Let's Say Hello

[00:02:35.410] – Allan

Hey, Ras.

[00:02:36.530] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. How are you today?

[00:02:38.070] – Allan

I'm doing okay. How are things up there?

[00:02:40.600] – Rachel

Really good. Really proud to announce my son just graduated from College. He's got a job lined up with General Motors, which we're very proud and excited for him. And so this month we're working on finding him an apartment to live in and he'll be about fledged in another month or so. We're pretty excited to be one step closer to that empty nesters part of our lives.

[00:03:03.900] – Allan

Congratulations for him and you because I know as a parent these days you're engaged.

[00:03:10.280] – Rachel

Yes, I am.

[00:03:11.510] – Allan

When they're going through the College years.

[00:03:14.530] – Rachel

Yeah. I'm pretty happy to be done with that Bill. I'll tell you that right now. And he is, too. Yeah. He's very excited to be done with College and starting this next chapter of his life, and we're very proud.

[00:03:25.990] – Allan

That's cool.

[00:03:27.020] – Rachel

So how are things with you?

[00:03:28.520] – Allan

Well, we had a new house guest come in. A holler monkey.

[00:03:35.650] – Rachel

Oh, my goodness.

[00:03:37.400] – Allan

And so this holler monkey, we're about 2 miles away from where any of the holler monkeys would hang out. I've never heard or seen a holler monkey this far into town. Heard stories. Now, of course, once it happens, like, oh, well, this happened a few years ago kind of thing. But, no, this dude was literally coming across the wires, and, of course, Buster has to fend the habitat. So he's barking like crazy trying to get to this monkey. I'm trying to keep him away from the monkey and just try to figure out, okay, how do I get the monkey to shoo or go away? But I don't want to also don't want them to get hurt. I don't want to get hit by a car and so many things going through my head, and then all of a sudden, the monkey zap, touched a wire they weren't supposed to touch and just fell. This is from the second story, probably, I would say a good 25ft drop and just lands on pavement. I hear speck when he hit the ground. I ran over there. He's stunned. I take a picture, and I go online. I message Tag, the guy that does our local humane society kind of stuff, Papa Gato.

[00:04:53.050] – Allan

And so he brings a woman over. But before he gets over there and really before I get my post all the way down and go back out, this monkey's woke up, goes across the street and climbs up an almond tree. And so he's up in the tree. So Papa Gato goes and gets his trap. We put a couple of bananas in there, and we set the trap up. Well, the monkey stayed in that tree for almost two whole days.

[00:05:20.310] – Rachel

Oh, my gosh.

[00:05:21.690] – Allan

Stayed overnight. And then it was late the next afternoon that he finally, I guess, get climbed down and just took off because I didn't see him slip out. I would go out there every couple of hours and check on him just to see if he was in the tree. He would move from side to side. So I knew he was generally okay. Somehow, another he came down. He just ignored the bananas we had out there for him, and they just took off. And so hopefully he's going to be okay. He'll find his way back to where he needs to be. I hear these male monkeys will get kicked out of their troop, and then they just have to go find a place to be that's not where their troops at because they're not welcome there anymore. So I think he just strayed and got himself on the wrong side of town.

[00:06:06.490] – Rachel

Oh, my goodness. What an adventure.

[00:06:09.980] – Allan

Then he got shocked and it was so interesting because we had a guest up there on the balcony when this is all happening, he's just looking around like, oh, my God, what's going on here? And then all of a sudden the monkey gets electrocuted and he's messaging his wife and his daughter said, don't come back yet. Don't come back yet. You don't want to see this. I thought the monkey was done when he hit that concrete and electrocuted, I thought, oh, that poor monkey. But he was able to climb up the tree and spend a day up there, I guess heal a little and then decided it was time for him to move on because there was no water on that land where he was. So he was going to need to go somewhere just to get water. But interesting weekend.

[00:06:54.680] – Rachel

Yeah, for sure. Holy cow.

[00:06:57.650] – Allan

All right. Well, are you ready to talk to Dr. Segar?

[00:07:02.300] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:07:52.090] – Allan

Dr. Segar, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:07:55.150] – Dr. Segar

It's great to be here.

[00:07:57.170] – Allan

Now I'm going to say joy is one of my favorite words. And I have a question that's going to come up later about wellness, and it includes happiness. But after I wrote the book and after I've asked this question hundreds of times, I kind of wish I'd use the word joy instead of happiness because I think that's really the word I was after. So your book is called, The Joy Choice: How to Finally Achieve Lasting Changes in Eating and Exercise. And, you know, I think anybody that's tried to change one or both of those knows it might be the most challenging thing they've ever done. I know for me it was. And while I didn't call it the Joy Choice at the time, most of what you're talking about here, it just resonates with me very well because it was effectively what took me over eight years of trial and error to figure out. And they can get this book and get a lot of the details of how to do it in a much shorter time.

[00:08:59.750] – Dr. Segar

The reason why so many people haven't figured it out yet and that it might have taken you eight years is because we've been taught an opposite approach that really gets in our way. It clouds and contaminates our thinkings and our emotions about eating and exercise and really derails what we're hoping to achieve. So that's why it's so hard. And I think the biggest thing is for people to really understand it's not their fault. It's because the whole formula that we've been taught, not the whole the majority of what we've been taught over the last three to four decades has been based on science, but it hasn't necessarily been based on how we can best sustain a behavior within our complicated lives.

[00:09:52.790] – Allan

Yeah. And you got into some of the science on that, which was fascinating. And we've seen it in other areas I have in Health and Fitness, where they'll take one study and they'll say, okay, this is the study, and then we're going to drive everything else off of this one study. And the one I'm talking about in particular that was in your book was you were talking about how long it takes to build a habit. And granted, we can say based on that study, 66 days potentially, but the standard deviations, for someone it was two weeks, and for someone else, it was almost a whole year on average. Okay, 66 days. And we drive a lot of the way we approach this on a study like that. So it's no wonder that you're not one of the people that happens to be on the right end of the 66 days. It might take you longer. It might take you a different approach, which is what you get into with the Joy choice.

[00:10:57.290] – Dr. Segar

I'm not sure that's even the most strategic question that we could be asking to focus on how long is it going to take me to form an automatic habit? As you know, in the book, there's a lot of concerns I have about telling people that they should be forming habits for healthy eating, exercise, and I'm sure we're going to get into that in a little bit. But the idea is that focusing on the process instead of the outcome, what do I need to do consistently to actually be able to stick with this long term? That's focusing on the process. That's the goal. That's what's going to get us where we want to go. So that's really the best of the question we should be asking is what do I need to do? What is most likely to get in my way, and what can I do to overcome or prevent those things?

[00:11:49.940] – Allan

Yeah. And we definitely will get into that. There was a concept you had in the book that I thought was brilliant, and it's called the motivation bubble. And the reason I think that it's great is because I think when someone actually understands this concept, it's like that happens to me every single day. It's not just every single time I try to lose weight or every time I try to start an exercise program, I build this motivation bubble. That bubble pops as soon as something gets around it. And we've got these. Can you talk about the motivation bubble because we go in with the best of intentions and we're excited.

[00:12:35.810] – Dr. Segar

Right? Well, we usually decide we're going to change our eating or start exercising more for a very specific reason. Either we're excited for a trip we're going to take or that magazine cover or our doctor gave us really scary news and we start and we're in this and we're full of motivation because we've decided we're going to do it. But the motivation is like a bubble. And as we know, bubbles are very fragile and we might blow a really big bubble, but it doesn't take much for that to bump up into anything else. Anything that bumps into it is going to burst it. This is how we've been taught to initiate behavior change in this fragile bubble of motivation without a lot of strategy, without understanding the types of things that are really going to get in our way. And bubbles burst. And that's why I use it. And that analogy came organically out of an interview, and I've just been using it ever since.

[00:13:40.670] – Allan

Yeah. Now there are some of us, like your husband, who is able to create habits, and you can call him a habitor, is what you call them in the book. And then there's people that are not habitors, and we call them you call them unhabitors. Can you talk about those two people? And why is it difficult for certain individuals to be able to form habits? And other individuals might just say, okay, naturally, here's my habit, and I start doing it three weeks later. I'm just doing it every day. What's the difference?

[00:14:12.890] – Dr. Segar

Well, before I answer the question, I think we need to create the context. And what people care about is they have some North Star they want to achieve. They want to be healthier, they want to have a better sense of well being. And in order to achieve those north stars, we need sustainable behavior change, because if you make a change and don't stick with it, you're not going to be able to achieve those goals. So sustainability is this fundamental thing we need. But sustainability is really the symptom of something else, and that is consistent decisions day in and day out. Now, I don't mean identical decisions. I just mean a sense of consistency in our choices that favor doing the behavior. There's a couple of ways to create consistent decisions. One is through our unconscious automatic thinking, which would be via habit formation, and the other is through our conscious thinking. So let's pause on our conscious thinking and focus now on habit formation, which is offloading our choices to exercise or eat in certain ways to our unconscious and automatic decision making. And let me just say, habits are great. I'm thankful for my flossing habit.

[00:15:33.690] – Dr. Segar

I'm thankful that I have a habit to feed my dog in the morning because it will starve otherwise. So I'm thankful I don't have to think about those things, but those are very simple things, and there are personality differences that I'll get into in a minute. But if we think about different behaviors like exercise, flossing happens in the bathroom. There's not a lot that's going to get in the way or disrupt it. But when it comes to physical activity, we've got places to get to. We've got transportation, we've got potentially changes. We've got other people whose logistics were in charge of there are so many different things that can get in the way and make it very complicated. Habit formation happens via what's called the habit loop, which is a queue for behavior like I brush my teeth and the cue is brushing, and I automatically think reach for the floss. I floss, and then there's some type of reward, and that fuels a process in our brain that automates it as soon as we get that queue. And again, for flossing, it's pretty simple in the bathroom. But step outside of the bathroom into the chaotic, crazy life of hubbub that many of us live, and that cue is going to get disrupted.

[00:16:50.760] – Dr. Segar

Now, getting back to your question about habitors versus unhabitors. Habitors are people like my husband, and God bless him, he lets me use him as an example. There's nothing wrong. Habitors are awesome, and I love them dearly. But what's most important is that we understand which we tend to be. And a habitor tends to be someone who is very disciplined, who has a very organized schedule that doesn't lend itself to a lot of disruption, and that makes it easier to form habits even for complex behaviors like exercise. But unhabitors and I happen to be one of those, one of the lucky many millions. I think more people are unhabitors because unhabitants tend to be less organized. We tend to have more hubbub and unexpected in our lives. We may manage many people's lives and pets, whether at home or at work. And so there's a lot of room for the unanticipated to just fly in and disrupt any habit loop that we might be trying to create. So that's the big difference. Does that make sense?

[00:18:05.740] – Allan

Yeah. The way I like to talk to people about it, a lot of it's going to depend on how you do your self awareness, and as you sit down with your self awareness understanding. Okay, am I the kind of person who can get into a Porsche and get this done? And I've got no disruptions. I got nothing in the road in front of me. It's a straight road, and I can just haul versus someone who's now got kids and other things. So now I'm driving in a minivan and I can't go as fast, and the road is curved, and maybe there's a whole lot of road construction in school zones and everything else going on in our lives. It's going to keep us from getting as far as fast and understanding that then allows you to take the approach one with patience, understanding that your life is not completely 100% of your control, which is what the joy choice really, when it comes down to it, is where the real value comes in is I don't have to Super manage my life. I don't have to worry about that I'm in a sports car. I can be in my minivan and be very happy with the progress that I'm making.

[00:19:06.890] – Allan

That's kind of the way I put where I'm at. The way I like to approach this with what you're talking about is once we know who we are, it's a lot easier to make some decisions. And then once we know how to approach it, we make better decisions.

[00:19:21.470] – Dr. Segar

You know what it's about fit and match. And let's step outside of exercise and healthy eating just for a minute, and let's think about what other areas in our lives we know that where we learn that we're fit is so important. We might, when we're younger, want to date and pick the raciest coolest person. But when it comes down to who we want to spend the rest of our life with, that person might have very different characteristics to fit us. Or if we think about schools, the fit with who we are and what kind of learning context teaching we need will determine whether we have a successful and a positive experience. So it's the same when it comes to changing our behavior. Are the strategies we're trying to use a fit with who we are in personality and our life context, or are they not? But we haven't been taught to ask that question.

[00:20:24.470] – Allan

Yeah. Now in the book, you talk about the decision disruptors and you use the acronym Trap. I love acronyms, too, because they help us remember some things. And these are really important because if you can recognize these traps, then you're in a much better place because so many times these traps get us. And by the time we recognize that, we've gone off the trail, our motivation bubble has popped and that day is effectively, in our minds, ruined before we ruin our day. If we catch ourselves in that moment, which is we'll get into the pop in a minute. But we start with understanding where the traps are. Can you talk about what Trap stands for and what these potential disruptors are?

[00:21:10.920] – Dr. Segar

Yes, and I call them decision disruptors, because what this book is about is what we really haven't been taught for the most part and what to do when our healthy eating or exercise plan bumps up with an unexpected conflict because the societal dogma has been all or nothing thinking, which really, if your plan is disrupted, the only alternative in that paradigm or that binary is nothing. And so people do nothing. And so the goal of the book is to help people at those challenges, those choice points, those momentary decisions about what to do and so things that disrupt those decisions, that tend to be internal in our heads that we might not be aware of are temptation, rebellion, accommodation, and perfection. And while these traps are active and often they're often unconscious. So one of my favorite quotes of all time it has to do with this is from Dan Siegel, and he says, name it to tame it. So if we can name the trap that is staring us in the face, we can really remove a great deal of its power to control our decisions, which is what we're focused on in the book.

[00:22:30.330] – Dr. Segar

So the first one is temptation. And temptation is just this visceral feeling. We have to we want that chocolate cake. It is in front staring us down. It's seducing us or, wow, the couch and that beer is calling us to watch more something on Netflix. Right now we're watching The Good Place, which is really funny. So temptation, when we hear that word, we know what it means. But what we might not know is what new theories based on how our brain works proposed. And that is that it's our past experiences with the chocolate cake and the couch and the beer that is really exerting pullovers. It's not what's in front of us. It's our history of past memories of participating these activities and what it felt like and what it sounded like and the emotions we had and the people we were with. And when we understand that, then we can name it. Oh, that isn't just that chocolate frosting listening in the light. It's how I felt when my mom made it for my birthday every year. And when we can notice that. I mean, I already know you started off this conversation with self awareness.

[00:23:54.370] – Dr. Segar

Self awareness is what people need to be able to notice those things. And so when we understand how the brain works when it comes to these temptation choice points, then we are much more empowered to take charge and not succumb to something that we might not want to succumb to. So do you want me to go to the second one?

[00:24:17.440] – Allan

Yes, please.

[00:24:18.090] – Dr. Segar

Okay. So the second very common disruptor that I've seen in my coaching clients is rebellion. And in my last interview, the podcaster asked me, why would people rebel against something that they themselves have planned to do? Well, there's a really great reason why. And the reason is because we have been socialized to initiate an eating plan or to start a new exercise regimen out of shoulds because we think we should do it because our doctor told us to, because our company told us to, because we think we're overweight, whatever the reason. And when we initiate a behavior change out of that mentality, which is the most common way actually to initiate a change in this area, it makes us feel like we're not free to choose the things we want to choose. And it's human nature. And theory support us that human beings are motivated to reclaim their freedom when they feel like it's been taken away. So if you think you can't have pizza because it's not on your eating plan, well, guess what we're motivated to do? We're motivated to say screw you plan. I'm going to have it anyway. So that's rebellion.

[00:25:38.780] – Dr. Segar

I bet you've seen that a lot in your work.

[00:25:40.780] – Allan

Is that I do. My very first client was doing great, seeing results. Everything was wonderful. I was excited. She was telling me these wonderful stories or interactions with her granddaughter. And I was thinking, okay, she's on a really great track. So she's experiencing the benefits of what's going on and things she had told me before. She hates exercise and everything. And I'm like, well, you know, we're going to do some and we're going to do. And so we were going along. And I think similar to what you'd said in the book, it's like when she started rebelling and then disappeared, it was my fault. It really wasn't her fault. I should have recognized early on that she was starting to struggle with the shoulds, even though she was seeing the benefits. I was focused on the benefits and thinking this has to motivate her when the reality was she was having an internal conflict with the shoulds and eventually just realized I was the bad guy, if you will, of the should. And every time she thought of me or thought about being on the phone with me, there was a should that kept coming out and that was too much pressure on her.

[00:26:56.700] – Allan

And so she just decided to rebel and disappear, ghost me. And because we weren't, again, not a family member or friend or somebody I was close to, when she decided to ghost me, she's gone. I think the one that you talked about was more on the perfection side, but I think as a coach, I should have recognized the warning signs. And now, having read your book, seeing this trap, listening to what my clients are telling me and understanding, hey, you don't have to do this. There's no shoulds here. Let's talk about it. And let's see how we can get past this trap because I missed it.

[00:27:37.550] – Dr. Segar

Until we recognize it, we all miss it because we haven't been taught to name it and categorize it. And I want to say something that people that coaches and personal trainers are doing is having their clients take the trap quiz on my website and then going over it with them to see, oh, is rebellion one of your traps? Yes or no? Is it temptation? And it can be a diagnostic for a coach to use with their clients. I personally found it really helpful. But let's move on to the next trap, which is accommodation. And this one is a little counterintuitive. People don't think about this as intuitively as they would think about rebellion or temptation. And it basically refers to whenever we come up against the needs of someone else or work needs, we just instinctively unconsciously drop what we had planned to do for our physical activity or our healthy eating because we say to ourselves, and again, most of this stuff has to do with self talk or unconscious processes that we're not aware of. We just said, oh, I have to join the celebration. I'm going to forget about my plan. I don't even want to eat that cupcake.

[00:28:53.820] – Dr. Segar

But if I don't eat it, it's going to hurt their feelings. And so that's accommodation for eating, where you just kind of decide what I've been doing doesn't matter. I just need to be in the celebration with everyone. Now the reality is there's a ton of ways you can participate in the celebration if you don't have all or nothing thinking. But if you do, then the only option is eat the cupcake. And from an exercise perspective, we see this a lot. And I'm sure you see this all the time. When people have some kind of planned exercise and our work needs, our email inbox, those urgent things are non urgent, but mounting things never go away. And so if we always feel that what our work is more important than our own walk or selfcare, then we're letting accommodation get in the way. And I want to say, people assume that people like you and me, who might be proponents of active lifestyles and self care, that we don't struggle at all with these issues. But I know I do all the time. And this has been a hugely busy time with the book launch.

[00:30:12.430] – Dr. Segar

And I have had to consciously make joy choices day in and day out about my walking because I have a lot more to do right now. And so I'm sure you experienced that too.

[00:30:25.690] – Allan

Yes, that was kind of the interesting thing. As we went through the traps, I was like, okay, well, yeah, that happened. So temptation got me. And then accommodation perfection. I had a hard time finding examples of rebellion for myself. I just kind of looked through, I said, okay, I haven't taken your quiz. So I'm interested. As soon as we get off this call, I'm probably logging in and taking a quiz. But the accommodation was a big one, because what I found was I wanted to work out every afternoon during my lunch hour. And so I would just have it in my mind that as soon as I took my lunch, that was when I was going to go to the gym. Invariably, a meeting would get scheduled. My boss would call, something would be going on, a report. I have to get out today, something I've got to get done. And so I would say, okay, well, I'll just do this instead. And then that day I get my workout. And what I finally found was, okay, what I have to do if I want this to happen is I literally have to block out my calendar as if that's the most important meeting of my day.

[00:31:25.640] – Allan

It's with my boss, myself, but it's with my boss, my real boss, me. And it's not something I can cancel. And so when I made that non negotiable meeting on my calendar, no one else could book a meeting coming up about a half an hour before that meeting, I actually turned my email off, so I wasn't hearing the Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding leading up to that hour. And then when my hours was up, I put my clothes on and I go and maybe my work boss would call. And so I'd say, okay, what do you need? Come on up to my office. I was walking up to his office in my workout closed. He's like, what's going on? He's like, well, I was on my way to the gym. Here I am. What do you need? He said, well, I need this. I'm like, okay, well, I need an hour to get my workout done, and then I'll have it over to you. Cool. And now, would I have done that before? No, because I didn't have the awareness, self awareness that I was letting that accommodation trap happen until I realized, okay, I keep missing workouts because I'm accommodating these other things.

[00:32:26.480] – Allan

And again, I didn't have a label for it exactly. But I just understood that if I didn't take that time back, I would always lose it.

[00:32:35.450] – Dr. Segar

What the book would address in that scenario is, let's say you walked upstairs to talk to your work boss, and what he needed you to do was going to take 25 minutes, and you had another meeting on the hour that you had to take. So the alternative is that instead of saying, oh, I didn't get that hour, what else can I do? In the 35 minutes that I have left, I can't go to the gym like I plan to because I'm not going to get all sweaty. So that's what we're trying to help people learn is how do you navigate in flexible ways? That unexpected thing that did cut into your hour, despite your great strategies of blocking off that time in your calendar, right?

[00:33:24.010] – Allan

Yeah. Now, the last one you had was perfection. And I actually think I know for myself this one's, the one. If I could have solved this one, it probably wouldn't have taken me eight years to figure this all out, because a lot of us suffer from this. And in many cases, it's the perfection trap that then really almost sets off everything else. I mean, all the other traps happen because we're already caught in the perfection trap.

[00:33:52.020] – Dr. Segar

Yeah, I'm smiling really big right now because you couldn't have said it more perfectly. Perfection is the most common one. It's what our society has taught us, socialized indoctrinated, us to do, and it does set the stage, because if perfection is the bar, then of course you're going to rebel and eat the whole piece of cake because there's no in between. You're going to succumb to temptation because you can't have it. You can't have it, and then you're going to rebel against that darn diet anyway. So perfection, you are right. I call it it's so big, I call it a Dragon. It's the all or nothing Dragon. And we have literally been so it's not our fault we have all or nothing thinking or perfectionistic approaches because our society has evolved in a way to teach us. But that is the old behavior change story. It's outdated and misguided many of us. And the great news is the new science offers us a whole new story of behavior change. And it will have a happy ending because it's based on what a body of science shows work. And I don't want to leap into the solution because you're guiding me along.

[00:35:12.140] – Dr. Segar

But perfection is the old story of behavior change and it is outdated.

[00:35:19.550] – Allan

Now with perfection and I think this is really where the breakdown of all this comes together is everybody believes that the reason they're failing is because they lack self control. And regardless, it's almost as if, okay, well, if I had more self control, I wouldn't fall for these traps. But that's not really the case because we don't have a lack of self control. It's not a failure, as you mentioned earlier, it's like we're not broken. We're wired the way we're wired. And it's not that we need more self control, we just need to go into what you call the choice points with our head up and being aware.

[00:36:04.970] – Dr. Segar

That's exactly right. We need to understand that the choice points right now and right now is the place of power because they accumulate over time. And that's why the perfect, imperfect choice or option is the solution, because right now we might make a choice that's imperfect, but it keeps us on the path. And the next now we might hit the Bull's eye, but the next five, we might make another perfectly imperfect choice, but we're still staying consistent. And that reinforces himself and keeps us getting the benefits over time. That continuously reinforced why we're doing it in the first place.

[00:36:51.770] – Allan

So the approach that you take to do the joy choice is called Pop. Again, another acronym. Again, they'll remember this, okay, trap is Temptation, Rebellion, Accommodation, Perfection. And then Pop is the approach that you take to get out of these traps. You recognize the trap. To do that, we've got to do a few things. And that's what the Pop is about. The story you told in the book about one of your clients using this technique I think was really good and I'd like to use that here. And that was the woman who decided, okay, I'm going to do a pool workout five days a week. It's going to be my bridge between my work day and my evening. And in theory, when you say that to a personal trainer, it's like, that sounds brilliant. That should work great until Alex got involved. Yeah, go ahead.

[00:37:51.210] – Dr. Segar

She comes home from work, her in laws are visiting, and she's thrilled to enact this perfect plan. And she hears screaming up in the window and looks up and sees her young son crying because she is in his happy place without him. And he's distraught. And she's like, oh, no, I've been gone all day. But I really want this, my time, this movement, listening to my music in the pool and helping me transition from brain heavy day to heart full evening with my family. And her old way of thinking would have been either I have to choose between meeting Alex's needs, which is not being in the pool and going and getting him or going out of the pool to comfort him, or fully meeting his needs and dropping my pool workout. But we had had a session, and she remembered that instead of letting this is what I say. Instead of letting the circumstances or life burst your bubble, you can pop your plan. And when we say we're going to pop our plan, we are taking ownership of our thinking and the situation. And again, we are not aiming for perfection here. So what did she do?

[00:39:16.660] – Dr. Segar

She popped her plan and pop stands for pause. This is where she said, oh, my gosh, accommodation is staring me in the face. Alex needs me. I'm yearning to go to him, but I know that I can name it and I can say, oh, this is what's happening. I have some control over it. Now, let me get my attention back on the pop process. Then she opened up her options and played with the options. Well, what could she do? She could take a walk after work with her family. She came up with another option that I can't think of off the top of my head. Or she could bring Alex into the pool and play around, walk with him, and basically do a modified pool workout with him. Still getting her physical activity and meeting Alex's needs. And of course, that was like the Ding, Ding, Ding. And she P, she picked the joy choice, which was staying in the pool, worked out to give her the transition she wanted. But instead of doing it alone, Mommy time with music, she decided she would do it and be active with Alex so that she could fulfill these two different what had been conflicting but had a mutuality that she could choose.

[00:40:38.180] – Dr. Segar

So she picked the joy choice, which is what we do at the end of the pop process.

[00:40:43.410] – Allan

Right. And the advantage was this. And this is the kind of added benefit that really wasn't built into her original model. But it worked was she had the in laws get Alex ready for the pool, which gave her, like, five to ten minutes to do the kind of the unwinding thing that she intended to do while she was in the pool. She got her head straight, got herself that transition from work to heart. And then Alex is in the pool with her. It wasn't the workout she intended, but she still got movement in, as you said, the perfect imperfect. And she got it done. And as a result, she was in control. But she had to get that pause. She had to recognize the trap, and then she had to make the decision that was the right decision in the moment for her. The joy choice.

[00:41:31.490] – Dr. Segar

That's right. That's the beauty of it is the joy choice lets us meet the many roles and responsibilities that give our life meaning and still take care of ourselves. And there's a new definition of success. And that's another reason why it's the joy choice, because we are successful when we do something instead of nothing. And she was so proud of herself, and that was the beginning. Once we do it one or two times, it really does become intuitive. And the beauty of it is that once we start doing it with exercise and eating, we actually can do it. I do it in all areas of my life because it's a way for me to regroup and be flexible and pick the most optimal choice for that particular challenge.

[00:42:23.980] – Allan

Yeah. Now, the way this would apply for, like, one with temptation. You talked about in the book, how if you walk by the cafe and you see that croissant, chocolate filled croissant, and it's glistening and it's calling your name and it's a loud voice and you're really struggling to walk away from this cafe and you find yourself in line magically. And then you realize, okay, again, pause. Why am I in this line? And you realize, it's not the chocolate croissant. It's the last time you were at that cafe with your friend, you guys had a wonderful conversation. You had that chocolate croissant. And the blend of the moment is now in your memory. So one of your executive functions has tied into this and said, this croissant is kind of a reminder of kind of a reliving of a great moment in your life. You talk about the chocolate cake your mother made. This is kind of another one of those things. Now, you can recognize that this is temptation.

