Nick Topel is a lifestyle and wellness trainer and Fitness model known for his magazine covers, AD campaigns with ARONIK SWIM and has amassed a huge following on Instagram over recent years since graduating from Ohio State University. We teamed up with photographer Aydin Arjomand and Kim Mesches for an all-new digital exclusive for our fitness title Metropolis Sport.
How are you, how are you liking Florida?
I love it. It’s very different from Ohio obviously, but, It’s where I need to be. Miami is the next step.
How was Greece?
It was my first time. Greece was a pretty worthy destination, so I’d never been there before. Just a beautiful island. The culture is so dramatically different and kind of a different perspective on life. And everybody was beautiful on the island too, which I thought was really interesting.
What fitness and wellness really means to you and how do you define that for yourself and for the clients that you work with?
Great question. And my definition of that has changed, you know, over the years, as a young guy in high school, it was how much can you bench, press and, you know, do you look good with your shirt off? Even through college, I got into bodybuilding and it was all about competing and stepping on stage and looking great. My social media platform has grown and I’ve worked with more clients across the world. Probably 250 clients as of now. That definition has changed to this nod towards a lifestyle, health and wellness, because.
The really extreme bodybuilding stuff or, the vanity side of, health and wellness is not necessarily sustainable. You look good for a couple of weeks. Do you hate diets and hate training? So over time, that definition for me has changed to just, you know, healthy eating habits, behaviors, living a healthy lifestyle.
I walk every day in the morning, I try to avoid processed foods and just focus on consistently exercising. I’ve seen a much greater response, with the clients that I work with when we focus a lot more on things like the lifestyle of health and wellness.
So develop sustainable habits and routines that you can follow for the rest of time, because, you’re not really successful , if you have this crazy goal, you’re gonna lose a hundred pounds and the second you’re done with the diet, you put on all the weight again. That’s not really sustainable and in my opinion, not super healthy either.
PHOTOGRAPHER Aydin Arjomand
So obviously you do more than walk every day. Why is walking so important that you mentioned that in your own health journey?
So there’s a lot of different angles to that. And they’re all equally as important. You know, the first one, when you look at, you know, calorie balance, how many calories you’ve burned for the day, a significant portion of it comes from your non-exercise activity, thermogenesis. So basically like your lifestyle wellness factor.
So you are going to be much more sustainable in the long term. If you can implement the kind of daily habits that elevate your lifestyle, wellness spectrum. So walking is one of those, just getting up, getting some circulation, getting some steps in absorbing the fresh air and the sunshine. Just good for your overall health and wellness. In Addition to that, it helps with digestion. I walk a couple of times a day, usually after I eat. That kind of thing helps speed up digestion and help you feel regulated and normalized. The other thing, I use it as my meditation time. So I like to get up in the morning and walk by myself and just kind of gather my thoughts for the day. So those first, 10 to 20 minutes in the morning, It’s all about, you know, meditation and kind of calibrating for the day.
Are you still collaborating with other trainers or are you working independently?
My personal label is the quarter-inch club and it’s kind of an interesting story. It had started as a personal project for an arm training program. It turns out that even the most searched fitness term on the internet is how to get bigger arms. So as a fitness model, it’s kinda my job too. So we just developed this really comprehensive arm training program for men. And it’s sold. But kind of through that, we’ve got a very large demand for personal wellness coaching. And so it evolved from this small personal project into a full label, online coaching brand. You can just go to nicktopelfitness.com and we’ll have all of our coaching programs. We have a variety of off the shelf, low budget items, that are fully comprehensive, and lots of supporting materials. My vault program has over 90 pages, of course, with four hours of video instruction and we give you access to our online coaching software, and load the programs for you.
We have an involved program, cardio and abs program, arm training program, and then you also have access to apply to join our one-on-one coaching program. You can also check out the quarterinchclub.com as well.
Can you talk to us a little bit about your education and your bodybuilding experience and how those things sort of shaped who you are today?
Yeah. And that’s a great thing to highlight, especially in the online wellness space, because everybody is like an online coach now. I think unfortunately, a lot of the internet. Kind of masses are people looking for health and wellness advice. They more often than not, they just associate somebody who has a great body with somebody who can coach you. And that’s not necessarily the case. You know, there’s a lot of factors involved in that and, you know, just plain and simple, some guys just have really good genetics and horrible work ethic and they just look good naturally.
