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Your perfect repeatable week for health and fitness

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Let's Say Hello

Rachel Discussion

Interview

Text

Post Show/Recap

Post show with Rachel.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:

– Eliza Lamb	– John Dachauer	– Super Anonomous
– Ken McQuade	– Leigh Tanner	– Tim Alexander

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Your perfect repeatable week for health and fitness

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:03:34.870] – Allan

Hey, Ras, how are you?

[00:03:36.420] – Rachel

Good, Allan, how are you today?

[00:03:38.840] – Allan

I'm doing okay.

[00:03:40.790] – Allan

We're right on the verge. Well, if you've listened to this podcast before, we've talked about Panamanians and the way they like to protest. And they'll block roads, and they don't just block a road or a bridge for a day or two.

[00:03:54.890] – Allan

Sometimes when they get to these kind of things, they block them permanently for weeks. And what happens is that then things that would come to us over thenroad can't get here and so they can't deliver stuff. And then as the result, we run out and people scramble and figure a few things out. But as that goes on week after week, it gets worse and worse. So today I got up, I walked around just looking for things. There's no yogurt on this island at all, which is a staple for our breakfast. We've got eggs. So they figured out the egg problem.

[00:04:30.700] – Rachel

Good.

[00:04:31.220] – Allan

We're running out of bread. They've done something to get a different type of bread, but we're still running out of that now because again, weeks and weeks, there's no orange juice. So we're running out of things. And like gasoline, propane is also very short. And so that's where the struggle is. And it's just like, just sometimes it gets a little frustrating for sure because. It'D be so much nicer if I could just walk to one grocery store. And it have the things I need. And then I can just walk home. But as it stands now, I have to make a circuit of it and walk all over town. This place has milk, this place has eggs, this place has this. But then you get into a store, it's like everything else you wanted. And then that place doesn't have the bread and it doesn't have the coffee. So it's like, okay, now I got to find another place that has the coffee and maybe has bread or I might have to buy a different kind of bread or something else. And so, yeah, it's just this thing that's out there that you struggle through.

[00:05:30.800] – Allan

But we're in a third world country, and this is their country. It's not mine. I just wish it didn't have the downstream effects it has because tourism has completely dried up. And that means that most people send their workers home. When their workers don't work, they don't make any money and they can't feed their family. And this is not a savings type of people. They pretty much live paycheck to paycheck. Even if they had extra money, they would just go spend it.

[00:06:01.320] – Allan

They don't think in terms of the future the same way that a lot of us might think, oh, we just put that money aside. No, they're going to buy something that they needed or wanted for a while, but at the same time, because we're set that way. You can buy a slice of cheese, you can buy a single egg. Oh, gosh, you can buy a single piece of bread if you want. And so if you just have enough money to buy lunch, you can buy lunch. But when they do these blocks and there'S no money and no one's making that money, they're at home. Without the money, they can't necessarily feed their families. And so it's been going on for weeks, and I understand why they're doing it.

[00:06:39.550] – Allan

Hopefully, the government will come to resolve the issue that's going on. It has something to do with the mining contract and it's gone to the supreme court. But every day you just go in the grocery store and it's one more thing that they don't have. And so there's just going to be a point here where there's no gasoline. And there's no propane and people can't cook their food. And we're all just grabbing the last things that are in the grocery store because that's all they can get. That'll be a shame. But that's kind of where we're at right now, so it's a little frustrating.

[00:07:12.340] – Rachel

It is very. I really hope they resolve their stuff soon and realize how many people they're hurting in the process.

[00:07:19.850] – Allan

I don't even think it hits their mind. They just know this is how you get the government to respond. And they just block a road. They just flat out block a road and say, okay, no one's going through this road. No goods or services are going through here. So sometimes they'll let people through.

[00:07:36.210] – Allan

You can walk around the roadblock. If you get out of a car and walk to the other side, some taxis and whatnot, or busses, they can arrange for someone to be on the other side to bus you from there, take you from there so people can move that's not the easiest way, but, yeah goods are stuck and so they're blocking food, they're blocking gasoline, they're blocking propane. Eventually, here, grocery stores will run down on stuff, except just basic, basic stuff. Like, okay, here's a can of tuna, here'S some oil, here's some rice, here's some beans, but they're running out of the other stuff. And then when you don't have any propane, you don't have any gasoline. Everything else stops. Everything else.

[00:08:18.640] – Rachel

My goodness. My gosh. Well, I hope it resolves soon.

[00:08:21.970] – Allan

I do too. But. How are things up there?

[00:08:24.610] – Rachel

Cold.

[00:08:27.250] – Rachel

As you can tell. We're in the middle of winter. It's snowing. It could be icy. At least we have blue sky days today. I mean, it could be worse, but.

[00:08:35.170] – Allan

It just makes it feel colder.

[00:08:38.320] – Allan

I can see the sun, but I can't even feel any heat off of it.

[00:08:41.690] – Rachel

Exactly. Well, it was 20 degrees earlier this morning, so, yeah, cold is cold, but

[00:08:47.740] – Allan

that nuclear. Shouldn't I feel a little.

[00:08:51.030] – Rachel

I wish. Yeah.

[00:08:53.770] – Rachel

But we're managing. Everything's fine up here. Getting ready for the holidays, getting ready for a vacation. Just getting ready to wrap up this year, actually.

[00:09:01.610] – Allan

Yeah. It's kind of fast, isn't it?

[00:09:03.390] – Rachel

It is

[00:09:04.750] – Allan

kind of crazy.

[00:09:05.920] – Rachel

Yep. It'll be New Year's before you know it.

[00:09:08.370] – Allan

All right, are you ready to talk to Peloton, Ben?

[00:09:11.620] – Rachel

Sure. All right.

Interview

[00:10:03.950] – Allan

Ben, welcome to 40+ fitness.

[00:10:06.280] – Ben

Thank you so much for having me on. I'm really excited to have a discussion with you today.

[00:10:10.580] – Allan

Yeah. So the title of your book is called Raise the Bar: How to Push Beyond Your Limits and Build a Strong Future You. And I think a lot of times we get older and we think, okay. Well, I have these limits. Oh, my knee, oh, my ankle, oh, my hip, I've got this job, I've got kids, I've got this, I've got to run. Do that. And as a result, we kind of pocket, if you will, or back of the stove. We push all this stuff that is important. We know it's important, but we just say, okay, I can't. And the word I can't becomes kind of the lexicon of our language.

[00:10:49.330] – Allan

Okay, well, I can't do that because of this. And there's always a because. There always will be a because. And so you had a quote in the book. You started out, this is actually, I think, the second sentence of the book. So I didn't get very far before I was like, okay, I'm going to like this guy Ben. And it was, “all too often, we grow up to define ourselves by our limitations.” I actually made that little quote thing, and I posted on my facebook right. After I read it. I liked it that much.

[00:11:17.380] – Allan

You know, because if we'Re going to talk about raising the bar, we're going to talk about doing anything hard in our lives, good in our lives, because everything that's good is actually kind of hard. We have to raise the bar. We have to raise our performance. We have to do a little better than we're probably doing right now. But if we let those limitations sit out there, they will eat us up.

[00:11:37.660] – Ben

Yeah, I think that's very true. I think every biggest growth opportunity in my life so far has always been through a moment of challenge or an opportunity where I've pushed myself out from a comfort zone or the outside forces have put something challenging in front of me. And I've learned and developed and grown through that process. And so I think as you go through life, as these external factors become probably more increased through kids and more responsibilities and priorities, we tend to, as you say, almost start to doubt ourselves or on a time basis, on an ability basis, on a confidence basis. And I think a big focus of my book is giving people structure to understand that they do have the capabilities to still be doing those things into their mid to late to longest years possible, and also to set them up for success. I used to work in finance, so my brain is very much logical and structured.

[00:12:42.630] – Ben

And so I think the combination of my background of ex finance guy or finance guy into a health and wellness expert means that my approach to fitness and wellness is very structured in the sense that I like to give people a toolkit to use to then tap into whenever they need it. And that's true at any point in someone's life. And a big emphasis of the book is around keeping yourself physically and mentally fit for whatever life throws your way. Because all of us are going to be going through challenges of some sort throughout our lives. Some people suffer grief or go through health challenges or there's lots of things that go on in our lives. I think, most importantly, if we can be ready physically and mentally to tackle those and navigate through those, we're going to navigate through them and come out the other side stronger. Whereas if we don't prepare ourselves physically and mentally for those, they could become an even heavier weight to carry around with you for the rest of your life.

[00:13:48.260] – Allan

Yeah. well, one of the things you got into the book, and as I was kind of, you were going through your story, which is actually kind of fascinating, you'd be surprised there's quite a few parallels in our past. I went through accounting and CPA in school, too, but that was not my first choice. Just like finance wasn't necessarily your first choice, but you talked about how, an I think our aspirations, we were younger, are kind of untainted because, well, of course I can be a professional football player and of course I can be an astronaut. That's what they told me. They told me if you work hard and you do the things and you're in the right place, right time, you can have those things.

[00:14:29.270] – Allan

So we aren't as tainted with our past setbacks as we are when we're older. But one of the tools that you did provide in the book that I thought was something we really need to think about. Because when you get older, I can tell you, you go to the gym. You got all the spunk in the world, I'm going to do the workouts. I'm going to do the thing, and then the knee starts hurting a little or you're ten times sore tomorrow. I actually have a story where I couldn'T get out of bed the next day. I did a workout, and it was really just a benchmark workout. It wasn't even the workout, it was just the benchmark workout. I couldn't get out of bed. I had to call in sick for work the next day.

[00:15:09.330] – Allan

So we have these setbacks, but your approach to setbacks, I think, is very fresh. And I would like for you to talk a little bit about how do we regroup and pivot and do what we've got to do when we face one of those big things.

[00:15:22.070] – Ben

Yeah, I think the first approach that I've always loved to take is really focused on having that growth mindset. I think it's a term or a concept that's been spoken about a lot but I think many of us slip into this world of having a fixed mindset where basically you don't really give anything a go because you're fearing failure before you even start. Whereas a growth mindset is focused all around. Every experience or opportunity is a learning opportunity. And so even if you, in your mind, fail at something across that process you'Re still going to be learning a hell of a lot, which could set you up for success for the next time you come around to it with regards to workouts. And as you get older, your body becoming just slowing down a little bit and it becoming a little bit more challenging mentally and physically.

[00:16:10.450] – Ben

I think what's most important for me and from a lot of the clients I've worked with across the years, is, again, going back to that toolkit of setting you up for success. Like, can you structure your day in a way which makes sure you, one, commit to the workout so you don't not do it in the first place, but two, you then have a recovery regime that's set up and ready for you, so you're making sure that you're putting that love back into your muscles after working them out, too. And so there's lots of different chapters within the book, but I think having an awareness of everything available to you is a really important factor to begin with. And I broke down in the book all the different areas of wellness, but also understanding when to tap into them. Is really important, too, because I think sometimes in wellness and fitness, there's a lot of noise and there's a lot of people telling you should be doing this, and this is the best way to do it.

[00:17:07.500] – Ben

In reality, we're all different. Right? So my approach is slightly different of here are all the options that I believe are a good tool to be using in your repertoire and test them. Do your due diligence on what works for you, what doesn't work for you, and then across the years, go on a journey of discovery with your health and fitness to find out what really is beneficial for you and your body and your mind. And most importantly, don't try and get it all done in one day. I think what's really, you listen to a lot of these fitness influencers and they're like, I get up go to my boss, I have this crazy breakfast, and then do this and do that. And I think anyone who just lives a life where you've got a lot of other things going on like that, is just straight away overwhelming. So my approach typically is try and at least tick off, like, one thing to begin with. And then as you start to build those habits, as you start to build your confidence, that one thing then will lead on to other positive habits in your day.

[00:18:09.370] – Ben

But I think if you can kick start your morning in particular, with at least either a healthy breakfast, which is going to feed your gut, make you feel good, or go and work out, get outside, get out in fresh air working out and moving your body is going to look different for everyone. But I think, importantly, finding what works for you, finding what feeds your soul, makes you feel good, is key in that.

[00:18:33.680] – Allan

Yeah, one of the core components of that, and it's what I noticed across your story, you got into this a little bit later in the book, was that you always kind of fell back on one core thing and that was the values, the values that you had for yourself. As I've kind of started looking at motivation and how that plays, I think that's the holy grail. I think when you actually put value in the health of your body. When you put value in the quality of your life, it made you make decisions and do things that were completely against the grain of what most people would do.

[00:19:12.690] – Allan

Like, particularly when you went from finance, well paid job, all the accolades, all the stuff to, okay, now I'm going to pedal on a bicycle, over a tv, on the Internet, that fell back on some pretty deep seated values for you that went beyond just winning, because that'S what finance was, was winning. This was something entirely different.

[00:19:38.800] – Ben

100%. I think you mentioned, I go into one of the chapters in the book about the importance of understanding your values. And I think the main thing that I like to say within this section is, like, the first step of self development is self awareness.

[00:19:54.230] – Ben

And so I think a lot of us go through life evolving our values by almost imitating other people or getting influenced by lots of people throughout our lives, which is one part of it. But I think what's most important is there's no truer happiness than if you can show up every single day as your true self. And so I think spending the time to sit down with yourself and think.

[00:20:16.660] – Ben

What is most important to me? How do I want to show up in the world? What do I believe in? And doing that consistently, it really gives you that confidence to then move into spaces that you may not think you could have done before. Like you mentioned, as I transitioned from finance to fitness, I'd been spending years testing whether this industry was right for me.

[00:20:40.250] – Ben

I've been surrounding myself with people within the industry. I've been coaching classes as a hobby. But I think most importantly, the things that really, truly mattered to me at that time were looking after my health, fostering strong relationships, helping other people, like having huge gratitude around that, and having an influence on other people, and building a legacy for myself and so I think that I went on a discovery during that period and a bit of a deeper dive into. Okay, so what really matters to me.

[00:21:12.230] – Ben

And what that ended up looking like was I wanted to join a business that was really helping people. I wanted to do a job that had a huge passion for through music and health and fitness. And what's really interesting, I was diagnosed with skin cancer during that period so I think that almost forced my hand a little bit into that space. But I think the takeaway from this chapter that I'd love for people to take away listen to this podcast is, I don't want anyone to have to go through a cancer diagnosis to be forced into assessing those values like I wish I had done it before. So then I was set up for success and didn't have to go through mental and physical challenges that I did. Yeah, I think ultimately, when it comes down to hard things or challenging moments, if you can truly stand up and just stay true to your values, stay true to who you are, you're going to go to sleep at night feeling a lot more in control.

[00:22:13.630] – Ben

And I also love to say we can only control the controllable. So if you can finish the day being like, I did everything I possibly could to be myself, I owned everything I said, all the actions that I did today, I believe and I trust in then in my eyes, that's one of the quickest ways to building confidence within yourself and building a healthy and happy life.

[00:22:36.610] – Allan

Now, in the book, you got into resilience and you took a pivot. And I'm glad you did because it wasn'T something that most people talk about when they think about resilience. And I think they think about resilience as they think about the kind of the phrases like grit and determination and just grinding it out.

[00:22:54.310] – Allan

So it's just this harsh, hard thing that we build over time. But you pointed to the fact that support is a key component of being truly resilient. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:23:09.710] – Ben

Yeah, I think it's vital to understand that we can't do things alone. Like everything that I've done in life that'S been a big success, I've always been supported by a team of people, or friends or family or I think to believe that you're going to go out there on your own and do whatever you want to do, whether it's like build a multimillion pound business or achieve great sporting success, or it'S very unlikely that you're going to be able to go there and just go solo.

[00:23:39.050] – Ben

And actually, what I found is that I've personally got to places quicker because there's normally people within the industry or that, you know, that know a little bit more about something so that you can learn quicker and get inspired by those that have been there before and learn from other people's mistakes. I think what's really interesting is I worked in private equity, which is a very fast moving business within finance. And I was very young, comparatively, to be in this industry. But it pushed me in a way to build such resilience, because I had to learn really fast. I had to learn how to be around CEOs of companies, I had to learn how to be at board meetings. And discuss things in financial details in depth. And I had to learn a hell of a lot around business strategy and financial modeling.

[00:24:34.670] – Ben

And if I hadn't pushed myself and moved into that space and surrounded myself by those people, I would never have had that opportunity. And if I'd just gone on my own mission to get to that spot, I never would have even got anywhere close. And so I think there's so much power in surrounding yourself by people who inspire you, people who challenge you, because I truly believe, and what I found throughout my life is that at any point in time, you are typically the average of the five people you spend the most time with or you're interacting with on the most regular basis.

[00:25:12.530] – Ben

And I think it's important to have a mixture of people. I don't think you need almost people that you can rely on to ask questions to and inspire you, but I really, truly believe you need people to lean on in times of need as well, who are maybe a bit more emotional. And it's good to have a bit of diversity within that solid group of people that are around you.

[00:25:33.820] – Allan

Yeah, you talked about your parents in there, but another one I'd like to bring up, that you had a coworker a female coworker, and her skill set was the analytics and the numbers, and your skill set was the smiling and talking to people and the two of you kind of put that together to form really a strong team that was capable of each of you filling up some of the things that you weren't as strong at while you built those. You didn't just say, okay, you do all the numbers, I'll do all the talking, and you just leave it there. You still kept working on learning how to do the numbers while you were doing it. This was just the bridge, just the support that you needed to push yourself through and be successful on the other side.

[00:26:17.850] – Ben

Yeah, definitely. And the first step with that was me admitting to myself that I needed to work this out. And I think I was speaking to someone the other day and they said, what'S the biggest myth that it's like shouldn't be believed? I think the term fake it until you make it. I just don't love that term at all because it's probably the worst bit of advice you can give anyone. Actually, I think my advice would be to be true to yourself, be honest to yourself, say, you know what? I actually don't know what I'm doing here, and work with the people that you trust to support you in that moment.

[00:26:55.380] – Ben

And then very quickly, most of us if we put the time and effort into something, we will learn and we'll grow and develop into the space. And that's what I ended up doing myself. But I'm still at a stage where my strengths lie in another area. So I truly believe that we should lean on our strengths. But don't forget about the weaknesses, because at some stage, you're going to get caught out if you just focus on your strengths. But, yeah, I think delegating and also understanding that there are people, we're all going to be slightly different and have different strengths and weaknesses is important.