[00:43:25.810] – Dr. Segar

Absolutely. And when we recognize that it puts it in perspective, it takes away. It's not the dark force that's drawing us in. I mean, if we think about eating the cake as the dark force, then we've already succumbed to it right before we ate it. So once we recognize, oh, Geez, this is what's going on. This is what's going on in my brain. It's not that when we remove the tension that it's this evil thing that we shouldn't have that's off the plan or that we feel that we should do and want to rebel against. We really put ourselves in control. Again, it's a decision. And it doesn't mean that people will decide not to have the croissant, but they're going to do it understanding the meaning it has for them without tension. But they're going to make a conscious choice instead of an unconscious reaction. Or they might say, you know what? I really want that chocolate croissant for all the reasons above, but I don't need to eat the whole thing. I actually would be really satisfied and proud of myself to eat half of it, wrap the other half up, and maybe I'll have it for dessert, or split it with my family after dinner, or I'll save it for the next day.

[00:44:41.410] – Dr. Segar

Learning how to be flexible is the key to sustainability. I mean, the research clearly shows this.

[00:44:48.170] – Allan

Yeah. Especially if you find that you're an unhabitor and you can't sit down and just say, I'm going to do this and stick with it. If you've struggled in the past with that, it's very likely you are an unhabitor. It's likely that you fall into these traps. And if you really go back and think about it, you'll start to see the patterns, and you just have to stop and recognize that pause and recognize when you're repeating that pattern and make another choice.

[00:45:17.530] – Dr. Segar

Absolutely. And it is, again, it's really important for people to recognize am I more like Michelle's husband Job, who's a habitor in all areas of his life, or am I more like Michelle and a little disorganized and a little comfortable keeping dishes in the sink and sometimes feel like, oh my gosh, how am I going to do all these things? So self awareness and fit is really the structure we need to set us up for success long term.

[00:45:49.930] – Allan

And so in the book, you give us a lot of tools as we start going through this process, because we can say it pop and go through it and we can talk about examples. But the reality is that you get good at this or get better at this by practice.

[00:46:08.290] – Dr. Segar

Like anything, like anything. Like any new things, we need to give ourselves Grace when we don't do it, quote, unquote as well as we hoped we would or thought we should anytime we learn something new, it's a learning process. And giving ourselves Grace is like we should give other people Grace when they're learning how to do something. That's a really important part of this, too. And that's part of why it's the joy choice, because it's all about being forgiven forgiving. It's about being imperfect like we are honoring that and making sure that our strategies for physical activity and healthy eating match with the imperfect lives that many of us live.

[00:46:59.470] – Allan

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

[00:47:08.770] – Dr. Segar

I think understanding that we need self-awareness is the fundamental element. Without self awareness, we can't know what we need, we can't know what we want. So first and foremost, we have to have the intention of becoming more self aware. Then when we decide that we want to do something toward our happiness or wellness, we want to make sure that what we're choosing to embark on is the right thing at the right time. So, for example, if someone now, this is different for different people. And this is why self awareness is really key to understand this. So for example, if someone just has a baby, they have a brand new newborn baby and they're like, I've got to get fit right now. They have a newborn that's a week old, that doesn't sleep through the night, and that person decides they're going to start working out every day or whatever. I would say that is probably the wrong thing at the wrong time. And the workout has to be perfect. Now, exercise is a great way to facilitate your sleep. But if you add something to grandiose onto an already overwhelming situation. So that's where fit of what we're doing when is really important.

[00:48:26.610] – Dr. Segar

So I just want to take a step back and say physical activity is great for new moms. It's the overarching plan that they create that would be important. And of course, walking with your newborn is a great way to be active. But that's just an example. You said, how do you do it? You want to make sure that what you're doing is the right thing for the right time. And then the third thing is, I think considering whatever you're doing as a process of learning, where one day you're going to have a couple of steps forward, you're going to hit the bullseye, and the other days you might have to make joy choices. And that the goal isn't perfection, it's staying on the path through doing something instead of nothing.

[00:49:10.510] – Allan

Great. Thank you. If someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about the book, The Joy Choice, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:49:19.150] – Dr. Segar

Well, the book should be everywhere. So they can go to their local bookstore. They can get it online through booksellers online. If they want to take the quiz and learn more about the book, they can go to my website, which is michellesegar.com

[00:49:35.590] – Allan

awesome. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/538 and I'll be sure to have links there. Dr. Segar, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:49:45.910] – Dr. Segar

Thanks for having me. It was really fun to talk with you.

[00:49:48.950] – Allan

Me, too. Thank you.

Post Show/Recap

[00:49:57.470] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:49:59.090] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. With an interesting conversation you had. There's a couple of things I'd like to talk about. But first, I'd like to talk about setting or creating habits. It sounds like it's still a good thing to do, but not everybody is able to create habits quite as easily as everyone else.

[00:50:14.010] – Allan

Yeah, there are people that they decide they want to do something, they're going to start taking a multivitamin or they're going to change something the way they do something. And then pretty easily after that, they're just doing it. They're not even thinking about it anymore. For most people, for a lot of people, works fairly well. If you do it long enough, it's different for everybody. You may have heard numbers out there, like 21 days or 66 days or whatever. And the reality is that the science that's out there, while there was an average of 66 days to make an action automatic or feel automatic where you weren't thinking about doing it, you just did it. 66 was the average. But the spread on that was really wide. Some people less than two weeks, other people almost a year. And so you can't just say 66 days. But for a lot of people, if you get to doing a simple thing over and over, eventually it just becomes a habit. You get up in the morning, you brush your teeth, you put the coffee on, you walk the dog. There's simple things that become like a ritual when you do them.

[00:51:31.890] – Allan

But big caveat, it really only works for simple things. When you want to do something like food prep or something like that, that's a whole series of actions. Then you have to go deeper than a habit because habits not going to get you there like that. There are habitors, like she said, like her husband, that once they start doing something, it does. So if you're doing Sunday meal prep, Saturday grocery shop, maybe Sunday morning grocery shop, and then Sunday meal prep, yes, that can become like a normal thing on your schedule that you get to doing and feel like a habit. But most of us are not going to feel comfortable that that's an automatic thing. And then anything that gets in the way pop, we're out of it. And we may not even go back the next Sunday and do it because we stopped doing it this Sunday before.

[00:52:27.630] – Rachel

That's a good point. Which brings me to the other thing that I think is more useful is that Traps acronym that she had for the decision disruptors. And the reason why that was such a light bulb moment, I love the phrase decision disruptors because we are all trying to make good decisions. We're trying to eat healthy and be active and stuff. But just things tend to get in the way. And her acronym of Traps kind of outline some of those things, some of those reasons why it's hard for us to stick or make these better choices.

[00:52:59.730] – Allan

Yeah. The temptation one is fairly common. And you'll see, so you go to work and a vendor brings Donuts.

[00:53:08.500] – Rachel

Right.

[00:53:09.410] – Allan

And you had no intention of eating the Donuts. You're even doing intermittent fasting. So you haven't eaten since dinner and you weren't going to eat until lunch. And you walk in the break room and there's those doughnuts, and you find yourself grabbing one of the doughnuts without really even thinking about it. And there you are. The rebellion is one that I don't see as often, but I see it from time to time. Accommodation is probably one of the most important ones because it's something that particularly women who are caregivers to their children, they take priority. Taking them to soccer practice, picking them up from dance, and just shuttling your kids around Burns up so much of your time that it's really hard to take time for yourself. And then Unfortunately, I think a lot of women will feel guilty taking that time away. I want to go for a run, but that's 45 minutes that I'm not here with my child.

[00:54:15.870] – Rachel

My guilt is strong, and it's definitely a driver in a lot of our decisions. But what I tell people is I tell people you can't fill from an empty cup. You need to take the time for yourself and take care of yourself before you can care for others adequately. But yes, I can definitely see that one. And the last one she had being perfection. That's a big one, too.

[00:54:40.090] – Allan

Yeah. She's absolutely right there, because so many of us are all or none.

[00:54:47.680] – Rachel

Yes.

[00:54:48.930] – Allan

And I'll admit when I learn about myself, when I think about myself and I've done that self awareness thing that I had to do, I recognize, though, that I do pretty much have to be all on or I'm off. I need to push towards that. But it also creates those other problems. And I've worked with people like this. I have a client right now that's going through some of this, and he wants to eat keto, but this is going on. This child graduated from this that one's going here and there's this party that he has to go to. And so he finds himself off keto, and it just creates this cycle of and unfortunately, guilt, which he shouldn't feel. We villainize food, and so we feel like we've let ourselves down if we are not perfect. And the reality is if we know that perfect isn't possible.

[00:55:55.390] – Rachel

Right.

[00:55:57.610] – Allan

Particularly for us, it's like something's going to come up. I can't think of a year that I've gone through that there wasn't a holiday or birthday, right?

[00:56:05.520] – Rachel

Yeah, there's always something, isn't there?

[00:56:09.370] – Allan

So at some point you're going to go to a party or go to dinner. At some point, somebody's going to bring Donuts to the break room and you're going to end up eating one. That's fine. The point that she was getting at was don't let that be what beats you, right. The joy choice in her book. It's about finding your path where you feel good about your decisions. And so if you can get rid of that concept that these are bad foods and good foods and bad food, then you kind of get to where this is all at and we're going to have another guest on in a few weeks. And his name is Alan Aragon and he's got an excellent book as well. And it goes really deep into some of these same concepts of ways that you can look at just doing better than you're doing now. And then he talks about this concept of discretionary calories. The way he puts it together is if you're eating your calorie level, Then it's okay if up to 20% of your total calories is coming from stuff that you would put in a bad food list.

[00:57:35.850] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:57:36.360] – Allan

So if you decide, okay, I want to have a Coca Cola And you're like, okay, that's sugar. I don't need that sugar. But I can fit that in my calories for the day. And because I know I'm getting good nutrition otherwise, that 80%. Then I know, okay, I can have the Coke and still stay under my calories, then that's fine. And so it's just trying to get away from the perfect is really important. So looking for tools, looking for things that are going to help you just kind of go through this and then it's hard, don't get me wrong, it's probably the hardest thing to do Because it's the mindset of change. So different things we talked about in this interview. There's even more in the book those tools and things that you can do. So I encourage anyone that's struggling with mindset, struggling with this willpower motivation, habits stuff. This is a good book Because it's just down to Earth stuff. It's science based. So she did go back into the science, looked it up. But at the same time, it kind of gives you a way to get through this without feeling like you've failed every single time you're not on plan.

[00:58:54.980] – Rachel

That's wonderful. That sounds like a really useful book and I love that it offers tools to help people get through these really tough traps like she had mentioned and these other tough situations. I think that's fantastic.

[00:59:07.490] – Allan

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

[00:59:10.100] – Rachel

Great. Take care.

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Eric More	– Leigh Tanner
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Thank you!

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Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:34.450] – Allan

Hey, Ras, how are things?

[00:02:36.260] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:02:38.260] – Allan

I'm doing all right. Tammy got on an airplane about 15 minutes before we started recording this to fly out for a vacation trip that she's taking with her friend. It was one of those pre-covid trips that got canceled. And so now it's like she's now on the list and got to go. So she's going to be enjoying herself for two weeks, and then I'm going to be responsible for Lula's, which will be interesting. No, I've done it before for her to go back to the States for things. It's just going to stick for two weeks and it's a slower period right now, but just some additional moving parts in my life, but otherwise everything's going well.

[00:03:18.560] – Rachel

Good. Glad to hear it.

[00:03:20.650] – Allan

All right. Well, are you ready to talk to Clint Emerson?

[00:03:23.960] – Rachel

Sure. Sounds great.

Interview

[00:03:51.790] – Allan

Clint, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:03:54.460] – Clint

Hi. How are you doing, buddy? Nice to be here.

[00:03:56.700] – Allan

So your book is called The Rugged Life: the Modern Guide to Self Reliance. And I think a lot of folks will sit there and probably wonder, well, why on Earth would Allan have somebody talking about self-reliance and homesteading and all of those types of things on a health and fitness podcast? But in my mind, self-reliance and health and fitness are like intertwined. They're like hand in glove. You can't really have one without the other in a grand sense of things. I guess you can be healthy and fit without having some of these things. But I think some of the things that you get and we'll get into that in a few minutes from living a little bit more of a rugged life actually enhances your health and fitness.

[00:04:43.750] – Clint

Yeah, exactly. You just nailed it. Like I always say, on the crisis side or with 100 Deadly Skill book series, first and foremost, your human performance is everything. To be able to get yourself out of trouble, to get your family out of trouble, you've got to have at least the heart, the lungs and the strength to get yourself away from whatever that threat is. And it could be natural disasters, man made events, you name it. It's out there. And rugged life really is stretching out. It's what you do as a lifestyle, the things you do everyday that can one give you far more fulfillment. And you get a Huger sense of satisfaction when you're doing it yourself. And most of the things that whether it's hunting, building, fishing or farming or whatever it is, those are physical activities. You're going to probably get in better shape than just visiting the gym for an hour to each day. So I think you hit it dead on is that living a more rugged life will exponentially increase your health, both mentally, physically and emotionally.

[00:06:02.830] – Allan

Now, in our world where, yeah, I've got a gem half a mile away from my home, we can call Uber Eats and they'll deliver just about anything you want. Netflix is on, Hulu or whatever your streaming service, or maybe you got more than one of them. We have everything pretty much at our fingertips. We don't have to lift a finger to do anything. And I think it probably might have been even about 20 years ago when the Internet was really just getting started someone wanted to do the experiment to see if they could stay in their house for an entire year and never leave. And way back then, back in the late 90s or so, this guy was able to do it early 2000s, late 90s, was able to literally stay at home for an entire year and not get out. Now, for many of us, we are in a situation with COVID where we weren't permitted if we lived in the city, particularly to get out. Now, I kind of kicked myself when we came down here at Panama, I didn't choose the rugged life. We chose something a little bit easier, an apartment in town, which meant we were pretty much trapped in our apartment in town with the lockdowns they did here, which were a lot more stringent than the United States.

[00:07:15.610] – Allan

Our friends who lived out and about on different Islands, generating their own electricity, catching their own water, living a little bit more of a rugged life than we were. They had a lot more autonomy, a lot more freedom. So that's kind of one of the reasons why I think the rugged life now appeals to me a little bit more than it might have before is seeing it firsthand. My friends were actually able to get out in the sun for more than 2 hours twice a week and walk around and do things. But for the normal person, what is this rugged life that we're talking about? And why would it be something that someone would want to do when there are so many easy ways to live our lives today?

[00:07:55.750] – Clint

Yeah, man, you had a bunch of great stuff. I think. First I'll start by answering the question with the pandemic certainly taught us all that being a little more self reliant can be very valuable. It can be important. It can just allow a certain level of independence and freedom that you can't get if you are reliant on all these other things that you mentioned. So I would say first and foremost, you don't have to dive 100% into the rugged life. I've built the book so that you can just dip your toe if you want. You living in an apartment in an urban environment can do a lot, even with limited space, to increase your self reliance and actually fend for yourself, whether it's these vertical gardens now, I mean, you can grow just about anything inside your apartment in the corner with very little maintenance. It's just time, right? Just wait for things to grow and then, you know, you've got it. Or if you decide you dip your toe a couple of times and you like all these different little projects that you're doing and you're realizing, Holy, Holy crap. This is actually not just is it giving me something in return, but the hard work that goes into it just feels so much better than using an app, right?

[00:09:14.610] – Clint

I mean, you don't get any satisfaction except the fat pill that shows up to your doorstep by using all the different Uber eats and whatever else is out there, having your groceries delivered to your door. Yeah, that's pretty cool. But what if you could just grow some of those things yourself and that's just a piece of it, right. If you're not into the farming aspect, then maybe it's the hunting. If you're not in the hunting, and maybe it's just being your own handyman, being your own power grid, be your own homemaker. I mean, I was surprised at how many household products, especially in the hygiene and the hygiene and grooming side of the house, that if you just got beeswax and some coconut oil, you can make shampoos, pomades and conditioners. Right. So the other piece to this whole thing with the rugged life is it's more like a family experiment if you get the whole family involved. I feel like it brings everybody together because we are so stuck on technology these days. You have an entire family sitting in a living room. It's on Netflix, like you mentioned, but everybody is still on their own personal devices and there's no solid family time.

[00:10:29.480] – Clint

So rugged life, at whatever level you want to kind of live it. You will find out that whether it's one project or a dozen projects, when the whole family is involved, you're just going to all be so much more healthier. You're going to get that camaraderie going again. And you're not just a bunch of individuals living in the house together.

[00:10:54.430] – Allan

Yeah. It's interesting being down here. I run into a lot of people that they do this thing. They say, okay, look, this is so cool. There's this island, I'm going to go out there. It's just land. It's just raw land. It's jungle. We're going to clear a little bit of it. We're going to build a house. We're going to use solar, we're going to use water catchment. We're going to do these different things like composting, and we're going to have a garden. And this just goes on and on. And what happens, though, invariably, is that they move down here, they make that happen. They build their dream house. And then as a couple, one or both of them kind of decide after a period of time that this was not what they signed up for. They miss some of the creature comforts that they had because they kind of went a little too far into the woods. The jungle, if you will, before really going through and analyzing. Okay. Is this really me? Is this really me long term? Is this a project that I'm going to do and then get bored with? In your book, you had what you call the top ten are you sure about this thing? Could you go through some of those to help someone kind of see because it sounds so cool off the grid, doing this thing, growing my own food, chickens, you know, the whole bit. It's a lot of work.

[00:12:25.270] – Clint

You are correct. It is, yeah. Some of the top ten is basic questions like, do you like vacations? Because guess what? As soon as you bring in animals, you're not leaving because you got to take care of them 24/7. Right. You are going to live to take care of animals that in rich parent are going to take care of you. So going on a vacation becomes very difficult. You really have to like the people that you and your family. Right. You all love each other, of course, but you have to like each other because you're going to be working as a team like you never have before. And you're really going to see people's strengths and weaknesses, and everyone's going to have to adapt. But ultimately, you just hit it again. It's very romantic to think that, hey, yeah, we're going to go buy a chunk of land in the mountains, and we're going to build a cabin. We're going to have this awesome fireplace every night. And I'm going to be butchering these big steaks. And it sounds all great. It really does. And everybody should aspire to do it. But there is nothing easy about it. And that's why it's the rugged life. It can be very hard work at times, but the return on that hard work is far better than what you get from going to the grocery store, though. That is convenient. And so there's a balance. If convenience is at one end of the spectrum and then the rugged life is at the other. Right. Anything rugged isn't going to be convenient. Anything convenient isn't really going to be all that rugged. So you just got to find that happy medium for you and your family.

[00:14:10.500] – Clint

And that's why I do not suggest just jumping in 100% because you might find out that you hate it. I definitely push the hey, take some of the projects in the book and see if it's something that appeals to you. And the other biggest piece to all of it is that you're going to fail and you're going to fail over and over again. You may spend a lot of time getting the perfect soil, mix it with the compost going, then everything to make the perfect vegetables. And then those things never grow or they die or a predator comes along and eats them for you before you even get a chance.

[00:14:50.470] – Clint

Right. So there's a lot of frustration, a lot of fail. So you have to be prepared for that and be the kind of person that's going to go you know what? I'm not giving up. I'm going to keep going. I want to keep going until I get this right. And so if you're that kind of person and you enjoy learning, then you should give it a shot for sure.

[00:15:10.550] – Allan

Now, the cool thing about this and that's what I like is while you talk about that continuum of convenience to the rugged life is you can pick and choose your battles. You don't have to be in a cabin in the middle of the woods. Like you said, it can be something as simple as saying I'm going to do a few of these things for myself. And I like that concept of saying, okay, I can pick and choose now, one that I like to pick where I would pick. If you're really thinking about your health and fitness so that, you know the food you're putting in your mouth is there's nothing better than you being responsible for growing that food, particularly with vegetables. Vegetables. It can be simple as a vertical garden. It can be herb garden, it can be tomatoes. And I like your idea of upside down tomato growing right there. Can you go through some of the considerations of why we would want to grow our own food? And then if we're going to grow our own food, what do we want to think about as far as the approach and what we do?

[00:16:12.030] – Allan

Because it sounds simple. Put a seed in the ground. And having been in a family where we did a garden, we had three acres for basically, I think it was six of us, it was a lot of work. What are some considerations and things to think about if you're going to start growing your own food and where are some lines, like if I'm going to try to grow food for my whole family versus just have some additional good quality food for me on my plate each night?

[00:16:38.720] – Clint

Yeah. I think a good starting point is always what climate zone do you live in? Right. So if you have this dream of avocados. Right. And you're going to grow them and you're going to have as many avocados per day because it's a superfood and it's awesome and you can heat it 24/7, which I can you really have to start with climate zone. Right. And this is old school Farmers Almanac type stuff. Where you go, all right, where do I live and what am I going to have the highest success rate of growing that actually benefits my health. And so that's going to narrow the list really quick. So that's where I would start is the research and also talking to local farmers, going to some of your farmer markets and talking to everybody, selling any of the vegetables and fruits they have going there. And getting educated is like the biggest number one step so that you increase your success. Next, once you figure out what that is, it's a good idea to start indoors. Right. You can set up a basic lighting bank and get the seeds, the kick start they need with a little bit of soil.

[00:17:57.090] – Clint

And once they actually start to grow, you actually see them break the surface of the little pods that you put them in. Then you can basically put them outside using just common language. You're taking something that started growing and you're going to transplant it to outdoors. And it's a very fragile moment, but it'll be fine making sure the soil outside matches the soil that they're in. And then now they're outside in sunlight and on their own. And you're going to have to obviously give some care and maintenance. You're going to have to do research on pest control, any of the other predators that might want to nibble on whatever it is you're growing and basically put up whatever fortifications you need, which a lot of times just chicken wire over your garden will keep out the birds and any of those little ground animals like rabbits that want to come in and get a free meal. But I think the biggest piece is really doing the research in terms of what's going to give you that highest level of success in the area in which you live. And you really got to pinpoint it, especially like where I'm at Texas.

[00:19:07.730] – Clint

North Texas is far different than South Texas. And what you can grow in one, you can't grow in the other, even though you're in the same state.

[00:19:16.430] – Allan

Yeah. You have a really cool map in the book that kind of breaks it down into zones. Obviously, I'm a lot further south than any of your zones, and we can do avocados here. One of the interesting things is when you plant that, you have to set your expectations. You won't have avocados for ten years and then you won't have avocados at all if your dog digs up the plant.

[00:19:39.590] – Clint

Exactly. And that's a great point, because people do on that same point. They think about like Apple tree or an Orange tree or a peach tree. But you're still talking several years before you really get to the good fruit that tree produces. And like here in Texas, the pecan industry is huge. Right. And monetizing acreage, let's say you've got a couple of acres and you can put 50 to 100 trees, but a pecan tree is going to start producing pecans for ten years. Right. Like I said, it's still that you have to do that amount of research and put it in and then also regulate expectation. Right. Expectation management is a big part of all this, like you just pointed out.

[00:20:29.690] – Allan

But the advantages are this. You know what's in your food, if you use pesticides, you know it, if you use something in it, you know it, you know the seeds, whether they're heirloom or there's some of something else. But you know the food because you were in hand. And I can tell you when you grow your own food, it actually tastes better because you have a pride of ownership while you're eating that food that you just don't get when you walk into a restaurant or have Uber Eats deliver it to you.

[00:21:01.190] – Clint

Yeah, no doubt.

[00:21:03.470] – Allan

Okay, again, you can do all of this if you live in the right climate. You can do all your food. It can be plant based and it can be awesome if you can grow enough and you need to, again, make sure you are growing enough if that's what you're going to do. But for a lot of folks, we are meat eaters, so on the board. So we're going to want a little bit of meat in there too. And that's where things like raising your own animals, you talked about some considerations there as far as vacations and other things you got to do hunting and fishing, which there are also some general considerations about that. Why would we want to raise our own animals, do hunting and fishing? Why would we want to go through the effort of doing that? And then what are some things we need to think about to go through that process? What that's all about?

[00:21:54.170] – Clint

Yeah, harvesting anything like you pointed out, is going to be healthier in the long run. But it's also important to note it might not be cheaper. I think a lot of folks think that, hey, I might save money by having chickens. Well, not at first. And it's going to take a while to get an egg for as cheap as you would buy an egg at a grocery store. It takes a while to get there because you have to invest. But something like chickens are somewhat easy. And it's important to note you have egg chickens and you've got meat chickens. The egg chickens obviously good at laying eggs almost all year round. You might have to put some lighting because they lay eggs based on the sun. And then you've got your meat chickens, which don't really produce very good eggs, but man, they're good to eat. There's even one breeded chicken that you literally have to Butcher it at about eight to twelve weeks because it gets so fat its own legs will snap. So there's a lot the thing about rugged life is each chapter is novels on their own of information that could be written, no doubt about it.

[00:23:07.580] – Clint

But growing your own meat, yes, it locks you at home, but you know where it's been, what it's eaten and what it's doing 24/7. So the safety and eating it, the health benefits in eating it are all just automatically there when you've been doing it. And what I've also pointed out in the book is if the farming aspect of harvesting your own meat isn't your thing, then hunting certainly is the other option, because then it doesn't require you to be stuck at home raising these animals, whether it's chickens, goats, pigs, you name it. So then you can go Hunt. And with hunting it's popular. Bow hunting has become more popular these days, so a lot of variance to going and hunting, but that has its own skill and set of patience and work that goes with it. There is some investment, but I would say buying a rifle and ammunition is cheaper than raising or keeping pigs, for example. If you don't do it right, they can destroy everything. And the same with goats. People see these goats when they go to yoga, climbing on them and like, oh, I want one. But what they don't know is those things will eat the tires off your car if you leave them there long enough with your vehicle.

[00:24:38.030] – Clint

But overall, once again, knowing where your meat is, looking out for it 24/7, butchering it and serving it to yourself. I mean, that goes back to where our country was 200 some years ago, where every man, woman and child were self reliant. And they had all of these skills in the book and then some because it was just a way of life. And by drawing from a couple of these things here and there, you might find out that you like it as well.

[00:25:15.360] – Allan

Yeah. A couple of things that you can consider. In my opinion, if you don't want to go, like, full on with all of this stuff, is it's very common for folks to go in with a farmer. They know everybody goes in with the money, they buy calves, and they know where that's being raised. And there's kind of like a co op, if you will. So it's one way to kind of get around of you having to buy the land and you having to run the animals is that someone who's more skilled at that. But there's a great opportunity for you to learn those skills. Also, with the hunting and fishing is often you can get into groups. I know we would go hunting back in the day. They'd run dogs. So you'd have the guys running their beagles. And we'd all set up in different spots. And then you get done and it's like, okay, the dog that did the chase, he's going to get his first pick. And then the guy who shot the deer is going to get his pick. And then, yeah, the rest of us, if we didn't happen to hit that day, we're getting a little bit of something there.

[00:26:15.210] – Allan

So it's an opportunity to kind of get those things. I can say the hunting and fishing is hit or miss if you're going by yourself, but there are opportunities for you to get involved and try some of these things. And maybe to me, the biggest challenge of a lot of this, if you haven't done it before and you have a lot of great advice in the book, is the butchering of the animal, which is something that many people haven't experienced. But once you start getting into it, it's like, okay, now I understand where my cuts of meat come from. I know what this animal's life was like. And you're right, it's kind of intense, but it's a good intense to know the quality of your food and to know where it's coming from and to know that you had a hand in either making it or killing or catching it.

