t about shrinking—it’s about finally stepping into who you were always capable of becoming.

You’ve spoken about discipline, but not in the usual “push harder” sense. How do you define discipline now compared to earlier in your life?

For most of my life, I was practicing discipline long before I had the language for it.

I started playing drums at nine years old. I had a stutter and struggled with Tourette’s syndrome, and drumming became the first place where I could express myself with complete freedom. It was my true voice. Because I loved it so deeply, I practiced obsessively—not out of obligation, but out of devotion.

Seven days a week. Year after year. Getting better mattered to me, and that passion naturally forged discipline without me ever forcing it.

As I grew older, that same discipline carried into adulthood. I learned how to turn my craft into a profession. Drumming became my livelihood—it paid my bills—and the habits I built through passion became the foundation of my life. That’s when I realized something simple but powerful: how you do one thing is how you do everything.

That skill carried over seamlessly into fitness, routine, and structure. I thrive on repetition. I love monotony. I love schedules and daily rituals. Discipline, for me, isn’t about pushing harder—it’s about alignment. When your actions match who you are at your core, consistency becomes effortless.

That’s why walking twenty to twenty-five miles a day for six months didn’t feel extreme to me. I had already spent a lifetime training the muscle of discipline—one rep, one practice, one day at a time.

Many of our readers struggle with consistency rather than motivation. What role did routine play in getting you across the country?

Like I said, it was built into something I was already familiar with—drumming—and I didn’t realize at the time just how important that was as a transferable skill. Routine became my secret weapon. Showing up day after day, hitting the same patterns, practicing consistency over motivation, it’s literally a life hack—a kind of recipe for success. Once you internalize that, it applies to anything, whether it’s walking across the country, building a business, or mastering a craft.

How did your relationship with discomfort change as the miles accumulated?

The greater the pain and the deeper the discomfort, the more enlightenment was bestowed upon me. What began as agonizing pain I wanted to cower from gradually became a destination I eagerly awaited—like greeting an old friend.

Was there anything you expected to leave behind on that journey but found you couldn’t?

Yes — I thought I was leaving behind my old self, or what I believed my old self was: a drum teacher and coach. I talk about this in my book, how I felt like I had no identity because I had never known anything else besides being a professional drummer and drum teacher. Walking across the country as a stranger, with no title and no identity, was unsettling. But I eventually realized I was wrong — I was still a drummer, still a teacher, still a fitness coach — I hadn’t lost my identity, I had lost my purpose. And once I found that purpose again, it became clear: to help people grow through fitness, wellness, and by showing them real, never-quit resilience — because everything we need is already inside us.

How did this experience reshape your understanding of strength — physically and emotionally?

That experience completely redefined strength for me. Physically, strength stopped being about how much weight I could move and became about how much I could endure, recover, and keep going day after day. Emotionally, I learned that real strength isn’t toughness or suppression ,it’s honesty, presence, and the willingness to keep moving forward even when everything in you wants to stop. I realized strength is quiet, consistent, and built in the moments no one sees, and once you develop it, it carries into every part of your life.

Q- You now work with men navigating change. What patterns do you see repeatedly in those who feel “stuck” in mid-life?

A - What I see over and over is men telling themselves the same story: it’s too late, it’s too hard, I’m too busy, I can’t afford it. By the time men hit their 40s, most have been conditioned to talk themselves out of what they truly want. That’s what keeps them stuck in jobs they hate, sexless marriages they’ve gone numb in, and quietly stewing in regret over the dreams they never pursued. I don’t just tell them “fuck that” — I show them it’s a lie, because I’m living proof. I walked across America at 47 after a failed marriage, a failed business, and a moment where life felt completely hopeless — and now I’ve rebuilt my body, my purpose, and my world.

If someone feels the pull for change but can’t drop everything and walk across a country, where should they start?

Start small and start where you are. Real change begins with achievable wins that let you feel what it’s like to get uncomfortable and still win your day. Something as simple as a 30-day challenge — walking every morning for 45 minutes to an hour, no excuses — starts stacking proof that you can keep promises to yourself. And when you’re ready for a real, total transformation, that’s when having a coach matters — someone who’s already walked through the fire, rebuilt from nothing, and can guide you step by step into the strongest, most capable new version of yourself.

Jeremy’s story isn’t about walking across America.
That just happens to be the shape his reset took.

What sits underneath is something far more familiar — the moment many of us reach in mid-life where noise no longer satisfies, speed no longer equals progress, and doing more feels strangely hollow. Jeremy reminds us that change doesn’t always require reinvention or escape. Sometimes it asks for honesty, patience, and the courage to slow down enough to listen.

His journey challenges the idea that strength peaks early, that discipline must be aggressive, or that transformation belongs only to the young or extreme. Instead, it offers a quieter truth: that resilience is built step by step, identity can evolve without being erased, and movement — when stripped of punishment and ego — can become a lifelong practice of self-trust.

For anyone standing at that invisible crossroads, feeling the pull to reassess without knowing exactly why, Jeremy’s experience is a reminder that you don’t need to walk 3,000 miles to begin.