[00:27:30.510] – Allan

Yeah. So one of my strengths is lifting. I can get really strong if I put my mind to it. I can have strong endurance, but it takes a lot more work. And so I could be an awesome grandfather. But if we go to the zoo, my grandkids might just run me to death if I don't train myself to be the grandfather that can keep up with the grandkids. When I did a tough mudder with my daughter, she was a level one crossfit coach, and I wanted to do a tough mudder with her. If I didn't work on my strength, endurance, grip strength, all of it, she would have left me in the dust.

[00:28:08.090] – Allan

And I would have respected it. I said, sure, you go on. I'm slowing you down. But I went into that race saying, no, I'm not going to have to say that. So I pushed through weaknesses I had. I had to lose weight, I had to get stronger. I had to improve my endurance. And all that was just knowing, okay, these are my weaknesses. My mental strength, my tenacity, my willingness to push myself was always there. I just had to apply it.

[00:28:33.750] – Allan

And so it was understanding your values. Understanding what you want to accomplish, and then just kind of like you did over and over in your life, just put your head down and say, this is where I'm going. I might be in last place right now, but I won't be when this race is over. And I think that's true resilience when you'Re asking for help, when you're true to yourself and you persevere because you don't see failure as a potential and you do what's necessary, even if it's asking for help to get there.

[00:29:05.220] – Ben

Yeah. And I think on top of that, I really, truly believe that as we go through life, if you stop learning your brain will just slowly slow down very similar to your body. There was a great analogy that I got told once where if someone breaks their arm, you have your arm in a car for, like, six weeks, and because you keep your arm in the same position for that long, the calcification of the bone, it never actually gets back to where it was before.

[00:29:31.640] – Ben

And so if you think about if that's just over six weeks, if we as individuals are not moving our bodies or sitting down too much, like slowly but surely, that's going to be our bodies and our mind. And it was an analogy that blew my mind because I thought with all the clients I work with it'S never too late to get started, but if we don't get started soon, then it's going to become even harder. And so I suppose to a lot of your listeners, what I'd say is, whatever age you are, today is the best day to get started with your health and fitness journey. Because for me, I'm inspired and my biggest motivation now is so I can move around with my grandkids when I'm in my 60s 70s 80s. That sounds quite strange because I am in my 30s, but that's my main driver, my main motivation. I don't even have kids right now.

[00:30:23.720] – Ben

But that's my main reason for still getting up and going to the gym and improving my mobility and flexibility and whatnot.

[00:30:34.080] – Allan

Yeah, well, I want to be able to wipe my own ass when I'm 105. So there's that.

[00:30:39.150] – Ben

That's the goal.

[00:30:42.190] – Allan

And it is you set a goal, you set who you want to be. You set your future, and you start working towards that, you're potentially going to have setbacks, you're going to have things that are going on, but you do the best with what you can, where you are, with what you have.

[00:30:55.240] – Allan

And one of the tools you put in the book that I think is really valuable for helping someone kind of put their starting point on paper, if you will, is to do an audit of your well being. Can you talk a little bit about that audit and how to go about that?

[00:31:10.870] – Ben

Yes, I think this is going back into the combination of my finance and fitness background. So for those that know, obviously, within a business, a business will have to audit their financials every quarter. So what they're doing within that process is they're submitting how their business is doing. What's the business health at the time. From a financial perspective, from a progress and growth perspective and essentially, they're providing figures to their shareholders to say, this is where we're at, this is where the business is moving forward. So I believe that we should be doing this on a regular basis for our health and wellness.

[00:31:51.150] – Ben

And so within the auditing or well being pillars, I try and break this down into movement, into nutrition, into rest. And also mental well being. And I think within the book, I break this down into lots of different categories and give people things that have really benefited me and also lots of the clients that I've worked with across the years. And I think essentially what this auditing and wellbeing is all about is having a check in with yourself, whether it's every quarter or every month, and just saying, all right, where am I at today?

[00:32:24.580] – Ben

Because what's gone on before, I can't change. But what is going to go on going forward, I can change. So let's have an understanding of where I'm at today. Which areas can I improve on, and what are the steps I can take to make an adjustment to these areas so I can support myself to live a happy and healthy life going forward? I think sometimes in life, we're on a train of just going through life and everything's moving super fast, and sometimes it'S really good to just have a moment to check in with yourself. And that's what this concept is all about. And then, obviously, providing them the toolkit to go out there and make the changes within their life.

[00:33:02.080] – Allan

Yeah, and some of the eye opening things that you might find from this audit is, okay, well, how well am I sleeping? And then you realize, well, it's crap. I'm not sleeping well at all. I'm staying up too late. I'm doing things that aren't helping me go to sleep and I don't feel rested in the morning but I just keep hit some coffee, hit a doughnut and go. And you know, that's not serving your health, but that's what you do because that's what you've always done. You look at your fitness and you may say, when was the last time I actually worked out?

[00:33:36.040] – Allan

And you're like, well, okay, I went for a walk, but really the last time I worked out, maybe that was last July. You're like, okay, I got some things to work on, so it'll help you see things that you can work on, but I think it'll also give you these opportunities to see your wins. And so, similar to the way your father was when you were playing football when you were younger, you were playing very well and you were scoring three goals in a game, but he always found something for you to focus on, to improve on. And you had the resilience and the strong mind to say, okay, well, the only way I can solve this problem is to score four goals next time. And it's not that we have to go that way with our health and fitness, but obviously I think all of us know that there's probably some low hanging fruit.

[00:34:19.260] – Allan

So the first few times you do this audit of your health, of your wellness, you're going to find things that you should be focusing your attention on and there is a finite amount of time and things like that that you can do. So this will also kind of help you prioritize where you should be spending the time so that you're getting the most out of it.

[00:34:38.250] – Ben

I totally agree with you. There is some easy hanging fruit there. And I think sometimes within health and wellness it's really difficult because like I mentioned before, there's a lot of noise. And so what I've tried really to do within this chapter is break down things in a really simple way and again, give people the awareness and not put the pressure on them to be like, right if you do all of these things but understand that it's accumulation of these things that's going to get you to living a healthy and happier life and says maybe one week you might work out three times and then the next week you won't only work out once.

[00:35:15.250] – Ben

But it might be getting better in other areas. And so a lot of our health and wellness comes down to stress on the body and within that, we have good stress and we have bad stress and so for me, it's about tapping into this toolkit to work more on the good stress and less on the bad stress and work on the energy givers in life and move away from what I call in the book, the energy takers. And so, yeah, I think it's important to have awareness of what's available to you and then start testing things for your body, because we're all slightly different.

[00:35:48.430] – Allan

Yeah, well, when you were going through your cancer treatments and getting yourself healthy again, you weren't killing it on the bike, you weren't doing all these hard workouts anymore. You struggled with that, obviously, because that was a part of your values, was someone who does these things and the people around you and everything, that was a core part of your life. But you knew, okay, until I solve this, this is number one. Till I solve this, then the rest of those things don't really matter. I could be the fittest corpse out there, but it's not going to do me any good. I got to heal. And then there were other times where. Yeah, you took a detour or went off path for the wrong reasons, and it took you a while to find your way back. So I think, again, this self awareness that you get from something like this audit lets you kind of put together. And help you redefine why you're doing what you're doing.

[00:36:42.610] – Allan

And basically, yes, sometimes you're not doing the optimal thing because it's just not the right time to be doing that thing. You need to be doing something else.

[00:36:52.870] – Ben

I think what's really important to note there on my cancer journey was physically, I couldn't do what I'd always done. And throughout my life, I'd always relied on fitness as my go to for my mental health, my physical health. And when that got stripped away from me, it made me go a bit deeper into the other areas of wellness. So I start to focus a lot more on my nutrition and I start to focus on my sleep, hygiene and my rest and recovery.

[00:37:21.960] – Ben

And I think sometimes we get caught up in wellness being, you got to just go to the gym, but there's so much more to it and I think really what is at the top is sleep, hygiene and sleep quality, I really believe is one of the most important things to our health and well being. And so that is the first thing that you're not getting right or you're not trying to improve, then sometimes all this other stuff is almost not a priority.

[00:37:51.110] – Ben

And the same with nutrition. If you're working out five, six times a week, but then you're going and eating fast food every single day, it isn'T going to serve you. And I really believe that what we're putting inside our bodies, whether it's nutrition or whether it's like products that we're using or environments we're surrounding ourselves, it actually has a dramatic effect on our health and wellness. And so all of these things, let's say you're injured or fitness, is still new to you, or you haven't been in it for a long time. There's other areas within the wellness space that you can really tap into as your kickstart, into improving yourself, into building you into that stronger fit of you.

[00:38:31.990] – Ben

And hopefully, as you start to build those habits into your life, you're going to build the confidence to just start integrating more and more.

[00:38:38.790] – Allan

Yeah, well, the problem was we were able to get away with it when we were in our teens, and our body'S not quite as forgiving for us to not get the sleep, not get the right food. We're seeing the results of that over time, and as a result, we just have to be a little bit more diligent. There's a question that I ask every guest, and I think this question is going to probably resonate with you as well as anyone I've ever talked to based on your book.

[00:39:02.000] – Allan

But I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:39:10.830] – Ben

Yeah, I think that it's difficult to nail down three, because like I said there'S a lot of things as option to us but I think just going simple terms like getting your body moving on the regular is going to be really important for both your mental and physical health. I mean, I've worked with millions of people over the years via the peloton platform, but also as like one on one clients.

[00:39:34.160] – Ben

And I've seen dramatic changes to people's mindset, people's physical look and also mental well being, just by moving their body on a regular basis. I think if you're not doing that right now, that's definitely something I'd encourage you to do. And it can literally start by, like we mentioned at the start of the podcast, just getting outside for a walk and then giving yourself a goal every single week, whether it's working out three times a week to start with, and then building that up into longer workouts. And then finding what works for you. I think number two is focusing on nutrition and focusing on feeding your body foods that are going to really benefit your gut health, foods that are going to be good back to you. And what I mean by that is foods that are nutritious for your body and that it isn't that hard for your body to break down. So for me, that is high quality proteins, carbs of some sort, but generally sort of like carbs are high in fiber and then lots of leafy greens and vegetables and fruits. And I think trying to move away from processed food is really key.

[00:40:46.740] – Ben

I think something that I've worked with a lot of clients on is we are influenced when we walk into a supermarket by so many things that it makes our brain just go wild. And I think sometimes we don't really know. And so a big tip for me when you're looking at food is understanding what is in our food. So taking an opportunity to start looking at labels doesn't need to be militantly. But just by understanding what you're putting into your body every single day from a calorific point of view, but also from a chemical point of view, is a big stepping stone to improving your health. There's a lot of, lot of ingredients in a lot of the products that we have in our supermarket. So the quicker you understand what they are and what they're doing to our body, probably the quicker you're going to stop eating them. And I know it's not easy, finances are challenging thing with regards to food.

[00:41:38.420] – Ben

And time, but I think we can sometimes coast through that space in our life. And really, you wouldn't put crappy fuel into a Ferrari or something that you really love, or you wouldn't water a plant with things that are going to kill it. So why are we feeding our bodies with things that are not making our body and mind function that well? And then thirdly, I think focus on rest. Rest is such an important part of our overall well being practice. And the first step of rest is sleep. If we can improve our sleep quality. Something that I discovered through working in finance was, doesn't matter how long you sleep necessarily, but it's actually about the quality of your sleep. And so I won't go into too much detail, but we have cycles in our sleep patterns. And so if you can get enough deep and rem sleep in within your night, that could be more beneficial than if you sleep 9 10 hours of not that good quality sleep.

[00:42:37.900] – Ben

And a big part of that is understanding how your practices before bed set you up for success, to make sure you'Re sleeping right, not being on your phone, not eating too late, not looking at screens too late or wearing blue blocking glasses or blue light blocking glasses. And just understanding like, how can I set myself up to success here to make sure that I get a solid amount of quality sleep that's going to regenerate my body for tomorrow, but also keep you mentally in a good place as you wake up tomorrow.

[00:43:10.250] – Allan

Thank you.

[00:43:11.000] – Allan

Ben, if someone wanted to learn more about you and learn more about the book, Raise the Bar, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:43:18.030] – Ben

So I have a website so my website, www.benaldis.com, spelled aldis.com. You can also find me on Instagram. So it's Benjamin Aldis on Instagram. And yeah, if anyone has any questions I'm hugely passionate about health and wellness. I've worked with, as I said, millions of people across the years. I currently work for a business called Peloton, who they have online fitness content. We do bike classes or spinning classes. We do tread classes. We do strength yoga, meditation. So the options are endless with regards to the fitness stuff.

[00:43:56.680] – Ben

If anyone has any questions at any point, I'm more than happy to answer them, help them along the way. This is my lifelong mission to try and help people. So thank you so much for having me on.

[00:44:07.950] – Allan

Thank you. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/621

[00:44:12.900] – Allan

And I'll be sure to have the links there. Ben, thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:44:18.010] – Ben

Thank you so much for having me.

Post Show/Recap

[00:44:19.570] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:44:20.990] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. What an interesting interview and what an interesting job he has writing for Peloton. But I do like a lot of what he and you discussed about mindset. I mean, it all starts with our self limiting beliefs and questioning what we think we can't do. It's a big thing.

[00:44:40.490] – Allan

Yeah. Well, again, his quote was, all too often we grow up to define ourselves by limitations.

[00:44:46.850] – Rachel

It's true.

[00:44:48.200] – Allan

Yeah. When I read that sentence, I'm like that'S every single person over the age of 40 who wants to lose weight or get more fit is that they start out with the things that they can't do. Well, I can't do this. I want to lose weight. I want to do that, but I can't do this.

[00:45:07.330] – Allan

I've been kind of fooling around on Facebook a little bit last month as you're listening to this, just posting things I call weight loss logic. And I posted one today, is I want to get rid of the fat on this butt, But.

[00:45:19.730] – Rachel

But yes.

[00:45:25.510] – Allan

And that's pretty much it. It's like you want something, but you put something in between you that you think, okay, well, this will stop me from doing it, and it may stop you from doing it the way that you thought you would. Okay, so this kid, Ben, and I'm going to call him a kid because he's just now getting into his 30s, but he wanted to be a professional football player.

[00:45:48.520] – Allan

Now, in his sense, football is soccer the way we do it in the United States. But basically he had every aspiration and from every indication, being younger, that he had the capacity to do this. So he was training and pushing himself, and that drove everything in his life. His aspirations, across everything. He put it all on the line for that thing and then he was notified. Basically, the way it works over there. Was that he wasn't going to get called back.

[00:46:18.810] – Allan

So he knew the writing was on the wall. You're not good enough to make it to the next level, and that's hard to hear.

[00:46:27.530] – Rachel

It is.

[00:46:28.330] – Allan

And so he could have quit. He could have just said, okay, fine. I'll just do something else and move on with his life, which he kind of did, but he got into finance and worked through. But when he got back into a situation where fitness was in his life again, he realized, I've got to keep this in my life. And there was some of it, a conflict of, okay, fitness was going to require him, finance was going to require him to travel eventually for what he was doing, what he was trained to do, but he loved doing these classes.

[00:47:06.080] – Allan

And he just the thought of, okay well, if I move on with this career, I won't be able to do this other thing. So he gave up a lot to get into this, and he went with a company. Granted, he did his due diligence on it. He was a finance guy, a low risk guy, but he did his things on, who are these peloton people and what is this going to mean? But it was a big bet because he was leaving that finance job to go take this other thing that could have amounted to nothing but being a nice looking guy with a british accent. It was kind of a no brainer. He was going to actually be good at this.

[00:47:49.110] – Rachel

For sure.

[00:47:50.200] – Allan

Tall, lean guy with a big smile. Yeah. Doing the class, I could see one or two women maybe being attracted to sitting at their screen, pedaling their bike just a little bit faster. But, yeah, I mean, we look at a limitation and then the question you have to ask yourself, and we've talked about this on the show before, when to quit.

[00:48:13.160] – Allan

And the point is, sometimes you do, sometimes you just say, okay, I'm not going to be an ultramarathon runner. I know that physically my body would just break eventually if I tried to do it consistently, if I tried to say, okay, this is just who I'm going to be. I'm going to be one of those weird guys that does 140 miles, 200 miles, crosses some part of the world nobody should actually be at for over a weekend just because I can. It's a limitation.

[00:48:40.410] – Allan

And my body physically won't be able to do that or isn't able to do that.

[00:48:43.720] – Allan

I'm not beat up by that. I'm just saying, okay, well, what can I do, right? I can be the most freaking grandfather you've ever seen. I'm going to be on the floor rolling around with the kids. I'm going to be out in the field kicking the ball. I'm going to be out there rolling around with them, playing with them.

[00:48:59.390] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:48:59.760] – Allan

And when I take them to the zoo, I'm not sitting on a bench waiting for them to finish, and I'm able to pick them up and carry them around and wrestle with them and do all those things. That's my aspiration.

[00:49:12.290] – Rachel

That's important. Okay. It's important.

[00:49:14.450] – Allan

Now I could say, okay, well, I tore my rotator cuff, so I should probably be kind of careful and just get your body ready. Get yourself ready.

[00:49:23.270] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:49:24.250] – Allan

Well, there's a pivot. Not a.

[00:49:26.620] – Rachel

Exactly. There's those physical things where I'm not going to be a pro baseball player or softball player. It's just not an aspiration. It's not something I'm built for. It's not something I'm interested in. But I've got other things I'd like to do. I'd like to grow old gracefully and like you, I'd like to be involved with grandkids and as well as friends of my peers and doing the things that they do. But kind of like what you guys had talked about towards the end of your discussion, taking an audit of your well being. I mean, where are you right now in your life? Are you interested in being a pro football player, Allan, at this point in your life?

[00:50:04.020] – Rachel

Probably not.

[00:50:06.130] – Allan

I wouldn't say no.

[00:50:10.450] – Rachel

Yeah, but you've got other priorities.

[00:50:14.450] – Allan

I wouldn't say no. So, yeah, if they came to me. And said, okay, look, it's probably not going to be the big contract, but here'S $500,000 a year to come out here and let us beat up on you for a year, I would probably take it.

[00:50:31.130] – Allan

I'd be a tackling dummy for half a million dollars. But I think a lot of times we get in there and the journey feels hard.

[00:50:39.390] – Rachel

Right.

[00:50:39.980] – Allan

It feels hard.

[00:50:41.200] – Rachel

Right.

[00:50:42.000] – Allan

And that's a time when people start to waver.

[00:50:46.680] – Rachel

Right.