[00:27:05.210] – Clint

Yeah, you are dead on. And for people that want to try, kinda like the easy route, but it's also somewhat difficult. Homesteading World rabbits have been very popular. And because you can in a very short period of time. And I point out in there rabbits, they do hump like rabbits within a short period of time. With six rabbits, you can turn that into 46 kits or so. And then before you know it, you've got enough meat to eat five days a week for a family of four. And it's just exponential with rabbits. And they're smaller and easier meat to manage, especially if you don't have the land. But yeah, there's a lot of options. You make some great points doing things as a group. And the co op options, both with eggs, milk and meat, are all out there and available these days.

[00:28:05.390] – Allan

Yes, I'm going to tell this story probably shouldn't, because it's just kind of embarrassing. But I'm going to say I'm going to tell you anyway. I had a friend and they raised rabbits. That was their thing. They raised rabbits and they had the kids, the cages for themselves set up. And you try to check the rabbit to know if it's a boy or girl, and it's really hard to tell. And so they thought they had these two boy and a girl, and they put them in the cage and they were fighting. So they assume now, okay, they must both be boys and they're fighting. So the father wanted us to kill one of the rabbits. He picked one of them. He said, go kill the rabbit. And so we go out there, we grab the rabbit, and he hands it to me and I go to grab the rabbit. I'm holding it against my chest, and the rabbit just kind of rests its chin right there on my neck.

[00:28:54.090] – Clint

And you're like, I can't do it.

[00:28:55.540] – Allan

Yeah. And so a little tear starts coming down my eye. I'm 15 years old. My friend turns around, he looks at me and he looks at me for just a second. Then he gets a tear in his eye. And his father drives up about this time in his truck and he looks at the two of us. He says, damn it, build another cage.

[00:29:15.930] – Clint

Yeah, that sounds about right. That's what I said. It's easy, but also could be difficult because killing a rabbit. Yeah. They're so soft and cuddly. It's the last thing you want to kill. And they know that, too, about themselves,I think.

[00:29:32.960] – Allan

Okay, this one did because that chin on the chest, on my shoulder, that was enough to say, okay, this one gets a second chance.

[00:29:42.030] – Clint

That's awesome.

[00:29:43.010] – Allan

But I think that's the other thing that I wanted to kind of get to with this is that you start having a newfound respect for the food that you're eating. So the concept of waste, the concept of just going out and doing something for the sake of doing it. You really get a sense of what the cost of this is, not just from a financial perspective of what we're dealing with, but just knowing that what you're doing is about survival, about you doing the right things for yourself. Again, I think you approach this with a very different mindset. Maybe you do eat less meat because the emotional cost of raising the meat for you is a little bit higher. And as a result, you're eating less red meat and maybe a little bit more vegetables, a little bit more plant based. And in the end, that turns out to be a more helpful choice for you.

[00:30:37.590] – Clint

Yeah, I think you're right. You're investing more than just money. When you go down this path, there's time and effort, then there's on the receiving end, whatever it is you're deciding to grow or harvest what it's given back to you. And so there's this relationship that forms with a lot of what you're doing, and every aspect of it becomes valuable, and you don't want any of it to go to waste. I think with people just do one little thing here and there, holistically they will kind of start to grow up in a different way than what we're used to, because these modern conveniences and technology, I think we all know it and we see it all the time that these things are necessary evil. And I mean, look at us now. It does give us these great capabilities. I'm communicating from Texas to Panama like live feed right now. And that aspect is just incredible. Right. But at the same size really makes us lazy and complacent. Like I said, 200 years ago, everybody knew this stuff, and now it's very rare, and it took a pandemic for people to wake up and go, oh, yeah, it might be a good idea that I know how to make something as simple as hand sanitizer.

[00:32:01.900] – Clint

Right. We all learned it really quick when the shelves got empty, along with toilet paper, which is really odd. But now that we're somewhat through it, this is an opportunity to really embrace it and start trying new and different things. And hopefully that's the kind of impact the book has on everyone. Yeah.

[00:32:24.340] – Allan

And I think other folks are going to look at it and say, okay, there's also the aspects of inflation and where my food is coming from. You look at some of these industrial plants where they're bringing in meat or eggs or whatever, and it's just horrific to see some of the stuff that they do to these animals. And to know that you can do this in a different, more sustainable way, I think is really a big step. Plus, again, not initially, but over time, just depending on what goes on in the world, being self reliant, having the sustainable source of something, whether it's vegetables, food, whatever, meat or whatever and being able to Hunt for yourself, being able to fish for yourself, those things is going to give you a way of having control. When inflation is out of your control and you just have to pay what the market costs. When you want to have a steak or have some fish or have some eggs, you just pay what the market is versus if you are doing your own thing and get to a point of sustainability, it's now just about you taking care of the animals and them taking care of you, as you said earlier.

[00:33:39.090] – Clint

Yup, you've nailed it. I mean, it's a crazy world and I'm not a fear monger by any means, but reality is reality. You come out of a pandemic, you've got Russia invading countries, you have interest rates already going through the roof. The economy is screwed because of supply chain issues. Supply chain issues aren't getting fixed because other countries are still dealing with the pandemic which slows things down. And recovery is just going to take a while. The economy is always kind of like this accordion and the impact of today, we may not recover for a couple of years down the road. And so being more self sufficient and self reliant.

[00:34:23.250] – Allan

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

[00:34:33.990] – Clint

it's a good question. Number one, having a routine that looks after you first, right? I always have to tell myself, look out for myself first each day. And that's only because if I let the day get a hold of me, then I may not actually do anything for myself. And when I say that, I mean you get up and you work out, right? And get that workout under your belt. It's also the same as, hey, I get my coffee, the MCT oil and collagen in my system right off the bat as well because I'm looking out for myself first and then, okay, sit down and organize your mind, right? So I'm a big list guy. So get those lists and keep your mind healthy and get the clutter out and down on paper. And then start tackling those tasks in the order of priorities in which whatever it is you're dealing with for the day. And then of course, you have to power yourself. So make sure you're taking in the things that fuel the body and fuel the mind. I like the intermittent fast. I feel like it's done. Everyone is different about that kind of stuff.

[00:35:49.190] – Clint

But for me, waiting till around lunch time to really start taking in calories seems to work. And then I pretty much eat somewhat healthy from lunchtime till about six or seven. And then that's it. I think regulating and getting into a routine and then implementing what can I do that's healthy for the mind, healthy for the body, healthy for the spirit and then just integrate that into my day. Then boom, it becomes automatic after some time, and then before you know it, you realize, wow, I feel a hell of a lot better than I did a year ago. And that's how it should be, right? Every year you get older, you should be able to go, I feel better than I did last year. Hey, you know what? I feel better than I did last year, even though I'm getting older and it seems to be working. But I don't know. I'm no expert.

[00:36:43.930] – Allan

It's working. Clint, if someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about your book, The Rugged Life, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:36:53.350] – Clint

Yeah, my entire ecosystem is @clintemerson.com super simple. You can pre-order or order the books right now, right there. And I really do appreciate your time and any of your listeners that go check clintemerson.com out or my Instagram page. I thank you ahead of time.

[00:37:12.140] – Allan

All right. Well, thank you so much, Clint, for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:37:16.870] – Clint

No, thanks for having me, buddy. You got a great thing going.

[00:37:19.520] – Allan

All right. Thank you.

Post Show/Recap

[00:37:27.590] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:37:29.270] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. Wow. I'm telling you, you're speaking my love language here. We talk a lot about home studying at our house up here.

[00:37:36.650] – Allan

Yeah, I see a lot of videos. I know that your husband is a Hunter and a fisherman and just kind of the whole idea of the whole concept of going out in a hut on a Lake and cutting a hole in the ice and sitting there, not my thing. I'll take my kayak out here in the water and cast out or fish from a beach. But I think the thing that I wanted people to take away from here is understanding the source of your food and taking that on as a personal challenge, to be more involved in the food. It's good for you. And it's great for the younger generations who in some cases have no concept whatsoever of what this stuff is and potentially how bad some of it can be. I would never encourage anyone to really go spend a whole lot of time diving into this, because it's not pretty how animals can be mistreated and terribly raised. So the more you're able to get involved, the more you're able to create sustainable opportunities for yourself. It doesn't have to be a huge thing, a small herb garden, a small this or that, going in with a few friends and finding a co op.

[00:38:58.810] – Allan

And you mentioned a few cool things.

[00:39:01.100] – Rachel

Yes, we do a lot of gardening at our house, and I say we very generally I do not have a green thumb. It's all my daughter and husband, they're way more skilled at this type of thing than I am. But we choose our vegetable gardens based on how we eat, and we tend to eat a lot of peppers and tomatoes. We do a lot of herbs. So we choose some pretty easy things to grow. And we put some in the ground, some in pots, like herbs can decorate your kitchen. It would look lovely and smell lovely to have some good herbs in your kitchen. And then on top of that, if gardening isn't your thing, our local community has an area in town where you could for a low price of just $20 in the entire summer. They'll give you maybe a ten by 20 or so square foot area where you could grow whatever vegetables you are so inclined to grow. So if there's no room on your property, there's a place to go. And also my brother and sister in law, they have been doing a co op where for a weekly fee, they get handed a bag of vegetables, which is really fun from their local farm because you never know what you're going to get.

[00:40:10.720] – Rachel

So you can get really creative in the kitchen if you're getting some vegetables that you may not normally Cook with. So there's a lot of affordable options if growing isn't your thing. So that's what to look into.

[00:40:23.490] – Allan

And the reality of it is there's some work involved. I grew up and we had three acres, and so that was a chore. And then after you get the food, you have to think in terms of you don't want it to go to waste. Like, we had plum trees and there was like three or four plum trees and they would all come ripening at the same time. I can personally tell you from experience, don't eat a lot of plums at one time. Plums are prunes, okay? They're just moisture prunes, and they will do the same thing. So what you end up doing is saying, what are the preservation techniques that I can employ to keep this food and have it for later? So you talk about tomatoes and you can tomatoes. You learn how to use the Mason jars and hot water and creating pressure and put the caps on and letting it sit and hear that pop. And you're like, OK, we're good. Same thing with the preserves that we did for, like I said, the plums, we would do that also with blackberries. The BlackBerry preserves went very, very fast, though.

[00:41:35.190] – Rachel

That would be delicious.

[00:41:36.650] – Allan

They were. But that's the whole point. We knew where our food was coming from, the chickens and Ducks and turkeys that we raised. We knew what they were eating, we knew where they were. And so that gave us some ownership there and changed behaviors because it wasn't the simple thing of throwing things out and not utilizing them because you knew the cost and you knew what was involved with the fishing and the hunting. It was like, okay, we know where our meat is coming from. And we know sometimes we're going to be lucky and have a good harvest, if you will. And then other times we're not. And we have to look at what's going on. Why aren't there as many deer? And maybe it's a good thing we're not getting a big harvest this year Because if there's not enough deer for us to see the deer, Then maybe we don't need to be hunting the deer as much. So it allows you to get more creative with understanding the environment you're in and hunting and fishing and growing your own, raising your own. I think those are just huge opportunities for us to become more self sufficient.

[00:42:41.610] – Allan

And Clint book, again, it is about being resilient, it's about being self sufficient. And it goes a lot deeper. He teaches things about welding, solar panels, water. So all the things that you would say if I was really going to homestead and figure stuff out for myself. And is it a complete manual for how to do this? No, but it is an excellent source. If you're saying I really want to start figuring out I want to buy that cabin in the woods and move there. I want to buy that house, that property down there here about Bocas del toro, where I can own my own island for less than $200,000 And I can build a sustainable house with solar water catchment and all that. This will give you some general ideas about what's involved in doing that and kind of coming to the conclusion. And I really cut out to do that Because so many people move down here and say, yeah, this sounds great until we go three weeks without rain. Or we go three weeks with rain.

[00:43:46.830] – Rachel

Yes, like you just did. Oh, my gosh. Yes. Well, it's good to try some of these little things and absolutely buy the book because it's good to read about and do your research before you invest a whole ton of time. Because you're right. Failure happens. We evicted two groundhogs last year that ate a good chunk of our garden before we could. And it's just these type of things happen. So it's good to try these experiments every now and then and see what happens.

[00:44:15.450] – Allan

Okay. Well, Ras, that's all I really had for this week. What about you?

[00:44:19.750] – Rachel

Sure. No, that's great. Take care.

[00:44:22.440] – Allan

You too. Bye.

[00:44:23.400] – Rachel

Thanks. Bye bye.

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Let's Say Hello

[00:03:24.190] – Allan

Hey, Ras. How are things?

[00:03:25.970] – Rachel

Good. Allan how are you today?

[00:03:27.960] – Allan

I'm doing all right. A little waterlogged. We got about 2ft of rain in the last three days.

[00:03:37.400] – Rachel

Oh, my gosh.

[00:03:39.410] – Allan

And it happened during what's supposed to be one of our driest months. March is supposed to be one of our dry months. In fact, the first year we moved here in March, we had three week drought, and they ran out of water on this island. They had a truck water in from the mainland for us. And then in December of that year, we had probably one of the worst rains they'd ever talked about, and they flooded the streets and flooded everything. I think the rain we got this time was even worse than what happened back in December. We literally got 2ft of rain in three days. We were in the middle of reroofing Lula's, so we're investing in this plastic PVC roof because we had a tin roof and it was rusting through and we're getting leaks. Well, we got leaks. So we had guests with leaks in the rooms, leaks over their bed, this and that. It was a little bit of a challenge there. And I had leaks at the gym. So we had this strip here, and I kind of knew it probably would leak, but I thought our guys had done enough to kind of help it from not happening.

[00:04:46.210] – Allan

But I just think the volume of water that was literally when we say buckets, that doesn't even really describe it. It was the hardest rain I've ever experienced. I've been here for over three years, but it was more than buckets. It was wild.

[00:05:06.390] – Rachel

My goodness. I can't imagine.

[00:05:09.350] – Allan

Yeah. So we're a little waterlogged. A lot of the papers and things that were on my desk because it just happened to leak right over my desk.

[00:05:16.620] – Rachel

Oh, no. Oh, my goodness.

[00:05:20.220] – Allan

It was a good thing I don't keep a computer just sitting on the desk here. It probably would have got ruined, but everything is kind of right now starting to have a little bit of an Orange hue to it. Everything metal. That is a bit of water and humidity. But hopefully another day or two will dry out and we'll figure out what my problem is on this road. But, yeah, the roofers are back at Lula's, so good. They know to kind of probably do a little bit of work there and two or three more days touch wood. We'll have our roof at Lula's Redone, and hopefully my landlord here will be able to do something. So next time we get a heavy rain, I don't have to move everything out of the way and have buckets cross the floor.

[00:06:03.220] – Rachel

No kidding. My goodness. Well, my fingers are crossed for you.

[00:06:07.200] – Allan

So you had a race?

[00:06:09.110] – Rachel

I did.

[00:06:10.080] – Allan

And you did a lot better than 5 hours.

[00:06:12.200] – Rachel

I did, yes. Last weekend we were in St. Louis for the St. Louis Marathon, and it was my husband's first official marathon, although he's done an ultra before, so kind of skipped a step. But he ran very well. And I also ran very well and secured a new PR at the ripe age of 50. So I'm quite excited to have a new PR of 4 hours and 38 minutes. And it was just a great day. It was a beautiful day to run. And I had a fantastic trainer who made me even stronger and more confident as a runner. And I did what I did, set a PR.

[00:06:54.400] – Allan

Congratulations.

[00:06:55.680] – Rachel

Thank you. Thank you so much. It was a wonderful time. I could not be happier.

[00:07:01.350] – Allan

Kind of the takeaway from this is if you set something in your mind and you make the investment. And the investment was time, effort, patience, and money because you did hire a trainer, but the trainer was telling you to do things that were like counter to what Rachel was saying traditionally. Yeah. It's like, no, I got to run more, not less. I've got to run harder. I got to run slower, not faster. She was challenging you to get outside your comfort zone and do some things. And you did. And the results speak for themselves?

[00:07:41.200] – Rachel

Very much so. Yes, very much. I had a great 16 weeks of training with her. And the different types of running that we did throughout the training period were a little different for me. Usually I run for different goals and different reasons. And you're right, this was definitely out of my comfort zone. And it was a very strong training cycle and it showed on race day.

[00:08:06.920] – Allan

Good. Congratulations again.

[00:08:08.900] – Rachel

Thank you so much.

[00:08:10.420] – Allan

All right. Well, we have Dr. Robert Davis back on the show. He did the Super Size Lies book, and now we're going to go. He's done a review of his book Fitter Faster. So you're ready to have that conversation?

[00:08:24.780] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:08:50.370] – Allan

Dr Davis, welcome back to 40+ Fitness.

[00:08:53.370] – Dr. Davis

Thank you, Allan. Great to be with you again.

[00:08:55.830] – Allan

I love seeing a book from an author who wrote a book that I love. And your Lies book. I can't remember the exact title of it, Super-Sized Lies, and it was about weight loss and all the lies were told about that's great book. I recommend everybody get a copy of that, too. But today we're going to talk about your book, Fitter Faster: The Smart Way to Get in Shape in Just Minutes a Day. And one of the things that's really cool about this is that this is not the first time this book has been out. You're actually updating it, meaning you've learned a few new things, a few new tricks, a few things we can do to get fitter faster. And you've touched on maybe the number one problem that most people will say. It's like, of course, my doctor tells me to eat better and exercise more. But working my working day, by the time I get home, I get dinner and get everything settled. When, when am I supposed to do this? And getting it done in minutes a day is true because as I went through your fitter faster program, those workouts, almost every single one of them is probably less than 20 minutes.

[00:10:09.960] – Allan

I mean, you need some warm up time for these obviously some cool down time stretching and things like that. But literally, if you can dedicate 20 minutes to your health and fitness each day, six days a week, this program is excellent.

[00:10:25.230] – Dr. Davis

Well, thank you. You're absolutely right. That is the number one reason people say they don't exercise can't exercise consistently because they don't have enough time. And the idea is that we wanted to help people overcome that barrier in addition to other barriers. And we can talk about those. But the number one barrier being a lack of time. And to do that by coming up with ways to exercise that are more time efficient. So to use certain techniques, they can allow you to get just as much, if not greater benefits in less time. And that's really the key. So that people can, when they have only ten minutes or 15 minutes, can still get in and work at it, because often people say, well, I only have ten minutes. I only have a few minutes. Forget it, because I don't have enough time. And so we try to eliminate that as an excuse.

[00:11:07.050] – Allan

And the cool thing about this is you're not just giving them shorter workouts and saying, okay, just do these shorter workouts and they're going to work. This is science based. You didn't just go and say, okay, how can I give them this easy button? You look back at the science and said, what does science tell us? Is something that we can do that's going to give us the benefits at the kind of the minimum dose.

[00:11:32.130] – Dr. Davis

Exactly. Readers will see. I have hundreds of footnotes in the back of the book, and I hope it didn't come across as a textbook. I tried really hard and so that it did not. It was very user friendly. But for people that want to know about the science, wanted to delve into it more. And to see that what, as you say, we're recommending is based entirely on the latest science. I wanted to make sure that people knew that those references were there for that reason.

[00:11:55.480] – Allan

Well, even though I geek out on a lot of this stuff, obviously, I can tell you it's not a textbook. It's very well written, it's very easy read. And we even talked about it before we got on the call, the workouts themselves and the demonstrations that you have in there, the pictures. I know how hard that is. I've seen a lot of books, a lot of workouts printed. It's among the best I've ever seen. So this is a good book if you're short of time and you want to get something done. But we're going to spend some time today talking about first, why would I want to sweat? Because that's uncomfortable. I can sit in my air conditioner and I can do this. Let's have some conversations. Let's have some phone calls, let's watch some Netflix or do something else. In the book, you go through what you call the Big Six benefits. Can we go through those Big Six? Because I think they're really important. Obviously, as a personal trainer, I would, but they are. And you go into the science in each and every one of these of why exercise gives us this benefit.

[00:13:01.850] – Dr. Davis

Sure. And let me say first, Allan, I like to say that if there were a pill, they could do everything that exercise could do, we'd all be clamoring for it, and we can talk about these Big Six, and there are others as well. And so the list is really very long of all the benefits that exercise has. I really believe it's the closest thing we have to a fountain of youth. And yet it's a shame that so few people take full advantage of it. With that in mind, we can go through, as I say, as you said, what I call the Big Six.

[00:13:27.780] – Dr. Davis

So the first one is simply the research shows that exercising regularly, regular physical activity, helps people live longer. And not only does it help people live longer, but it helps people live healthier so that there's in many cases what's so called compression of morbidity, which means that the time that we have debilitating conditions is condensed, typically toward the last few years or the end of life, so there are fewer years of disability. You cannot say that it adds years to your life, but life to your years as well.

[00:14:02.090] – Dr. Davis

So that's a key point there also we hear about this all the time. Regular exercise reduces the risk of heart disease. That's something many people are familiar with. Less risk of heart attacks and cardiovascular disease, lower risk of certain kinds of cancer. That includes colon cancer, breast cancer, and boost your brain power. What that means is there's a lower risk of dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and those who exercise regularly. Also, people who are not affected by dementia just have clearer thinking, often better memory, who often experience that people experience that often who regularly exercise. Mood is another area of important area. There's a lower risk of depression among those who exercise regularly and among those who have symptoms of depression. Exercise can often help improve those symptoms. And then finally, what I like to call fending off feebleness as we get older, we have various conditions that can make it harder to do everyday tasks. So bones tend to become less strong. Osteoporosis, arthritis, we lose muscle mass as we get older, and so regular exercise can help all of those things, and particularly muscle mass as we lose all those muscle mass as we get older.

[00:15:22.110] – Dr. Davis

And what that means is that people often as they get older, have trouble doing everyday activities, getting up and down from a chair, walking up and down steps, doing simple things. And so this impairs their quality of life. And by helping to preserve muscle mass, particularly exercise, can help us live Fuller, more active lives longer.

[00:15:41.490] – Allan

The interesting thing is and I think every one of us, if we just sat down, we're all in our 40s, 50s, 60s, maybe even more. But as we sit down, we start thinking about this. It's like, well, of course I want to live longer, but I want to live better. And every one of these benefits, if you really think about it, what's the number one killer of men and women in the United States? It's heart disease. What's number two and maybe even scarier is cancer. And so there's evidence to support the fact that this is going to make us not just fitter. So what we're capable of physically doing is going to make us live longer and live better. I think those are huge, and they're really big. Now you go into too many more, as you mentioned, I think I could sit down and probably come up with a list of 100 things that exercise does for you every day and for the rest of your life. But there's one surprising one that's missing from your list, and it's probably the main reason people walk into a gym in the first place and see all those treadmills sitting there is most people believe that they need to exercise to lose weight, but weight loss is not one of the benefits that you list in either your big six or your surprising step.

[00:16:55.830] – Dr. Davis

Yeah. And people find that surprising, that weight is not there. And as you say, Allan, people that's often the number one reason people start an exercise program or look to exercise to help them. And that's unfortunate because helping you shed pounds is the one thing of all the things we talked about and the other things exercise can do, it's the one thing that it doesn't do so well. And the reason is fairly simple. And that is the kind of exercise that most of us do that is going for a brisk walk, taking a yoga class, riding a bike, all of which are fantastic for your health, have all the other benefits we've talked about. And people should absolutely do. They don't typically burn that many calories. And so what that means is that you're going to get a much bigger bang for your buck if you focus on your diet, changing your diet when it comes to your weight rather than exercising. Now that said, there are benefits related to weight that come from exercise. For example, exercise, while it may not be so great at helping you actually shed pounds, it has been shown to be effective at helping you keep weight off.

[00:17:52.380] – Dr. Davis

So once you lose weight or in the maintenance phase, help trying to keep that weight off. Exercise is very important for that. It's also important for helping you to avoid gaining weight in the first place. So there is good evidence for that. Also, there is evidence that exercise can change your body composition so it can reduce body fat, particularly visceral fat. That's the kind of fat around the waist that's often associated with negative health effects. So while it can have weight related benefits, it often does not have the benefit that we look to the most, which is just to help the shed pounds. And I think it's important that when people go into an exercise program that they're fully aware of that their expectations are managed, because too often I think people go in, they start a program, they say, okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to lose weight. They don't lose weight. And then what happens? They give up on exercise. And so they say, well, it's not working the way I intended, so I'm not going to keep exercising. And that's a shame, because as we say, it has all these other benefits.

[00:18:48.050] – Dr. Davis

And I think it's important to reframe exercise not as a weight loss tool, but as something to enhance our lives and to improve the quality of our lives. And I think if we do that, then people are less likely to give up on exercise the way they do if they see it simply as a weight loss tool.

[00:19:03.060] – Allan

Yeah. One of the things I like to say is weight loss tends to be a side effect of getting healthy and fit. So if you're doing the right things physically, you're putting information in your body. So movement to me, any kind of exercise that you do is a form of communication. You're telling your body, I need to get stronger. I need my bones to be more dense. I need the capacity to be able to run a little faster, run a little further. So I'm building stamina. And through that process, then your body says, okay, well, we're viable, healthy human being here. Maybe this body weight doesn't need to be here. So our hormones start acting the right way, our body starts sleeping better, our stress management is better. All those surprising seven stuff that's in there that I encourage you to get the book. And so all of a sudden, yeah, you do start losing weight, but if you focus on weight often, that does derail you because you might be putting on muscle mass, you do a particularly hard work out your body water. The amount of water your muscles carrying, your body's carrying might vary and you very well could put on weight.

[00:20:16.650] – Allan

That's water weight. And so weight itself is measuring one element of about four to include your actual muscle, your bone, the water in your body and fat. And so if you want to lose weight, there's easier ways to do it, cut off a limb or something. But exercise is not specifically for weight loss. The diet is going to do a much better deal there. But I think the exercise is very important, as you mentioned. One, it helps you keep it off. You've got more bone, you've got more muscle mass. Your resting metabolism is going to be a little higher, not much, but a little, which says annual hormone profile, your sleep, your stress, everything is going to be telling your body you don't need to accumulate fat. You're in a good place.

[00:21:07.810] – Dr. Davis

Right. Absolutely.

[00:21:09.450] – Allan

Now for many of us, okay, you can say, hey, you can live longer, we can boost your brain power, which I think a lot of us would love that we don't forget where we put our keys often, which is kind of a plus 40 thing. But there's the motivation of that that comes around. And then there's the other things that go on around us, someone kind of cheering us on or a friend that's working out with us. And those levels of motivation and things that push us to do things are really important. Some are more valuable than others. Some come from within and some without. We call them intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors. Can you talk a little bit about motivation, where it comes from, and what those two elements are really are? Internal, external, intrinsic external, and how we want to use those to make sure we can get better faster?

[00:22:06.870] – Dr. Davis

Sure. Well, extrinsic you mentioned motivation means motivation from the outside. And this is the kind of motivation that's particularly important as you get started, because if you're just starting an exercise regimen, it often is tough and it's tough to sort of get in the habit of doing it, to keep doing it. We all know that. So certain things can help this kind of extrinsic motivation, one is trying to make it more enjoyable. So, for example, listening to music or save if you're exercising indoors, saving a favorite TV show or on Netflix or whatever it is, so that it's something you look forward to doing, teaming up with a friend, joining a class, things like that, that can essentially make it more enjoyable and give you more motivation to do it. Interestingly. Money is a motivator for some people. I talk about how that is a motivation for people, and their studies have been done. People are given money that particularly the beginning can help them exercise to continue their exercise program, rewarding yourself with something like a vacation or a concert or massage, something you enjoy and saying, if I reach a certain goal, then I'll do this, by the way, it shouldn't be food.