I think when you’re dealing with somebody else’s health and wellness, that’s a very serious topic. It’s difficult in the online space just because it’s not so well-regulated like the wild west of sorts. A little bit about me, you know, I’m a self coached, professional bodybuilder. I got my pro card as a natural athlete, you know, no drugs involved and it’s a little bit of a taboo topic. I don’t look down on anybody who’s using performance enhancing drugs, but I think.
It’s a distinguishing factor that I always like to highlight. There’s a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on with a lot of these big guys. Well, this guy has taken every drug in the book and the body responds very differently when you’re taking, you know, exotic compounds that enhance how your body performs. On a professional level, professional stage, To a certain extent, some of those things are necessary. I want to be clear that, you know, I’m not necessarily speaking down to anybody who’s doing that stuff, but I always try to highlight and talk about my coaching.
Yeah. I got my pro card as a natural guy, and that’s important because the body responds differently to training and diet, when you’re kind of doing things without help. The self coach professional bodybuilder. I’ve been on the cover of maybe like 15 different magazines, health and wellness, consultant for pop sugar, birdie. I just recently became the men’s health editor at Beverly Hills lifestyle magazine. I also do a lot of writing about personal health and wellness, and kind of that elevates your lifestyle wellness factor. And I also have my certifications .
Master’s level sports, nutrition classes at Ohio State university. I’m a certified personal trainer, sports nutritionist. Specifically with the personal training, I have bodybuilding and weak point development specializations.
What do you feel like is your differentiator factor as a trainer?
You know, as a pro fitness model, it’s my job to be healthy and look good all the time. So if you’re following something that’s not sustainable, that’s a bad program to push on to others. Hey, we figured out how to do this on a long-term sustainable, consistent basis in order to look good and be healthy too. The other thing is it’s just an experience factor. You’ve got to have experience and understand, or have an idea of how the body’s going to respond.
And that just comes from training yourself and training hundreds of other clients. I’d say the distinguishing factor. I’m a natural guy. I do this for a living, so I know how to integrate, the habits and the lifestyle wellness stuff. And then just the experience. There’s a lot of people who are textbook smart, but don’t understand how to apply it in a practical setting. And that comes from just being able to do it for yourself or coach myself to provide both status. And I’m coaching hundreds of clients as well. And just get more data points and understand what’s going to work and what doesn’t work.
You have some breaking news, you joined Only Fans. Let’s talk more about that?
I just recently created an Only Fans page. I really think that the conversation about only fans has changed, in a very positive manner. The platform has become much more mainstream. There’s 192 million users on this site. I think I had a very closed minded perception of the type of content and the people that were on there until recently. I got a chance to meet some of my idols and my icons, people that I look up to in the fitness industry, and a lot of really big mainstream fitness models. They all have these fan pages accounts, and they run them very successfully as private fan pages. Then I got a call from the executive celebrity management team. And they were like, we would love to have you on this platform, we know you’re a personal trainer. We’re looking for creators like yourself who have a very strong fan base. And so I spoke with my manager and I spoke with a lot of very close friends and kind of explained my business plan behind it. And they’re like, dude, you should do it.
So all of the outtakes, the additional content that’s going on, my private community, people love it. So I’ve had a tremendous response, and people are so nice to me there. It’s been very positive for me. My private fan page, where she’s gonna answer your messages, you can see all the outtakes, BTS, everything else. I saved the sexiest stuff for my only fans. It’s my job to be a sexy guy on camera, a pro fitness model. So I’ve got a lot of good content to share. The farthest I’m going to go? I almost feel like I needed to define implied nudity, but things that are going to showcase the beauty of the male physique, the hard work and dedication that goes into sculpting your body. It’s not going to be any type of, you know, in your face adult contents, porn type stuff.
What would fans be surprised to know about you?
I love Disney music. I have Disney’s greatest hits playlist that I listen to all the time when I’m in the gym, but it’s the old school stuff from like Mulan, Tarzan, Toy Story, The Little Mermaid, and Cinderella. Totally my guilty pleasure.
An all-new Metropolis Sport presented by Man of Metropolis starring Nick Topel PHOTOGRAPHER Aydin Arjomand STYLIST Kim Mesches
GROOMING Shaina Ehrlich EDITOR Seth Travis