[00:50:47.260] – Allan

And they start looking for the comfortable way. Okay, I have limitations. My knee hurts, my ankle hurts, my shoulder hurts. Or I would, but I've got to cook for the family and this is what the kids eat. So, yes, my staple is Mac and cheese. Well, you're not going to lose the weight you want to lose. If you're eating Mac and cheese three or four times a week or fast food three or four times a week. It's too hard. You've stopped yourself. So you've taken what you perceive as a limitation and you've stopped and you can'T blame anybody else. You have to take responsibility. That that's you. You limited yourself.

[00:51:32.490] – Rachel

Yes. I think that there's almost two concepts here, Allan, in that self limiting, like what I hear in the running world, well, I got bad knees, so I can't run. Well, do you really have bad knees? Did your doctor say your knees are so bad you can never run? Maybe there's something you can do to be able to run healthily and safely. But I also want to add, just toss in there self sabotage because we're talking about losing weight here. If you say, well, I want to lose x amount of pounds, but I can't give up alcohol or I can't give up Mac and cheese, then that's just self sabotage. Right there.

[00:52:06.090] – Allan

It is. But it is coming from that perspective of limitations. It'S just too much. It's too hard. I don't like to do it. I don't want to do it. I want to keep eating out every night. And so they're like, how do I lose weight? And I would be like, very carefully. You can, but you've basically put yourself in a roped in course that is going to make this very difficult to do and it's not going to fit the norms of when people walk into a restaurant and they put a plate of food in front of you and you eat it.

[00:52:43.640] – Allan

Your life's not going to be like that. If you want to lose weight and eat out all the time, you're going to have to set some rules, set some standards and do things a little bit different. Meaning asking for the to go box before you even get your food so you can put half or two thirds of it in that box to take home with you because you have no business eating 1200 calories for that meal when 600 is enough.

[00:53:08.320] – Rachel

Right?

[00:53:10.170] – Allan

And so if we set a limitation for ourselves, or there is an actual because sometimes people do go, the doctors love to say it, you stop running. Don'T walk on the sand, don't do what doctors get paid to do. They get paid to stop the pain. They get paid to help you feel like you're getting better. They don't actually get paid to get you better. They give you a solution. You don't want to run, don't run. Don't walk on the beach. That's going to hurt your knee. It might, but I was like. Okay, doc, what do I got to do so I can walk on the beach? I did not come all the way down here to live here, to not walk on a beach.

[00:53:52.540] – Allan

So don't tell me not to walk on a beach. Tell me what I got to do so I can, that's a different, you see that click there? That click is okay, you can tell me. And there could physically be a limitation. So I know, okay, first, six weeks after surgery, probably walking on the beach.

[00:54:09.050] – Rachel

That's right.

[00:54:09.740] – Allan

Okay. he might have a point.

[00:54:12.750] – Allan

But at the same time, I would never accept that I could never walk on the beach again.

[00:54:19.200] – Rachel

And like Ben said, with his experience with cancer, he had to take some time off. He had to reevaluate what he was capable of doing during the time he was dealing with his cancer treatments. And we all go through these phases in life too, where you need to take an audit, you need to say, well, what can I do today in order to achieve my goals in the future?

[00:54:38.920] – Allan

Yeah, and that's the other value of the audit is because you can sit down and say, okay, granted, I just had my knee operated on and I'm sitting here on the couch because I can'T really move around as much as I would like. Doctor still wants me to walk around, but he by no means wants me out running every weekend or lifting weights or doing these other. Right, but what can I do? Well, I can work on my mobility, yes.

[00:55:03.330] – Allan

I can go and figure out how to do, how to make and prepare really good food that my family loves that is healthy for us. So taking a cooking class, going out to a farmer's market on the weekend and learning about my food, maybe it's working on balance. That's not going to hurt my knee if I'm standing on 1ft and just trying to work on balance or mobility. While you may not be able to do something because it is a valid limitation, the question is, are you putting the limitation in front of yourself because it'S convenient and it means that you would have to go and do something uncomfortable and then that's holding you back. Or is it real? And if it's real, this audit is a good way for you to say no, well, I can't do this right now because of this that's real.

[00:55:54.050] – Rachel

That's really neat.

[00:55:55.000] – Rachel

And staying in the present right then is really important. It's interesting that you mentioned Ben was in his 30s. Did you say he was 40?

[00:56:02.580] – Allan

He is now in his 30s. When he was talking through the book, of course, this is a young man who was going through his teens and then 20s as he got into his career. And so as I started to talk to him, not knowing again how long happened between what he was talking about in the book and what he was.

[00:56:21.200] – Allan

I was basically assuming he was probably in his late 20s, but he said he's already past 30.

[00:56:27.370] – Rachel

It's just interesting to hear a guy, a person thinking about his future in the similar ways that you and I do. Allan, being that we're in our 50s even, you know, he's working towards developing a healthy lifestyle now so that he could live a healthy lifestyle in the future. And kind of taking that audit along the, we, we go through all these different phases in our life. And at the end goal, though, is to be able to have a healthy, high quality of life in our 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond. And so all that hard work that we're doing right now, or like he's doing in his 30s and 40s, that's setting us up for success in the long term. It's a long process.

[00:57:07.080] – Allan

And I think that's what he's looking at if you look at your career, most people have a career and they expect for it to last 40 years or so. We all kind of go into it with the idea, okay, I'll graduate from college or whatever, and I'll start my career. I'll work for 40, 50 years.

[00:57:24.430] – Allan

You may do double that because some people will go in and say, okay, I'll work the time in the military and then I'll do that and I'll go do this other career, and then I'll retire from that and that'll be my retirement. So they're looking at 50 years, maybe 60. But most people think in terms of 40 to 50 years. Okay, so he's starting out as a peloton instructor in his late 20s. If he goes 40 years, he'd be 69 years old.

[00:57:49.590] – Allan

Okay. And if he wants to keep doing peloton or whatever, he wants to stay fit and healthy, he actually has to talk to you guys while he's doing this, or you don't hear his british accent. But the point being is like, yes, if you're in the health and fitness industry and you want to stay in the health and fitness industry, well, you kind of have to stay alive.

[00:58:10.980] – Rachel

True.

[00:58:12.090] – Allan

If you want to do things and be a wonderful grandfather, wonderful grandmother, if that's who you want to be, then you got to do the things to make sure you're still here and capable. When your grandkids are around. If you want to remain independent and capable well into your older years and have a health span that's as long or closer to as long as your lifespan, then you got to do those things.

[00:58:34.820] – Allan

And so it's a joke. I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105, but it's not a joke. It is. I fully expect that I'm going to live a long, healthy life and I want to be able to take care of myself.

[00:58:47.190] – Rachel

Absolutely.

[00:58:47.980] – Allan

I do the things I need to do to make sure that I'm that person when that comes around.

[00:58:53.040] – Rachel

That's awesome.

[00:58:54.120] – Allan

All right, well, I'll talk to you next week.

[00:58:56.490] – Rachel

Great. Take care, Allan.

[00:58:57.970] – Allan

You, too.

[00:58:58.750] – Rachel

Thanks.

[00:58:59.520] – Allan

Bye.

[00:59:00.200] – Rachel

Bye bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Another episode you may enjoy

Get fitter, faster, and stronger with Krista Stryker

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:03:28.930] – Coach Allan

Hey, Ras. How are you?

[00:03:31.460] – Coach Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:33.590] – Coach Allan

I'm doing okay. Tammy went back to the States. We recorded these a few weeks in advance. So Tammy's going to go do a surprise visit for her mother for Thanksgiving, so she's going to see her boys. I'm not sure if summer is going to make it up there or not, but she's definitely going to see her boys and probably her granddaughter and her mother and all that and spend some time with them. Wonderful. Her mother was a little bummed out. It's like, I'm not going to see you this year, and DA DA DA. So we said slow here, and it's slow here because people are afraid of what not to be afraid of, which is there's stuff going on everywhere, and if you let people scare you, then you're scared. But that being said, things are slow here. So we decided, okay, go ahead. Head on up there. So it's just me and the dogs. So it's a boys weekend or boys week. The dogs just hanging out nice and dogs.

[00:04:29.350] – Coach Rachel

That sounds awesome.

[00:04:31.190] – Coach Allan

How are things up there?

[00:04:32.780] – Coach Rachel

Good. I'm super excited to share that I just completed the Dr. Stacy Sims Menopause 2.0 class. She has an online class. It was about 20 hours long, although I wasn't timing myself. It just seemed like it was a lot. But it was a really great class, and I needed it for the CEUs that you and I need to get for our NASM certification. So it was a perfect class at the perfect time, and I learned a ton, so I'm pretty excited about it.

[00:05:02.360] – Coach Allan

And you're living it.

[00:05:03.970] – Coach Rachel

I am living it, which made it so much easier to digest. I'm like, yeah, I know exactly how that know how that feels. Exactly. Yeah. It was perfect.

[00:05:15.620] – Coach Allan

Well, good. Congratulations on that.

[00:05:17.320] – Coach Rachel

Thanks.

[00:05:18.310] – Coach Allan

All right. So are you ready to talk about your perfect repeatable week?

[00:05:23.190] – Coach Rachel

Sure.

Episode – Your Perfect Repeatable Week

Today we're going to talk about your perfect repeatable week. This is a concept I recently heard or heard something similar to a business related style podcast, and I got to thinking about the lesson and what it was about, and it really hit me that this is actually very good for our health and fitness as well as our business. So want to share this concept of the perfect repeatable week with you and see if you can use this to maybe create the thing that's going to help you make the most change this next coming year. So the perfect repeatable week brings about a few different things that are really, really important. The first is about consistency. So we want something that is going to allow us to be consistent. And when you think about consistency, the way I really want you to think about this is realize that the Colorado River and depending on when you read what they say, it could have been 70 million years ago or 6 million years ago. But at any rate, there's still a lot of consistency. That river has formed the Grand Canyon just by being consistent, running, running over all of that time created one of the most amazing spectacles on the planet, the Grand Canyon.

So one of the things that the perfect repeatable week does for us is it creates consistency. The second thing is it creates a level of discomfort. Okay? We humans spend way too much time in our comfort zone. We're never willing to go out of it and for good reason. That's how we've survived as long as we did. The ones that did the things that were stupid, that were outside of the norm, well, they often didn't come back. So the ones that did the comfortable thing, just enough of the comfortable thing and just enough to stay just on the edge, well, they didn't die and they managed to survive. Okay? But when you're looking at change, comfort is the enemy. We have to get a little uncomfortable if we want change. So that's one of the other things that your perfect repeatable week does is it pushes you just outside your comfort zone. Not too far, but just enough that you can get the benefits. And the other thing about your perfect repeatable week is that there's nothing inherently special about a day or even a week. However, we tend to structure our lives around a day and that can make it really, really hard to be successful in the long run because days are different and we'll talk about that in more detail.

So there's three key things that make your perfect repeatable week kind of special. So let's talk about the principles behind your perfect repeatable week. Well, first starts with your. And the thing about your is this is yours. This is not mine. This is not someone else's. This is not an influencer on Instagram or someone you're seeing on YouTube. This is what works for you. This is what you, it's built around you. So what you can make your week do is what you make it do. So you think about what you need to do within a given week to meet your health and fitness goals. Your health and fitness goals. So this is all built around you and your lifestyle. It's not anybody else's. And that's a really cool principle behind this. Your perfect repeatable week. The second is perfect. Now the term perfect is conditional. Someone who is a professional athlete, well their perfect is going to look very, very different from mine and going to look very, very different from yours. Yours is going to look very different from mine. So it's conditional on who you are. So first off, don't think perfect is perfect for everyone.

That we're looking for this perfect model that would fit everybody. That's not we're after here. We're after what would be perfect for you. Again, back to your, because the second thing about perfect is that we want to start where we are now. We don't want to think about, well, gee, if I were perfect, I would be running 100 miles a week and I'd be doing this and I'd be doing that. We're not looking at that. We're looking at starting from where we are now. What would be perfect based on where I am now and what I can do now. So what you have and where you are are key components to defining your perfect. And then the next is, well, I may not always hit this goal, but at least by having a target that's a little bit further than I think I can reach, I'm going to get close. And if I'm getting close, what does that look like? Maybe I'm not running or walking the 40 miles on a perfect week like I would. Maybe I only got 35, but that's still pretty darn good. So this is about trying to set this stretch goal and knowing that if I can occasionally hit perfect and sometimes hit really good, I'm doing pretty awesome job and I'm going to get where I need to be because again, I'm pushing myself outside of my comfort zone.

The next part of your perfect repeatable week is the repeatable part. So the reason I like to break this down this way is what can you do week in and week out? Okay. What this requires you to do is it requires you to be consistent. So I'm not thinking about, well, gee, I'm off work this week, it's this week and I'm off work this week. So of course I can do more than I could last week when I was working all the extra hours to make sure I could be off this week, really off this week. So obviously I can't do this every week. But if I'm doing the things I can do every week, then I'm being consistent. So what's repeatable what makes sense? And that's the second part. What's realistic, I can't say that I'm going to work out twelve times every week if my work schedule doesn't allow that to happen. If in general, I know, okay, I'm working eight to five Monday through Friday, so I know I can work out before I go to work. I know I can do a little bit of moving around during the day, like during my lunch break.

I can do some walking. I know that I can do some things during the week and during the weekend to make this all work. And if I do those repeatable things, I create consistency. So that's the key there is repeatable equals consistency. If I do repeat it, okay, then we talk about week. Of course, week being seven days. And a lot of times the reason I like the week is sometimes the day can be limiting. It is 24 hours, and sometimes I'm working 16 of those. And if I look at it from that perspective. I'll never be successful because a perfect day would not happen all the time. But a week gives us a little bit of flexibility. And the other thing is days are different. So my Saturday often looks very different from my Monday. My Sunday looks considerably different from my Friday. And so as you look at your days now because you're looking at a week you can find ways to make bits and pieces fit in that make sense. So days that I'm off, maybe I can do better. Maybe I can do things to make the days that I'm working or on better.

So batch cooking, things like that, what can I do? And then sometimes you just need a day off. Think about it. If you're trying to train or lift or do anything seven days a week, eventually you're going to burn out. So the advantage of a week is it lets you look at this holistically and you can say, okay, if I know that I need to predominantly eat less than a certain number of calories, if you choose to count calories you may say, well, it's really hard for me on a Saturday, only eat 1800 calories. I can easily do it Monday through Friday, but Saturday is a little bit difficult. So if I look at it and say, well, I really only have to eat 2000 calories a day to make my calories work for what I want, well then I calculate it. Okay, what is 2000 calories times seven? That's 14,000. Okay, how do I distribute those? Well, maybe more of those are distributed on Saturdays and Sundays when I'm more active and a little less on the days when I'm a little busier and not as active because again I'm more distracted and it makes it easier.

So I can fit this stuff in in a way that works. And I can take days off when I need to take days off. And I can really push myself on days that maybe I'm not doing some things so I can get things done that make it easier when I'm doing the other thing. So I know that's a lot, but I want to just back it up because again your perfect repeatable week gives you the tools to be consistent. It gives you the tools to get outside your comfort zone as often as you can and stay out of it as often as you can. And because it's a week it allows you a lot of flexibility in how you apply this. So an example if you will, would be a perfect repeatable week for me might be something like Sunday. I do batch cooking. I put some lunches and dinners in the refrigerator and more and others in the freezer. Okay. So now what I've done is I've made it very easy for me to make sure that my food is set for the week. I can pull it out of the freezer when I need to so I'm not pushed when I come home for work.

I can also do my grocery shopping on Sunday. So I go to the grocery store, I pick up the things I need. The reason that's perfect for me is if that's when they run the sales on the meat to clear it out, because tomorrow Monday, they're going to get a new shipment of meat. Then I can go ahead and I can take advantage of those savings. I go in, I buy early morning, I buy the meat, I go do the grilling. That afternoon, I cook the other things I need, I do that batch cooking, and I'm done. Okay. When I have my work week, well, my day starts around 07:00, so I know if I get up early Monday through Friday, I can schedule time to do my workouts. So I can put in a little bit of time each day to get in my resistance training, my balance training, my mobility training. And then on Saturday and Sunday morning, I can go out and do a little bit longer cardio stuff. So build a little bit of stamina, longer walks, enjoy my day, be a little bit more active so I'm able to take my week and build it out that way.

So I'm not saying, well, gee, today I didn't get stamina work in. Oh, my gosh. Well, no, I got a whole week to build this stuff in and put it in my schedule and put it on my calendar. So I've built this out, and because I want to get better and better, I'm constantly looking for ways to improve so my perfect repeatable week doesn't stay the same over time, it often changes. Okay, so how do we do this? How do we really put it all together? Because all I've really given you with your perfect repeatable week is a standard. You've set a standard for yourself. This is how I want to live my week. This is how I want to do my week. And if I do it well, this is my perfect. Okay, so the way I like to apply it is to basically look and say, okay, on a scale, and you can do a one to ten or one to seven, whatever fits. On a scale of one to seven, how did I do? A perfect week would be a seven. A horrible week would be a one. Well, chances are you're not going to have a lot of ones.

And chances are you might not have all that many sevens either. But as we go into the holidays now, you might find there's some weeks that you can just blow this out of the water. I intended to do this, and I did more great. Okay. On something else, I thought I was going to do better, and then I didn't. Okay, again, we're not totally after perfect, but we do have a target. And if I'm staying on the top end of that scale. Most of the time, I'm going to see change. So each week, I can go through my perfect week, and I can rate myself. How did I do relative to my perfect? Your perfect? How did you do? So you rate yourself, and then you look for what you can learn. What did I learn this week that I can apply and be better in future weeks? And in some cases, you may find, well, you know, I thought my perfect was basically eating whole food five days a week and then letting my Saturdays and Sundays be a little bit more flexible. But what I found is that if I go ahead and push myself outside my comfort zone, I can actually eat predominantly whole food all week long, that I don't need the snacks as much as I thought I did.

And if I do need a snack, it's easy enough for me to get some nuts, have a small salad, or some protein if I'm prepared. So I can actually ratchet up my perfect week as I improve my health and fitness. So I hope that you can see how you can take your perfect repeatable week, build out your model, schedule it, put it into play, and then start rating yourself based on it. And then as you improve, ratchet up that perfect a little bit. Hope this is helpful for you. I hope to hear from you.

What does your perfect repeatable week look like?

Post Show/Recap

[00:19:20.030] – Coach Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:19:26.030] – Coach Rachel

Hey, Allan. I love the concept of a perfect repeatable week because it really limits your vision to one week to one week. That's all you need to worry about. Not a year from now, but just one week. And especially right now, this is probably the busiest time of my year. Probably everybody else's, it really helps you plan things and still have some sort of a focus on your own personal health and fitness. And that is so important.