[00:23:13.200] – Dr. Davis

So if you're trying to lose weight, that can be counterproductive. But some activity you enjoy as a reward. That's another example of extrinsic motivation, just sort of external motivation to help you keep going. So those kinds of things can be very helpful, particularly, as I say, as you get started. But over time, what we want and what happens to many of us I know it's happened to me over time. It wasn't this way at the beginning, but it is now is that you shift to intrinsic motivation, meaning you exercise not because of some external reason, but because something inside of you just wants to do it. And I think the way at least I've arrived at that and tell other people they can is instead of focusing on a lot of these long term benefits, and certainly they're fantastic, all the things we talked about lowering your risk of heart disease, cancer, and all the rest. But sometimes that's not enough to motivate you to go to the gym today, right. If you think about I'm not going to have a heart attack in 20 or 30 years, it's easy to stay on the couch.

[00:24:07.500] – Dr. Davis

So the thing to focus on in that case is how am I going to feel right away right after exercise? What is the immediate payoff? Think about that instant gratification. Does it mean that you're less stressed, that you feel better, that you feel less anxiety, you're better able to deal with a stressful job or screaming children, or you're going to sleep better tonight, or you just feel more empowered? Those kinds of immediate feelings that you get from exercise can be very motivating to help people keep going over time. And you don't feel that you have to go exercise. You feel that you want to because you have these benefits. And so that's an example of intrinsic motivation that we all sort of, I think can achieve over time, which is to say that exercise goes from something that you have to do to something you want to do because it's going to help you feel good. And I think that ultimately is what can motivate us to continue exercising for the long term. I know that's what's worked for me because now I started off as a kid who never wanted to sweat, never wanted to get off the couch, who hated gym class.

[00:25:12.180] – Dr. Davis

And over time I started exercising in various ways. And now I can't imagine not having exercise as part of my life because of how I know how it makes me feel better. And I think that's not something we can't expect or cannot expect to have intrinsic motivation overnight. But over time that's I think a very powerful force to get us on track to make exercise something that we continue to do.

[00:25:36.210] – Allan

The way I like to look at it is for me to really push myself so to push myself past what I would call my baseline. So I have a baseline of fitness that I'll just do. This is who I am. This is what I do and to push myself past that. So let's say I want to do a little bit more. I'll typically do something like sign up for a race. So I'm signed up for a tough Mudder in August, and it's going to be the 15K one with the obstacles.

[00:26:04.990] – Allan

Yeah. There's some electricity and some water and some heights, cold and a lot of uncomfortable things. I find that fun. I really enjoyed the time that I've done it before, so I'm really looking forward to a future event. But it's intrinsic. It's extrinsic knowing, okay, there's this event, this thing coming up. I have to kind of push myself to be ready for that or not. I can just go in and suffer through it and probably still do it, but just not enjoy it. And then there's the intrinsic, which is I can't wait until Sunday. And the reason I can't wait until Sunday is that's my long day. And my long day means that I'm going to be walking from here. And about mile four, five, I start hitting the beaches of Bluff here in Bocas, and they are gorgeous. And I get deeper and deeper into the jungle. There's fewer and fewer people. I'm a huge introvert. So that opportunity to spend some hours by myself is a huge reward. It recharges my batteries like nothing else. When I can go an hour or so without seeing a human being, for me, that's brilliant. If I could go a day without talking, it would be brilliant.

[00:27:19.800] – Allan

I would love that. So just knowing myself, the intrinsic motivation of getting out there on the trail, and there's a part towards the end I'm just now getting because I'm starting to push my mileage up. I found a spot they call Jungle Highway now, and you're literally walking through the jungle. There's no one. It's just you on a nice path walking through the jungle, the birds, the monkeys, all of it. To me, that's a huge opportunity that I look forward to, but it means that I'm already at something like ten to 12 miles. So there's an element of I have to push myself to earn that. If I want to see that jungle, if I want those birds and those monkeys, I've got to get past that four mile out and 4 miles back. So there's a push to get to the better parts the next thing. So if you can find those opportunities where you're going to enjoy what you're doing even more, signing up at a gym that you really like, it's got all the stuff you really enjoy. For some of us, that's wonderful. Having a home gym where you can just feel proud when you're sitting there in your basement or garage and just enjoying the heck out of yourself because this is my space.

[00:28:33.870] – Allan

Those are just opportunities for you to bring that inside and really have some pride and some enjoyment in what you're doing.

[00:28:41.490] – Dr. Davis

Yeah. And I think that's a great point. And as you say, that works for you. And I think it's important for everybody to find and it takes time sometimes what's going to be motivating for you. Right. And it's going to be different for all of us. But to sort of give exercise and fitness enough of an opportunity to allow you to find that, because it may not be readily apparent when you start. But over time, you can see okay, I can see these things in ways that I feel or these aspects of my routine where I do feel really good and motivated and motivated to continue. So I think it's important to find what works for you.

[00:29:16.290] – Allan

Now we talked about weight loss a little bit, and as I said, I would say probably 99% of the folks that walk in and want to talk to me about training them, their number one goal is weight loss. We said that's not going to necessarily happen in the gym, but it's going to come from what you eat. And your performance when you're working out is also hugely affected by what you eat. So in the book, you include eight eating rules. And these rules are designed to kind of help you on your fitness. So you're getting the nutrition your body needs and making sure you're not just, I guess, following broscience, because again, there's you didn't do broscience here. Can you go through these 8 eating rules? Because I think it's really important for someone to understand that when you start thinking of food as fuel and food as building materials, those two primary things. There's other reasons we eat. But once you get on those two, I think it makes the fitter faster program even better.

[00:30:23.910] – Dr. Davis

Well, let me just say first, I think I went through these rules because so often, as you say, people here around exercise all kinds of different advice. And often they come from gym rats, eat a bunch of egg whites, drink chocolate milk after you work out, or drink a bunch of Gatorade, the list goes on things you're supposedly supposed to do if you're working out. And I think often these things are not only not effective, but they can actually derail people, particularly if they're trying to lose weight or other things by adding calories. So what I've tried to do is sort of issue some guidelines here. Now, granted, everybody's different. So part of it depends on what your goals are. So somebody who's a middle aged woman is going to be different from a young man whose bodybuilding in terms of what their diet needs to be. But nevertheless, there are some general principles I tried to sort of lay down for people to keep in mind. One is to get plenty of protein and to try to include protein at every meal. And you hear about the importance of protein and building muscle. And it is important.

[00:31:23.070] – Dr. Davis

But sometimes people end up getting all their protein or most of their protein, for example, at dinner. And it's important, I think, to sort of spread that out and get some protein at every meal. And that protein sources are things like poultry, eggs, dairy, beans, soy. And then at the same time to go easy on the processed red meat. It doesn't mean you have to never eat red meat, but it just means to minimize that. So that's obviously one macronutrient to focus on is the protein. Number two would be the carbs. So here to go for complex carbohydrates rather than refined carbohydrates. So that means things like complex carbs will be fruits, vegetables, whole grains. And to try to minimize things like chips, cookies, crackers, sweets, those kinds of things that are refined range, white bread, the third thing. And the third macronutrient, of course, fats. And here to go for the good fats, we all hear about the good fats, fatty fish, olive oil, nuts, seeds, avocado, things like that. And to de emphasize saturated fats and trans fats. So those are the three macros. We hear those principles. Those are principles that apply to healthy eating, but they apply also when we're trying to eat in an optimal way for exercise, when it comes to hydration, water is your best bet.

[00:32:43.720] – Dr. Davis

So we hear, as we say, about sports drinks, Gatorades, replacing electrolytes. That may be important for athletes, for people that are exercising for very long periods, particularly in hot conditions. But for the vast majority of those people going to the gym for an hour or going for a walk or going for a bike ride, it's not necessarily necessary to have a Gatorade or any kind of electrolytes to replace once you've lost. So water is your best bet. There fad Diets again, we hear these different diets. I talk about a lot about this in my previous book, Super Sized Lives. And there's sort of all kinds of diets that people hear about when it comes to related to weight training into the gym. But I think generally the idea here is to just focus on healthy eating and forget about diets with a bunch of rules. Not only are they not sustainable over the long term, but in some cases, they can actually cause harm. When you're looking at ingredient lists, a general principle I like is that shorter is better on boxes, on food labels. And if it has a long list of unpronounceable ingredients, it's take it as a red flag.

[00:33:50.790] – Allan

I'm going to step in just a second and say if it has no ingredient list, you're probably better off. You'll notice the tomatoes sitting on the farmers market, the chicken, if you want to buy chicken from a Butcher, particularly no ingredients list, doesn't need one. It's tomato.

[00:34:15.690] – Dr. Davis

I like that. Yeah. The best is no, the best is zero ingredients. Right. And so it has some ingredients when a box shorter is better. So that's an excellent point. And then when it comes to related to this, so you have the nutrition label. Right. But then you also have marketing claims on packages, all kinds of marketing buzzwords. We see things like gluten free, vitamin fortified, organic, multi grain. All these words and studies show these can often lead people to falsely conclude that the food is more helpful, it's better for them when in fact, it's not. And so generally, to ignore all of these claims and to look just at that nutrition label, look at things like calories, protein, added sugars, fiber. Those are the things to look at in that ingredient list, as opposed to all these sort of marketing buzzwords that you often see on the front of the package to look beyond those. And then finally, foods that are often marketed for exercise, energy bars, particularly not to be fooled by this, because again, if you look carefully at that label, you'll find that many energy bars have lots of calories and in some cases, as much sugar as a candy bar.

[00:35:20.100] – Dr. Davis

And yet people will eat these after they exercise, think, oh, this is good. I need to get this refuel after I exercise by any energy bar because it has protein or because it just seems like it's something that people who exercise should eat. And in fact, they can be eating unhealthy foods and adding a lot more calories to their diet more than they realize. So, again, not to be fooled by these kind of in many cases, these are highly processed as well. So I think that to sort of look beyond, again, that kind of marketing around these so called exercise friendly foods.

[00:35:50.370] – Allan

The core for me is experiment with your nutrition. There's some basic rules that most of us can follow. These are intended to make your performance when you're working out sufficient so that you're recovering from your work, you're fueling properly and you're getting the protein your body needs. You feel full, you feel satiated, you're not overeating. Because, again, if weight loss is part of your overall program, you still have to manage that part. But knowing you're fueling, knowing what you're putting into your body is equally important if you want to make sure that you're everything you need to be to be able to do these programs.

[00:36:31.650] – Dr. Davis

Right. Absolutely.

[00:36:33.690] – Allan

Now, your Fitter Faster program has a lot of variety. It's a six day on, one day off kind of program. Obviously, if someone needs to ease into this, then maybe they skip a day here and there as their body tells them. You talked about a lot of that. That's one of the things I really like about your book is you have a lot of asides, if you will, of that. This is Dom, and this is what this feels like and why you're having it. And this is this and this is what's going on there's a lot of information in there that's put together in a way that okay, here's a little bit of information to help you. But as someone's going into this, they're going to ease into these and get into this program. But the program itself has three levels. So regardless of whether you're a beginner all the way to advanced, this is a program that's going to be able to work for you. Can you give us a little bit of insight into your program, how it's put together and what someone can expect?

[00:37:29.670] – Dr. Davis

Sure. And we'll continue at that point you made about beginner, intermediate advance, because somebody could be different levels for different types of exercise. Right. So we have both cardio exercise as well as strength training, and so somebody might be intermediate or advanced when it comes to their cardio, but just starting with weight training or strength training. So it's important to assess where you are. And we have tests and there are ways to assess self assessments where you are with that. But yes. So it includes what we try to do is to include the various elements of a well rounded and comprehensive exercise program. And those are aerobic conditioning, strength training and also flexibility, because we hear for the official recommendations from the government or you should have at least five days a week, 30 minutes a day of cardio or aerobic exercise. You should have at least two days a week of strength training and then have some flexibility. And that's a lot. And so it's easy to see why people like I can't do all that. That takes too much time. So we tried to do is to combine all of those in a way, as we said earlier, that is more time efficient but allows you to incorporate all those elements.

[00:38:34.550] – Dr. Davis

So we have a couple of days, a week of more traditional kinds of strength training. But we would do it in a circuit. So as opposed to someone the way that many of us training, you do a set, you rest, you do another set, you rest, you go through a circuit. And we have people go through one circuit which research shows can be very effective. Certainly two or three can be more effective, but that first one is the most important. So if all you have time for is one circuit, that's great. And so we have that. So a couple of days a week, you have a circuit of just traditional strength training. And also you go through relatively rapidly. So there's some aerobic benefit there, too, because you're going from one exercise to the next pretty rapidly. One day a week, we have what's so called hit training, that's high intensity interval training. That's where you instead of going at a steady state, say on walking or biking, you go hard for, say 30 seconds easier then harder than easier. And research shows, as many of your least listeners, I'm sure know is that hip training, high intensity interval training can be just as effective, if not more effective with regard to cardiovascular and other benefits than conventional aerobic activity.

[00:39:40.610] – Dr. Davis

So again, this is a great way to save time. You can get more benefits, and just about anybody can incorporate this. You don't have to be a high level athlete. It doesn't mean you have to run. If you walk, you simply walk at a faster pace for, say 15 or 20 or 30 seconds, and then go at a more moderate pace. So whatever activity you do, you simply do it with more intensity for a short time. And that's how you can incorporate hip, whatever your level happens to be. We incorporate conventional cardio for one day. We have what's called hit plyometric exercises. Those are jumping exercises that are done in a high intensity interval fashion. And then we have one day where you pick your own activity. And this is an important, crucial part of this is because you're not going to stick with exercise if you don't do things you enjoy, or at least you do things you don't hate. Right. So it's important to do things that you're going to enjoy. And so there's so many different ways to move your body. And so we have a day that it's important where you just pick what you do.

[00:40:36.920] – Dr. Davis

The same goes for the hit day to pick the activity that you enjoy and for cardio. So there's a lot of choice built into this, tailoring what activities you like to do. And I think that the other important point I'd make here is it's also varied. So you notice every day of the week there's something different because number one, if you do the same thing day after day after day, you have a greater risk of injury, overuse injury. And it's important to mix things up. And second, it just reduces boredom. So that often you do the same thing every day. You get sick of your workout, you get bored, you're more likely to stop. So if there's something different every day, that's crucial as well to keep you motivated and keep it interesting.

[00:41:13.270] – Allan

Yeah. But you have two different resistant training exercises up for each level in the book. So as you go through on day one, you'll do workout A. I don't think you called it workout A, but you'll do the first one, and then on your next resistance day training, you'll do the next one. And if you get through that and you're doing that, it's like then your step up would be potentially doing another level of circuit. So you did one, and now you're worked up to where you can do two and then maybe the three. By the time you can do three of these, now you're ready to potentially move up to the advanced on some or more of these exercises. And so it does provide quite a bit of variety with regards to the training. And then yeah. The kind of the add in there of kind of doing things you enjoy. So if you like playing tennis, your standard day of doing what you want to do can be go play some tennis, enjoy yourself. So I like that. I like the way you put that all together.

[00:42:13.530] – Dr. Davis

Well, thank you. And it's a testament to my co author, Brad Kolowich, who's a personal trainer who I work with to come up with the plans. And again, it was very important for reasons you said, to make them so that people start basic exercises at the beginner level, and then we move to more compound movements as you get to the advanced levels. And people again, as you say, can move once they're ready, they've been able to do three sets to move to the next level.

[00:42:36.470] – Allan

Yeah. Like I said, doing the workouts in the book, the way you presented them, you guys did a great job with that. I've seen a lot of them, and this was among the best. And they're pretty standard full body things. So these are not going to be confusing. You don't have to have a ton of equipment in most cases. I think the equipment the only two pieces of equipment I'd say Besides shoes that you'd really need would be a set of dumbbells and varying degrees based on how strong you are and a yoga mat so you can get on the floor comfortably and I guess a bench or a sturdy couch.

[00:43:12.570] – Dr. Davis

Yeah. And I think that's a key point, Allan, because so many people I like going to gyms. I didn't always like going to gyms. I was intimidated by gyms when I started. And so many people don't like gyms or it's inconvenient to go to a gym. And I think the key here is that any workout program you do needs to be convenient. Right. So if you don't like gyms, if you can't go to the gym, if it's not convenient to be able to do this at home. And so this is design where you can do it at a gym, but if you don't want to go to a gym, that's fine. You can do this at home. And I think that's, again, another crucial element of any kind of successful workout plan is it's something that's convenient for you and it works with your preferences.

[00:43:45.870] – Allan

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

[00:43:53.520] – Dr. Davis

Well, I'm going to quote the late, great Jack Elaine, who said that when it comes to wellness exercises, as King, nutritionist, Queen, put them together and you have a Kingdom. And so those are two elements. I think that there's pretty self evident, but in my world view, they're both crucial. So first of all, we've been talking about movement, all the reasons that incorporating movement into your life is so important for wellness. Second is nutrition, eating a healthy diet. That way we've talked about focusing on a whole foods diet, and that's again, also imperative when it comes to living a healthy life. So what you put into your body, how you move your body, the food you put into your body. And third, I would say for me at least would be sleep, getting adequate sleep. That's just something that so many of us don't do. We have busy lives. We're up late scrolling through Facebook, whatever, and at late at night and don't get enough sleep. And I think it's so important to prioritize sleep. It has so many benefits with regard to our health, with regard to our risk of disease, with regard to how we feel, with our ability to exercise and to do other things to make healthy food choices.

[00:45:02.080] – Dr. Davis

So really, all these things work together, I think, to incorporate, make sure that we try to get enough sleep is another crucial element of a healthy lifestyle.

[00:45:12.280] – Allan

Great. If someone want to learn more about you, learn more about the book, Fitter Faster, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:45:21.170] – Dr. Davis

So they can go to my website, Healthyskeptic.com, and learn more about this book as well as my other books. There are links there to Amazon to purchase the books. In there by the way, I have short videos I've created about fitness and nutrition and other wellness topics that take on various claims and look at the science show what's true and what's not. And then they can also go follow me on social media. I'm on Instagram @HealthySkept, and I'm also on Facebook at Robert Davis Healthy Skeptic.

[00:45:50.930] – Allan

Great. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/535. And I'll be sure to have the links there. Dr. Davis, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:46:01.050] – Dr. Davis

Thank you, Allan. Fine to talk to you again.

Post Show/Recap

[00:46:10.030] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:46:11.530] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. It's really nice to hear from Dr. Davis again and Fitter Faster. Sounds like he's got a really interesting book available now.

[00:46:20.660] – Allan

Yeah, the book it's interesting because we did Supersize Lies and that was about weight loss. And then he redid his Fitter Faster book, which I think the last time he had done it was like 2017. So it's about five years old. So he did add some science and stuff to it. I didn't cover the book back then. But if you're looking at the book, though, if you're looking at buying the book and you say, oh, it's got an audiobook. Just beware and beware when you're buying it. Sometimes Amazon will do this. They will show the old book and the new book. But you got to be careful. He has not done the audiobook for the new book yet. So the audiobook will be the old version and some of the paperbacks and hardbacks that might be out there might be the old version. So pay attention to the Copyright date. It's 2022 already. Pay attention to that date if you want the most updated book. And so to take it together, that book and his super sized Lies but fitter faster and his super sized Lies book really do give you a good, solid basis for understanding how to get into this stuff, how to do things right, and why some of the traditional approaches, the broscience, the hearing and this bad diet.

[00:47:41.190] – Allan

That why all those things aren't going to work for you, so you don't waste your time doing it. They're both really good entry level books for you to kind of understand these things. If you're looking for something that will let you dive a little deeper into the geek, but in a good readable way.

[00:47:59.420] – Rachel

Great. Well, why don't we get started with his exercise schedule he has in his book?

[00:48:08.230] – Allan

Yeah, the programs are really good. I'm not sure that a true advanced lifter. Now, again, I look at advanced maybe a little differently than he does, which is fair. We can all look at them the way we want to. For me, a beginner lifter is probably for about the first six to eight months that you're lifting. You're really getting used to learning how to do the exercises you're using very lightweight or body weight. It is stuff you can easily do at home as you start getting further along. So after about six to eight months, if you're starting to really get stronger, starting to figure some things out, you're going to want some variety in there. You're going to want to mix things up a little bit. This is about the time that people even consider things like splits. So you're going to do certain body parts one day. So you're actually allowing yourself to lift more often than the traditional workout. Take two days off, work out. Now you're working a body part the next day, working the body part the next day, working a body part. And as you go through, you don't really even have to take a day off if you didn't want to.

[00:49:13.430] – Allan

His program blends in both the lifting and the cardiovascular fitness things. So you are doing some hit training, some longer cardio, some fun days, your two lifting days and then off day. But as you get into more intermediate, you're probably going to have to make some choices. Okay. If I'm going to do the hit, I might have to do my hit training on the same due. I do my lifting if I'm going to do a split because I'm going to lift instead of two days a week, I'm going to lift five days a week and kind of see how you're probably going to have to double up if you really want to get all that volume in and then advanced. My advance would be if you've been lifting for over two years, you know the form, you know how it feels, your brain knows how to talk, your muscles, everything's there at this point, it's really about fine tuning. It's about making decisions on whether you're truly in this just to build more muscle, to really get stronger if you're going to compete or do things like that as an advanced lifter, it's really at this point, it's just really about kind of polishing it.

[00:50:24.810] – Allan

getting your life, getting your fitness where you really want it to be at points in time, maybe a little bit further. So you challenged yourself to do something a little different. Like maybe you want to get your physique to a certain level or you want to get your strength level to a certain thing. As I said, competitions are just saying I want a PR on the deadlift. Those are things that advanced lifter is going to be looking at is okay. Can I do the main three lifts? So bench press, squat and deadlift. Can I top 1000 lbs? Can I top 1500 lbs? Can I top 2000 lbs? I know that sounds like a lot of weight, but you're advanced lifters and the people that are really good at lifting, those are doable things. Those are possible things. Even in your 40s and 50s and 60s, there are people that do those three lifts and get over 1000 lbs.

[00:51:16.110] – Rachel

I think if somebody loves the gym that much and loves body weight training that much, I can see that type of a goal. But for most people.

[00:51:25.670] – Allan

Mostly, yeah, there's a line and you just say, okay, so I want a certain level of fitness and it will just stick there. And that's cool too. The core of it is, though, as you go through this, you're going to have some trade offs. You have some trade offs to say, Do I get a gym membership and what are the benefits of that? Do I do this at home? And I can just say, if you start out and you buy a couple of dumbbells, a few sets of dumbbells and that's working for you, or maybe the adjustable dumbbells, which take you from five to 55 lbs, I think the last time I priced them like three $400, you get a whole basic set up to 55 lbs that's cost effective. They're kind of bulky, particularly when you're starting to do low weights. Seems kind of odd to have this big bulky thing for 5 lbs, but it is what it is. But there's going to be a point where you have to just make some decisions. Am I going to have all these dumbbells sitting around my apartment or my house? Do I go ahead and buy a rack in the bars and all that?

[00:52:26.060] – Allan

And people do. What I've found is the people who make the investment, and particularly that investment in the equipment, they get into it. The ones that didn't do it initially, don't go out and buy a rack and all this waits. If you're not listing yet, try the dumbbells, do his easy beginner level stuff, get yourself into it, and at some point, you'll be like, yes, this is my thing. This is it. And now I want the rack and I want the bar and I want the lap pull down and I want this special attachment. Then that's when you make those kinds of choices for your equipment. But don't just run out and buy all this equipment or see. Okay, someone is selling this on Craigslist. I'm just going to go buy all this stuff and fill my garage with it. If you're never going to use it.

[00:53:13.390] – Rachel

Right.

[00:53:13.950] – Allan

Get yourself started. And it's a key we've talked about over and over. Get started.

[00:53:18.140] – Rachel

Yes. Got to start somewhere. And if you did have a gym membership or if you've decided to get one, you can spend some time in the gym and see what types of activities that you like. Gyms often have trainers. They could help you. They often offer classes. If you try something new, take advantage of those types of amenities. You'll never know what kind of maybe you'll like a spin class or a yoga class or Tai Chi or some such thing, as well as spend some time on the weights, just see what you gravitate to, and then maybe make a bigger investment if you decided to bring that type of stuff home.

[00:53:53.080] – Allan

Yeah. And that was his thing was, you know, you're going to have some fun days because it's a six day a week program that he's basically got set up for you. And it's balanced it's balanced across all the fitness. That's why I really like it. And I think they did a really good job with their workouts. There's a fun day in there. So maybe you go down to the gym and like you said, there's a class, water aerobics, Tai Chi, racquetball something. And you get out there and you start playing around and you start having fun. And that makes you want to maybe build up your speed and agility more, maybe build up your strength a little bit more or any of it. So the point being is there are opportunities out there. Gym memberships, they can be expensive or they can be really inexpensive. Buying equipment can be inexpensive or can be really expensive. You're going to have to make the choice, but do it on the knowledge that you are committed doing this, not just okay, I need the equipment and therefore, I will lift.

[00:54:58.550] – Rachel

Save your money. Lift first.

[00:55:01.310] – Allan

It's just a very expensive coat rack is what it is.

[00:55:03.940] – Rachel

Yes. Oh, gosh, I hate that. The other thing I wanted to talk about, too, is the trickle down effect that exercise offers. A lot of our clients come to us asking to lose weight and to have us help exercise them to weight loss, but it's not necessarily the order that it goes in. I think we need to still continue to look in our kitchen first when it comes to weight loss goals.

[00:55:27.730] – Allan

Yeah, you're absolutely right. People come to us and they say, okay, I want to lose, what's your health and fitness goal? I want to lose 20 lbs, I need to lose 10 lbs. I'm like, okay, well, personally, the way I think in my head, I don't say it out loud because I try to be a nice person. But the internal part of me in my brain says, well, that's not the question I asked you, but, okay, so you want to lose some weight, what are you eating? So then now where have I done? I'm going to go right back to what's actually the cause and effect here. But what I will say that is probably where I disagree just a little bit with Dr. Davis on this is what I have found, though, is people who exercise do lose weight faster, easier and more consistently than people who don't. But it's not because of the exercise, which is kind of weird, right? Say, okay, so if they're doing it and it's not the cause, what is the cause? And the cause is once you start doing one thing that's a healthy lifestyle choice, it becomes normal for you to do other things that are a healthy life choice.

[00:56:41.300] – Allan

So it's not that someone becomes a vegan and they become a runner because they were a vegan. But what happens if the vegan decides, okay, I'm a vegan and I need to do some exercise because I'm seeing some good health benefits from being vegan. And then they start running and they enjoy the running and they join a run club. Now they're really good and they're losing weight and they're vegan and it works, it works for them, but it doesn't mean that being vegan makes you a runner. That can cause you to run. But being vegan, if it's making you make the right lifestyle choices, other healthy lifestyle choices happened. Maybe you drink less. And that's why a lot of these studies, you have to take them with a grain of salt because they'll say vegetarians and vegans have lower this than meat eaters that eat processed meats. Well, if someone's eating just meat and processed meat and it was just a questionnaire, how much meat do you eat in a week? Because that's how they do it. How much meat do you eat in a week? I'm like, let's see, I have a meat with just about every single meal, so that's going to be 21 servings or more.