[00:19:54.830] – Coach Allan

Yeah, it's just too easy to get too busy. Well, I was busy doing this, I was doing that. This was a priority. That was a priority. Family this, family that, friends this, work that. And some of us, I don't know, me always going into the holidays, I would be working my butt off so that I could actually take a whole day off because there's too much going on. And so it's just that thing of, okay, I'm working so hard, and I got to get all this done and family and friends and all this other stuff around this time of year, and it would just be chaos. So, yeah, this whole idea of kind of looking at your week and saying, okay, what would be the best thing? But not just this week. I mean, this week is different than last week, obviously, and this week is different than a lot of weeks, but we have weeks that are the same as the week before, the week before that. And we still come up with excuses to not do what's necessary to be done. And so this is just a point of saying on a normal week, sometime in the middle of April, when there's nothing else going on, it's like, what does that week look like?

[00:21:07.860] – Coach Allan

And why don't at least probably 40 or so of the other weeks of the year look very similar to that? And so if you can figure out what works, then here's your opportunity to kind of build a blueprint for this. And I just think that's important, for sure.

[00:21:25.610] – Coach Rachel

As a runner, I'm no stranger to consistency and following a training schedule, usually a good training schedule might be ten to 14 weeks, depending on what you're going to run. So you basically have an outline with a training plan. But in terms of just general health and fitness, I think that if you take a class at the gym, like with me, I have run clubs several nights a week. That's my repeatable week that's on the calendar. I don't schedule anything over it, and that's just what I do. And then just because of where my husband and I are in our life, we know what nights that we can cook at home versus what nights we're out with work or doing other things. So I can control what we're cooking at home, what we're eating at home. And that's a pretty basic way to manage our health and fitness. And then with the holidays, things go sideways. And sometimes you just need to put what you can do the best you can when you can.

[00:22:26.350] – Coach Allan

But I'm telling you, if you go into a week like that with no plan right, it will go sideways. It has to. There's no other way for it to go. You didn't plan for it. Yeah. You didn't plan for it to come out better. You didn't do anything besides just say, well, I'm going to wing it. Well, winging it puts you in the ditch. It just does. And so that's the advantage of this, is saying, I know what a great week looks like, and trying to aspire to be as close to that as possible, even when things aren't optimal, is going to put you on the right side of this equation more often than not, for sure.

[00:23:02.560] – Coach Rachel

And you can plan that for us. We recently had Thanksgiving. Christmas is coming up. If you have other holidays, birthday parties, family events, that goes on your calendar, because those are important days in your life and your family's life. And so then you work around that. Well, when can you squeeze in a trip to the gym or a run with friends? Or when can you plan a meal? And you have a whole week, Sunday to Saturday, to plan that out. So put all your important things on there, but certainly put on there the important things that you need to live a healthy lifestyle.

[00:23:38.330] – Coach Allan

Yeah. And some folks might get upset. I use the word perfect. Well, I've even done an episode saying nobody's perfect. And it's true. It isn't perfect. So maybe a better word for you would be ideal. So maybe instead of the word perfect, if you find yourself cringing over the use of that word, maybe the better word for you is ideal. This is your ideal repeatable week. And it follows the same pattern of this has to be something you know works for you, will get you where you want to go. It's something you can repeat. It's your week and it's your time. And it's written in a time where you're not saying, well, okay, Sunday is different than Monday. So therefore, if I can't do it on Monday, there's no sense in me trying to do it on Sunday. Hockey Puck of course you can. Sunday can be different than Monday, but your Sundays generally might be about the same week in and week out. Your Mondays might be about the same week in and week out. And if they are, that's awesome because that gives you the opportunity to create that repetition that gives you the consistency.

[00:24:44.450] – Coach Rachel

Oh, that's perfect. But I also liked your rating system, too, because it makes you look back on your week. And if you didn't hit your marks, like whatever run club or whatever meals you wanted to cook at home or whatever your journey is, look back and say, well, why didn't you hit those marks? If it was because you had a sleepless night with a baby or grandchild or something, then you have to give yourself grace because you can't work out if you're sleep deprived, but it gives you ideas. Well, maybe you made too many excuses because the weather's too cold or it's too rainy or something, or a new.

[00:25:20.630] – Coach Allan

Series dropped on Netflix and you've been.

[00:25:26.390] – Coach Rachel

If only we scheduled our TV habits like we did, our eating and workout.

[00:25:30.890] – Coach Allan

That can be a part of it, too. For a lot of people, the television is time, family time. It can be or it can just be. That's a way that you really enjoy unwinding in the evening. Sure, fine, throw it in there. It's a part of your week. It's a part of unwinding relaxing, and you can just say, okay, I'm going to give myself 90 minutes of television time this many times per week. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that if it's not disturbing your sleep and it's not keeping you from doing the other things that you need to do, but when you're like, okay, well, I spent 15 hours on Saturday and Sunday watching Netflix, so I didn't have time to work out. I didn't have time to batch cook. So McDonald's it is, and so what? Well, no, that week didn't turn out the way you wanted it to. Then it gives you some food for thought.

[00:26:21.770] – Coach Rachel

Yeah, what can you do better next time? Or what can you fix so that you're not stuck with grabbing snacks out of the cabinet or fast food or something. There's always something to be learned, and if it can't be helped, it can't be helped. Things happen, but whatever you can plan and control, the better for you. So I love it. I love the idea of planning your perfect week and seeing how it goes.

[00:26:43.960] – Coach Allan

All right, well, I'll talk to you next week.

[00:26:46.320] – Coach Rachel

Great. Take care, Allan.

[00:26:47.690] – Coach Allan

You, too. Bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

The 5 enemies of health and fitness change

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:31.470] – Coach Allan

Hey, Ras. How are you?

[00:02:33.600] – Coach Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:02:35.700] – Coach Allan

I'm doing all right. I'm a little tired. Yeah, I'm not a night owl by any stretch of the imagination. And there was a Halloween thing, so yeah, again, you guys know we record these a few weeks ahead, so yeah, here he is talking about Halloween in the third or fourth week of November. But, yeah, we had a Halloween contest at one of the local places, and our whole group went as the characters from Gilligan's Island.

[00:03:03.330] – Coach Rachel

Oh, how fun.

[00:03:04.590] – Coach Allan

Yeah. So I had the easy one. I was the professor, so all I had to do was wear a button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up and khakis. And then I had a little antique looking radio thing and coconut and aluminum foil.

[00:03:20.200] – Coach Rachel

Oh, how fun.

[00:03:21.410] – Coach Allan

That was it. So, yeah, we won the group award for Gilligan's Island. And then one of the guys that's here, friends of ours, he dressed up as Ginger and his wife dressed up as Gilligan.

[00:03:34.590] – Coach Rachel

How cute.

[00:03:37.430] – Coach Allan

He won the best dressed, I guess, the best individual costume award for being Ginger. So, yeah, it was good. But it was late, and so I got in late and was tired and had to get up this morning and run a bed and breakfast. So that whole breakfast part, jeez, if we just stopped doing that.

[00:04:00.590] – Coach Rachel

It's early. Yeah, right.

[00:04:03.100] – Coach Allan

No, but I am an early morning person. But this morning I was not. So I'm going to get through my about 3 hours or so of stuff I got to get done today, and then I'm going to take a nap.

[00:04:14.930] – Coach Rachel

Good idea. That sounds like a plan.

[00:04:17.320] – Coach Allan

Yeah. So how are things up there?

[00:04:19.360] – Coach Rachel

Well, funny you mentioned Halloween. We just got dumped on with some snow. Where I live, I only got a dusting of snow, but to the cities west of us that are in the lake effect area, they got about seven inches of snow. And so the poor kids in some cities nearby, the cities postponed Halloween or trick or treating to the next day, so the poor kids got snowed out for trick or treating. Crazier things have happened.

[00:04:51.540] – Coach Allan

Yeah. Seven inches, though. I thought you guys kind of had that whole snow thing covered. So seven inches. That's a random Tuesday.

[00:05:02.770] – Coach Rachel

Yeah. It is still early. It's not unheard of, especially for Miganders to go trick or treating with costumes underneath our snow jackets. But it was a little not fully unexpected, but a little unexpected. And seven inches is quite a bit yeah.

[00:05:20.810] – Coach Allan

That's when being a superhero or something like that is not cool. But I can be a bear.

[00:05:27.930] – Coach Rachel

Exactly. But nonetheless, it was a good night.

[00:05:33.740] – Coach Allan

Good. And ixnay the candy, right?

[00:05:37.130] – Coach Rachel

That's right. Yes.

[00:05:38.810] – Coach Allan

But you don't have the little ones, so they're not coming home with bags of the stuff.

[00:05:42.850] – Coach Rachel

No, I get to hand mine out. Whatever I've got left gets to go home with my kids.

[00:05:48.610] – Coach Allan

Yeah. And so, yeah, that's the lesson here. If you're still sitting on some of that candy hoard from Halloween, it's time to give it away. Just take it to the office, put it in a bowl, leave it on a table in the break room. Just anything you got to do to get rid of that stuff, it's time to get rid of it and get serious about your health and fitness. All right, you ready to have a discussion about that?

[00:06:15.260] – Coach Rachel

Sure.

[00:06:16.120] – Coach Allan

All right, let's go.

Episode

Today we're going to talk about the five enemies of health and fitness. Change. I get it and you get it. Change is hard. It really is. Humans were not really programmed for change. We weren't built for change. We were built to basically look for stability, look for the same, find comfort, find safety. And we get that through something that we know, which is security and solid. And so when things are changing, that puts us out of our elements. Often that makes it very difficult for us. In fact, our senses in our body react to change in a negative way because typically if something's different, it could be dangerous. So we want to recognize change and be afraid of it or be prepared for it. So we're looking for change. But change often elicits negative reactions because the same is safe. Change can be dangerous. And so that signal is in our head and so change can be hard. But if you conquer these five enemies, it's going to make change a lot easier. Now the first one I want to talk about of the five is believing you can get a different result doing the same thing.

Now there's a quote that's associated with Einstein. He's not sure he said it. Someone said he said it. He said it sounds reasonable. So he's not going to fully claim it. He wasn't willing to fully claim it, but did say it was good advice. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. That's the quote. And so believing you can get a different result just by doing the same thing, well, it is what it is. So I want to start each of these enemies with kind of a story. And I think the story is going to kind of give you a good picture of how this manifests within a client or within a person, rather. Okay, so the first story is about Marie. So Marie was a really cool person, had a very stressful job. And so each evening when she got home from work, she'd have a glass of wine. Sometimes it was two, sometimes it was three. And she did this every evening. This was her kind of her go to wind down habit for each evening. So she finished work, she started dinner, she started the wine.

Now the OD thing was she hired me and we kept talking about the wine, but she would step up her activities. She would do other things with her food. She literally was doing everything right except she wasn't willing to change the wine. Now she was getting results as we went through our training, but she wasn't quite getting the results she wanted. So we circled around the conversation several times and came back to wine. And each time it was, I'm going to work around it. But it was obvious that this was holding her back and she wasn't willing to change it. So she had this belief system that she could do the wine. But in her mind she also knew this was also what was holding her back. So she thought, okay, well, I'll just do it more. This is working. It's not working as well as I want, but I will just keep doing it. And eventually it will work. So sometimes we just have to face facts that we can't get away with the things that we did when we were in our twenty s and thirty s. Okay? This was part of her mindset was, well, I was fine when I was younger.

It's only now that I'm older, but I know if I keep working out and I keep eating this way, I'll get what I want. So three glasses of wine, let's assume a regular pour. But she and I talked about it probably wasn't a regular pour, was about one third of her daily calories. So if you figure three glasses of three regular glasses of wine was about one third of what she was expending in a given day, that was just not something that she was going to be able to out exercise. But again, her mind believed that she could just keep doing what she was doing and she would get different results. So the challenge for you to get something different, you will likely have to do something different. Now it doesn't have to be extreme. She didn't need to quit wine. Maybe just tapering it down because small changes can add up. She wasn't happy with the results that she was seeing, and maybe you're not either, but are you really thinking it through to say, what are the things that I'm doing that I know aren't serving that mission, that outcome that aren't going to make that happen?

And am I right to believe that I can keep doing those things and get a different result? And the answer is typically no. So unfortunately, yes. To get change, you have to do change, and you have to change things to get change. So one of the hardest things and one of the first enemies I talk about when we talk about change is believing you can get a different result doing the same thing. It's typically just not true. The second enemy of health and fitness change is self limiting beliefs. So jill. I got a message from Jill on Facebook. But before I get into the story, are we even friends on Facebook now? If we're not, you can go to fortyplusfitness.com Fballen, that's Fballan. Fortyplusfitness.com Fballan and send me a friend request. I am completely open. I'd love to have some conversations with you there. And that's where a lot of this stuff comes out. So anyway, Jill, I got a message from Jill on Facebook and she told me that she really liked doing the weekly challenges that we do in the Facebook group. But she wanted to know if I would take a few minutes each week and come up with a couple alternate challenges for her to pick from because she often found she couldn't do the main challenge.

So I asked her a few questions. Okay, I want to understand because most of the challenges that I put in the Facebook group are things that most people can do if they put their mind to it. So what we found was, okay, she couldn't do the food challenges because her husband liked to eat out, and so she was stuck with what was on the menu wherever they went. She couldn't do the physical challenges because she had a bad knee or she sometimes get migraines when she exerts herself too much. So she felt like she couldn't do any of the physical challenges. And then she couldn't do some of the other challenges because, well, she had a second job and she just didn't have time to do anything else. So basically what Jill believed was that Jill couldn't do anything food related, she couldn't do anything physically related, and she really couldn't do any of the other things because she just didn't have control of her schedule. So she had these self limiting beliefs that she wasn't willing to work around, and that was holding her back. Okay, so then I just had to ask the question, because it did kind of like, okay, why do you like the idea of challenges?

And she came back to me and said they made her think, okay, and that's good. You definitely have to start with that. But then she said she'd realized that she couldn't do this or basically couldn't do this. So she had this limiting belief. She had something that she felt was a wall, something holding her back that was keeping her from being able to do pretty much any one of these challenges. Now, there's another quote. I'll talk about a few quotes here and there, but Henry Ford is quoted as saying, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. So, in other words, where your head goes, so do you. If you have limiting beliefs, those limits are real for you, okay? For me they might not be, but for you, they're absolutely real, and you're going to struggle to overcome them, okay? So to be successful in something hard like a challenge or weight loss or getting healthy and fit, you've got to start believing in yourself, okay? You've got to start believing that it's possible for you to make the change, and you have to start believing in yourself. And these are hard.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this is something as easy because change is hard. But if you don't believe you can change, guess what? You're right. So I know you can do it, but you have to approach it with that attitude. And it might not be the solid, okay, I know I can do this, but at least I know I can try. I can try. I will try. And when you give it that shot just that much, you can push past that limiting belief and do things you never thought you could. So my challenge to you is when you set a goal, just be clear with yourself that, okay, not only is this attainable, it's almost easy. So that's why I tell people, don't set this huge goal that you're never going to be able to do, or that you think, okay, yes, if I'm perfect for a long period of time, I can get there. Start out with a pretty simple goal, set the bar relatively low, and it might be for someone, it might be, I'm going to walk for ten minutes in the evening, three days a week. Now, for some, that might seem pretty simple.

30 minutes of walking doesn't seem like a lot of time for some people. For others, that might be quite challenging. So your bar might be a little lower or a little higher, but it still, for you, has to be kind of a relatively low bar to get started. You'll probably hear this advice over and over and over again. The most important thing in change is getting started, and we have to get past the limiting beliefs to get there. So set that low goal. Now, are those 30 minutes of walking each week going to change your life? And the answer is, initially, no. But when you're successful in doing that consistently, your belief grows. Oh, I can walk 30 minutes per week more than I was before. Okay. And then you can start to feed that belief. You can start to make it grow. So you feed belief and you abandon limits. And you do that through consistent, gentle nudges of setting a goal, meeting the goal, proving to yourself that you can. So we get past the limiting belief and then setting a slightly bigger goal, getting that done, getting past that limiting belief, go to the next one.

So eventually you could be doing much, much more than you would have thought you could, your limiting belief, but you're doing it now. So challenge yourself to set a goal that's just outside your comfort zone, but obviously attainable, and then do it, and then do it again. And then do it again. And then do it again. That consistency of running over and passing your limiting beliefs is going to take you to some amazing places. So the third enemy of health and fitness change is staying in your comfort zone. So Carrie was a client, and when we first started working together, she told me, I can't walk for five minutes without getting super winded. Okay? Now, we couldn't just tell her. We couldn't just get her and say, okay, no, you're going to go and do all these workouts, and here's all the programming, and here it is in the app, and you just get in there and start doing this stuff. What we did was we said, okay, what's something that's generally attainable? Remember the limiting beliefs and that we can do consistently that you know, you'll do consistently. It's not going to be comfortable.

So I made it uncomfortable. I said, okay, how many minutes do you think you could walk in a day in addition to just your normal daily activity and she said ten minutes. So we started with ten minutes. Now, I told her, said ten minutes doesn't have to be all at one time. It could be two, five minute sessions, which she said again would push her a little bit. It could be four, two and a half minute sessions. It could be five two minute sessions. The point was for her to get ten minutes of dedicated walking done each day, each and every day. And it was really hard for her most days. Now, she started doing it, she started being consistent and she started doing it, getting it done. So she was walking every day for at least ten minutes. Sometimes she'd do a little more. Now, each week we started to bump up this target because she felt comfortable. She got comfortable with ten minutes a day. Now, we want to push just outside that comfort zone. So we go a little more, usually within a little two minute increments, which is not a bad thing.

It just is a thing. That was her gentle nudge, just to get her just outside the comfort zone. Now, some days when she felt great, she actually did more. So the goal might be twelve minutes and she might be doing 14 one day. Now, other days she just didn't feel good. And she's like, I just didn't feel good, but I still got my target hit again, just outside the comfort zone. Okay? Now she showed this courage each and every week, each and every day. And what ended up happening was her fitness improved. Now, it's kind of a phenomenon, but once people start pushing comfort levels in one place in their lives, they tend to start pushing comfort levels in others. So she improved her nutrition and these little gentle nudges know were coming just as a nature of her saying, I know I can do more. I've got to get outside my comfort zone. She was able to enjoy things that she had really struggled with before. Now, Carrie really loves music festivals, but she had told me, she said she was kind of dreading going because there was so much walking and she would always struggle with that walking.

But because she had done the little nudges just outside her comfort zone while we were training and she was improving her nutrition, she really found that she was able to walk around, enjoy the musical festivals much more than she ever had. And again, it was just from getting outside her comfort zone. It made things so much better. So no matter where you are right now, I'm going to tell you you can improve your health and fitness, but you're not going to do it if you stay in your comfort zone, okay? Now, getting outside your comfort zone doesn't mean you're doing something crazy like, I'm afraid of heights, so I'm going to jump off the Empire State Building. It's just little bits just outside the edge of where you're comfortable and you keep doing this, you keep doing this and consistently doing this again and again, and it all adds up. So my challenge to you is that you need to do things that scare you a little bit. Okay? Now, there's two operative words in what I just said do and scare. Okay? Change requires work. You are not going to change if you don't do something.

And you're not going to really accomplish much if it's inside your comfort zone. So if I say, well, I feel really good that I can walk 30 minutes in a day each day, I'm just going to walk 30 minutes in each day, not really going to grow, not really going to change. Pretty much going to stay the same. So it has to somewhat scary, just outside the comfort zone. And you have to do it, and you have to do it consistently. The enemy of change in health and fitness number four is unwillingness to invest. So Sharon was this prospective client. Now we got to talking, and she was doing these pain on demand workout things. There are several of them, but she was doing one. She said it costs something like 15 $20 a month. She's not sure. Occasionally they raise the price, but still not much. 15, $20 a month. And she loved the workouts, but she wasn't losing any weight. Okay, so we started talking and I said, okay, so how do you go about this? And she's like, Well, I just scan and they have some featured ones. And so I just do a featured one.

And I said, okay, well, how often are you doing this? And she said, well, when I'm turning them on, I'm turning them on. I do them. I do the whole workout. I feel really good. It's hard, but there's times when I just don't feel like doing it or I forget to do it or it's not something I want to do. And so basically, she said I could go weeks without doing any of them. And she says, Well, I kind of justified it. It's just $15. I'm not really losing much because it's just $15. Now, Sharon also told me a story about going to a gym and working with a trainer. Okay? She met the trainer anyway, and so she meets this trainer. The trainer is walking her through the gym, starts talking about programming and helping her reach her goals. And so she's starting to get a little excited that she can lose weight and be more fit, and this is going to be really great for her. Now, the trainer sat down with her and said, okay, they recommend that she buy the gym membership and that she pay for three sessions per week.

And if she signed up for a six month contract, she would get a free consult with a nutritionist to even bolster her weight loss even more. Okay? So I said, well, that sounds really good and probably similar to what I would do if I worked in a gym. So how did it go? She says, Well, I didn't do it. I said, okay, so why didn't you do it? She said, well, that's more than my car payment. So the six months that she would have paid for and gotten training three days a week and gotten a meeting with a nutritionist to help her with her food planning and give her a meal plan was more than a car payment. Okay? So she was okay with the $15, but wasn't doing it. She wasn't willing to pay for the more service, the accountability, all the things that come with that, and all the difference guidance that she would have gotten because she felt it was too much. Now, in the end, we were having the conversation. She said she did want to do something. She wanted to work with me. She realized, okay, I'm not accountable. I'm not doing things.

I do need that. I need this. Okay? So we started talking. I said, Well, I've got a six week starter program. Are you interested? And she said yes. Okay. And when I told her how much it cost, she was like, what her investment would be to do this thing with me. Her answer was, oh, that's a lot more than I'd pay. Okay? And the odd thing was, no, this was not $15 a month, but this was about a third of what she would have paid a local gym and nutritionist to work with her. So she had kind of a base for what this might cost. But she was like, no, I'm not going to pay it. I won't invest in getting this done. Now, at first, I was a little stumped. I'm like, okay, I don't understand this. The conversation we had. She saw her mother declining, and she just didn't want to go down that path. But I just was kind of dumbstruck. It's like, okay, are you willing to invest at all? And so I asked her simple question. I asked her, what is money? Now, that might seem like an OD question, right?

But I needed to understand this. And here's what I solved with that question. Do you know what she said? She said the word security. She had the money sitting in her savings account. It was easy. She could afford it. She could do it. She was working a job. She made plenty of money she could easily have afforded to work with me, to work in that local gym, to do all of it. She could easily do that. She just saw money as security. Now, I would have said money is freedom. So I see money as opportunity to accomplish things you want to accomplish, to do the things you want to do, to be places you want to be. I see that as opportunity. But if she gave me the money or gave that to the trainer, at that gym, she was giving away safety. Okay? Now it turned out after we had a deeper conversation about money, was, oh, well, this is exactly how her mother thought about money. Her mother would not invest in her health either. She would not buy more expensive healthier foods. She wouldn't sign up for different things. Like, I think her mother smoked and wouldn't pay for anything to help her stop smoking, even though she knew she couldn't do it on her own.

Okay? So Sharon didn't value money more than her health. She just looked at it and said, I'm going to find the cheapest way. So she was more than willing to pay $15 a month because it's almost nothing to her for videos. But she had this cheap solution, and she didn't do it because it wasn't there. She also told me she'd pay $30 for diet pills at costco. Okay? We had talked about that earlier with her, and she said she's paying for these diet pills, but they're not working. So she's looking for another low cost, free, if you will, even solution. And honestly, I don't know that they're out there. She'll probably keep looking. Now, with most things, you get what you pay for. So again, video sessions that are $15, there are people who use those and they do phenomenally. So I'm not going to poo poo that. It is an investment for many people. It's a big investment. For her, it was not. She's looking for the cheap solution. And so when you're going to pay for something, you need to do your due diligence to make sure that you're getting what you paid for.

That's true, because you can get ripped off. But if you really want results, you should be willing to invest for them, okay? If you're going to hire someone to do something for you and you need to get it done, you could go with the cheapest price, but you might be getting the worst outcome. You're going to have someone repair something for you, somebody build something for you. You're going to buy something and you're like, oh, look, I can get this really wonderful Corvete for $10,000, and I see every other one that's that year. Well, those are 30,000 $40,000. So the question is, okay, what's that 10,000 buying you? And usually it's a limit of a car because it's not in good shape. It's not what you want it to be. So you have to be willing to make the right investment to get what you want. And a lot of people are not. Here's the other cool thing about investing in yourself. When you invest in yourself, you have skin in the game. Okay? What does that mean? That means you made a payment, you wrote a check, or you put a credit cards in.

You did that thing, and that money is gone. That money is not yours anymore. So guess what you're going to do? You're going to. Do the work, you're not going to pay a large amount of money and then not do the work. And when you do the work, you get the results. So don't go cheap in the sales. If this is important for you, if this is an important thing, like a true priority, then you're going to invest to make it happen. You're not paying for something. You're investing in yourself. And you have to look at it that way because change is hard. And if you're not willing to invest in yourself, it's probably not going to happen the way you want it to. So my challenge to you, don't be afraid to invest in yourself. Invest in yourself is the best investment you'll ever make, okay? And it pays off, not just in the way you look and feel. Today I feel good. I got my workout done. That's great. I feel good that I'm eating well. That's great. But it's the health issues later. I'm sorry. Sharon's mother is in really bad shape.

She's spending a lot of money at the hospital and doctors and all this other stuff because she didn't invest in herself, she didn't invest in her health. So she's dealing with all the health issues around the things that she didn't invest to change, even though she said she wanted to, and she probably wanted to, really wanted to, but she just didn't invest. She wasn't willing to invest in herself. And as a result, she's not getting the payout. So invest in yourself, do the work, and you'll find change. So number five in our enemies of health and fitness, change is failure to act. Okay? And this is probably the biggest one. So Matthew and I, we got on a planning call, strategy call, and we went through all the things, but one of the first things he said to me was, I know what to do, I just don't do it. And I can respect that. I was in the same position for a long, long time. And even now there's some pulls on me sometimes to just not do what I know is the right thing to do. So that's a normal reaction, normal feeling.

Okay? Then he told me, he said he wanted me to ride him a program using the equipment that he already had. He didn't want to buy another membership. He didn't want to do anything, go anywhere else. He had a good equipment. He really had really good equipment. We'll talk about that in a second. But he was just super excited, okay? He had all this equipment, all this stuff. He's like, I want you to write me a program using this stuff. And so he took his phone because he was on his phone on this call and he video showed me his gym and man, it was pristine. It was beautiful, all this equipment. It was just new. Like all new, beautiful. Now the reason that was new, because Matthew never used it, matthew would buy a piece of equipment, and then it would sit there. So he bought a peloton. You remember those? They're still popular, but he bought a peloton, $2,000 on this bike. He's paying a membership with them every month. And he had this beautiful peloton. He read about it in an article, and he bought one. And then one of his coworkers told him about the smart mirrors.

Okay, so this is where you see your image, and then they tell you what to do and all this other stuff. And he had one of those, and he had free weights, and he had bands, and he had cables, and he had all this stuff. The guy had well over $10,000 worth of equipment in his basement. Jim, it was gorgeous. I loved it. In fact, I almost wanted to ask him if he wanted to sell it all to me, that I would give him a take it off his hands. But I knew that wasn't where I needed to go with Matthew. But the thought did occur to me that I would love to have his gym. Okay, anyway, I told Matthew that I would write him a program. I said, okay, here's what I'm going to do, and I'll do it for absolute free, okay? I said, Pick one piece of equipment that you enjoy doing, and I'll write you a program. And so he chose dumbbells. He said, I like the Dumbbells, so I like their different weights. I said, I've got the bench. I've got the whole thing. He says, So I know I can do a full body workout and get stronger using Dumbbells.

And it's simple, and I don't have to worry about it. And so I gave him right there, right there on the spot, I gave him five exercises, okay, so here's five exercises. And then when I log off the call, and I did follow through, I sent him a video describing each one of the exercises I was talking about. And then what I did was I said, okay, go do this workout, okay? Three sets of ten with these exercises. I'll send you the videos. I said, when you get done with this workout, the first time, message me, and then we can make some adjustments. Now, this was in his morning. It was my evening. We had this conversation, and I didn't hear from him that rest of that day or the next day. So I emailed him, and he didn't respond. I texted him again, crickets. Nothing. Now, what they call this in the industry, when you have a client and you're working with someone, it's called ghosting. So basically, Matthew ghosted me, okay? Now, usually when a client or potential client someone ghosts you, it's because they're embarrassed about something, okay? In this case, I'm pretty sure it was because Matthew didn't do the workout.

Normally, I wouldn't give out a workout, like know, I was like, okay, I'm doing something kind of I wouldn't do. We're having this planning call, but to I want something. I want you to feel something. I want you to do something. Because all Matthew really needed to do was to do it once. If he did the action once, he was much more likely to do the action again. He hadn't done the action, and that he didn't do the action. So without action, there was no change. Without action, there wasn't any feeling. There wasn't anything. And then probably the only feeling he had afterwards was a little bit of guilt, remorse, and maybe embarrassment that he didn't even do the workout I gave him, even though he had everything he needed in front of him, and I gave him roughly 48 hours to see if he would do it. He didn't do it. Okay, so have you read my best selling novel? No. Well, of course you haven't, because I haven't written it yet. Okay. I have stories in my head. I read things about writing stories and fiction, and occasionally I even jot down a few ideas and maybe a little bit of what I think would be in the book, what would be in the story.

But here's the thing. I'm not really committed to writing a novel, so I like the idea of being a novelist. I like the idea of writing a best selling novel. It all sounds cool, right? But I don't do the writing, and so I don't have a published novel. Now, health and fitness is the same way. If you want something, you have to do something. So you have to take action. If you want to improve your health and fitness, it takes action. This is not a thought process where you can think yourself healthy, think yourself fit. You need those things. You need to believe in yourself. You need to get past limiting beliefs. You have to do those other things we just talked about. But if you don't do something, don't act, you won't have okay? So here's my challenge to you. I want you to be an action taker, okay? This is what you do. You decide you want to work online, you want to do something. You want to make something happen, you do it, okay? Now, if someone decides they want to work with me online, I always tell them, I say, okay, well, I've got a couple of rules, okay?

I've got a couple of rules. And so one of the rules and you know this because of the podcast you're listening to, is you have to be over 40. I work with people over 40 online. So if you want to work with me online, you've got to be 40 or more, okay? The second thing I ask them is, are you an action taker? Because the thing is, if you're not an action taker, I can't help you. I don't have an easy button, but what I do have are some easier buttons, meaning I can help you make this easier. I can help you get results faster. I can help you get better results. I can help you avoiding some of the problems that people have at our age. But I can't do it for you. So you have to be the action taker. My challenge to you is, are you an action taker? Be an action taker. So with that, I just want to summarize a bit, and we want to get past these five enemies that are keeping you from changing your health and fitness. Remember, the first one was believing you can get different results doing the same thing.

To get change, you're probably going to have to change something, okay? And you probably in your head right now, can point to one, two, three, maybe more things that you're doing that are holding you back. And if you think I'll just keep doing these things, you're probably not going to get a different result than what you already have. The second one is self limiting beliefs. Now, if you don't believe that, you can change. If you don't believe that you can do this, you're right, you can't. So you have to find a way to get past the limiting beliefs. Easiest way I found is to set goals that are just outside of what you think and then do it. Make it a low hanging, make it easy, but do that first goal. Then make it a little bit harder and a little bit harder. Push yourself just past your limiting beliefs. Over time, those limiting beliefs will go away. You'll reset your bar, you'll reset your temperature, and you'll know, okay, yes, I can do this. I didn't think I could do it before, but I know I can do it now, and I know I can probably do more.

And I'm going to keep pushing. Okay? The other is staying inside your comfort zone. And so this is the deal where I see women come in, or men, and they see the circuit machines. They're like, oh, this is awesome. I can get really strong and feel good. And they go through all the circuit machines, setting the weights on the same weight every single time. That's their comfort zone. Now, are they getting change? Are they getting more fit? Are they getting more healthy? And the short answer is probably no. Basically, they're staying in their comfort zone, so they're just not seeing the results. So if you don't find yourself getting results, ask yourself, I'm doing the work, but I'm not seeing it. Are you staying in your comfort zone and just not pushing yourself to accomplish that change? The fourth reason we struggle with change in our health and fitness is an unwillingness to invest. Okay, you're either going to buy equipment or you're going to join a gym. You're either going to buy better food or you're going to eat what you can eat. If you're struggling with the concept of investing in yourself. You got to work on that.

I'm sorry, but this doesn't come from just doing the things the way you've always done them, eating the cheaper, less whole, lower quality food, saying, oh, well, it's not much cheaper for me to pick up a pizza than it is for me to actually eat whole food. I can feed my family on pizza a lot cheaper. We can eat mac and cheese. We can do these other things, and it's cheaper. I can do this workout at home, although I don't really have any equipment, and I can do it with my body weight, but then I'm not doing it again. It's really about, are you willing to invest? You may need something. I'm not going to say you don't. We can work with what you have, obviously, but you probably have to invest to make this happen the way you want it to. And when you're invested, you're committed. And when you're committed, you do the work. And when you do the work, you get things. So change takes work. It's often and typically takes investment. It's definitely going to take an investment of time and effort. And I find you get it faster, you get it better if you're willing to invest in yourself with money.

And then the final one in what makes change hard, the enemies of change in health and fitness. And that's just a failure to act. So if you're not willing to do the work, you're not going to get the results. People will be angry. They're like, oh, well, such and such is carrying $130,000 purse. And I'm like, So the guy's a professional basketball player. He works his butt off. He stays in shape. He does everything he had to do for his whole life up until the point he got put into the NBA. Now he has some genetic skills and things like that. Yeah, but the guy works his butt off, and he makes a ton of money. So to him, $130 purse, $130,000 purse, no big deal, okay? But he didn't get there by just coasting. He got there by acting, by doing. And so I'd say, if you want something and you want something big, you've got to act. You got to make it happen. So think through your journey. And I have a question. Have any of these enemies kept you back? Did you recognize some of these? Are some of these in your life today?

Or have they been in your life in the past? So I want you to take something away from this, okay? This was not just I don't know how long I've been on here, but the reality is I didn't just have this conversation with you for you to decide, oh, okay, that was great information. And then again, number five, failing to act. Okay? So I want you to do what's necessary to do what you need to do to change. You've got to get past yourself. You got to get out of your comfort zone, and you got to be willing to do the work and invest in yourself. And if you're willing to do that, when you're ready to do that, if you have any questions, I'm here for you. So please reach out. I'm here, but otherwise, again, get it done. These are the five enemies. If you're dealing with these enemies, break them down the way we talked about today, and I'll talk to you soon.

Post Show/Recap

[00:45:15.300] – Coach Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:45:17.830] – Coach Rachel

Hey, Allan. These five enemies of health and fitness changes are really a challenge. And I know because I'm a creature of habit, but I also love change. I do a lot that when something's not working, of course I change it. But I can see how these different kind of ideas are just what's holding people back. And I guess one of my favorites, as you know, I love talking about mindset is the self limiting beliefs. I mean, right there, that's a hard stop. If you just can't believe that you can do something, then it's done for you've got no hope.

[00:45:55.040] – Coach Allan

Yeah, change is already hard. I mean, we're not wired for it. We're wired to find a consistent pattern where we can walk through places we're familiar and we can just be there. We can be in a familiar place because then it's really easy to notice the things that are different. But when we start to initiate change on our own, it's hard. What happens then is these different things that get in your way, like limiting beliefs. You can say you want to change, but if you don't believe that you can change, then you won't. I didn't get this for a long, long time because, like you, I'm very tolerant to change. I've lived all over the United States. I've lived in live in foreign countries. Things change, and things go on, and you're like, okay, what can I control? What can I not control? But even within that, there's a serenity prayer of hey, grant me this, to do the that it's about looking for the things you can control and kind of letting the rest of it go. But if you don't believe you can control yourself, then what can you control?

[00:47:18.010] – Coach Rachel

Right? The thing with self limiting beliefs, too, is that we're so ingrained to kind of hold ourselves still, like you said, to stay in our comfort zone, to do what's comfortable. But I just want to call people out to just question that belief in the running world where I see it, we've got people that. And I used to do it. I used to think I could never run a five K, which is 3 miles. And I just thought that was the most impossible task. But if you can just stop with that thought and really think about it for a second, well, why do you feel that way? And you've seen it with your clients. You've had people that say, well, I can't lose that 20 pounds or I can't do this at the gym or take this class, but you just got to pause and really question yourself. Why do you think that?