[00:57:51.900] – Allan

So I fall into that eats a lot of meat category. But a lot of people who are in these categories that they go through when they're not thinking about food, it's like, well, I had to actually do that calculation of I meat every meal, therefore I eat this many servings and then they fill out the questionnaire, whereas the vegetarian is making a healthful decision about or maybe they're doing it somewhat for social reasons, but at least at that point they equate it with a healthy lifestyle choice. If someone's making one healthy lifestyle choice, they're very likely making others. And therefore they're healthier, not necessarily because they're vegetarian or vegan. They just because they've started down a path of better choices. They make better choices. They're also probably less likely to drink as much alcohol and they're less likely to smoke and they're more likely to exercise. From a normal standard perspective, that's what you get. Whereas if they had said, how much grass fed meat do you eat in a week amongst meat eaters, if they had segmented and said how much processed meat do you eat within a week? And then they took those and segmented them, they would probably find a very similar cut around is the people who don't think about the quality of their meat.

[00:59:11.870] – Allan

They don't think about the difference between processed and unprocessed stuff. They're making different healthy lifestyle choices. In fact, that I'm investing in grass fed meat means that health and fitness is a little bit more important to me.

[00:59:26.360] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:59:27.100] – Allan

And so therefore, I'm going to make other healthy lifestyle choices. It's not a cause and effect. It's just a commonality because of what happens. But to go back to the thing is, exercise won't help you lose weight, but it will help you lose weight.

[00:59:46.050] – Rachel

That's how I feel as well. I think healthy diet and exercise go hand in hand to make you an overall healthier person and give you a higher quality of life. And just in my own example, as a runner, I've been running for almost 24, 25 years now, and I sweat a lot, so I drink a lot of water. It's just a causality for that situation. I know that I can have a beer and I love a good beer every now and then, but not in the night before an important run like my St. Louis marathon. I choose my meals very carefully. While I might enjoy a little bit of cake and ice cream at a birthday party or celebration, it's not part of my daily lifestyle because I know I need to run well the next day. So, you know, once you pick up a healthy habit, you're right, it leads to other healthy habits and then you'll feel better at the end of the day.

[01:00:40.420] – Allan

Yeah. So now if you came to me and told me you really want me to exercise you and help you lose weight, I would do it. I would do it. Here's how I would do it. I would say, okay, show up tomorrow, we step on the scale, and then I run your butt. I literally just run you ragged in here for an hour. And then I say, okay, you're coming back in two days. And if you weigh more than you did today, I'm going to work you harder.

[01:01:06.630] – Rachel

That sounds scary.

[01:01:07.960] – Allan

Exactly.

[01:01:10.470] – Rachel

Not very fun

[01:01:11.760] – Allan

right. Not fun at all. Not fun at all. It's not an exercise program that you want. It's not a hamster wheel that you want to start because the workouts if you're not losing weight, the workouts have to get harder. And guess what? We're not getting younger so they don't get easier. So maybe when you're in your 20s, Put exercise off a few pounds, Get out there and do a few days of running, Push yourself a little bit, make a couple of other probably healthier lifestyle choices and you drop a few pounds, drop a dress size. That was easy in your 20s. It's not when we get over 40, Particularly for women, as they get closer to menopause and into perimenopause and menopause, it's not easy at all.

[01:01:52.600] – Rachel

Right.

[01:01:52.980] – Allan

So just recognizing we have less muscle mass, we have less energy, we have less capacity, less resilience. So for us, it has to start in the kitchen and then a whole lot of other healthy lifestyle choices Support that process.

[01:02:09.100] – Rachel

Yeah, well, great discussion with Dr. Davis. It's always nice to hear from him.

[01:02:13.740] – Allan

Yeah, it's really good. I really appreciate that his two books, Even though they're not like part of a series, like a lot of authors will write a book and then they'll know, okay, the next book in the series is this book and then they fit together. These weren't written that way or even planned that way, but they really do complement each other.

[01:02:32.740] – Rachel

Great. They sound like great things to have on my bookshelf.

[01:02:35.830] – Allan

All right, well, you enjoy the rest of your good weather for the next week or so. Yeah, and then winter we'll be here before you or summer will be here, hopefully, but yeah, we got our three days of rain, So I'm hopeful that we'll get a couple. Today is no rain. It's clear skies, so it's evaporation. So we're at about 115% humidity, I guess.

[01:03:01.710] – Rachel

Oh, my gosh.

[01:03:03.690] – Allan

I can literally walk on the air. It's that humid. So we'll have a few days of this humid, Then the mosquitoes will come out and then we'll probably be fine.

[01:03:16.220] – Rachel

Oh, my gosh. Good luck to you, Allan.

[01:03:18.440] – Allan

Yeah, you too. I'll talk soon.

[01:03:20.400] – Rachel

Take care.

[01:03:21.220] – Allan

You too. Bye. Bye.

[01:03:22.600] – Rachel

Bye.

Patreons

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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Weight loss myths that are keeping us fat with Dr. Robert Davis

Less...

Let's Say Hello

R

[00:01:11.230] – Allan

Hello, Ras. How are things going?

[00:01:13.440] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:01:15.530] – Allan

Going well, just kind of busy, actually. Kind of funny. I was supposed to have a call and I completely lost track of days.

[00:01:23.780] – Rachel

Oh, Jeez.

[00:01:26.650] – Allan

I switched up my workouts and I did a weight lifting workout on a Sunday. And as a result, I woke up the next day thinking it was Tuesday and did a weight lifting workout and then woke up today thinking it was a Wednesday, when, in fact, we're recording this on a Tuesday. And so it's like I was completely backwards on my thinking, fell behind, thought I was way behind. And then even though everything being what it was, I should have known different. I didn't. And as a result, kind of miss some appointments and things I was supposed to do. So if I was supposed to be on a call with you on Monday night, I apologize. I thought it was Tuesday night. I just don't even know what was going on last night when I thought, okay, it's Tuesday night, tomorrow's Wednesday. What do I have going on? And okay, well, tomorrow is another weightlifting day, and it wasn't today was a cardio day. And we'll talk a little bit more in detail about that at the end. But it was just kind of one of those things of the weather here is the same every day.

[00:02:35.170] – Allan

There's not a lot of differences. I don't really have weekends the way a lot of people have weekends. Any day could be a weekend. Everybody's here on holidays. So it doesn't feel different one day to the next, for the most part, any day here. So, yeah, just kind of lost track of days.

[00:02:54.420] – Rachel

Oh, my goodness. How crazy is that? Do you keep a calendar? Do you have a paper or a digital calendar?

[00:03:00.430] – Allan

I have a digital calendar, but it's kind of one of those things where I'm trying to condition myself to not look at things unless I need to look at things. So social media maybe not look at it all the time. Log in and check in on my clients once a day or so where I need to and do what I need to do. And then it's the same thing with a calendar. It's typically just, okay, what do I know is going on today and on the Monday, but I knew I needed to record something so we could have this call because I failed to do it on what I thought was Monday. And then again, just like, complete confusion. Didn't do what I was supposed to do when I was supposed to do it and then didn't know what day of the week it was and did other things, failed to do other things I was supposed to do.

[00:03:56.110] – Allan

So it just kind of put me in. I'm in this kind of weird juxtaposition because my weekend and the first part of next week is going to be intense because we're moving all the gym equipment. We're moving in. So the paint is late, the light fixtures are late. So those are going to be like, I had to go actually buy replacement/alternate light fixtures, not the light fixtures I want to keep. I had to pay for those just to have light fixtures because you need light the building to do what you got to do sometimes. And then the paint is not in because we were put off the paint waiting on the light fixtures because it's coming from the same source. And I'm like, no, I got to have the paint because they're finishing up now and now I don't have paint. So I told the person we were telling them, okay, look, regardless of whether the lights are ready, bring the paint, because I've got a paint because we're moving all the equipment in on Sunday.

[00:04:51.080] – Allan

So I'm hopeful I'll get the paint on Thursday, Friday the latest, and then I'll start painting where I can paint. And then I'll start moving equipment in and continue to try to paint around the equipment. That's going to be harder, but it kind of is what it is. So a lot of moving parts in my life right now, and I just completely lost track of days. But I won't lose track of days those days because those are going to be four or five really hard days.

[00:05:18.510] – Rachel

That sounds like it. My gosh, no wonder you've lost track of days. There's a lot going on. A lot of things you're balancing right now.

[00:05:25.780] – Allan

Yeah. How about yourself?

[00:05:28.690] – Rachel

Good. I'm far less busy than you are, but things are going good. I mentioned I have a trainer and I'm working on my marathon program, and over the weekend I ran 16 miles on my treadmill, and it was hard. It was a challenge.

[00:05:51.190] – Allan

When you're training on the treadmill, do you use the distraction, like watching Netflix or something like that?

[00:05:58.820] – Rachel

I can't watch anything because I feel like I have lost balance and I don't want to accidentally trip. I think I was watching something like, I don't know, the Matrix or something ages ago, and I was trying to bob and weave along with Neo there, and I almost fell off the treadmill. I prefer to listen to podcasts or on certain days, music is actually easier to listen to. So that's about my limits of my distraction. But it was just a long day and I chose that over outside, we had single-digit temperatures and double-digit wind gusts, so I chose the safer route.

[00:06:41.130] – Allan

Yeah. And those are not the conditions that you're going to be running your race in. So there's no value to pushing yourself through something like that, other than just saying, I want to be uncomfortable for what was probably about two and a half hours.

[00:06:55.180] – Rachel

Yeah. It was definitely the right guess. Exactly like that. The snow and the ice is just too sketchy, and it would have impacted my gate so greatly that I probably would have put myself at more risk than I got off the treadmill. So at least on the treadmill, I had a consistent gate, which I think is far more beneficial for that long run.

[00:07:19.910] – Allan

Day treadmills were originally a punishment.

[00:07:24.730] – Rachel

I know, I know. I could tell you. Yeah. So things are good up here.

[00:07:32.220] – Allan

Good. So let's go ahead and get into today's episode where we talk about programming for yourself.

[00:07:38.550] – Rachel

Perfect.

Episode

Hello, and thank you for being a part of the 40+ Fitness Podcast. Today, I want to talk about a topic that is actually really important if you're looking to build your fitness and make it really matter. A lot of people approach fitness programs the wrong way. They try something that's generic. They don't get the results they really wanted. As a result, a lot of them give up. So today I want to discuss how to build a fitness program that's right for you. So first, let's define the problem. Now, the initial problem with a fitness program is that most people seem to have a singular view on fitness. So you either think that you need to build cardio or you think you need to build strength or you think you need to do this. And as a result, people get tied into one dimension of fitness. So they become runners or they go in and they start taking the classes. They really enjoy them. And so it's just basically you're doing classes. And then there's also things like people that just go in and do yoga and think that's sufficient for what they need, or people that actually just go in and do weightlifting and say, okay, that's all I need.

The reality is most of the time that's not enough. And when we do this, what happens is we tend to put the workouts first. So you enjoy the class. The class is what you do. You feel like you're getting what you need. And as a result, what we've done is we've effectively put the tactics in without really having a strategy for what we're trying to accomplish. So if you're going to work on your fitness, you need to ensure that the fitness is doing. The work you're doing for fitness is working for you. So why do we do some of these things? Well, the first one is if you enjoy doing something like you really enjoy running or you really enjoy your fitness classes, you tend to want to do it more. Or another thing that I've seen quite often is people are really good at one thing, so you're really good at running or you're really good at lifting. And as a result, that's why you want to do that one thing. But movement for the sake of movement is not necessarily always a good thing. Now I will be the first to tell you I'm not going to poopoo anyone who takes the time to do a workout.

If you're doing a workout, that's a thousand times better than not doing a workout. But there's a reason why the treadmills are at the front of the gym. And the reason the treadmills are at the front of the gym is because 99% of the time that's as far as most people are going to go, they're going to walk into the gym and they're going to get on the treadmill, they're going to do their time, literally, and then they're going to get off the treadmill, and that's their workout. Now, again, movement for the sake of movement, fine. But realize that won't necessarily get you where you want to be. You need to get a little deeper. You need to do a little bit more because you're not only missing modalities, you're missing key one of the ones you're doing. Okay. So it's great you're on the treadmill. It's great that you're lifting, but are you really pushing yourself? Are you really doing the things that are necessary to move the needle for your health and fitness? So how do we make this happen? Because it's so easy to get wrapped up into the I'm really good at lifting, and I really don't want to do these other things or I'm really good at running, and I don't want to do these other things or I really enjoy doing the elliptical or the treadmill.

And I'm really somewhat intimidated by doing anything further. So the first thing you want to do is you want to go all the way back to the beginning. I'm going to do this to you over and over again. You have to go back to the grounding that you did at the front of this whole process. And if you don't know what that means, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to any of the lessons I've talked about with regards to commitment. And so within commitment, we have this vision. Okay. And within the vision, there are multiple segments of fitness that you're going to need to have. I've never seen anyone who has this vision to be able to run 50 miles a day and that's their vision. That's not what people emotionally attached to. The vision is about enjoying your life. It's about being the person you're meant to be. It's about being able to do the things that you need to do, which is fit for task. So if you want to be fit for task, you've got to really pay attention to what that means. What does the future you what are they capable of doing?

Okay, so let's say, for example, you want to be able to travel and there are certain places you want to be able to go, like let's just say Europe and you want to be able to do the Mediterranean, you want to be able to arrive there and enjoy yourself and do the things that you want to do. Well, I can tell you one of the first challenges you're going to get when you get that trip going, because you're most likely going to have to get on an airplane or some kind of mode of transportation that's public and you're going to have to load your bag, you have to carry your bag, you're going to put it up over into the overhead bin. There's things you're going to have to be able to do that will require strength. If you're going to do something and go somewhere and you're going to be doing walking or anything like that, you're going to need some stamina. And if the roads are cobbled like they are in most of Europe, you're maybe going to need some balance and mobility is always a good test thing to have just to keep your body moving in the way that it's supposed to so you don't injure yourself.

So just in that one vision of being able to travel successfully, you're going to need strength, stamina, mobility and balance. Okay, so that's four different training modalities that you don't get if you're only doing one thing. Now, how much of each of these do you need? Again, we go back to the base. The base is your vision. Okay. If your overhead is not going to weigh over £30, then there's very little reason for you to train to be able to press over £30 over your head. Okay. If the most you feel like you're going to ever have to walk or run or do. If you're going to go do a tour or something would be about three or 4 miles, then maybe that's the stamina that you need to have. So if your vision is travel, then you need to be fit for that task. If your vision is to do something else, like be an awesome grandmother and keep up with your grandkid, maybe your stamina needs to be a little higher at certain points in time. You're picking up the child, maybe your strength needs to be a little higher at certain points in time.

And then the other thing is mobility and balance. Obviously if you live in locations where there is a potential for you to fall or slip, you need to have those skills too. So looking at your vision is really an independent topic, independent approach to you doing you to you being the fit that you need fit for task. So what you need to do, the work that you need to do is really should be driven by that vision. And if it is, that breaks down all the motivational problems that you would have. Yes, it can be intimidating to try something that you're not good at. I walk into a yoga class. I am like a bear in a Penguin shop. I don't belong there and I know I don't belong there. But if I need to work on mobility, that's a great place to do it. If I want to get into body weight strength, that's a great place to do it. Even if I'm uncomfortable, it's important for me to push myself through. And if my vision is a part of that, it makes it a lot easier to do. So how do we get started with all of this?

And I'll say the first step is always going to be a self assessment. Now the self assessment goes along with my GPS model, and the S is the self assessment. So how are we going to self assess? Well, the first is to look at our fitness and what our capabilities are. Okay, so what areas of fitness am I really good at? And I'll tell you generally strength. However, I did tear my rotator cuff a few years ago, and as a result, I am not as strong in my upper body from a pushing perspective as I was back then. So there are areas of fitness where I'm good, particularly leg strength and pulls with my back. But there are areas of strength that I'm not so good at. So kind of looking and saying, what are the areas of fitness I'm good at? I know that I'm good at strength. I know that I'm good at long, slow cardio. Where am I not good. I'm not good in balance, I'm not good at mobility. So those are areas that I may need to focus on. Okay, do I want to do more where I'm already strong?

And the short answer to that is it depends. If I need to be stronger, like I'm trying to work on building my pushing strength because I'm weaker, then that's something I need to consider. Okay, so what effort is now necessary for me to maintain or gain the fitness I need? For most of us over 40, that's going to require working each body part at least once per week. But probably just twice per week would be enough for most of us to maintain or gain some fitness at that level. Meaning if I want to get stronger at lifting weights, I'll probably need to do weight training for my whole body or for body parts at least twice a week. So what are some fitness areas that I'm not so good at? And I mentioned earlier, I'm not so good at balance. I'm not so good at mobility. So what effort is necessary for me to gain or maintain those? And that's some balance training that's putting myself in some positions where I might not be as comfortable. So instead of doing a two legged squat, maybe I'm going to do a one legged squat, or maybe I do some form where I'm moving side to side and then doing a squat.

So there's opportunities there for me to work on my balance. As for mobility, that's paying attention to where I'm tighter, where I'm not as mobile and working on stretching, working on some other efforts to make sure that I'm gaining that mobility. And for those types of modalities, for balance and for mobility, those are things that I could practically do every day. So if I'm lifting two times per week as a whole body workout, I now have five days left. I can focus on doing these other things and in some cases, maybe go ahead and double them up and I can do these others more often. So you kind of see how I'm beginning to do from this self assessment to build out the training things that I need to get in to build fitness, to maintain fitness based on where I currently am and based on where I want to go. So the first question is, is a predefined workout for you? Because they're everywhere. You can go on the Internet, you can do a quick search for anything you want to train on. And basically a workout is going to come in. So if you went on YouTube and you type, which is the second largest search engine in the world, and you Typed in mobility workout, you would be inundated by all kinds of videos that you could do as a predefined workout.

Now, I would say that for most of these, yes, for balance and mobility, a typical class or plan will work fine. So you can go in and say, okay, I'm going to do this basic stretching class or I'm going to work on this balance program. Those typically are fine for just about everybody. However, I'm going to say this, not all muscles need to be stretched. If you have good solid mobility in certain movement ranges, say you're almost double jointed in the upper body or in the lower body, you don't need to stretch those muscles. Those muscles are already long. They're already doing what they're supposed to do. Look for other muscles that are a little tighter and focus on those. So while basic plans and classes work, you just need to make sure that where you need to be focused, you are getting that focus. The next is stamina. Now, stamina is kind of one of these things that I think a lot of people struggle with particularly as we get older, and that's because we have physical limitations. Now, as we went through that self assessment, we talked about reasons why we were good or not so good at things.

I mentioned the shoulder problem, so you may have issues with your needs. There's a lot of different examples of where we have physical limitations that would prohibit us from doing certain activities where we're trying to build stamina. So at least knowing those ahead of time is really important. For most of us working on stamina, it's really good to try to get this done outside. Getting outside is going to be better for you. However, there are a lot of machines that can help you do this, particularly when the weather is not so nice. This episode is coming out in March, maybe it's in March, but as this episode comes out, you're going to see that the weather is starting to improve. This is a great opportunity to get outside, but in the event you can't, it's raining, the weather's not good. It just isn't conducive for you to be outside doing these things. Treadmills, elliptical rowers, bikes. There's all kinds of machines that can help you build different forms of stamina. Mixing them up, trying different things always a good thing. Get that variety in there where you can, particularly if you're trying to work around a problem like knees or shoulders or something like that.

All that said, like I said, outside is better. Outside is better. So if you can do these things outside, go ahead and do it. And then if you're going to do a program for stamina, I strongly encourage you to use one that has been proven to be effective. One of my favorites is Jeff Galloway's run walk run method. We interviewed him on episode 248, so you can go back and listen to that episode. I'll have a link in the show notes, but that's a great program about how to build your running stamina without injuring yourself. Other great programs. You can find a couch to five K program. It's going to be sort of a similar walk run kind of thing. So you can build up that stamina in a controlled perspective to try to get you ready for a five K, which is 5 km or basically 3.1 mile. So you're looking to do something specific, either just program or the five day programs. Both are great programs and it can help you start your spam in a process. And as you get a little bit more specialized or start building up to longer distances or longer periods of time, there are other things that you can use that are fixed and then always.

We had a conversation with Rachel not long ago. She has hired a running coach to help her improve her stamina even further so she can run faster and have better times on her run. So if you're looking for that, sometimes having a running coach can go a long way towards helping you build superior stamina. So now we'll talk about my favorite thing. Okay. As I mentioned earlier, it's really important for you to understand your limitations before you start a strength program. Some of those are physical limitations. As I mentioned, my shoulder, my ability to push, my ability to do shoulder exercises very much different than what it was just even five years ago. So I have to be aware of that. I have to address that as I put my training plan together, and then the other is knowledge gap. So one of the reasons that I work on getting my certified personal trainer and the different specializations that I did was just recognizing that I had a knowledge gap in what my body was capable of doing and what I need to do. I was building most of my programming for the first several years off of what I knew when I was in my 20s.

And guess what? It doesn't work and it breaks you time and time again. So I knew I had a knowledge gap. If you have a knowledge gap, you don't know the form of particular exercises. It's really important for you to get this right. Don't do an exercise right and you put load on yourself. Opportunities to hurt yourself is huge, so make sure you've bridged that knowledge gap before you leap into any kind of program. Now, when you're getting started for most lifters, as long as you do know the form and you find the right coach or you find the right website. Strong Lifts Five by Five is one of my favorites. They teach you basic workouts, basic programming, simple lifts, five sets of five reps. It's pretty straightforward and it will help you get stronger. It's a really good entry level basic workout that you can do for quite some time before you need to switch that up. And then most gyms will have a machine circuit. And while machines are not optimal from a form perspective, it's really hard to screw up. If you're sitting in the seat properly and you've got the right posture, a machine workout can be quite good.

You just have to make sure that your settings on the machine are appropriate so that it fits your body. Most machines can adjust seats up and down, back and forward. Just making sure you're in a good position to do that workout is really important. You go to most gyms, they're going to have people available to help you learn how to set up that machine and use that machine appropriately. Take advantage of that or as I mentioned earlier, hire a coach to walk you through it. But strength is probably the only fitness modality that I would say is non negotiable. You have to be training strength, and second behind that is stamina. You have to be training stamina. Mobility and balance are also important, but if you aren't building strength and you're really just focused on stamina, you're going to lose strength, you're going to lose muscle mass. And in the long run, as we age, that's not going to be a good thing. So strength has to be a part of your program. Stamina must be a part of your program. Mobility and balance will very likely need to be a part of your training.

It's just a function of how mobile and how much balance you have now and how much work you need to do to enhance that or at least maintain it, depending on where you stand. So those are the basic training modalities. Now I want to skip into something a little bit deeper about fitness that I think is probably some things that people really struggle with in the long run. First off, a lot of people will start a fitness program and then they'll get bored. And like I said, if you downloaded a program and you started it and it's not something that's progressive, then it can get kind of boring. So if your decision was that you were going to go out and run or walk the same path, and so you're going to walk around the field or you're going to walk through the neighborhood and you've got your horse, if you will, you've measured it out and you know the length and the distance that you're going, and you're maybe keeping up with your time. You know, this takes you a certain amount of time so you can get your workouts done before dinner or before you have to go to work.

So you know how much time it's going to take you to do this. But if you keep doing the same route week in and week out, other than changes of weather and other things that might be going on in that neighborhood or in that field, it could get pretty boring. So that's one thing to be very concerned about is if you get bored and you want to quit, it can be a problem. Likewise with lifting weights, you may go in and do the same basic five exercises. When I mentioned strong lifts and you do them and do them and do them, and then you kind of say, okay, I do these every two times a week, and then eventually kind of getting boring. I mean, okay, squats are great, bench press is great, pulls are great. But in the end, that can get a little boring when you're doing the same workout week in, week out. And yes, maybe you are seeing some progression on that, but it can get kind of just dry. And so don't make sure that what you're doing and the fitness routines that you're doing don't bore you. Some people are able to do the same thing over and over and over again, and they're fine with it.

Others do need some variety. So at least be aware of where you stand with some of those things. Next, some people will see diminishing returns or plateaus. Now, this is completely normal in all phases of training. Initially, you see some pretty good results because your body is not accustomed to what you're doing. Your brain and your muscles are having a conversation. It's a very easy conversation to have once they figure out the wiring, the very difficult conversation when you first get started. So you will see yourself from a strength perspective, potentially from a stamina perspective, from a balanced perspective, and even from a mobility perspective, actually sees some pretty good gains in returns when you first start. And then it kind of slows down and then it kind of Plateau. You've seen this with weight loss. You'll see it with fitness. So a lot of people get disgruntled or upset when they don't see that continued linear progression. And I'm going to tell you, you almost never see a linear progression over and over, because if you did, then the strongest people in the world would never stop getting stronger. So there's a natural limitation on what the brain muscle conversation can do.

And then there's a limited potential for when you're actually building muscle and building strength or building stamina that can continue. At some point, you will Plateau. Now, there are things we can do to break those plateaus, but just realize, don't get dismissive. Don't quit just because you're not seeing the return. And then the other thing is sometimes you're going to see unequal returns. And so maybe your stocks are not exactly what you wanted it to be. Whereas some individuals just really can't put on a lot of muscle mass, they're getting stronger, but they're not seeing their muscles get bigger. They're putting on all the stamina. They're capable of going further. Distances are going and or going faster, but they're not necessarily losing weight because they thought, okay, I'm burning all these calories, I should be losing weight. So just recognize that even though you're pushing yourself in a fitness direction, you won't always see equal gains going forward. And even within body parts, you might not see the same. So like for me, it always was the case. My legs get stronger. They get bigger very easily now. Probably not as easily now as they did before when I was younger.

But that said, I can get really strong with my legs. I'm not capable of getting that much stronger with my upper body the same way. So I see unequal returns. And I also see my legs getting bigger when I lift weights with my legs do leg strength stuff, my upper body doesn't respond quite as well. So recognizing that I'm going to have those biological limitations, I have to keep pushing through, I cannot let that break me mentally. So these are things that are really hard to get through mentally, as if your workout is boring. If you're not seeing the returns that you used to be seeing or you're seeing unequal returns a lot of times that makes it really difficult to stick with, but I want you to go back to what commitment your grounding. There's a reason why you're doing this. There's a vision of what you want to accomplish. If you want it bad enough and you know where you're going, you will still get there. It's never going to be a straight line, so you got to keep pushing through. And that takes a lot of guts, it takes a lot of mental fortitude.

But if you have a good why and you have a good vision, that makes it a lot easier, stick with it and it'll pay off. Okay. So the whole reason we're on this podcast is to learn how to program for yourself. Okay, so first, let's get into the basics of all this. Now, the first thing is you have to know your muscle groups. You have to know what you're doing and why you're doing it. I'm going to talk about this predominantly from a lifting perspective, but a lot of this will fly across the board. Okay. So first, know your muscle groups. When you're doing a certain movement, what muscles are you supposed to be building? What muscles are you supposed to be using? For most exercises, there's going to be a pro mover, there's going to be a primate mover that's causing that exercise to move. Even if it's a compound style movement, there's a prime mover for parts of it and then potentially a different prime mover for other parts of it. So knowing which muscles you're trying to work for each exercise makes it easier for you to know that you're doing the exercise.

Right. So knowing the exercise. Okay, so what muscles am I going to work if I'm doing the deadlift? Well, the deadlift is a very complex work exercise. It is a compound movement, meaning multiple muscles are working. The deadlift happens to work the entire posterior chain. So you're working basically your back, your butt and you're working your hamstrings. So all the way from almost top to bottom, you are working the back of your body, the posterior part of your body. When you do squats, you initially start by using your quadriceps, which are the muscles in the front of your legs. And then as you get deeper into the squat, eventually your glutes are going to kick in and they're the braking mechanism at the bottom, and they're the muscles, the biggest muscle, they're going to start you moving back upwards. So knowing that a squat will require you to use both the front of your legs for a period of time and then the back your butt for the rest of the movement, and then reversing that going back up will help you make sure that you're keeping good form, working the muscles you're supposed to.

So understanding the work that you're doing is really important. That starts with understanding the muscles. Okay. Next is for every exercise you can do has a particular form to it. The form is important to making sure that, one, you avoid injury. But two, understanding that form also affects the angles on the muscles. And so a couple of examples would be whether you're doing something a pull from above your head, like a lap, pull down or pull up, whether you're doing a high row, a low row or a shrub. So what I just talked through were three different angles of rows that are all intended to work a different muscle group across, mostly your back. So the laps when you're pulling down the lats are the main mover, the prime mover. It's going to pull that bar down. If you're pulling the bar, the cable potentially to your upper chest, that's a high row.

Okay.

So that's working more of the upper back, the rhomboids and the trapezes. And so there you go. There's a whole different set of muscles. When you're doing low rows, you're now working more of the middle back. And when you're doing shrugs, you're working most of the traps and larger traps there. So you can kind of see as you change the angle of something, it's a different exercise. Hand position can also be a very different thing. If your grip is wide. When you're doing something like a bench press or push up, you're really focusing on the chest. If you get your hands closer together now, your triceps are more involved in the movement and maybe less of the chest. And if you get your hands all the way together almost now you're doing well, you're doing a push up, push up. And at that point, now you're working mostly your triceps, the back of your arm. So where you put your hands also affects the movement you're doing. So as you're putting together exercises, again, knowing the muscle you want to do and understanding the form of the exercise, these are critically the next important phase of this, or at least understanding level, is to know your volume.

Now I'm not going to get into that on this episode because we're probably already going long. But on episode 506, we discussed how to increase volume and knowing what your volume is. And volume relates to the amount of weight, the amount of reps, amount of sets, and also how fast or slow you're moving the weight. And so all of those things add to your volume. And so knowing how to adjust those so that you're getting the most benefit out of the work for what your goals are is important. So you might want to go back after you get started here, go back and listen to episode 506 just to make sure you've got a grip on what your volume is as you're getting into work. Now if you're someone who's going to get bored and you start a program, the easiest way to change a program that you already have is to swap exercises. So I'll give you a couple of examples. Let's say you have a program like the five by five. And the back squat is the exercise that was in the book or on the website. You say, okay, I'm going to do this exercise.

And then you get kind of bored with your back squats or you've got toe and you want to try something different. Maybe you try a front squat. It's a very different exercise from the perspective of the angles with which the bar is going down, how your body structured. You're going to move that center of mass a little bit. That's going to change the exercise. So the front squat is a good exercise to go back to. Another one is a lot of people will work on a leg press. Leg press is a great way for you to build overall leg strength.

A lot of leg strength, actually.

You can get really strong in your legs using a leg press. But sometimes people get to a point where they're a little bit tired of the leg press. They've gotten up to a particular weight and they feel like, okay, they've done enough. They really want to change the structure of their work or they want to do something slightly different. Maybe you introduce a hip rust. So you're basically at this point, you're elevating your back maybe on the bench and you've got a weight on your lap and you're trying to do rust. So your feet are flat on the floor, your butt goes down your hips, and then your hips go up to basically try to thrust upwards against the weight. This is a great butt glute word, which again is similar to the leg press. So something you can swap. So basically, anytime you have an exercise, you get a little bored with it or you're not seeing the progress, you can swap out another exercise that works the same muscles or muscle and plug it into the work and use that as your exercise. So not the easiest thing, but every exercise that you do, particularly if one of them is bothering you, can be swapped with another exercise, typically works the same muscle groups and gives you the same effort or at least similar effort and results.

Now, if you're going to make a change, if you're going to do something, I highly recommend that you stick with something for at least six to eight weeks before making a change. You're doing a different workout every day, every time. You're not really going to get the optimal benefit of what you're doing. For one, we talked about that brain muscle, the neuromuscular connection. That's really important. If you don't do an exercise enough, you're not going to get that your brain and your muscles are not going to talk as well as they could without that communication. You're not getting enough work. So you're not going to continue to see gains. If you're swapping exercises every week, you're not going to see those gains the way that you'd like. That will be. So you're going to want to make sure that you stick with something for a while. Six to eight weeks tends to be a really good time before we make a change. Next, you got to increase the load. If you stay with the same weights. And I see this all the time, people will go in and do a circuit. They'll set the machines on exactly the same weight and they go through them time and time again and then they don't really know or see that they're getting any stronger.

The fact that they try to raise it up one weight, they don't really feel like they're able to do it. And that's the struggle. They really haven't pushed themselves, they really haven't made it progressive. So adding a little bit of load when you're using good form creates the stimulus that causes the muscles to react and get stronger and get bigger in most cases. Okay. And then when you're doing this work and sticking with it for a while, you begin to see that strength starting to kick in. So last week you were doing the pulls and you were only pulling £20. This week you're pulling. You're now up to 22 or 25. So now you're seeing the weights get bigger as you learn the exercise, there's communication between the muscles in the brain and then actually, yes, your muscles are changing, they're adapting to the stimulus and they're getting stronger. That's a huge motivation. You start realizing that the work you're doing has a positive effect of actually seeing fitness improvement. That's a great way to know. That's a mile marker to know, hey, I am moving towards my vision. I see it, I see what I'm doing and that's important.

So make sure you stick with it at least long enough. Six to eight weeks to know what you're doing is working before you start trying to mix it up. I know, boredom, boredom, boredom, right, but that's important. So find that balance between switching things up and sticking with it long enough to know that it's working. Okay. So this is how most of us got our start. Most of us, back in the day, it was trial and error. We walked into a gym much like you might, and we had no idea what was going on. There was all this equipment, all these weights. Sometimes there were really big guys back in the back rowing around big dumbbells and big plates and all that. We see that. And I agree it can be a little intimidating for the trial and error part where we just really don't know what we're doing and we're approaching it. I hope today that I've given you some ideas of how you can approach this from a little bit more upscale. You have access to the Internet, you have access to a lot of information, you have access to me. So you won't have to go through trial and error.

Another thing that we did back in the day was we had fitness magazines, so Flex and Muslim Fitness. Those were the main magazines that came out. There were a lot of other bodybuilding magazines in the day. Those have pretty much been replaced by YouTube and different websites. But the concept is the same. There's stuff out there, some of it's good.

Some of it's really bad.

So just kind of knowing that, okay, I have to learn and I can't just try to apply this thing because I can tell you, I read magazine articles where guys were doing 100, which means they're doing 100 reps for a muscle group. A little muscle group at that. I tried it. It hurt. Did it give me additional muscle gain? No, not at all. It was probably a wasted workout because it was too much and it really wasn't set for what I was trying to accomplish at the time. But it looked cool, it sounded cool. And the bodybuilder that was touting it in the magazine was someone that I respected, but again, not necessarily the right thing to do. So take what you see online with a grain of salt, spend some time doing some research, asking questions, and put together a program that's going to get you to your vision. All things considered, being over 40 does add some challenges. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I went to NASM and got certified. And yes, there was a good bit of expense to that. I can't even tell you how much money I have spent on my education, my fitness education over the years.

And so there are ways for you to get around that. Hiring a trainer is a great way to do that. And along the way.

I've done the same.

I've hired coaches to program for me and to push me because when you have someone there, you work harder. So every time I've hired a coach, I've never regretted it. I've never regretted having someone there who wrote a program. I could look at the program and say, this is reasonable, this makes sense. And then I could push myself. And they were there to help. They were there to encourage, they were there to critique. And so my form was better, my work was better, I worked harder, I got more results, and it was well worth the investment. Now, if you want to fast track your fitness and weight loss, I'd encourage you to go to 40 Plusfitness.com. I have an application there had some problems with that website up until I today, but I will have a link to the application there. Go ahead and complete that form. And then we can go ahead and connect and see if 40 Plus Fitness Online training is for you. Programming is not rocket science, but it's also not something you can just pull something off the Internet and do and know that you're optimizing your health and fitness. So if you're still stuck and you need help or you want help or you really want to fast track what you're doing, go to 40 Plusfitness.com and there you'll see a link for an application.

Go to the application. It's not long. It won't take you long. But then we'll get on a call, I'll get on the call and we'll come up with a plan just for you. And it may not be 40 Plus Fitness online training. And that's cool. I really want to help you get where you want to go. And if this training program isn't the right thing, I will help you find the thing that is and get you started and get you moving in the right direction. So thank you so much again for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

Post Show/Recap

[00:46:38.750] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:46:40.290] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. What a really great and timely podcast. I think the tips that you've given about developing your own training program could not be more perfectly timed. I'm seeing a lot of questions on the Internet about why do we do this or how do we do that? And right now it seems to be revolving around strength training. That's an important modality that people just don't know how to fold into their current training programs. But I like what you set up here for the listeners because there's a good way to go about developing your own program.

[00:47:14.800] – Allan

Yeah, well, first it has to align with what you're trying to do. And that can be an event or that can just be a lifestyle you want to have or both and probably should be both. Me, I get highly motivated by having an event in front of me. I think I posted something this week in the group about how even the most elite athletes are not what they would call optimally fit all the time. They have their ebbs and flows, their seasons and off seasons. And so they're going through those things themselves.

[00:47:48.480] – Allan

But that said, they're hiring the professionals. They're doing little things that they're supposed to do. And yes, you can do those things yourself. And when I work with clients, I think the thing that sometimes just it kind of frustrates me a little bit is to have a client that really just wants to work out in front of them. They don't want to think about it. They don't want to learn anything about what they're doing. It's just like make me skinny is sort of the mantra. And I'm like, well, okay, skinny doesn't mean healthy. Lifting weights will get you stronger.

[00:48:24.560] – Allan

If they're asking questions. Well, how strong do I need to be? And I'm like, I don't know, what do you want to do? And so they're not able to answer that question because they haven't really done the initial homework. So to them, it's the workout is. And I hate to say this, as we said earlier, the punishment for being unfit. I'm not healthy and fit. I'm not the weight I'm supposed to be. So I have to effectively punish myself. So I've got to do this running. I've got to get on the treadmill or elliptical and they're not really planning out what they're doing. And then even if they do pick up a program, they don't know why they're doing the exercises they're doing. Other than that's what the program says. So they're following a program.

[00:49:05.880] – Allan

And while I said in my talk, that can be great. But at the same time, it's really hard to stay motivated. When you get to the end of that program, it's like, okay, well, I just do it again. Is there something else? And a lot of people get stuck at that. And so I'll work with someone for a number of months, maybe even a couple of years, and at the end they're like, okay, I'll see you. And I'm like, okay, cool. And then they just keep doing what I gave them until they stopped because they get bored or something gets in the way, and then they just don't know where to start back. They're like, well, I was doing this weight and doing that exercise, and now I don't know, should I lower it this amount do that, or should I just go back in and do what I was doing?

[00:49:51.610] – Allan

And that fear keeps them from starting again. And then they're out. And so I talked to him a couple of months after that, and they're like, how's it going? It's like, well, kind of fell off with the exercise. I still run and they still do the thing they enjoy doing. So they're still doing the cardio stuff, if that's what they enjoyed, or the hiking or whatever, the biking. They're still doing some of that stuff. Not all the time, but some.

[00:50:17.030] – Allan

But their eating completely falls off because again, the exercise kind of drives eating. And I don't mean that you can exercise out of bad diet, but what I found is almost implicitly 100%, someone who works out, puts time in in the gym, pays the trainer, starts eating better, and when they stop paying the trainer and then they stop working out, they go back to their old habits. So just realize that there's more there than just doing a workout.

[00:50:49.390] – Rachel

Well, I think you mentioned the very first place to start is to have your vision, to have your long term goals. And it's not necessarily like for me right now, I'm training for a marathon in April or the ultra, maybe I'll do in the fall, but I've got good role models in my life. My great grandparents didn't leave their farm property until they were in their 90s, their late 90s at that.

[00:51:14.080] – Rachel

So I'm looking that far forward. I want to be active and able to live independently well into my 70s, 80s or 90s if I'm so allowed to do so. So lucky. But that's the thing is that I've got these long-term goals and then in the medium, I've got these short-term goals about running, and I think that's what people might forget about. Sure, you can do a couch to 5K program. That's a great place to start. Absolutely. But what are you going to do after that? What is going to keep you motivated to stay active and to stay healthy and fit for the long-term? And some of these tips, like having a vision is a good place to start.

[00:51:56.800] – Allan

Yeah. When you have that vision, then everything seems to make a little bit more sense. You know, that okay, I could have all the stamina on the world, but if my grandchild comes running up to me and I can't pick them up or I have to sit in a chair because I can't kneel down and tie their shoe, those are things that are going to emotionally affect me in a way that I don't want to experience. I want to be able to get down on the floor and tie their shoe and roll around with them in the grass and not feel like, okay, now someone has to come help me up. I want to be able to do all this stuff. And so, yeah, there's this long-range plan.

[00:52:34.090] – Allan

And then for me, the short run is okay, I'm doing another Tough Mudder. And what I found is these particular obstacle course races are requiring me to be more fit in more direct ways, meaning I have to have more stamina than I think I would ever need with a grandchild.

[00:52:54.290] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:52:56.810] – Allan

Grandchild is not going to make me do 15K running in addition to 25 obstacles in a given day. Now over the course of a month, maybe. And then the other side of it is just the physical strength and being able to do the things that I'm going to have to be able to do without knowing what some of those things are because they don't broadcast all of their obstacles. You know, some of them, but you don't know all of them unless you've already done a race that season. And then generally maybe you do. But for most of us going into the race, they don't broadcast and tell you what all the obstacles are. So I know I'm going to need strength, I need grip strength, and then I'm just going to need grit.

[00:53:38.570] – Rachel

Yes.

[00:53:41.730] – Allan

One of the things I can say my training is that my cardio came back really quickly. I've taken a break I've taken a break from training and everything to kind of just say, okay, I'm off. I'm going to take an off-season. Good long off-season. And then I said, okay, now I'm back in and I'm going to work really hard all the way up until the race. But my cardio was right back there. I'm hitting anywhere from ten to twelve and a half miles easy. I'm not doing the run the way you are. I'm literally just doing a good Huff walk. But doing that today, I think I did a little over 7 miles, but the terrain was hilly so some of the grades were up to I would probably say somewhere around 15% in places that I was going so…

[00:54:29.380] – Rachel

Good.

[00:54:31.170] – Allan

It was a good walk, particularly considering it was just the 7 miles. And I know I say just the 7 miles. Oh my God, 7 miles. I'm like, I didn't start with 7 miles, I didn't start with 7 miles. It was a progression that I did over time and then your body has some memory to it and you're able to take a break and get back at it at some level and work your way back up. And that's part of fitness. It's the ebbs and flows of working your way through.

[00:55:01.490] – Allan

Now, same way with strength. I'm back in the gym, I'm working with weights that are in my opinion pathetically low. But at the same time I know for other people I'd be like, oh my God, if I could actually do that, I would be really happy. So this is not about evaluating where you are relative to other people, it's about evaluating yourself relative to those vision. What do I need to be successful for this Tough Mudder/ and a couple of things we've talked about is I've got to lose body weight. I talked about that, what is it, two or three weeks ago? Okay, well, I've already shed 12 pounds.

[00:55:40.760] – Rachel

Good for you.

[00:55:41.600] – Allan

Okay, great. And that was again, I got into ketosis and one of the cool things is a good long walk really strikes up your ketosis levels. It's kind of insane. A good long walk for you and I that's two to 3 hours or so. And so I tell you, if you check your ketones before and after doing one of your events, one of the things your trainings, particularly the longer trainings, you'll be surprised at the change in your ketones. Now if you do a weight lifting, it's actually going to increase your blood sugar and you might not see that. So just kind of knowing that and knowing where I'm going and having the experience, which is great, but you don't get the experience without the experience.

[00:56:31.020] – Allan

So if you're going to put something together, know why you're doing what you're doing, have a plan, pay attention, do some research. And above all, if you're going to hire a coach, which I encourage a lot of people to do like you've done like I do, is ask why. Have those conversations learn from it. Because that's your ability in the future be able to do some of those things for yourself.

[00:56:58.750] – Allan

I just wish I had a coach on this island that could be in there for my workouts because I know physically if they were there, I would work a lot harder. Other than the fact that I have my way of eating and my way of doing things, I don't know of another coach for people over 40 that would know how to treat me like I was 20 when I needed to be 20, because there's things I can do that I was doing when I was in my 20s.

[00:57:28.610] – Rachel

Wow.

[00:57:28.910] – Allan

Some people in their 40s can't. Okay. But also know when to treat me like I'm in my 40s and be cool with the fact that I have a way of eating that is different than what they would encourage people to typically eat. You got to have your carbs before you work out. And I'm like, well, no, if I had carbs, I just go to sleep. I'd be in a coma. So no, I don't need the carbs before and I don't even need them during literally I can take a liter of water and I'm good. That's my 3 hours of go, go, go. A liter of water.

[00:58:07.190] – Rachel

That's awesome.

[00:58:08.630] – Allan

And I do hydrate a lot after, and I've hydrated a bit before. But all I need to have with me as I go is that liter of water and I don't bonk. There's no bonk if there's anything that's going to stop me, it's just the fatigue and the legs.

[00:58:27.630] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:58:28.510] – Allan

At that point where, OK, you push yourself to the line, which is where you need to be for this training session. Good. But I know that again, from experience, from being a coach and coaching myself. So as you're putting your programs together, I think it's just really important for you to take those lessons. Realize you're also you're bio-unique. So downloading a program off the Internet works for 80% of the people. That Bell curve. But if you're an outlier, you're out of luck. You're going to have to figure something else out. And that takes experience and time and effort and paying attention to your body and doing those things.

[00:59:09.000] – Allan

And so I just encourage people, if you don't know what you're doing, ask for help. It's not that hard. And I am opening up five slots in my training. And for these five slots, I'm particularly looking for people that want to up their fitness game. So in the past, I've really focused on the weight loss. I think I've gotten those clients in that want to really work on weight loss. And if you still want to work on weight loss, you can reach out to me.

[00:59:37.960] – Allan

But right now, for at least the next six months or so because of what I'm doing for myself, my brain has really turned on to the fitness aspects of it. So if you're looking to up your game in fitness, and that can mean starting from zero and wanting to get to level one or that can be being at level five and wanting to be level seven wherever you are, I'm able to meet you there. And we can put together training programs. You can learn why we're doing what we're doing, and we can help you get that fitness together. So if that's what you want, go to 40plusfitness.com, not 40plusfitnesspodcast.com, but 40plusfitness.com and I'll have an application link there. You can fill out the application. We'll get on the phone and we'll figure out what you need. If it's my training program to get you there, it's not a fixed program. It's custom. So like I said, if you're starting from zero and just want to get to one, we can do that. If you want to ratchet it up a little bit more, we can do that too. So do reach out if you're interested in that.

[01:00:42.330] – Rachel

And then of course if it's running that you're interested in really getting good at then Rachel?

[01:00:49.940] – Rachel

I'm here. Just ask me any questions.

[01:00:52.500] – Allan

Where should they go? You've got a website, too.

[01:00:55.100] 

Strong-souls.com. You can just reach out for me there or even on my socials. I'm on Facebook and Instagram. Just shoot me a message and I'll be happy to help you out.

[01:01:05.730] – Allan

All right. And we'll have the links in the show notes for this one so if you have any questions, please do reach out to us.

[01:01:12.440] – Allan

Also, again, we're trying to put together a Q&A episode. So if some of these questions you would rather just ask and have answered on a podcast then I do want you to reach out Allan@40plusfitnesspodcast.com and just email me there. Allan@40plusfitnesspodcast.com. We'll take those questions. I may reach out and see if you want to record and ask your question vocally and be on the podcast that way. Or I can just read your question from your email on the podcast. But if you have a question you'd like for us to answer on an episode, we do want to try to accumulate some of those so we can get those questions together and have a duo episode with Rachel and I answering your health and fitness questions.

[01:01:58.420] – Rachel

Sweet. That would be fun.

[01:02:00.320] – Allan

Great. Rachel, anything else you want to get into?

[01:02:02.910] – Rachel

No, this is great.

[01:02:04.460] – Allan

All right guys, have a great week and we'll talk to you next week.

[01:02:08.080] – Rachel

Thanks.

Patreons

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Let's Say Hello

[00:04:04.670] – Allan
Hey, Raz, how are things going?

[00:04:06.890] – Rachel
Good. How are you today, Allan?

[00:04:08.810] – Allan
I'm doing all right. I imagine Michigan's starting to get a little bit cool.

[00:04:14.030] – Rachel
Oh, yes. In fact, we have snow in the forecast, so just flurries, but, yeah, it's about to get real cold.

[00:04:23.210] – Allan
We've been really hot here. I mean, temperature here has been pretty warm and dry. We just got rain today and some wind and rain. The wind came in last night and felt really nice because when it's warmer and it's windy, doesn't quite feel as bad because the wind kind of gives you kind of a cooling coming off the water, particularly. And then today it's raining, which is good island that survives on the water that we catch. Kind of important to catch some. It's kind of important to have something to catch.

[00:04:52.490] – Allan
So, yeah, a little bit of rain. And then as we're recording this, we're going into the holiday season here in Panama. So Panama has independence from Spain.

[00:05:06.530] – Allan
Independence from Colombia, and then independence from the United States. And all of those holidays happen in November. So the first week of November is just sort of like just a big holiday week. And people like to travel and do the things inside. So tourism is picking up. People are coming. So Lulu's is starting to get busy and go. And it was kind of funny because we were sitting there and we started getting Lula's on Airbnb. And so Tammy set up and we're supposed to next day talk to our service provider that actually lets our booking agent talk to Airbnb.

[00:05:46.550] – Allan
So at this point in time, she's just set it up and we get our first reservation. Ten minutes.

[00:05:53.630] – Allan
And there's somebody hits us up for reservation.

[00:05:56.870] – Allan
We go on there like, okay, well, run, go, Mark this off on the booking engine because they're not talking yet. We don't want someone to double book. So we managed to get through that and figure that out and then figure out how when PayPal gets money, how to get PayPal to pay us. I think we've done that. Anyway, we're still ironing out like things as we're just getting things going. But things are starting to heat up here, and that's good and keeping Tammy on her toes. In fact, right now, as we're talking, she's at the airport picking up some guests that are flying in today.

[00:06:29.090] – Rachel
Oh, that sounds wonderful. How exciting.

[00:06:32.690] – Allan
Yeah. Well, how are things up there?

[00:06:34.790] – Rachel
Oh, really good. Like I mentioned, the fall is in full swing. We're in peak color right now, so the colors in our area are just beautiful. And over the weekend, Mike and I ran our Cal Haven Ultra marathon, and it's 33 and a half. Actually, it's 34 miles on the Cal Haven Trail. We run from Calaman Zoo to South Haven in Michigan, and it's a rails to trails pathway in the entire run. The girl I was running with and I we're just remarking it how gorgeous the colors are, the golds from the Oaks and the Reds and the Maples.

[00:07:13.190] – Rachel
And it was just spectacular. It was just such a wonderful day. We all had a good run, so it was a lot of fun.

[00:07:20.630] – Allan
Mike finished?

[00:07:22.010] – Rachel
He did.

[00:07:22.910] – Rachel
He and the guy he ran with, they're much faster, and they finished in 5 hours and 29 minutes,

[00:07:32.150] – Allan
That's outstranding.

[00:07:32.150] – Rachel
And they each secured first place in their respective age groups. So they did fantastic. And Luz and I finished just over 7 hours, 7 hours and two minutes, and we tied in our age group. We tried for seconds. So it was a really good day. And like I said, the fall weather was perfect. We didn't have any rain and we didn't have any blazing sun, so we couldn't have asked for better weather conditions. It was beautiful.

[00:08:01.790] – Allan
Good way to close out your season.

[00:08:03.590] – Rachel
Absolutely.

[00:08:05.270] – Allan
So now you're going to be lifting some weights.

[00:08:07.670] – Rachel
Yes, I am.

[00:08:08.570] – Allan
Which is a good time for us to be talking about Deep Fitness.

[00:08:12.650] – Rachel
Wonderful. It sounds great.

Interview

[00:09:14.690] – Allan
Philip, Andrei, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:09:18.110] – Andrei
It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Allan.

[00:09:19.970] – Andrei
Yeah. Thanks, Allan. Nice to meet you.

[00:09:22.310] – Allan
Now, I've had Dr. Mcguff and I've had John Little on and similar messaging, because you guys are coming from a very solid foundation of science-based resistance training. And when I saw the full work of the book by Dr. Mcguff, and he gave you such a glowing review, I got really excited to read this book, and I'm glad I did. So the name of the book we're talking about is Deep Fitness: The Mindful, Science-based Strength Training Method to Transform Your Wellbeing in Just 30 Minutes Per Week.

[00:10:01.730] – Allan
That's a big promise. But I think you deliver. The book is phenomenal. The science is sound, and you do a really good job of explaining some things. And every once in a while, you get this kind of this. Aha moment of well, of course, that's how it works. There's a lot of that in the book, and it's a book that I'm definitely going to have as a reference that I'll go back to time and time again, because even someone who's been doing this for years, there was just a lot in there, even for me to absorb. But it was done well, it was written well, so I appreciate the opportunity to have you on the show.

[00:10:40.670] – Andrei
Thank you.

[00:10:41.990] – Andrei
Pleasure to be here with you, Allan.

[00:10:44.810] – Allan
All right. So, one of the things that kind of hit me, and you put this right in the beginning of the book, which is what most of us do is why do I want to do this? And you say fitness starts with muscle. And initially, when I was reading, I was like, okay, yeah, on one side. And I've talked to people who are on the other side of this conversation with the aerobics and the cardio and all that.

[00:11:08.030] – Allan
As we started getting into it, and it was just something really simple. Initially that kind of clicked with me, but I want to go a little deeper afterwards. But you said all these chronic diseases we have, many of them are caused because we're losing muscle.

[00:11:22.970] – Philip
Yeah. It was a pretty big revelation. This guy in the 80s, there was a really powerful renewal of interest in aging, and a massive study had laid out in gruesome detail what happens to us as we age. It's like everything you take for granted in your youth starts to corrode. They came together in a conference and trying to figure out A what was causing it. And B if you could begin to reverse it. And this guy was sitting with all these papers because he volunteered to write a report on the conference.

[00:12:06.830] – Philip
And what he realized was that every single condition that people were talking about was associated with a loss of muscle mass. And this didn't even have a word at the time. So he coined this word sarcopenia. Sarcopenia just means the wasting of muscle with age.