[00:48:12.970] – Coach Allan

Yeah, it's interesting. I haven't talked about this a whole lot on the podcast, but during my vacation, I guess it was still during my vacation back in September, we finished up a week, know, Mexico at a timeshare. It was all inclusive. And then I just, I'm going to, I'm going to take a break from alcohol. And right now that was about a month and a half ago and I still haven't gone back to drinking any alcohol. And I go out with my friends and they look at me like I'm a space alien. How on earth can you do this crazy thing of not drinking alcohol? Especially sitting in a bar with hundreds of other people all drinking alcohol? And so I just order a club soda and I drink my club soda and it's really that thing of saying I'm in control of me in the instant you tell yourself, but I need this to do that, or I want that to do this or I could never, or I can't. You're hearing those words in your head, you're telling yourself that it's not true. Yeah, it's not true. And so if you're struggling with something, yes, this is going to be hard.

[00:49:39.910] – Coach Allan

This is not an easy change is not easy. That's one of the core things I want people to take away from this is that you can't keep doing what you're doing. You can't let these limiting beliefs stop you. You can't stay in your comfort zone and expect change. Okay. It sounds simple, but this is the hardest thing you're going to do. If you truly have weight that you want to lose or you want to build a fitness level or you want to do these things and the things you have done to date have not gotten you there, you're going to have to do something different.

[00:50:19.270] – Coach Rachel

Right.

[00:50:20.120] – Coach Allan

Okay. And to make that something that you can keep doing, it has to be sustainable. And for it to be sustainable, you got to get yourself doing it. It sounds like this crazy paradox of how do I if I can't and it's like eating the elephant one bite at a time. You just do a little bit more and a little bit more. Get outside that comfort zone, do a little bit of pushing, believe in yourself.

[00:50:46.670] – Coach Rachel

Yeah.

[00:50:47.330] – Coach Allan

And if you're struggling with any of that, invest don't just sit back and say, yeah, I do these workouts online. They stream them to me. YouTube this and Pilates that and they're great, but I don't do them. Yeah, so you can say you do them, but then you say, well, when's the last time you did it? It's like, well I did it. Well, I guess the 1 September I started was a Monday and I did this, and then I did it on Wednesday, and then I skipped Friday because of this, and I've never done it again. And so, no, you don't actually do those videos. You did two of them. Be real with yourself. You did two of them. You don't do them. You liked them, but you didn't like them enough to keep doing them, and you didn't do them long enough to see results. So you went back to your comfort zone. You went back to your normal habits. You went back to living the lifestyle you were, which got you where you are. And that's cool. I don't want to diss anyone that says, okay, I'm happy with where I am. But if you listen and you're still listening to this podcast, you want to change some things.

[00:51:59.270] – Coach Allan

And so you got to do the work. You got to do what's necessary to make that happen, for sure.

[00:52:07.530] – Coach Rachel

And that kind of brings me almost to the next one, the getting out of your comfort zone, as well as willingness to invest in that, taking that next step and doing something that's different is intimidating. But if you could meet with your friends or if you hire a trainer even, or go to the gym and talk to the people there, I mean, it's good to learn something new, because you never know, you might like it. You might go to the gym and take, like you said, a Pilates class or the spin class or I recently took not a tai chi class, something I never would have done on my own, but I went with a friend, and I really enjoyed myself. I mean, try something new and see if it sticks. And you mentioned being surrounded by people who are not drinking or are drinking alcohol while you're not. This is a good chance for you to go inwards and to really focus on yourself and decide, what do you really want? If you did those home videos and it didn't stick because maybe you didn't like them, I mean, it was fun in the moment, but it didn't stick, maybe you need to find something else that would stick, something maybe sign up for a series of classes, like I said, and see how that goes.

[00:53:19.740] – Coach Rachel

But you just need to find something that you love.

[00:53:22.580] – Coach Allan

Yeah, a lot of people, they have the advice. They say, what exercise should I do? And the answer is always the one you will exactly just find something you enjoy. And I think as a starter, that's often a really good advice. You can't just keep doing that. So you can't say, well, I really enjoyed doing that 30 minutes online video thing. Well, you can do that online video thing, and you can do it three, four, five times a week. But if you're not getting what you want, then you might need to do a little bit more or a little bit different. And so this is not a one and done. And you don't have to think about it that way. We don't have to get from A to Z in one jump. There's 24 other letters in the alphabet. And so it's just, okay, if that 30 minutes thing is your B, then you went from A to B, and then you got the B, and now you're like, okay, I'm comfortable with B, now I'm going to do C, right? And you start working your way through, and you stack these habits, and you stack these activities, and eventually you start putting this intrinsically into you.

[00:54:34.390] – Coach Allan

It's like, I don't even think about it. Yes. Someone comes around and says, Would you like a beer? Because people are buying buckets of beer, and they're sitting there with a bucket of beer, and they see me standing there with nothing. They're like, Would you like a beer? And so I have to, at that point, realize who I am, why I'm doing what I'm doing, what it means to me, and say no. I said no. I said, thank you, but no. And I had to do that dozens and dozens of times last night because everybody wanted to offer me a drink because I was weird for being in a bar not drinking. But I'm okay with that. I'm okay outside my I have to be outside my comfort zone. I have to know my limiting beliefs of, oh, okay, if I think that I can't do this and someone offers me a beer, I'm going to take it. Well, I got to get past that limiting belief because if I don't, then every time we go out, there's going to be some offer. I have one friend, we went out to dinner right after I got back, and I said he's like, do you want to split a wine?

[00:55:43.200] – Coach Allan

We used to just yeah, that's what we do. We all go to dinner, and he'd be like, okay. Because our wives would do the white wine. They'd split a bottle of white wine. He's like, you want to split a bottle of red? And I had to say no. And he said, well, what happened to my bottle splitter? So I had to have that conversation with, that's not how I'm choosing to go right now. So ordered his bottle of red, and we went on with our night. The next time we went out, he's sitting there wanting to order a bottle of red wine, and he's like, you want to split a red? I'm like, not really. And he's like, okay. He found someone else to split that bottle of red with, and he was fine. They were fine, and I was fine. But again, I'm not going to say it's not uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to tell your friend no. It's uncomfortable to be in an environment where everybody's drinking and you're not. It's uncomfortable to go for a run. It's uncomfortable to stop eating the things it's there. It's delicious. It's going to give you that hit.

[00:56:42.180] – Coach Allan

You're going to feel great for a moment, then you're going to feel miserable, either because physically or because emotionally, you're going to feel guilt and shame and all these other things about food. Whereas you could say, this doesn't serve me. This does not serve me. I'm done doing it. I'm a different person. I see myself. I don't have this limit where I have to do something. I'm a grown ass man. I can do what I want to do.

[00:57:11.520] – Coach Rachel

Right. You're an adult. Make your own decisions.

[00:57:14.820] – Coach Allan

Exactly. And so just realize that change is hard and it's going to take some time and effort. It's going to take action. This is not something you passively do.

[00:57:28.880] – Coach Rachel

Right. And that was the last thing I wanted to chat about before we leave, is the failure to act. I think that's where people get paralyzed the most because we have so many different information and advice floating around us all day long. Do this exercise, eat in this manner, this diet, that diet, or whatever, and we get paralyzed. Too many decisions, too many things to do. Just pick, just do something, make a plan and do it. Don't be stuck with that failure to act. Don't be bombarded and confused by what's out there. Just make a decision and do it.

[00:58:07.150] – Coach Allan

Make your lunch for tomorrow.

[00:58:09.110] – Coach Rachel

There you go. One thing.

[00:58:10.860] – Coach Allan

One thing. I'm going to start making my lunch and taking my lunch. Okay. Or it can be, I'm going to eat a whole food meal tomorrow. Easiest one for me to do would be breakfast.

[00:58:21.810] – Coach Rachel

Sure.

[00:58:22.780] – Coach Allan

So my whole food meal tomorrow is breakfast.

[00:58:25.970] – Coach Rachel

And that's a great way to think about it. It's the easiest meal of the day to prepare.

[00:58:30.590] – Coach Allan

Pick one and then the other things are looking for ways to make that as easy as possible. So I saw someone online the other day, and it was a business thing. It wasn't even a diet thing. It was a business thing. And the guy said, I have the same thing for breakfast every single day. And it was literally three boiled eggs and then some blueberries and strawberries. That was his breakfast, okay. Every day. And he said he just makes it easy on himself because he doesn't even have to think about it. He has the boiled eggs and the fruit already in his refrigerator. He got to a point where he was ready to eat his breakfast. He went in, he pulled those things out, he sat down, and he showed the breakfast. He said, I eat the same thing, so I don't have to think about know, Steve Jobs used to wear the same sweatshirt, and as a result, so does Mark Zuckerberg, is what I've heard. Basically, they wear the same thing every day. So it's not like they go in their closet and, hmm, what am I going to wear today? They know, grab a hoodie.

[00:59:33.070] – Coach Allan

Grab your jeans and just put them. So make it as easy for yourself as possible, because, again, change is hard. Decisions are hard. But if you're going to do one thing, then put all of it together. Make it where you won't fail. Make it where it's easy, where it's overwhelming odds in your favor. And the more you can do that, the more that thing is going to stick. And once that sticks, it's like, okay, what's the next thing? A. Then to B, then to C. Eventually you'll find yourself at Z. You'll probably find yourself at Z, and it will have felt like a journey, but it's not something you do today. We can't beam ourselves to Z from A. We've got to go through each of those letters. We got to do each of those things. And if you don't try to stack too much of it on your plate at one time, it becomes overwhelming, and you're much less likely to make it. Some people do. Some people sit there and say, I'm changing everything today. Woke up at rock bottom, and I'm changing everything. They blend up that smoothie that morning. They go for a run, they come back in, they shower.

[01:00:39.590] – Coach Allan

They do everything right, and they can do that. I'm not one of those people, and I don't know if you are either, but it's just one of those things of saying, hey, I got to change what I can change in the order. I can change it the easiest way I can change it. But if change is important to you, really important to you, you do that. That's what you do.

[01:01:02.470] – Coach Rachel

Absolutely. Yep. This was great, Alan. Really great information and insights that we could use.

[01:01:08.710] – Coach Allan

All right, well, I will talk to you next week.

[01:01:11.100] – Coach Rachel

Great. Take care, Alan.

[01:01:12.570] – Coach Allan

You, too. Bye.

[01:01:13.650] – Coach Rachel

Thank you. Bye bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:

– Anne Lynch	– Ken McQuade	– Leigh Tanner
– Debbie Ralston	– John Dachauer	– Tim Alexander
– Eliza Lamb

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Less...

Let's Say Hello

Rachel Discussion

Interview

Text – https://amzn.to/4714lt4

Post Show/Recap

Post show with Rachel.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:

– Anne Lynch	– Ken McQuade	– Leigh Tanner
– Debbie Ralston	– John Dachauer	– Tim Alexander
– Eliza Lamb

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

How to overcome pain and heal from injury – Dr. Tom Walters

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:16.170] – Allan

Hey, Ras.

[00:02:17.930] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. How are you today?

[00:02:19.790] – Allan

I'm doing all right. How are you?

[00:02:21.620] – Rachel

Good, thanks. It's beautiful and fall up here. Leaves are changing, and I just realized we're into the month of October. And I just wanted to remind all the ladies out there to make sure they schedule their mammograms. This is breast cancer awareness month, so I feel like I got to push

[00:02:38.620] – Allan

We're almost at the end of it. At least get it scheduled. Go ahead and call your doctor. Get the appointment scheduled. Do a little bit of self work because I think there's some things you ladies can do to make sure that you're taking care of your tatas.

[00:02:54.780] – Rachel

Yes. And coincidentally, what made me think of it was I had just recently had a visit with my dermatologist for my annual skin cancer check. He checks if you've ever seen me. I've got a lot of freckles moles. I got all sorts of spots. And he takes a look to make sure that they all look safe. And he was actually just schooling me on habit stacking. And one of the habits he was saying was to take your birthday whatever day you were born on. I was born on the 22nd of the month. He's like, use that day to schedule to do healthful things for yourself. Do your breast exam, do your skin self check, make your doctor's appointments. It's an easy day to remember and make it's an important day, obviously. So that was an interesting little habit.

[00:03:41.450] – Allan

Well, did he mean that by every month of every month, like, you do a self exam, you do looking at yourself over check, something over an appointment? So this is every month?

[00:03:51.340] – Rachel

Every month.

[00:03:51.930] – Allan

Usually the 27th of every month, which is just a few days from now.

[00:03:56.730] – Rachel

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So that's a good thing to do.

[00:04:01.120] – Allan

Yeah. Good. Well, we had that huge vacation, and so you would think, okay, well, things are slowing down for Allan. Not exactly. We have a chili cook off that just happened about a week ago. Of course, we're recording this early, so that's this weekend for me right now, calling from the future. But it's this weekend anyway. Yeah. So it's a chili cook off. I'm responsible for the chili. So I've got a 13 pepper chili that I do, I'm going to do. I call it Superstition Chili. Although my team kind of went rogue on me and decided that they wanted to do Roman stuff, so they want to wear togas what it is. But we're trying to tie 13 chilies to Roman stuff now. But anyway, they're creative. They're going to be the fifth year in a row they're probably going to win the best booth thing, and I just want to win the best chili, so I'm working on that. So all that's going down this next weekend, so that's got me busy. And then I'm going to host a murder mystery dinner here at Lula's on the 11th. I'm planning that. And then, of course, my wife Tammy, she's really into Halloween.

[00:05:15.290] – Allan

So there's the Halloween thing that everybody's got together and said, okay, well, we're going to be this, and so it's like boom, boom, boom, and then that. So a lot of things going on here, but it's fun and it's interesting, and I'm just enjoying myself. And no, it's not getting cooler, and no, the leaves are not falling. I'm still walking beaches and shorts. Shirtless to get a little bit of sun.

[00:05:41.710] – Rachel

Nice.

[00:05:42.180] – Allan

My birthday is on the second, so that's when I can do my little skin checks. And there you go. Good. All right, well, I've had Tony on before, and that was a really good conversation. Exciting. He's got so much energy, it's insane. But are you ready to have this conversation with Tony?

[00:05:59.720] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:06:00.500] – Allan

All right, here we go.

Interview

[00:06:31.530] – Allan

Tony, welcome back to 40+ Fitness.

[00:06:34.030] – Tony

Allan, I know, it's good to be back.

[00:06:37.150] – Allan

It's crazy how time flies when you're having fun, but it's been over three years, the summer of 2020 that you were on the show

[00:06:46.930] – Tony

before the Earth got very confusing.

[00:06:49.390] – Allan

Yes, every day. But I just try to have fun and see where it takes me. But, yeah, that was episode 446. This is going to be episode 611 or 612. No, 612. I got that. 612. So, yeah, I've been working. You've been working. A lot has changed, but a lot stays the same. So I'm glad to have this opportunity to have a conversation with you today.

[00:07:12.380] – Tony

My pleasure, man. Good to be here. Good to see you again.

[00:07:14.990] – Allan

So, the last time you were on here, you mentioned something, so I have to share this with you. You'd pulled out your calendar and talked about your red X's to stay motivated. That was kind of one of the keys of and I kind of keyed into that. It's like that visual representation of consistency and how it drives your mind, particularly if you're someone who's driven by the gamification of things and just kind of seeing it versus just feeling it and knowing it. I had a client, her name was Anne, and so I kind of talked to her. We were talking about a couple of different things. One, we were talking about self love, because I think if you don't love yourself, the fitness game is really hard to stick to. And then the other thing was the consistency. She needed the consistency. So I told her about your calendar tool. Well, she put the two together and she went out and bought some heart stickers. And so every day she did her workout, she put a heart sticker on her calendar, man, and it was so cool to see her going through that. And the consistency improved, and the way she felt and the way she felt about herself improved.

[00:08:17.610] – Allan

So really cool tip. I appreciate you sharing that with me.

[00:08:20.350] – Tony

Oh, hey, man. Hey together, we help somebody get to the next level.

[00:08:24.400] – Allan

Absolutely.

[00:08:25.730] – Allan

It is. Again, I think if we all just pay attention to the tools and things that are out there, everybody's bringing something to this game, and I'm looking for you to really bring it this time. Okay.

[00:08:39.890] – Tony

I've learned. I've learned a thing or two since we spoke last, Allan.

[00:08:43.820] – Allan

Good.

[00:08:44.660] – Tony

Fresh tidbit. We only hope. Maybe there's a good joke in here somewhere.I don't know.

[00:08:49.870] – Allan

Okay, well, one of the things I really wanted to get into this time we talked about your shingles last time, and for anyone that doesn't know, go listen to four, four, six. Tony went through about the worst thing I think you can go through with regards to it

[00:09:07.860] – Tony

visited the demons.

[00:09:09.400] – Allan

Yes. But that required you to kind of restart, because a year of not being able to beat Tony Horton for lack of a better word, you lost 25 pounds of muscle. You came back, you weren't where you were. And for a lot of us that were at a level, particularly as we get older and recovery and getting back to things is that much harder. Can you give us some ideas? If someone took a long break from training, or maybe never was training, how do they get the right mindset and really kind of get themselves moving in such a way that they could get this stuff done?

[00:09:51.310] – Tony

Well, here's what's interesting. Let's say, for example, you were committed at some point, like you were into it, and maybe you were single at the time and you had spare time and maybe who knows? Everybody's different, of course, right? One size does not fit all. And you were that person. And whatever happened, you got married, your house got flooded, you ended up with a really horrible flu. Or maybe you had got Ramsay Hunt syndrome like me, and you lose like me. Like you said, I lost 25 pounds. But for me, at that stage in my life, I'd already been doing it for three decades. You know what I mean? It was already ingrained. It's who I was. It was as important as anything else in my life. And the reasons why I was doing what I was doing then had changed from when I first started. Now, when I first started, it was all about ego and size and how much you benched and the circumference of your biceps and whatever. A lot of ego driven stuff, a lot of comparisons of me to others, you know what I mean? And that's all fine if that sustains you.

[00:10:56.450] – Tony

You got to kind of notice when life is shifting that you might have to shift your strategies, your techniques, your methods, whatever. And so when I came out of my situation and again, this applies to anybody who was into it, and then whatever happened and it was two months, three months, a year, five years, and you're getting back into it, it's important to look at your reason why. And my reason why was all ego and esthetics and comparisons to others and looking for compliments, which is not sustainable as you get older, I don't think. And for me it was about health and wellness and my mental and emotional state or much more so than my physical appearance. And far too often I meet guys who are in their fortys or fiftys. I need to get bigger. Really?