[00:12:28.010] – Philip
And there'a an inevitability about it. I mean, you're just not as strong. You can't sprint as fast at 90 as you could at 25. But my gosh, in our culture, that loss is drastically accelerated. And what happened as they began to look into sarcopenia, and it slowly gained prominence in the fields of research, they realized that sarcopenia was associated with every single major chronic disease of civilization. These are diseases that are rare in huntergather cultures and prominent for ours. So suddenly, the role of muscle in our health was coming into a new light.

[00:13:19.370] – Allan
I think one of the things you put in the book, which, like I said, it was kind of one of those wonderful light bulb moments. And there's many, many of those in this book was that we store sugar we eat in our muscles and our liver. And if we have less muscle, we have less storage capacity for that glycogen, which means our bodies have to store this fat. And so we start talking about the things like having pre diabetes and diabetes. The cause might not just be what we're eating, because what we were eating was probably fine for us.

[00:13:55.730] – Allan
It was the fact that we've lost so much muscle mass. We just don't have the storage capacity for it anymore. And that's causing us the problems.

[00:14:03.470] – Andrei
Yeah. And that would lead to increase in inflammation when we store body fat around organs that will also start producing those cytokines. And so on. We created havoc for our body. If we cannot store the glycogen, where it's supposed to go in the muscle or replenishing the liver, storage.

[00:14:23.390] – Andrei
Yeah. Makes total sense.

[00:14:26.630] – Philip
Sorry. I was just going to say the other side of that is glycogen is stored in the muscles. Well, a lot of it is stored in the large muscles. In the book we call the powerhouse muscles or the fast switch muscles. And that glycogen is only depleted with intense exercise. So with intense exercise, you can basically empty the muscles or not empty them, but deplete them of the glycogen. So then the storage space becomes available again.

[00:15:00.410] – Allan
And we're starting to get to a point where we're understanding more and more how different things in our body are communicating with each other. You almost want to think that our muscles are separate from our fat, which is separate from our brain, which is separate from our microbiome. But the reality is all of these things actually communicate together. They're all releasing. And one of the things you brought up in the book was myokines. Could you dive a little bit into myokines and why they're so important?

[00:15:29.270] – Philip
Yeah. For years, researchers understood that exercise had this global effect on the body. It affected every organ, every tissue and promoted health. And why? Like, they didn't know why. And then in the early 2000s, they discovered these endocrine messenger molecules called myokines. And they began to research them. And they found over 600 different kinds of Myokines that are released when muscle works. And the more intensely a muscle contracts and the stronger the muscle is, the more myokines are released, and they help in every system of the body.

[00:16:19.650] – Philip
I mean, they promote mental acuity, they promote bone mineral density, they decrease inflammation. It goes on and on and on. The Myokines have sort of been dubbed the X-Factor, the unknown factor in exercise that resulted in such positive effects.

[00:16:40.650] – Allan
And so to get the muscles to do that, we now have what you're bringing forward mindful strength training to failure, or MSTF. Can you talk a little bit about what that is and why that's so important?

[00:16:53.610] – Philip
Yeah. I mean, there are several aspects to our mindful strength training to failure. The mindful part is important because that means you're bringing the whole of the body. It's difficult to describe because we tend to sit in our heads and tell the body what to do the way you'd sit on a donkey and beat it to go harder. So what we're proposing is a mindful approach that is made possible by a very slow movement. So, for example, if you're on a weight machine, you would lift the weight very, very slowly and let it down very, very slowly.

[00:17:35.850] – Philip
And you continue to do that until you hit the point of momentary muscle failure. And that can take one and a half or two minutes. I mean, it happens quickly, and then you move on to the next exercise. Within a half hour, you can bring all the major muscles of your body to failure, and you can do one session a week and see improvements. And you really should be cautious in doing more than two sessions a week, because once you've taken a muscle group to failure, it takes time to recover.

[00:18:15.930] – Philip
You need 72 hours. And if you don't allow the muscle to remodel, you undermine its effects in strengthening.

[00:18:24.990] – Philip
And it just simplifies everything. When you go into this mindful space and you're present to this weight and you take it to failure.

[00:18:38.910] – Philip
And it is a joy. This form of training, the high intensity training is known to be a form of suffering. And with MSTF, we're really emphasizing that as you bring a mindful quality to it, it holds a joy. It holds an aliveness that you may not encounter in the rest of your week.

[00:19:06.430] – Allan
As I mentioned earlier, this is very deep in science backing. I mean, you guys spent a lot of time thinking about the whys, and this is not something that you've just done yourself. This is something that over the course of now, I guess decades have been coming to fruition, and now you guys are kind of putting it into a process that's very easy to follow. It takes less time than the standard. If you are going to talk about doing normal resistance training, I think most of us that would go in the gym and do the standard three sets of ten or whatever of X number of exercises and try to get a whole body workout and then try to do that every third or fourth time because maybe we didn't actually stress ourselves that much.

[00:19:48.790] – Allan
So we're doing four or five, maybe six workouts per week.

[00:19:52.750] – Allan
Here we're condensing it. We're a lot more mindful about the work we're doing. We're slowing way down. And so you've taken all these, all this science and you've now broken it. We have six principles that are rolled up into this model. That all are really valuable. As I went through, I was like, you can't not have that one. You can't have this one. So they're all really important. Could you go through those six principles? Because I think they're really important for someone to understand why this way of training is optimal.

[00:20:21.490] – Andrei
Well, I think they're more like a steps of getting through your workout, because ultimately, when talking about the actual training principles, you can synthesize it to around four. But speaking of how we describe them in the book, we work on them in steps. And, for instance, step one, just get ready and just get prepared. Like, understand what you're about to do if you do it on your own with your partner, have a game plan, which machine, which sequence you going to do them. Have your stop push ready water bottle already. Getting that right mindset for what you about to do, because you're working out.

[00:21:04.690] – Andrei
If you're thinking something else, you jump in. You don't have that kind of focus. It could be distracting, and you won't get quite the same workout. And this style of training is not kind of training where you do well with your chitchat and watching TV requires that mindfulness presence and that focus of what you're about to experience. That's kind of the first step is just get ready. Have a clear roadmap of how your next 30 minutes is going to look like. And then we just go through those steps.

[00:21:40.030] – Andrei
Step two is becoming present. And this is where Philip is an expert..

[00:21:48.950] – Philip
I'd be happy to talk to step two. You've got a stop watch with you, because what matters in MSTF isn't the number of reps that is irrelevant. What matters is what we call time under load, how long you go and you'll notice as you do it, you're going longer and longer before you begin pressing against the resistance. It's so important to drop down into your body and feel what you're feeling. I mean, we're trying to guide people away from the conventional approach. I'm going to do this thing.

[00:22:35.610] – Philip
Okay. Here I am. I'm ready. This is very different. This isn't a top down mode of making the body do what's good for it for its own sake. This is a matter of joining the body in its intelligence and my gosh. Once you tap into that, the resources that are available to you will take you to failure in a way that that badgering of the voice in the head can't do because it falls into storytelling, just maybe one more. Oh, I think I'm there now. I got to stop all that chit chat goes away when you drop down into the body and you're just in the moment feeling what is happening and tapping more and more deeply into your resources.

[00:23:26.610] – Philip
And Andrei, why don't you take us into step three?

[00:23:30.030] – Andrei
I guess the first step is we describe it as muscle first movement, second. So I give a little bit of history because that principle. We've been doing it for eight years now. We have a couple of Studios here in Toronto, downtown Toronto. And when I first opened this place, I thought everybody was just like me. Quickly, I realized that's not the case. And working with people, all demographics, all age groups, all different mental neurological abilities quickly learn that not everybody is able to do this training how we kind of Doug McGuff and John Little described the body by science.

[00:24:12.750] – Andrei
There are many answers to it. And one of them was some people, I would train them for months, and will still tell them, feel the lats, for example, doing a city throw exercise and tell me like, where are the lats? And it's kind of embarrassing because here's this client. I had this client for a few months, and he still doesn't know how to feel the lats. And at some point you can only repeat those cues so much, and then you move on. Right. And then actually from when I took one of the Philips workshops, he mentioned this experiment done in a scenario of neuroscience in an area of brain plasticity, where the quality of paying attention makes a neurological kind of difference in rewiring in your brain.

[00:25:05.370] – Andrei
And he was using this example from the brain plasticity in his work. And when I was listening to realize this is why people struggle filling those muscles. So I asked if each book he came, I read the book. So the experiment is basically the book is called Brain that Changes Themselves. Written by Norman Deutsche. And I think it's the first chapter about the subject of brain plasticity. And there's this guy from the States. I think he's retired now he changed, I guess, the idea of neuroscience before his time neuroscience.

[00:25:42.870] – Andrei
So the brain is sort of soft when we're younger. And then it kind of hardwired at older age cannot really wire anymore. So he challenged the whole paradigm. And she showed that the brain is still soft and plastic at any age. It might not be as soft as plastic as one of the children, but it's still soft. So one of the experiments, they talk there that kind of was light bulb for me when I heard it from Philip and read about it, they asked monkey to move index finger.

[00:26:10.290] – Andrei
They look at the brain and they saw socio neurological map turning on, then asking ask monkey to move middle finger, basically, next body part, next finger and another neurological map turn on. They call them topographical brain maps. Because typically with two body parts near each other in the brain, those neurological maps will neighbor each other as well.

[00:26:33.150] – Andrei
So what they did an experiment. They tied the two fingers together for a few months so monkey can only move two fingers together, cannot separate those two fingers. After several months, when they look at the brain, they discover those individual maps disappear. Instead, monkeys develop one large mob. They call it competitive plasticity. Basically something that you fire together are going to wire together. And what's going to happen? Something that you master day in, day out. It's quite literally what appears going to grow in real estate is going to take over the real estate of the adjustment maps that you don't use anymore.

[00:27:08.370] – Andrei
And then it occurred to me, we see searching where we move, searching where we have these dense jobs. We don't feel the back anymore. Day in, day out, year after year, your brain will adjust to a current lifestyle. We have injuries. And I realized it's not because before I was focusing on the muscle, then I realized it was not the muscle. We have to start with the brain. We have to start with rebuilding those neurological brain maps or topographical maps to strengthen the signal into the muscle before even can focus on the muscle.

[00:27:39.570] – Andrei
If you cannot send a potent signal, how can even isolate and target that muscle? So that kind of shifted my approach in the way I started hearing people. And I put this principle on top of our list and realizing that some people and it's clearly absorbed with the age related phenomenon. If I take a client in their 20s, everybody pretty much almost ten out of ten will get the cue, will get the right muscle. Feel the right muscle. With age, typically, the older somebody gets. Some people have harder and harder time, particularly those people who are new to strength training. By feeling the right muscle and by moving its mindfully slow by just feeling it,

[00:28:25.930] – Andrei
What happens again, learning from the science of neuroplasticity brain neuroplasticity, we know that one of the fastest way to create a new memory pattern in the brain is by paying close attention to a task. When we pay close attention to a task, our brain activates nucleus basalis. It's a part of the brain and the rest of the brain. And what that does, it starts producing this very potent so called modulatory neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. And when we have high level of acetylcholine, from paying attention to a task, the brain becomes soft and plastic.

[00:29:06.130] – Andrei
It's going to create those synaptic connections much faster rather than just mindlessly moving the weight up and down. So this quality of paying close attention to the map could be if you cannot feel the lats. I just tell people just that you call just feel it. I won't give you the normal cues until you can feel those right muscles, right. And after a few months, so many clients would come to me and tell me I feel muscles. I didn't know where I had right. So now I'm actually working.

[00:29:38.050] – Andrei
So that's what that step is. When you train number one error. When I ask my more experienced strandedness, I absorb it myself and I ask them, what do we think what do we see here as a mistake and how people exercise? Number one, what we see is people prioritize the movement over targeting the right muscle and what happens you're going to strengthen those existing maps. And if they're not perfect to begin with the targeted muscles you try to reach, they're going to remain unstimulated. But at the same time, you're going to strengthen the other parts in your body.

[00:30:12.610] – Andrei
And that leads to more imbalance down the road. And also you don't really get the job done because you're not targeting and stimulating the right muscles around the body. So the way we explain it here and also explain in the book is make sure you're feeling the right muscles and the joint and experience that movement experiences muscles and make the movement sort of happen as a byproduct as a result of that, rather than making about the movement if it makes sense.

[00:30:37.330] – Allan
Absolutely.

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[00:32:24.150] – Andrei
And I think we're going down to step four, which is something it's about the breath. And Philip is an expert, so he's going to elaborate on that.

[00:32:34.890] – Philip
I mean, the breath in our culture, we have a very unsettled relationship with the breath. We tend to hold it. I mean, you hold the breath when there's something you'd rather not feel or there's something you have to do, and you don't want to be confused by all the sensations that the breath evokes, because to release the body to the breath is to precipitate an avalanche of sensations and the whole of the body can release to the breath. You can measure the breath wave, the effect of the breath traveling down through the legs and traveling up through the torso.

[00:33:20.910] – Philip
So how to not only allow the breath to continue without being interrupted without being held because especially under pressure as you're holding the breath, it puts a huge amount of pressure on the internal organs. And then you find not only can you breathe continuously through the movement, but as the breath is released deeper and deeper from within the body, you are impelling the movement with the breath itself. That may sound strange, but it's as though the energy of the breath is moving the weight rather than trying to isolate the mechanics of it.

[00:34:09.510] – Philip
So what's happening is the body as a whole is gathering behind this task and all of the body is contributing to whatever the movement might be by allowing the breath to be resourced from deep within the body and mindful strength training to failure of course. What do we mean by failure? That's step five. And I'm sure Andrei could clarify that for us.

[00:34:44.710] – Andrei
While we can, while we younger have the ability, it's such a gift to be able to exercise and be able to bring those muscles to failure. At some stage. As we get older, we have injuries. Perhaps people develop what is cognitive impairment. They don't have the same ability to bring the muscle to failure, but while we can, it's the adaptation you get from reaching failure, not just increasing in strength, which is that's simple to understand. Take your muscle to full existing capacity and then some and then let your body time to recover, adapt and repeat.

[00:35:27.970] – Andrei
And each time you bring it to failure, you're going to progressively do more and more and more assuming from week to week, you can get stronger and stronger. But as well, I don't know exactly, but I would guess 80-90% of the benefits you get from this training from those last 15, 30 seconds. When you approach and failure. When you tap it into that fight and flight sympathetic nervous system, the body starts producing adrenaline, by the way, that also will raise your acetylcholine in the brain, because now your body is primed.

[00:36:05.650] – Andrei
It's an emergency. It makes you pay attention. You have to deal with it. So there are so many adaptations happen when you bring muscle to failure versus when you don't. We are in the book talking about this experiment. Do you remember the name of that protein, Philip, that they showed this in animal studies when the exercise produced an adrenaline?

[00:36:25.750] – Philip
I don't remember the name of it, but I sure remember the research.

[00:36:30.310] – Allan
It was some letters. Yes, and I think it ended with the two. It started with the C.

[00:36:35.290] – Andrei
That showed that it's an animal that when you produce adrenaline and do an exercise, there are certain epigenetic triggers that happen that otherwise would not happen. So they're modified as one group of mice that they have higher level of that protein and the control group, which is normal level. Both groups did exactly the same amount of exercise. I think they run on the treadmill for two weeks, but adaptations were significantly different. The group that had more of that protein, the increase in endurance by 103% versus control group only like eight and a half percent.

[00:37:14.390] – Andrei
They had more muscle tissue lesson, three muscle fat and so on and so forth. So even though they exercise the same amount. But that was one of the examples that showed. And it's also true for humans that detection happen on a completely different level when you have more of that protein, which the body would actuate in that fight and flight event. And so this is what MSTF really is all about. You only have to do one set. And by the way, I learned about it from Doug Mcguff and John little's book classic Body By Science.

[00:37:49.790] – Andrei
That's all it started for me. I used to go to gym like everybody else, compound movements, deadlifts, all that stuff. I kind of was okay. I had lots of aches in my joints, but I thought, you know what? I don't care. That's just how it just comes with it. And after I read the classic book, Body by Science, this is the last time I exercised convention, and I just fell in love with it. After I've been doing it for a year, all the aches and pains went away.

[00:38:20.870] – Andrei
We did it. I first tried it in my old work with some colleagues, and I've seen changes in one guy who never really exercised properly in his life. But now he had shoulders, chest, triceps, six pack. So after individually, only once a week of the style of training. So all the aches and pains disappeared. It works. Then it occurred to me this is such an amazing form to take care of the body that I need to do something with it. That kind of was why I decided to open New Element training.

[00:38:52.550] – Andrei
And this is why people come to us. That's what we do. We follow the other principles. But bringing muscle to momentary muscle failure is the foundation of the strength, and we move on.

[00:39:09.710] – Philip
I might speak to the last of those principles or steps, which is that MSTF is best understood as a lifelong practice. There's no age at which muscle strength isn't an asset. There's no age at which this protocol is unsafe, either. The slow movement of the weight was really developed for people with Osteoporosis who were in danger of injury, and they thought, Well, let's try moving it very slowly and see if they can do that. And not only did they not suffer injury, as a result, they got stronger faster than had been expected.

[00:40:03.890] – Philip
And so the safety of it. I'm 68. And when I met Andrei, I sort of internalized despite myself, you're at a certain age better not be too intense, just kind of back off a bit. And I discovered this workout through Andrei, and I go to more intensity with the workout more safely than I've ever gone in my life. And one of the consequences of this, one of the reasons that you're encouraged to do it for the rest of your life is that as the muscles come into balance, you have less aches and pains.

[00:40:51.110] – Philip
I mean, I used to have chronic little nagging things that were there for months or years, and they have disappeared from my body. So I will be doing it for the rest of my life. And there's no point at which doing it is not either safe or an asset to your health.

[00:41:13.490] – Allan
Yeah, to compare and contrast this, you go into the gym, and the first thing people do is they come in, and if anything, they've got their workout on their phone or they've got a notebook. That's about all the preparation they did. They're blaring music so they can actually not focus. And then as they get to moving, you're absolutely right. It's like, okay, well, I'm supposed to get three sets of eight with this weight. That's what I came in here to do. And that's what I'm going to do.

[00:41:41.150] – Allan
And when I get those three sets of eight, even if I got all three sets of eight, I'm done. I finished that set and move on to the next exercise. And a lot of times there really isn't even a whole structure to why they're doing the next exercise. It's just, no, I'm working chest today. That's another chest exercise. So I'll just go do that one. The other one is the breath as we're lifting. And if you're doing three sets of eight, you're told, okay, on the eccentric, breathe in on the concentric, breathe out.

[00:42:05.750] – Allan
And it's just like an engine just go. And then the other one is failure. And so few people want to work to failure, either because they have the mental concept that failure is a bad thing or because they're afraid of it. And here you're saying, okay, now we can safely work to failure predominantly because, again, we're going to be focused on working in environments where we are safe. So we're not going to put ourselves under a heavy load of doing bench press and try to go two minutes under a bench press unless we have a spotter.

[00:42:37.130] – Allan
But we're going to use machines. We're going to use resistance bands, we're going to use body weight. We're going to do this in a responsible way, but we can actually use less weight and get stronger. Which again goes into why it's a lot safer. We're moving a lot slower, which again, is why it makes it a lot safer. And then, yes, at that point, this is something you can keep doing. And that takes me to the next bit of this because I think so many people will say, hey, I want you to start doing resistance exercises and like, oh, my knee.

[00:43:10.610] – Allan
Oh, I got this back problem. My doctor is telling me not to lift weights, not to do resistance training. And so as a trainer, typically, I'd say, okay, let's try to work around those injuries, those issues. But you brought up a thing in the book that I've not seen before, and it's called, I'm going to say it wrong again, biotensegrity.

[00:43:37.130] – Allan
Can you talk about that? Because I think that's just one of those things that is never mentioned. Everybody thinks, oh, I'm bone on bone on my knees. So therefore, I can't do resistance training with my legs or my back is going to start hurting me. So I really don't need to have anything I'm doing that's going to hurt my back. Can you talk about why that's not a problem with MSTF?

[00:44:02.090] – Philip
Yeah, you're absolutely right. We shy away from engaging. The book talks about one study that was done with people with arthritis, and they were encouraged to do strength training. Say, your knee hurt. You were encouraged to do leg presses, for example, and to tolerate the pain they said up to about the level of five out of ten. If it goes above that, back off. And in the course of the study, people got stronger and their pain diminished. And that principle you mentioned, Biotensegrity really explains why that can happen.

[00:44:43.250] – Philip
We imagine that the bones are stacked on top of one another in the skeleton, the way you'd build a brick wall, one brick on top of the other. And so then, of course, if the bricks are rubbing, you don't want to exacerbate it. But that's not the way the body works. The joints between the bones aren't in contact with each other. Unless there's a shock to the system. They are floating. The bones float and they're held in this web of muscle and fascia and connective tissue.

[00:45:26.750] – Philip
And when the muscles are strong and the muscles are balanced, the joints continue to float, and it's where the muscles become weak or they're out of balance. Or there's an injury that that can be impaired. But it's all the more reason than, as Andrei was saying to reactivate what muscles have fallen asleep and strengthen them the result. I mean, I felt it myself when I talk about my sort of chronic aches and pains disappearing. I know it's because my muscles are stronger and more balanced.

[00:46:07.470] – Allan
Yes. Again, like I said, I get a lot of people that will say I can't. So you go down this mindset of having a conversation with them. Well, just tell yourself to start, tell yourself to do the brain, telling you to do something. So get a start. Do this that's the big mantra out there. But when we bring mindfulness into this and I think that's what I want to wrap up here, at least for today. I want everybody to get this book so they can learn a lot more about this.

[00:46:39.150] – Allan
But we have this mindset of the drill instructor in my head telling me to go work out, telling me to do my sets, telling me to push one more rep, telling me to do these things. And for a lot of people that they actually can get stronger, they push themselves further. They also have aches and pains and injuries. But when you lean into this, I guess the best way I can say it and use the term willingness versus willing fullness. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:47:11.130] – Allan
Because I think as people are looking at this and saying, well, do I really want to because your body wants to. Can you kind of dive into what that's about and what that feels like? Because it's really hard. I'm not even really good at it getting out of my head and getting into actually enjoying what my body can do?

[00:47:30.930] – Philip
Yes. And to give some context to that, the reaction might be what's wrong with me? I can't get out of my head.

[00:47:40.410] – Philip
But thousands of years ago, we actually experienced our thinking in the body and most commonly in the belly. We felt ourselves thinking there, and now we can't imagine any other state than thinking in the head. So it's been inculcated within us. We've been trained to think with the head, and it's such a wonderful relief to drop out of the head and into the body.

[00:48:14.950] – Philip
And that relationship with the body that we've been trained in is one that leads us to feel victimized by the body and betrayed by the body, and we want to be in charge of it, and we know what it needs for its own good and all of that noise overwhelms the body's deepest understanding. So the body, what the body feels is the present. It feels the breeze, it feels the sounds of the world. It feels everything it vibrates to the present and to join the body in that way is to join its attunement to the present.

[00:49:06.190] – Philip
And then you discover, as the body is taken towards failure, you discover the animal joy of it. You are summoned into life, and the energy of your life is coursing through your being. As you are moving this weight and feeling it all. And there is no realm of my life in my week to week existence in which I feel more alive than I do during this workout. And because of that, because I've been able to renew my relationship with the body, I look forward to it.

[00:49:57.070] – Philip
Today's the day I get to go to the gym and come back fully to life. And there's an imperative in our culture that makes us afraid of life. We make ourselves small. We'd rather not feel things in a big way. And here's this realm in which you can do it in complete safety. You can bit by bit. Allow yourself to feel what you're feeling. And that relationship you have with the resistance with the say it's the plates of the machine is no longer an adversarial relationship. There is companionship in it. If that doesn't sound too strange, because here you are no longer in the isolated ego of the self.

[00:50:52.010] – Philip
But you have dilated into the spaciousness of the present and engaged with this weight that is helping you move to the edge. It's such a deep and vivid encounter with the self.

[00:51:12.830] – Allan
Well, Philip, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:51:20.570] – Philip
Well, that's a good one, certainly what you put into your body. I mean eating. You can't out exercise a bad diet. Andrei, do you have another one?

[00:51:35.010] – Andrei
Well, clearly, MSTF. Even once weekly, if you can twice a week. It's amazing when people come to us even once a week. As you said, it's hard to believe that you can achieve this transformative benefits in only 30 minutes. But guess what? We've been doing this for eight years. We didn't write the book out of the thin air. It works if you apply this principle correctly. And if you put all the inside out benefits you get from this style. Any style of proper strength training, as long as you're not hurting yourself is the most powerful.

[00:52:11.130] – Andrei
If you put it in a pill, the most powerful help you ever invented. So essentially, it does transform your body. And it does work. So that would be my second one, once or twice of proper strength training once a week.

[00:52:24.390] – Philip
And I might say number three for me is renewing that relationship with the body to drop out of the head and trust the body's intelligence.

[00:52:37.830] – Philip
And the biological fact is, the body processes over a billion times more information than we can be consciously aware of. So to decouple from that driving need to control and drop into the present through the body and feel it through the body is to access a grace in your life that carries you forward minute by minute, hour by hour.

[00:53:11.130] – Allan
Thank you, gentlemen.

[00:53:12.330] – Allan
Andre, Philip, if someone wanted to learn more about the book, Deep Fitness or about your training up there in Toronto or any other things you've got going on, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:53:23.490] – Andrei
Well, the book has it's website, Deepfitness.life. It's available on all the major platforms everywhere in North America and UK. On our website, Newelementraining.com, we created a video library where we professionally recorded videos of all the exercises that we mentioned in the book. So people, if they needed a bit more help, they want to learn a little bit more. They can simply go to Newelementraining.com, go to Resources pages and then have access to the videos as well. And from there, find a way to contact me if they need to and have any questions.

[00:54:00.150] – Philip
I might just add that the book is available as an audiobook and as an ebook. So it's available on all platforms. And people want to find out more about my aspect of MSTF. I've got a website embodiedpresent.com that has all kinds of information, and I still actively teach workshops, and there's a listing workshops and facilitators trainings there. And in late November, I'll be in Europe. So if any of your listeners are there, I'm in Berlin, Amsterdam and England. Please do look me up.

[00:54:42.150] – Allan
Awesome. Well, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/512. And I'll be sure to have all those links there. Andrei, Philip, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:54:53.070] – Philip
Thanks for having us. It's been just fabulous, Allan.

[00:54:56.010] – Andrei
Yeah. Thank you, Allan.

Post Show/Recap

[00:55:02.770] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[00:55:04.390] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, what a great conversation about lifting a little bit slower. It's a nice change of pace.

[00:55:13.990] – Allan
The funny thing about weightlifting is most of what we know is really just based on bro science. It's just okay. Well, what did Arnold do to be Arnold? And then what did this guy do? And so then I grew up in the 90s buying the muscle and fitness and the Flex magazines and all that stuff and making wider.

[00:55:36.010] – Allan
I guess that's how they pronounce it, making him very rich, buying his stuff and then buying supplements that were all in these books and trying any of the workouts that were in there as well. And those magazines are still on the shelves and they're still selling. And so you open them up and it's the same workout. It's just a different bodybuilder. These guys followed the science. They really dove into this. They come on the heels of some pretty cool people. I had Dr. Mcguff on the podcast.