[00:11:44.600] – Tony

Are you playing hockey now? What do you want, a rugby team? Or are you going to be the oldest professional football player in the world? Why do you want to get you got three kids and a wife. Does she want you to get bigger? What do you want, dude? What's important to you because you're wanting to get bigger as an example didn't work for these last six months, a year, two five years, whatever. So maybe it should be something different. And for me, my raison detra, as the French would say, my reason for being is to be a super healthy, fit 65 year old. And what does that look like? And how am I prioritizing now? So I'm prioritizing on exercising today because it helps my creativity and my productivity and my ability to solve problems and improves my sex drive and my sleep and my range of motion and my body's ability to move quicker in situations where I wouldn't if I didn't do these things. To be a better skier, to be able to get through a ninja course on Sundays with guys half my age. You know what I mean? So it's more about performance, it's more about quality of life, it's more about better brain function and improving my emotional state as I make my way into my 60s, right?

[00:13:01.530] – Tony

So I think we spoke about this before. When you move, whether it's yoga or cardio or weights or Pilates or CrossFit or P90X or our new program Power Sync 60, you release norepinephrine dopamine serotonin and brain derived neurotropic factor BDNF that happens inside of your head, inside your temporal lobe, inside your hippocampus, inside your little tiny dentate gyrus. And you don't have to wait 30, 60, 90 days for a better look, bigger arms, more you get it today. And if you don't work out, you don't get it. You don't get it. It doesn't happen. And so the temporal lobe and the hippocampus and the dentate gyrus are not stimulated. Those chemicals are not released inside of your head. So you're just a little sadder, you're a little bit more depressed. Your ADD and your ADHD and your elemental P and whatever it is that you have overtakes, right? You don't have all that good brain chemicals to be able to counteract the doldrums of your life. And that's life altering. You know what I mean? Annex is the plan, right? You get your calendar, whatever it is, figure out what you're going to do and when you're going to do it, and you announce it to the world.

[00:14:14.230] – Tony

I got a friend right now. She's so committed. I'm in. And she's been super inconsistent because she doesn't tell the world, hello world. I am going to be working out at 08:30 A.m. every day so don't even begin to think about scheduling anything there because I've already scheduled it till now, until the day I'm dead. Tell the world my workouts are morning and night because I'm working around other people's schedules, because I want those other people in my world motivating me, inspiring me, and helping me push harder.

[00:14:48.100] – Tony

All right?

[00:14:48.490] – Tony

So if you wing it, you won't do it. If you plan it, the odds go up. And third is accountability. Who are you accountable to? If you are one of these people who get up in the middle of the four in the morning and you go down in your basement and you live in Minnesota and it's February and it's 59 degrees down there, and you do a plotty routine or a yoga or you're a superhero, we crown thee. We say, you are better than me, because I don't invite those people to my house. I ain't doing it half the time, man. I mean, I felt like, oh, Horton, he must love working out. Not really. Purpose, plan, accountability. If you got that in your life and you understand how important those are, you go from surviving like everybody else to thriving like I know you want to.

[00:15:34.170] – Allan

Yeah, I kind of break that down into the two different what I call motivational lines. So there's an extrinsic motivational line which falls along the accountability, and then there's the intrinsic, which is more about self efficacy. And the self efficacy stuff is hard. It's hard because at that point, you have to be your own boss. At that point, you have to identify yourself as being more than just a desk wonk doing your job. You've got athletic aspirations, you see yourself differently. I never want to be a spectator in my grandchildren's lives, ever. I don't care what they're doing. When I started, P 90 X was maybe the hardest, craziest thing I'd ever done in my life. Now they got tough Mudders and Spartans and all that kind of stuff going on CrossFit, and it keeps going CrossFit and all that, and I don't know what my grandchildren are going to be doing. They're not even born. Most of them aren't even born yet. So when they come along, it's like, okay, well, when they get older, I want to be the grandpa that's a participant in their lives. Correct. I don't want to be the grandpa that's watching from the rocker or sitting in the aluminum stands watching them.

[00:16:51.090] – Allan

I want to be out there playing with them.

[00:16:53.540] – Tony

Yeah. Building memories. Memories that you're going to have while you're here, and the memories they'll have for the rest of their lives. The influence that you have on them is I went to a show the other night, and P 90 X is ancient. Really? At this point. I don't know, it's been a while. And I don't get out of the house much because,

[00:17:12.250] – Allan

like, 40 years, let's be honest, Tony.

[00:17:16.490] – Tony

I went to Fargo, and I went to Jackson, and I went to Paris, and I went to Rome, and I went to London, and I'm going to Miami, and I'm going to know, like, when I'm not traveling, I'm here, you know what mean? Like, I haven't been to the grocery store in like, seven years, whatever. That's just who I am. But I go to this club, right, packed theater, and they call me on stage, which was not planned, so I had to do this MC thing. And of course, I'm up there reading these three by five cards, my glasses going like I can't. Anyway, it was fun and it was great. And then the show is over, and I would say a fourth of the audience I mean, I'm talking to Pac Theater, all come up to me and say, you changed my life, and P 90 x this and that. And I started in high school, my parents did it and then I did it. And they're like, you have no idea, man, what this did for my and I'm like, wow. And that's what you would be doing on a smaller scale for your grandkids and your grandkids friends and your grandkids kids when they have kids.

[00:18:16.270] – Tony

I mean, it trickles down, man. And it's powerful and it has a tremendous effect. You don't think, oh, you don't really think? Because I didn't really think about it, then all of a sudden I'm like signing and doing selfies and people are crying in front of me. It's like, holy smokes, wow. You forget because you're just doing your thing. And then you let other people market it and send it out to the world. And I don't know how much is getting used, but apparently quite a bit. And so you're in a field, Allan, that is so important right now for this country, you know what I mean? Because too many people are suffering needlessly. And it's up to us to come up with ways to get people off their butt and changing their lives. You know, there's two things that we control. It's whether we move and what we put in our mouth. I mean, pretty much everything else is out of our control, you know what I mean? So if you have the right strategies, the purpose, plan, accountability, whatever, and other intensity, there's other things on the list, too, and you learn that hydration and proper sleep and supplementation and mindfulness is another thing that's really key.

[00:19:24.480] – Tony

There's a lot to learn here, but once it becomes ingrained, once you get that routine down, it feels impossible to abandon it. But there are people out there who are like, I'm in, I'm out, I'm in, I'm in, I'm fit, I'm fat. You know what I mean? And it's up to us to rein them in and say, hey, man, you got this. You can get going again. Here we go.

[00:19:44.330] – Allan

So now, one of the things I noticed is, like, you kind of said the ego thing. It followed me. It wasn't something I said, okay, I'm on my 20s, and okay, I got the ego, and I want to have the arms and the chest and the thing. And it kept following me every time I get in the gym. It's like, okay, just a little tad ego.

[00:20:06.520] – Tony

And as we get older, that can get you hurt.

[00:20:09.210] – Allan

It can get you hurt. That's why I tore my rotator cuff. Exactly. I was as strong at 51 as I was ever in my life. And then I tore rotator cuffs and then I wasn't so as someone gets older. 50s, 40s, 50s, 60s, are there things that we should just say, okay, look, those are childish things, I'm going to put them away and then I'm going to focus on things that are more suitable for who I am and where I need to be. And just kind of as a preface to that, how has aging affected your training?

[00:20:43.550] – Tony

Great question. Well, aging is inevitable, so therefore change is inevitable. It just has to be. But if you still have your high school college mentality and you're in your 40s, 50s and 60s, you're going to tear your rotator cuff, you're going to blow out your knee, you're going to screw up your back, you're going to end up with sciatica. And there are ways to mitigate those things. It doesn't mean that you have to stop training hard. You just have to start training smart. A lot of people can continue to do the workouts they did then, but they're going to have to maybe back off on the reps and back off on the weight, you know what I mean? I would suggest go to more body weight gravity type exercises and get away from trying to do the bench pressing and trying to do the heavy squatting, you know what I mean? And a lot of people who are still hung up on wanting to get bigger, no, live big. Get big. Yeah, that's true. But is it still necessary? Is it still that important to you? I mean, we're getting back to my first answer, right?

[00:21:46.050] – Tony

And I'll get into how my training has changed to a degree. What people need to do is add new stuff. So the recovery mindfulness category of this lifestyle is more important than ever, more popular than ever. I have foam rollers and I use them. I have a Theragon and I use it. I have an infrared sauna and I get in there. I have an infrared mat that I lay on. I have a cold plunge, which I absolutely despise, but I do it. I have a regular pre workout, post workout regimen. Warm up, cool down. Really important, right? I have a regular yoga practice. Every Friday is an hour, 15 hours and a half session. Always trying to work on that, you know what I mean? I have separate stretch routines that I do. And most people just want to start and they want to finish, and they don't want to do any of that stuff because I don't have enough time for that stuff. I barely have enough time for my workout alone. All right? And then the other piece of the part of the recovery is what you're putting in your mouth. Certain foods, certain beverages cause inflammation.

[00:22:55.950] – Tony

And that inflammation occurs not only in your organs and in your pancreas and your liver, in your esophagus and in your digestive system, and in your stomach and everything else. That inflammation happens in your joints. It affects your tendons and your ligaments in your body. The wrong foods that sugar, salt and chemicals over and over and over again at processed food is weakening the muscles, weakening the tendons and the ligaments and your bones. Right? So everybody knows calcium is good for my bones. Well, duh. You think your ligaments and your tendons and your muscles are like my new protein powder has HMB and vitamin D, three massive doses that helps muscles actually grow without having to do much. And when you do much, it's a whole lot better. I mean, I'm 65. There she goes, you know what I mean?

[00:23:40.490] – Allan

Flexing again,

[00:23:41.910] – Tony

still vascular, still strong. But at the same time, if you want to do what you did to a certain degree, you got to add all this extra stuff. And sleep is important. Most people are sleep deprived and dehydrated and malnourished. Right. Get that in order. Like, most people aren't drinking enough water, their sleep is terrible, they're not getting enough of it.

[00:24:05.520] – Tony

This is all part of the recovery process. And then last but not least, it's really learning how to change gears. Maybe you add pilates, maybe you go hiking instead of sprinting on the track. It's really understanding that age is happening. So change is happening. Can you change with the age as you age? And a lot of people just forget that and they don't understand that, and they don't know how to do that, and they don't know who to reach out to to help them get there. And it's about form and function, too. Like today I was on a stability ball. I'm doing tricep extensions with 75s, with the 75, not 275, but 175. Right? So first of all, I got to get into onto the stability ball, and then I got to get the weight on my chest, then I got to get it extended over my face, and then I'm doing ten or twelve reps with that because I've done it so many times. I've built so much the routines for so long that I can get in there and do that, you know what I mean? And it's also the other thing too is P 90 X was successful because there were twelve workouts.

[00:25:05.590] – Tony

My new program, the Power Four, has 24 workouts. So the same adage, we called it muscle Confusion, which was just a made up word term, like it's not real, it's just a term to explain what we're doing. It's not like it's scientific already, so relax everybody. But Jack Lane had something called periodization training. We called it muscle confusion, which was working on your weaknesses as much as your strengths. Yeah, you don't like yoga, we're going to make you do it. You don't like martial arts, we're going to make you do it. You don't want to lift weights, we're going to make you do it. Right. You don't want to work on your ABS? Well, we're doing Aberbarex you've decided to do it or not. And so it was avoiding the boredom and the injuries and the plateaus that come from doing the same things over and over and over again and expecting you're going to look gorgeous and you're going to be right for me. I work on my speed, my balance, and my range of motion as much and more than the resistance, weights and cardio, right? So these three are as important as those two.

[00:26:00.180] – Tony

And when you add all five, you know what I mean, then you're going to be able to do what? I can't jump as high and I can't run as fast, but everything else is pretty much in play for me because I've added the variety, and I have all the recovery aspects of my lifestyle now.

[00:26:20.230] – Allan

Well, I do like that you said form and function, because I think that's the missing piece. When you talked about the why at the beginning, it's like I said, I want to be the grandpa that can climb on the floor and do coloring books. I want to be the grandpa that can keep up with them when they're playing soccer or whatever the thing is. I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105.

[00:26:39.560] – Tony

Um, let's hope we get to 105, and we can.

[00:26:43.010] – Allan

Right? But the whole point being is a lot of people get to a point where they're not able to take care of themselves. They lose their independence because they lost their fitness, not the other way around. It's the function of living the life that you were intended to live, the way you want to live it on your own terms. And so the things you do and you talked about it mobility, balance, speed, keeping those things up takes work. It's not just something you lose. You lose it because you're not doing it. And so it's putting those all together and saying, what does my workout need to look like? I don't need to be able to press 160 pounds over my head anymore. I never actually probably ever really did, but I tried a lot of weight.

[00:27:26.360] – Tony

Over your head, man.

[00:27:26.990] – Allan

It is, but I don't need it now. The heaviest thing I put over my head is an overhead bag. An overhead bin. You put it up in the overhead bin, it's literally that. And that bag doesn't weigh more than 25 pounds. So from a form and function perspective.

[00:27:43.010] – Tony

You'Re good to go to you're 105?

[00:27:45.080] – Allan

Yeah, I can turn that down, but looking at that okay, so I'm sitting on the couch. I got to go to the bathroom. I've got to be able to hop up. This is not a slow thing. This is a get to the bathroom thing. You get there, sit down. That's squat, leg strength. I sit down, I do my work, and now I got to be able to do the paperwork. So that's Dexterity mobility, being able to move around and do things, and then it's standing back up. So there's speed, there's mobility, there's balance, there's strength. That's all built into just a basic function of human life. We don't think about a lot when we're in our 50s and 60s, but we're sure going to think about it when we're sitting on the couch watching, I guess Jeopardy will still be on different hosts. Yeah, different hosts.

[00:28:25.830] – Tony

But we're still we miss you, Alex Trebek.

[00:28:29.690] – Allan

Yeah, but we're sitting on the couch.

[00:28:31.570] – Tony

The other thing, too, that I think is important is and people don't realize that a lot of folks, as they get older, especially if they've never had any kind of a fun activity that they've done in their life, you know what I mean? They're exercising purely to lose a certain amount of weight or have a certain amount of certain kind of appearance. But what if you started training because you really wanted to go on a bike ride on the Appian way outside of Rome? You know what I mean? Like, you really train for these activities. For me, winter comes every year and I ski at least two months, not in a row, but two months worth days, like at least 60 days a year I'm trying to get skiing. And so my mindset the other three seasons, summer, spring, and fall, I'm always training for that one season because I'm out doing something. And maybe it's as simple. Like, I know a lot of people who rode bikes and didn't think about it, and now they're in their 50s and 60s and are afraid to get on a bicycle. Like, damn, man, that's just like, go buy your plot, you know what I'm saying?

[00:29:36.680] – Tony

Like, holy smokes. So what is it about you? I tell people, get a piece of paper and get a pen and write down ten things that are physical, fun things that maybe you did as a kid or you never did. Maybe it's surfing for some of you. Maybe it's just going on hikes on a vacation. Maybe for some it's ice. It's, you know, getting on a skateboard again or getting on a know when I had Ramsey Hunt and I balanced and my balance still isn't right, it's never going to be right. That's permanent damage in these nerves in my brain, but whatever, it doesn't slow me down. But I was wigged out about getting on a bike. And then when I got out one, it was like, oh. And then I did it about five or six times, and it wasn't like I fell over sometimes when I was trying to start, like, I stopped and I was on a hill and you get on the bike and you're trying to go up the hill. That wigged me out. But I go, what's the word? I'm going to scrape my knee. I mean, who cares, you know what I mean?

[00:30:32.330] – Tony

But that's a great motivator, having something else that you want to do physically that you enjoy, that you want to share with other people, friends, families, coworkers. I don't know what it is. And sometimes maybe your purpose is that along with wanting to feel good the day you do it, there's a lot of good reasons why.

[00:30:51.970] – Allan

Anyway, now, I know you're big, and you already spoke to it a little bit today about accountability and getting accountability and having accountability. I know you have people actually come over to your house.

[00:31:06.550] – Tony

Yeah, I've built my home. I have 1 2 3 4 places I work out on my property, three outside and one inside. And so it's a playground. It's an adult playground with stuff pegboards and 20 foot rope and 17 foot rope and parallel bars and a whole dang ninja course in the backyard.

[00:31:24.250] – Allan

But this is not Tony just getting up at 05:00 in the morning and going out there and doing his little ninja course. And it's not just a little ninja course. It's actually kind of exceptional. But you're bringing in people, you're staying in it, and they're holding you accountable. You're holding them accountable. One of the things that a lot of people will poo poo a gym. They'll say, I don't want to go to the gym. I don't like the gym. But to me, that's a ready made accountability group just already there somewhere in your neighborhood.

[00:31:57.810] – Tony

Park the car, go inside.

[00:31:59.480] – Allan

You don't even have to talk to them. If you're the 05:00 workout person, which I was when I was corporate, it's the same people in the gym every morning at 05:00.

[00:32:08.460] – Tony

Yeah, man.

[00:32:09.460] – Allan

And you see them and you nod, they nod, you get and do your thing. So it's not even like I could call them friends. I don't even know their names, but I just knew they're there. They're going to be there and pushed me to

[00:32:22.250] – Tony

maybe they become friends at some point. Hey, man, what's your name again? Especially, hey, will you spot me? Sure enough, tell me your name, blah, blah, blah. And you find out you have a lot in common. It becomes your best man at your wedding.

[00:32:33.810] – Tony

Those stories happen all the time,

[00:32:35.440] – Allan

and that goes to the gym. Wrong. You're some of the five people you spend the most time with.

[00:32:41.300] – Tony

Correct.

[00:32:43.090] – Allan

Some of those folks should be in fitness. Just saying.

[00:32:48.070] – Tony

Yeah, totally true, man. Totally true.

[00:32:51.340] – Allan

So I'm going to ask you this question again. I think you'll probably give me a different answer. It's been over three years. I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:33:06.330] – Tony

I kind of covered them already, you know what I mean? Curiosity maybe is something I didn't really touch on, but being open to trying new things that you feel like you've never even tried before, because I talk about it in my book, The Big Picture, there's two kinds of love there's the thing that you just love to do. If you don't like fitness, there's probably not much that you love, but you got to be open to something, right? I mean, like a lot of guys just want to lift weights, that's all they want to do. They love lifting weights, but they don't want to try anything else. Like, yoga is not my favorite thing to do, but I understand how important it is. I love yoga like the last ten minutes of yoga, I love it the first hour, that's.

[00:33:46.810] – Allan

When you're laying on your back about to take a nap.

[00:33:48.580] – Tony

Yeah, when I'm in Shavasana, right, or whatever, I'm going through those final stretches and I'm in Vinyasana. I'm pretty Vinyasa is the flow. So curiosity is great, what is it out there? And again, break out your paper and your pen and you write down maybe some things that you've heard about. And by the way, there's Peloton, there's beachbody, there's my platform, there's Tonal. I'm on Tonal now, you know what I mean? There's running clubs, there's rock climbing clubs, there's just so many things, you know what I mean? And category one is what are the activities that you could do on your own, right? Like, if you're on the road and the gym is terrible and it's raining or snowing outside and you know that you need to move today, what is your plan? You know what I mean? What are you going to do? Me, I have this thing I call the warrior workout. I do a set of push ups, I do cardio for a minute, I do 30 sets of ABS, I do 30 sets of legs, 30 reps of legs and ABS. And I go three rounds, four rounds, five rounds, six rounds, whatever I got time for.

[00:34:53.340] – Tony

And all you need is the human body, gravity and mother Earth and you're good to go. And that just means, oh, I'm open minded, I'm curious, I'm trying things and it helps me stay consistent. And then again, you touched upon it too. You are the company you keep. And a lot of people, as they get older, they stop making new friends. They just, I got my friends and I don't want to meet new people. Well then you've just put the blinders on. Wham, you know what I mean? So everything in your world gets smaller because your friends are going to eventually a not to be able to do anything anymore because they're not on the same path you're on or they're going to start dying. All right, I meet new people and I invite them over to my house all the time, I've known people ten minutes and I go, hey man, here's my email address, email me if you want to show up for a workout. I do that all the time, right? So creativity, curiosity, when it comes to how you train, constantly searching, go to the gym and don't just look at the same people for six months a year and not say anything to them.

[00:35:53.620] – Tony

Go up and say hello. You know what I mean? I mean, if you're not a weirdo, then they'll probably be cool. I have so many friends. Like, some guy with an FBI agent was walking by my house with his dog and his daughter, and he came up, and he thanked me because I helped him get fit, and I just liked him. And, hey, you know, here's my email. Call me if you want to come over. And the guy was over here five days a week until he had to move to London. And then there was another doctor. It was an eye doctor, same thing. He's just some guy who I was at a restaurant, and he came up to me and thanked me because I helped him with his career, and now he and I are pen pals and email pals, text pals. And I'm always giving him advice and whatever. If you open up your world, then that's everything. And then the other thing too, that I don't talk about much. I mean, I just say form and function. But get in front of a mirror and watch what you're doing. Look to see if what you're doing is correct.

[00:36:50.690] – Tony

Your form is everything. I've been with friends of mine, and I'm always saying, go lower. Get in your heels more. Straighten your arms. You're too hunched over. And people are just kind of arbitrary going through stuff. And as you're training, you're doing the same things over and over and over again incorrectly. I lost you.

[00:37:11.020] – Allan

No, I'm here.

[00:37:12.160] – Tony

Did you hear all that? If you keep doing things wrong all the time, well, then you're even more vulnerable to injury long term, because you get out in the world and you want to try something, and that range of motion isn't there. Your tendons and ligaments and muscles aren't prepared to do what you're about to do because you don't have that flexibility. You haven't moved very quickly. Your form has been terrible for decades. You know what I mean? And that's like, oh, man, here I am. I've been working out. I'm taking care of myself, and now you're telling me everything I'm doing. My form sucks. Well, either you address it or you don't. You know what I mean? Because if you address it and you're willing to get your arms straight or get your squat prop get a proper squat or you're landing like a ton of bricks as opposed to like a kitten, these are things that are important, especially as you get older, because you become more and more vulnerable if you're not really paying attention to those types of things.

[00:38:03.690] – Allan

Thank you, Tony. If someone wanted to learn more about you and the things that you're up to right now, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:38:10.830] – Tony

Oh, there's so many places, tonyhortonlife.com. That's the easy, simple one. You can find everything. There's a lot of tabs, my equipment, my supplements, my live events, my clothing line that we still have a few of in a warehouse.

[00:38:25.500] – Allan

And your blog. And your blog.

[00:38:27.670] – Tony

And my blog. But if you want supplements, go to mypowerlife.com mypowerlife.com and put in the code tony30, which means you save 30%. Awesome. That's really good. And then our brand new my wife and I have got a new thing called Power Nation. In Power Nation, we have lots of our own trainers, we have lots of our own programs. Like I said, the power of four. I left Beach body and everybody said, where's p 90 x four? So we made one called The Power of Four. It's kind of like, what that's all about? But it's about exercise, it's about nutrition, it's about supplementation. And most importantly, the fourth leg of that very important table is the mindfulness component, which I think a lot of people are saying, oh, wow, I didn't realize that if I do breath work and box breathing and meditation and body scan work and everything else, that it just gives me the energy to be able to keep coming back. So the power of four is there. And our brand new program, which is designed I designed it with Dr. Mindy Pells. And Dr. Mindy Pells has done years of research on why women aren't getting the results that they want, is because they're doing the wrong things on the wrong days.

[00:39:37.500] – Tony

And women have a much more complicated hormonal situation than dude. Dudes, we got testosterone and some estrogen, and women are pre pedomopausal and postmenopausal and perimenopausal. And so some women have to train based on the moon. Some of them have to train because their menstrual cycles are gone. And now we added stop options, which means in a lot of these routines, there's two stop options at the ten or 20 minutes mark, at the 40 minutes mark. So that way if you don't like, oh, it's 55 minutes routine, I'm out, I can't do it. But I gave you a stop option. All you have to do is fast forward to the cooldown, and that gets more people in the room, helps them be more consistent. And then, of course, we have our power up and power down stuff, which we used to call modifications with P 90 x. So you can intent if you want, because there's somebody here that shows you how. And if you want to back way off, there's somebody on my other shoulder that will show you how to do that. So our two test groups are getting blown away. These women are getting in the best shape of their life.

[00:40:38.250] – Tony

They're losing weight for the first time because they're doing the right workouts on the right day. So men have one schedule. Women have like three and four based on where they are in their cycle. So we're really proud of that. And you can get all that at powernationfitness.com that's powernationfitness.

[00:40:55.150] – Allan

All right, well, you can go to 40plusfitness.com/613. It's actually episode 613. I thought it was twelve, but it's 13 613. And I'll make sure to have the links there so you can find whatever you want to find for Tony. Well, Tony, again, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:41:16.390] – Tony

Allan, my pleasure, man. I love being on with you and I think we struck some gold today.

[00:41:21.840] – Allan

I think so, too. I think we're going to get a lot out of this. Thank you.

[00:41:26.120] – Tony

Thank you, brother. Bye

[00:41:28.530] – Allan

bye.

Post Show/Recap

[00:41:31.070] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:41:32.690] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. I'll just fangirl again for a minute. Tony Horton, he's such a name in the industry and it's been really fun to watch him all these years. So it's nice to hear he's got something going on these days.

[00:41:44.850] – Allan

He has a lot of things going on. Like I said earlier in the intro when we were talking before, the man has just so much energy. He's like a nuclear power plant. It's insane. And that's cool. I think that one of the things that is really interesting is, yes, he was a big, huge name through the 90s into the 2000s with p 90 x, x two and x three, and then he had all these celebrity clients. One of his best friends was Tom Petty and things like that. So it's he's he's in the industry. He's been in the you know, a lot of times people are in the industry and then they're not and then they're not the same person. And so he's had some health issues with his shingles thing, which was he had he had one of the worst cases of it. So it was not a good deal. But at any rate, he is the healthiest, fittest, happiest version of himself. And you can't compare yourself and I think this is where I can literally say, do not under any circumstances compare yourself to someone else. Because Tony wanted to do a pull up competition against me because he sees my pull up rack behind me when we're doing the video and I'm like, not a chance in hell, Tony.

[00:43:19.470] – Allan

I said, now, if you're stuck and I happen to be walking down the side of the road, I'm the guy you want because I can push your car. That's my skill set. So I'm not going to compare myself to Tony Horton. I'll never have that amount of energy and, as he put it, have hollow bones to be able to do a whole lot of pull ups. But I know my way, I know where I'm going. I know what I want for my life. And my training is effectively geared to make me who I want to be tomorrow.

[00:43:49.850] – Rachel

Well, I think that's an important concept. I think you said in his 60s somewhere I'm my 50s. And what we can do today is a little different than what we may be able to do in our 20s and 30s. I mean, there's something to be said for decades of change and maybe training smarter instead of harder. It's an important pivot to recognize.

[00:44:15.100] – Allan

I've been very open and transparent about the fact that I wanted to get super strong in my early 50s, I blew out, you know, tore up, ripped out a rotator cuff, and I did CrossFit until I realized, okay, CrossFit is fine. But at the time, my ego would often overshoot my capacity and I would find myself hurting after a workout and trying to do another workout before I had fully recovered. And so it was just one of those things of saying, okay, CrossFit's great if you can do CrossFit. CrossFit's terrible if you don't have control of your ego or you're doing it too often and not recovering between them. And so it's just kind of finding where you are being realistic about it and then pushing. Now, the way I say pushing is those gentle nudges that kind of get you just outside your comfort zone, not the extreme. I'm going to see what Tony's up to today and then I'm going to emulate Tony's workout. It's not going to be in your best interest, right?

[00:45:24.620] – Rachel

Well, it's important. That's right. It's important to know what your capabilities are and then how far you can push that without causing any injury. Like, I like to say I'd like to live to run another know. I don't want to overdo it and really get injured and then not be able to do the things that I love. But Tony was mentioning that too. He had an ego in his maybe younger years. And now you just need to find what you love. You talk about being fit for task, if that's important to mean. You just need to figure that out for yourself. We're all quite individual.

[00:46:01.090] – Allan

Yeah. And then the other thing that I really like that Tony got into was that this is not just about doing know, this is about doing you. And you is more than fitness, it's nutrition, it's rest and recovery and all of these other things wrapped together. And the funniest thing is, I'll talk to somebody and they'll say, well, I did a long run or hike on Friday or Saturday on Saturday, and then they're hurting on Monday. And I said, okay, well, what was your Sunday like? Because just to see if it was recovery, it's like, oh, well, there was a potluck at the church. And I said, okay, so how'd the nutrition go that day? Not so great. I had some of the cobbler. It was really good. I went back for seconds and I had this and I had that. So, yeah, I completely washed out on my nutrition on Sunday. And I'm like, okay, so you're hurting on Monday. Your knees and ankles and hips are all hurting on Monday, and you think it's the run you did on Saturday.

[00:47:06.450] – Rachel

Right.

[00:47:07.930] – Allan

You ate all that inflammation food, and they got inflammation. That's where the pain is coming from. And you think you earned it, you said, well, I was moving for over an hour and a half. I did this distance, and over an hour and a half, I felt like, yeah, I can have a few little treats. And like, okay, so you burned maybe 400, 500, maybe 600 calories. Let's go on the high end. And then you go and eat 700 calories worth of cobbler.

[00:47:40.770] – Rachel

Oh, jeez.

[00:47:42.370] – Allan

It's so easy to eat it.

[00:47:43.990] – Rachel

It is.

[00:47:44.450] – Allan

It's so hard to burn it.

[00:47:45.970] – Rachel

Right.

[00:47:46.800] – Allan

But we think we deserve it.

[00:47:48.760] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:47:49.300] – Allan

And then we're hurting, and we blame the wrong thing for hurting.

[00:47:52.880] – Rachel

So true.

[00:47:53.770] – Allan

So now it's like, well, I got to cut back on my mileage.

[00:47:57.210] – Rachel

Yeah, well, that's an important concept, too, as we age, especially if you're a runner. We need to do all these other things to get those adaptations that we're trying to get in the gym or running on the road like I do. So you need to have good sleep, you need to have good nutrition, you need to do the stretching and mobility work. And if you're not, or worse yet, sabotaging yourself by not doing these things, not getting enough sleep or eating maybe the wrong foods, then you're ruining your own goals. You're really hamstringing yourself at this point.

[00:48:34.950] – Allan

Well, the worst part of it to me is that you have a goal and you want to work towards the goal, but then not that you're doing something specifically to sabotage it, but that you're just not doing the right things. Fine. If you want to have a day and it's a potluck at the church and it's important for you to be there, and yes, if you don't eat the pastor's wife's cobbler, we're going to excommunicate you, or whatever, have some cobbler. That's not where the real problem comes in. Where the real problem comes in is that you don't objectify it. You don't step back and say, okay, I need to have some cobbler, but I don't need to have a four pound piece. That's what they're going to hand you. They're going to hand you that cobbler on that little paper plate, and it's going to feel like you should be doing overhead presses with this thing because it's heavy. You don't have to have that much. You can have a taste of it, enjoy it, relish it, and then move on. But we kind of turn that off. We're like, oh, well, I have to have this, and therefore, boom.

[00:49:55.670] – Allan

Okay, it's a bad day. I screwed up. I'm emotionally upset about it. Don't be. It was fine. Not that you were entitled to it, but you're a grown person. You can have that decision. But you don't do the other stuff. You're not sitting on the floor, rolling around with the kids and doing stuff like you did when you were in your thirty s and now you wonder why it's so painful and hard to get down on the floor. Just because you don't do it enough. You just don't do it enough. I can sit down on the floor and get back up. I can roll around on the floor with my dogs, I can play. I can do all those things at 57 years old. And it's not because I'm some superhero fitness guy. It's just because I actually get on the floor practically every single day. I make a point of getting down there and moving around. Is it dedicated stretching? Is it dedicated mobility work? Do I feel like I'm working out when it no? I just get up in the morning, start my coffee, sit down on the floor and hope my dog doesn't bite me in the face because he's just a little too childish.

[00:51:05.770] – Allan

He likes to nip. It's not a bite bite. Lev is just a nip nip guy. But it's just one of those things of get on the floor, roll around, move around, get the hips open as often as you can, particularly if you had a sitting job.

[00:51:20.090] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:51:21.210] – Allan

And then the other thing I'm on this interview, I've been on this call. I've got two interviews today.

[00:51:26.620] – Rachel

Oh boy.

[00:51:27.260] – Allan

So I set up my workstation right now where I can just be standing up. So I'm standing up right now. I'm not sitting down. So my hips are open, my chest is open. I can have a conversation with you, and I can do that like I have a phone call or anything and just not be sitting in the chair hunched over there's times that works very well. There are times I need to be sitting down because I got to take notes, I got to be doing some work, got to do some stuff. But I pick my battles and I say, okay, I can be sitting, I can be standing, I can be on the floor. And I try to be all three at different points of the day where it makes sense. So it's not that you have to do all these extra workouts. It's just look at your day and say, what can I do to be moving in a different pattern than I would be? Because if you're sitting for eight solid hours, that's really hard to undo.

[00:52:21.760] – Rachel

That's a lot.

[00:52:22.600] – Allan

Yeah, it's really hard. And I get it. Some people, you have to be sitting at the computer. You got to be typing notes while you're on the phone or whatever's going on. You have to be at the computer. Okay, that's fine. Get up, move around, do a stretch break. It's not like you're going to do a workout, but just do five squats. Five squats. A Samson Lunge. If you don't know what that is, look it up. But just different things that are moving your body to open you up, to get your body moving in a different way so that you're not getting locked into a position. And that's the thing, he has the time. And so he does dedicated yoga, he does other dedicated workouts. Heck, sometimes he's just out there throwing hatchets at a target. Oh God. Because he's made his house his playground.

[00:53:12.330] – Rachel

Yes.

[00:53:12.860] – Allan

And so it's not that you have to do that. I'm standing here in basically what was our living room of our apartment and guess what? It's a gym. I see. So it's easy for me to walk in here and just say, okay, well, I don't have time for a full workout. Okay, well, I'll just get back in real quick. I don't have time for the full thing. But I'll do a few pull downs, I'll do a few pullovers, I'll do a few rows. Takes me five minutes, put in a circuit and go. And so not that you have to have a bunch of equipment, but just have things that you do that are not sitting at your desk or sitting watching the TV, have other things that you do. And that's really kind of the lesson of all this, is that by doing, you take care of yourself.

[00:54:04.110] – Rachel

For sure. Well, I'd like you both. Well, Tony had said he wanted to be a super healthy, fit 60 year old or in his 60s. And I love that. And it means something different to everybody. And like you had said, we have watched him grow from the beach body days in, what was that, the 80s and 90s even to what he's doing today. And he's made being active and fit a daily activity for his entire life. And he is pretty darn healthy for somebody in his 60s. Super healthy.

[00:54:40.730] – Allan

Yeah, I would definitely put him in the top one percentile of people his age. There's not a lot of people that you're going to see in their mid 60s that can even hold a candle to what Tony's doing. And he had all the reasons to not. I mean, he went through that, lost 25 pounds. He could have just said, okay, done, because he's made enough money. He doesn't need it. He just enjoys being a part of this.

[00:55:06.630] – Rachel

That's it.

[00:55:07.170] – Allan

Enjoys doing it and being so that's what gives him drive. That's what makes him happiest, is when he knows he's helping other people. Me telling him the story about Anne and her stickers with the calendar, he lit up. He lit up because again, this is what he's doing. This is what he's dedicated his life to, is helping people find their health and fitness. And he has his message and his approach. I think it works very well for people in the next generation because we're fired up when someone else is fired up. And so again, the message is you do you, take care of you. No one else is going to do it for you. You've got to do you and just be cognizant.

[00:55:55.150] – Rachel

Just like you were saying, just simple movements throughout the day is enough to get you to be in a healthier, fit place each decade.

[00:56:05.630] – Allan

Each decade, each decade, all the way up to where I can wipe my own butt when I'm 105.

[00:56:10.950] – Rachel

That's right. You could be a super fit, 105 year old.

[00:56:15.100] – Allan

That is a super fit, healthy 105 year old. I can tell you it is.

[00:56:18.880] – Rachel

And that could be you.

[00:56:20.330] – Allan

It will be me. All right, well, I'll talk to you next week, then.

[00:56:24.490] – Rachel

Take care, Allan.

[00:56:25.570] – Allan

You too. Bye.

[00:56:26.560] – Rachel

Thanks. Bye bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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– Anne Lynch	– Ken McQuade	– Leigh Tanner
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