[00:56:04.750] – Allan
It was one of my first interviews, one of my really early interviews, episode 43. Now, I promise, if you listen to it, I don't sound the same. I've learned a lot about podcasting in that time, but it's a really good book, Body by Science, and it was kind of he wrote that with John Little, and when you read through that, it's like then you start realizing, okay, there's a whole bunch of science that's coming out about resistance training. That's not just bro science. It's actual people in lab coats, testing mostly College students, but still testing people and figuring some things out.

[00:56:40.990] – Allan
That was back in 2016 and then jumped forward a few years. And I had John Little on the show with his next book that he came out with, which was the Time Savers workout. And again, the concept was the same as if you use enough intensity and the exercises, you don't have to necessarily change the number of sets, the number of reps, or even the amount of weight to get a more intense workout, you're changing something else. That's a big part of the whole process, the volume.

[00:57:10.270] – Allan
And that is time under tension, or as these guys like to say, at time under load. And it really does make a difference. And it's typically not something when I'm training anybody that I work with tempo until they've been lifting for a good long time. But the way these guys structured it. So we're talking about Philip and Andrei in their book Deep Fitness and all of these books, all of them the way they structure it is in making sure that it's accessible to everybody. It's not just an intermediate or advanced lifting technique that you throw in there to get the muscle to grow even more.

[00:57:47.830] – Allan
It becomes a standard of the way you work.

[00:57:51.670] – Rachel
That's neat. And I think one of the things that they mentioned, too, about being mindful while you're lifting and not distracted by music or chit chat or anything like that. But if you're really paying attention to the muscle that you're trying to work with, you'll feel it if you're thinking about it and focusing on it. And I had mentioned not too long ago, I had read an article about standing with my bag against the wall and trying to do a bicep curl. And in doing that, you remove all of the momentum.

[00:58:23.290] – Rachel
You remove any of the cheating, and I lift pretty light. I lift a ten or 15 pound weight for a bicep curl. But when I stood with my back against the wall, there was no cheating, and I could barely get that ten pound weight lifted. It was so different. But what I realized was that I was really relying solely on the bicep to lift that weight and no helper muscles were involved. It's totally different. So I can imagine that if you're really mindful in the moves that you're doing, you would get a bigger impact because you're really using that primary weight and muscle and not the helper muscles around it.

[00:59:04.690] – Allan
Yes, there's the two concepts. One is the helper muscles, and it's really hard, particularly if you're standing up and you're trying to do any kind of movement. It's really hard not to shift your body weight and do something that's going to incorporate another muscle when your brain feels like the muscle you're using isn't going to be strong enough to do the work. And so anytime someone comes into the gym, it's interesting because they get really excited. We'll do the first day and they'll do some weights and we'll say, okay, this is about how strong you are and they'll do the first workout, and it's so hard.

[00:59:40.150] – Allan
And by two weeks, they've increased their lifting by 20, 30, 40, 100 percent. They're lifting twice as much weight as they were on their first workout just two, three weeks later.

[00:59:52.220] – Rachel
That's awesome.

[00:59:53.770] – Allan
Well, it is.

[00:59:54.490] – Allan
It's huge, impressive. And they're like, oh, my gosh, if this keeps happening, I'm going to be able to lift a truck. And I'm like, that's not going to happen, because what's happened in that time is your brain actually learned to talk to your muscle. If you sit on your butt all day, your brain turns off, it's not having to talk to your butt muscles at all. And so if you don't do squats, right, it's not talking to the butt at all. And so when you slow down and you start doing exercises the way you're supposed to do them, the brain is like, oh, who's that guy?

[01:00:29.590] – Allan
And literally, they start having a conversation. And then once they figure it out, it's like, oh, so we need to fire these muscle fibers to make this happen. And then when it gets smart at that, you can just keep adding weight. And then there's a point where it's like, okay, we fired almost all the muscle fibers we're talking to now. Now we've got to incorporate even more. And or we've got to make these muscles stronger and bigger because the stimulus is more than we can handle.

[01:00:57.190] – Allan
Which is another thing about their program is you are going to take this to a failure, a momentary failure, meaning that muscle can't do the work anymore because your brain has incorporated every muscle fiber it knows, and they are all firing. And that's all you can lift at that point in time. And then you effectively fail. And then your body goes back and say, okay, give me nutrients, give me rest. I've got to be stronger next time. And that's where real strength starts to happen. Because now your body is saying, I have to adapt.

[01:01:30.490] – Allan
You given it everything, the stimulus and everything it needs to adapt. And by doing it in this controlled manner, there's no way for you to change the momentum of it. And there's no way to not fire those muscles. So your brain has to stay focused on that muscle. And it's one of the things people will go do their training, like someone go for a run, they'll turn on their music to make the run easier. People will listen to certain music, what's your playlist in the gym to make the exercise easier.

[01:02:04.090] – Philip
And the reality of it is sometimes easier just means that you're not getting as strong as you can. If you're more mindful about the muscles that are supposed to be firing and you're firing those muscles maximally as much as you can, you're then creating this huge stimulus that's going to benefit you in the end. And the other thing I I think really like about this process is like I said in the past, I would probably not schedule this for anybody. That's not an intermediate level, but the way they're looking at it and it makes a ton of sense is okay so if I'm going to do three sets of ten of squats, that's 30 squats.

[01:02:49.630] – Allan
Or if I do their method and let's just say, I'm going to do 10 seconds down. I mean, 10 seconds up and 10 seconds down, and I'm only going to get five, and then I fail.

[01:03:04.510] – Allan
Okay. I just worked for roughly 100 minutes, 100 seconds. That's not even two minutes. And my leg workouts over my leg press is over. So I'm only doing five reps and not doing 10, I mean got 30. So that's my knee. And if you're worried about your knee, that worry goes away.

[01:03:34.090] – Rachel
Well, that's the interesting thing, too, is that instead of doing a slow motion like I learned from NASM to do a count of four and then pull it back up for a count of three or four or something. To me, that's slow. But to them, they're talking like 30 seconds in a movie or something. I can't imagine lowering, for example, the bicep curl again, lowering the curl down for a count of 30 seconds, and then trying to bring it back up for 30 seconds, I would be done.

[01:04:07.030] – Allan
Well, a lot of people want to do pull ups. They'll come to me as a trainer and say, what are some things you want to do? I've always wanted to do a pull up. I get that a lot. And I'll tell you how I would typically train someone for pull ups. We would start out with either a Lat machine or we would do some resistance bands or some form of assisted pull up. And then over time, you take away the assist and they can get stronger. But there's another way to do it once they start getting to the point where they're almost able to do it.

[01:04:39.010] – Allan
And that's where we would incorporate negatives. Okay.

[01:04:41.470] – Allan
Now, as you may recall from the episodes we've talked about, a negative basically means you're doing the eccentric portion of the pull of the movement. So in this case, I would get them up on a bench or a ladder. And I'd say, okay, I want you to put your chest against the bar, and then we remove the ladder, and I'm like, slowly lower yourself down. And when you get to the bottom and put the ladder or the bench back under you and say, okay, go back up there, put your chest against the bar, and I pull that ladder away.

[01:05:12.790] – Allan
Normally, a person would lower themselves. And at first, if they last 5 seconds, that's phenomenal. Once I know that they can take, like, 10 seconds to come down, that person can do a pull up.

[01:05:25.150] – Rachel
Wow.

[01:05:25.750] – Allan
Okay. So if you wanted to get really strong pull ups, the way Philip would do this is he would climb up and then he would lower himself, and he would try to make that lowering portion last 30 seconds.

[01:05:39.610] – Rachel
That's incredible.

[01:05:40.870] – Allan
Okay. And then he would try to pull himself up really slow. Now, can someone do that? 30 seconds? 30 seconds? Maybe. Maybe not. But I can tell you, if you can do that, you're going to be doing pull ups like a piston. You won't have any problem at all doing any pull ups that you want to do. So maybe you start with the lat pull down machine and you have someone feed it down to you to your chest, and then you just slowly over the course of 30 seconds try to bring that bar up.

[01:06:13.090] – Allan
Let it go up. Don't let go of it and let it go slowly up over 30 seconds. And then if you need help getting it back down, then let someone help you get it back down and then go again. And that will be giving you a lot of what we're talking about here in that you are putting time under tension or time under load on that muscle, and it's very intense. So this is something you would do probably no more than twice a week, and you're going to feel DOMS.

[01:06:44.650] – Allan
Just get ready. You are. There's just no way that you can start this type of program and not have some level of DOMS. But with everything, this is something about when they talk about mindfulness, it's just something to realize that we are helping ourselves get stronger. And if you're paying attention to the muscles and the muscles are hurting, that's just feedback. That's just feedback. You got to let that go and then get stronger and come back.

[01:07:14.650] – Allan
Well, it looks like something happened to Rachel's connectivity and she fell off the call.

[01:07:19.930] – Allan
So I guess with that, I will call it a show. So I'll talk to you next week. Bye.

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Eric More	– Leigh Tanner
– Deb Scarlett	– John Dachauer	– Margaret Bakalian
– Debbie Ralston	– Judy Murphy	– Melissa Ball
– Eliza Lamb		– Tim Alexander

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

The time saver's workout with John Little

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Let's Say Hello

[00:03:37.670] – Allan
Hey, Raz, how are things going?

[00:03:40.070] – Rachel
Great, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:41.690] – Allan
I'm doing pretty good. A couple of things I'm kind of excited about one I went camping. I realized when I went camping here because place about 2 hours boat ride away from here. So we were remote. We were really remote. And I realized when I was camping, like, I haven't done this since I was in the Boy Scouts. I was in the army. Granted, we would be out and about in the Woods and whatnot? But because I was a light infantry group, we never set up tents.

[00:04:11.690] – Allan
We never started fires. We never did any of that stuff. If you were to sleep, you slept on the ground right there and you might cover up with a poncho if it's raining. But we never set up tents ever. And so just like to set up a tent, start up campfire, collect wood as got going back. And like, hey, I haven't started a fire in decades. Decades, many decades. And I was like, this is kind of crazy because I think it was probably about 15. So it's probably about 40 years ago was the last time I actually went camping.

[00:04:46.910] – Rachel
And what did you think? Did you have a good time?

[00:04:48.950] – Allan
It was good.

[00:04:49.550] – Allan
It was just 2 hours is a long time to be on a little boat. A little pangas, bang, bang, bang all the way there. And then bang, bang, bang all the way back. I was able to do a little fishing and that kind of thing. And we were camping with people that while I'm friendly with, I don't know, super well. So it wasn't like, deep friendships that you sit there and you have deep, meaningful conversations with them. It was just sort of okay. Yeah, we're hanging out.

[00:05:17.450] – Allan
This is cool. That's cool. Probably if it had been longer, it might have been more difficult because this is the point. And I'm an introvert by nature. So just being trapped on an island with a few people is kind of interesting.

[00:05:34.370] – Rachel
Sure. That sounds wonderful. I love camping. I grew up camping, not on a beach like you guys, but we love camping. We did tent camping as kids. And then when Mike and I got married and we had kids, we eventually made it up to the pop up type of camper. And now we have a trailer pulled behind kind of camper

[00:05:55.370] – Allan
that's glamping.

[00:05:56.750] – Rachel
Yeah, it is. I totally agree. I have a great mattress. I have a little bathroom in my camper. I am totally set, and I absolutely love it.

[00:06:08.450] – Allan
I had the shovel ready just in case.

[00:06:12.050] – Rachel
Yeah, it's a little different when you're roughing it like, you guys, but, yeah, it's still a fun experience to do every now and then.

[00:06:18.710] – Allan
Yeah. And then I'm pretty excited I'm going to do this new challenge. And I've started talking about it because you probably heard some of the conversations about it, but there's still time. There's still time to sign up for this because I believe this episode is going live on the 8th. Right?

[00:06:39.770] – Rachel
I think so. Yeah.

[00:06:40.610] – Allan
8Th. Okay. So there's still time for this. And so if you'll come to Crushtheholidays.com, I'm doing a little 40 plus fitness challenge this year, and it's just five weeks. And basically it's motivation. There's a pop up Facebook group for us to kind of support each other as we go through these holidays, because on the average, people are going to put on weight over the holidays. So if you're thinking, oh, I'll get started in January, we're going to talk about that a little bit later. I'll just get started in January.

[00:07:13.250] – Allan
Well, if you take two steps backwards between now and then, that's not so cool. So this challenge will start on November 20th. But don't wait. Go ahead and sign up. There is a small cost to the challenge, but there's also prizes. So I'm literally taking the money that I'm getting from the challenge and reinvesting that into the prizes that I'm giving out to make things. So there's going to be some 40 plus fitness podcast swag. There's going to be some books, some of my favorite books that I've had some of these folks on the show recently.

[00:07:44.750] – Allan
I'll be sharing their books with you. There's going to be Amazon gift cards. And for one lucky person in the challenge, I'm going to give away a six week, 40 plus fitness online training program that I'm launching in January. So I've been doing the GAS program. I've kind of revamped it a bit. And so I'm going to relaunch that in January, and it's going to be a little bit shorter, a little bit more condensed, affordable. But for the one person coming through the challenge, they're going to get it for free.

[00:08:13.730] – Rachel
Sounds awesome and like fun. Sounds like fun.

[00:08:16.490] – Allan
Yeah. So it's crushtheholidays.com.

[00:08:19.850] – Rachel
Great.

[00:08:20.870] – Allan
All right. Anything else before we get with this conversation, this really bold conversation with Deltorro?

[00:08:27.470] – Rachel
No. Yeah. I can't wait to talk.

[00:08:29.690] – Allan
All right.

Interview

[00:09:11.690] – Allan
Delatorro, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:09:14.390] – Delatorro
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Good honor to be here with you.

[00:09:17.030] – Allan
So today, we're going to talk about your book, Shift into a Higher Gear: Better your Best and Live Life to the Fullest. And I really love that title. And then also you use the motorcycle as kind of your vehicle for communication. And I just love that. I love that because you went through. And when someone does that, you know that they've spent a lot of time thinking which you probably did most of that thinking on the motorcycle, which was also probably pretty cool. And so really just kind of told a story about you that I really felt like a personal connection.

[00:09:52.190] – Allan
As I was reading through the book about who you are as a person and what you bring and the joy you bring to people's lives because you're there to help them live the better life.

[00:10:01.550] – Delatorro
Yeah. That's really what it's all about, man. I appreciate you saying that, Allan, because I really believe that when we commit to stepping into what it means to really transform people and shift people, right? I think we really have to go on this intentional journey to really let people into the parts of ourselves that sometimes we don't even feel are the most beautiful parts of ourselves. But they're the necessary parts that people need to see. And so I don't want people to just look at me and say, okay, he's super successful.

[00:10:31.610] – Delatorro
I want people to say, hey, listen, this guy's been on a journey. He's gone through some things. He's had to navigate some potholes, right? He's had to maneuver, right? He's had to deal with all these things to be able to be at a place where he can now reach back and inspire others to take it to the next level as well. So I'm excited about the book. I'm really, really grateful for it, and it's already making waves all across the planet. So we're excited.

[00:10:50.750] – Allan
Well, of course it is. Now you had this concept at the very beginning of the book, and I was like, I love this because it's kind of a mantra that I use a lot of the time is better me tomorrow. Am I doing today the things that are going to make me better tomorrow? And I think so many people think about the end game of where their finish line is, of what they want to accomplish, not thinking in terms of tomorrow. What can you do today versus thinking about this big thing later?

[00:11:19.850] – Allan
It's a snowball. Can you talk a little bit about that theme of will you be better today than you were yesterday? Because I think that's really the key.

[00:11:30.410] – Delatorro
So here's what's cool, right? It's the daily invitation. I believe that life really and truly does give us one open invitation every day, and it comes in the form of a question. Will you be better today than you were yesterday? Will you make the daily decision to better your best to top yourself just by 1% and that's the key, because a lot of people don't really can't quantify what that means. And so for me, it's how do you get better just by 1% how do you get 1% more forgiving?

[00:11:57.710] – Delatorro
1% more generous, 1% more patient, 1% more service oriented, 1% more fit, right? 1% more committed to your cardio. 1% more committed to your meal plan or meal prep. 1% more committed to your supplement intake or you're getting enough vitamin D by taking a walk in nature, right? It's about how do we every day do a little bit that's going to make the big difference.

[00:12:23.270] – Allan
And it's compounding interest.

[00:12:28.170] – Delatorro
You're exactly right, my friend.

[00:12:29.850] – Allan
Now in the book, we're talking about change. And you talked about the six phases of real change. And I thought these are really important because, again, everybody likes to skip to the end, but we really kind of have to take these steps. We have to take these little steps and go through these phases. Can you talk a little bit about the six phases of real change?

[00:12:50.370] – Delatorro
Yeah. So I want to encourage everyone who's listening right now to really think about something in your life that you want to change, like, right now we all have stuff that we want to shift.

[00:13:01.290] – Delatorro
But there are six phases to change. But just like you said, if we skip to the end and we don't do the process necessary, we might get a quick change, Allan, but it's not going to be permanent, and it's not going to be long lasting. So if we really want to create real change in our lives, we've got to go through what I like to call the six phases of change. So change phase number one is you got to say it must change. You got to identify the thing that has to change in your life because you can't conquer if you don't confront and you can't confront what you don't identify.

[00:13:32.370] – Delatorro
So you got to identify what it is that you want to change. Right?

[00:13:34.890] – Delatorro
Second thing you got to say is, I must change it. It's a simple phrase, but it's really powerful. So it must change. Lets us get clear about what needs to change. I must change it. Allows me to now be the CEO of the Correction. In other words, it's not up to the government to change it, Allan. It's not up to who's in the White House to change it. It's not up to who's, the governor or the Mayor. It's not up to society. It's not up to whatever things that we tend to externally justify and externally excuse a way or what I like to call interpersonal responsibility.

[00:14:08.370] – Delatorro
It is up to us to change it. It must change. I must change it. Number three, I can change it. You got to get excited. You got to get confident about the fact that you can get fit over 40. You can live the life of your dreams. You can take the vacations you want. You can have the kind of business that you desire, right? It must change. I must change it. Number three, I can change it. Number four, I will change it. Now, Allan, you and I both know there's a big difference between what someone can do and what they will do.

[00:14:34.530] – Allan
Yes. Absolutely.

[00:14:35.910] – Delatorro
Can is a statement of potentiality and possibility, and it evokes confidence. At the end of the day, we've got to cross the bridge from can do to will do, right. And I always say this your I will is more important than your IQ. I think it's so important that we have that determination, that fortitude, that grit, that fight, that hustle that says, I will make this change, right. And then once you get that, I will change it. The next phase, which is number five is I am changing it.

[00:15:04.050] – Delatorro
And when you're in the middle of a change process, I don't care what it is. It is uncomfortable, right?

[00:15:10.050] – Allan
Yeah.

[00:15:10.350] – Delatorro
Because you don't fit, Allan. You don't fit where you used to be. You're not there anymore or you don't quite fit where you're going because you're not quite there yet. So you're caught between who you used to be and who you're trying to be. And when you're in that conundrum, I think it's so vitally important that you celebrate. One of the things I always encourage people to do, Allan, is go to the party store, get some confetti, throw in the air and walk through their own little celebration, because at the end of the day, you're in the middle of a change process.

[00:15:35.670] – Delatorro
And it's a process. But I am changing it. I am changing my nutrition. I am changing my exercise. I am changing my podcasting process. I am changing how I people into my programs. I am changing my webinars, I am changing my parenting. I am changing my marriage and my relationship. So you're in that process of change. And final step, step number six is I have changed it. And this is where a Press release comes in, because you need to let Lotty Dotti and everybody know that you have changed something significant in your life.

[00:16:08.790] – Delatorro
And I ultimately believe that when we make it through all six phases of change, and when we really haven't changed, we've actually transformed, brother.

[00:16:16.350] – Allan
Yeah. And that's what way I kind of go about it is I called it Cargo in my book, and it was kind of like, okay, first, you've got to celebrate when you get there. Second, you've got to kind of almost re acclimate because you are different. You're a different person. Like you said, you transfer yourself, you've transformed. And then the R is reassess because there's always another journey. There's always another one.

[00:16:46.710] – Delatorro
I like that reassess. That's good, man.

[00:16:48.810] – Allan
And then go, just go do it. There's so much more that 1%, that 1%, that 1%. And then the reassess and saying, okay, what else? What keeps us motivated, keeps us moving. And then you go, like I said, you can just lay those six phases right on top of that and say that's the journey and that's the journey.

[00:17:07.830] – Delatorro
Just keep rolling.

[00:17:09.570] – Allan
Now, one of the things you brought up, I just kind of love this, too. I loved a lot of things in your book.

[00:17:14.010] – Delatorro
By the way, Shift into a Higher Gear: Better Your Best and Live Life to the Fullest. Grab it Everywhere books are sold, Amazon, Audible, Barnes and Noble.Com. Everywhere books are sold, the book is all over the planet. Pick it up in airports, you name it, it's available. Grab it.

[00:17:32.490] – Allan
Good.

[00:17:33.150] – Allan
Now, when you're riding a motorcycle, a lot of people don't know this, but if you haven't ridden a motorcycle to make a turn, you have to be very cognizant about where you're putting your weight. Your weight shift is what causes the terminal motorcycle. Now, I owned a Spider, which is the three motorcycle was the exact opposite. And if I leaned into a turn, I was going to topple. But just understanding, putting your weight into what we're trying to do and doing it long enough to wait is a big part of this.

[00:18:07.110] – Allan
Can you kind of get into that story and what that's all about? And why that's important.

[00:18:11.910] – Delatorro
Brother, I get chills, Allan. I get chills, brother. This is one of my favorite sections in the book. I love the whole book, but, man, I love shift your focus and put your weight into it, which is chapter four. And one of the things that we talk about is when you're riding a two wheeled motorcycle, right? It's important that you understand that a motorcycle takes its direction from your intention. And so a motorcycle knows your intention based upon where you place your weight right. So a motorcycle, you don't have to turn a steering wheel automobile right.

[00:18:49.650] – Delatorro
If you want to go left, you lean left. If you want to go right, you lean right. So a motorcycle takes its direction from your intention. Why is that important? I firmly believe that if we really want to live life to the fullest, there's not a single person that we admire or respect, Allan, that got to where they got to by half asking their way there. Everybody that I know put their weight into it. They went all in on something, right? Whether it's Elon Musk or whether it's Steve Jobs or whether it's Mel Robbins or Tony Robbins or whether it's Jillian Michaels, it doesn't matter.

[00:19:35.250] – Delatorro
We can do this all day. Everybody who's at the top of their game, they put their weight into their industry, whether it's Steve Harvey, right, whoever is at the top of their game, they put their weight into it, meaning they gave their best, they gave their all. They focused on leaning into excellence.

[00:19:50.010] – Delatorro
Right. But not only did they give their best effort, but they gave their best effort, watch this, long enough to get a result, which means not only do you have to put your weight into it, W-E-I-G-H-T. But you also have to put your weight into it W-A-I-T. And one of the examples I use in the book is how I've got one of the world's first inspirational business reality television shows based upon public speaking. It's called The Keynote. And from idea to television, it took me 839 days to get that book from concept to actually being able to see it on TV.

[00:20:25.890] – Delatorro
That's a little bit over two years. But I was willing to sit on that egg until it hatched. And the point is a lot of times, I believe, Allan, a lot of us don't get the results that we want in life because we're not willing to sit on things long enough until they hatch. So one of the principles that I teach in the book is you got to learn how to be like a stamp and stick to one thing long enough until it delivers. If you follow the metaphor, if you put a stamp on an envelope, let's just assume, for the sake of conversation that the stamp was animated and it could jump from envelope to envelope whenever it wanted to.

[00:20:59.070] – Delatorro
You're trying to mail something from Florida to California. And every time that envelope got to a different postal stock, it jumped from your envelope to somebody else's, the postage jumped from another. It would never arrive. Your envelope would never make it.

[00:21:11.370] – Delatorro
Why? Because the postage that was affixed to it didn't stay attached long enough to get delivery. And you're in the fitness you're into wellness. It's almost like certain supplements, right? There are certain supplements that are better for your body when you add black pepper extract to the supplement, because it gives your body the chance to absorb the supplement into your bloodstream. Same narrative, right? There's got to be certain things that allow that need to stick to us long enough to get a result. And then we can go on and take it to the next level.

[00:21:43.530] – Delatorro
So I firmly believe that if we really want success in anything, you got to learn how to be like a stamp. Stick to one thing to a delivers. You got to put your weight into it, meeting your best effort. Then you also got to understand that even in this Instagram, Instapot, Instafamous, TikTok, five G, four G LTE super quick microwave world that we live in, some things just take time.

[00:22:06.930] – Allan
Yeah, we see this a lot in my industry where someone will say, okay, well, I'm going to try this diet, or I'm going to try this program and they get into it. And maybe the first week is awesome, and then the second week is less awesome. And then there's just kind of this like this settling. And it's really hard at that point to not get frustrated. But you have to lean into this thing that you're doing and recognize that if the strategy is right, it will come and you have to lean in and keep at it and not just jump to the next thing.

[00:22:39.390] – Allan
It's like, oh, well, I was on this and all said I saw these pills at the store, and so now I'm taking these weight loss pills, and that didn't work. So now I'm back trying this other diet, and then someone else said, I need to go do this exercise, but it hurts my legs. So I quit that one. We've got to keep going if we want to get some real change. And that said at the beginning that 1% over time is going to really add up.

[00:23:02.970] – Delatorro
That's exactly right. You're exactly right, Allan. I totally agree with you, brother. We got to stick with something long enough to get the result and watch this. Part of the reason why we struggle with that is because we've got Shiny Object Syndrome, right? That looks good. That looks good. But another reason why we struggle with it. And I help high achievers. That's really my area of focus. I really love working with high achievers because this is going to sound like an oxymoron, but high achievers get ignored. And the reason why I say high achievers get ignored is because what we've been taught all our lives, the squeaky wheel gets the what?

[00:23:35.610] – Allan
The grease?

[00:23:36.690] – Delatorro
Yeah, squeaky wheel gets the grease, the grease, the oil. So in other words, if you're a problem performer, you get the most attention. But if you're a high achiever, you tend to get the least amount of attention. Right. So I really focus on helping high achievers get better, take their best and top it. Right.

[00:23:53.010] – Delatorro
And so one of the reasons why I think we struggle with this area of Shiny Object syndrome for high achievers, specifically is because we don't know how to score a touchdown. And what I mean by that is as soon as we as high achievers get close to the end zone, what do we do? We push the end zone back another 20 yards and say, yeah, but not quite right. We are never satisfied with a certain level of success. We always got to push the envelope and goal setting is huge, and it's important.

[00:24:18.330] – Delatorro
And goal achievement is big, which we talk about in the book. But as you also learn the book, I have a different take on goal achievement, but we'll get to that in a little bit. So I think it's important that at some point, we as high achievers, learn to celebrate the small wins, learn how to celebrate the process of achievement and learn how to celebrate the good things that we have in our lives and really take those things to the next level.

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[00:26:25.250] – Allan
There was another concept in the book that when I first got into it, I was kind of like, okay, that's not a big deal. And then as I got towards the end of it, I was like, Wait a minute. I need to go back and reread that. And as I went back and reread it, it just clicked and I was like, oh, wow.

[00:26:41.690] – Allan
This is phenomenal. And the reason I say that is in a motorcycle there's go forward or go home. I mean, you just go forward.

[00:27:22.670] – Allan
Because there's a lot more there than I'm able to articulate. But like I said, it was just a really exciting thing. As I got into it, I was like, if someone could just wrap their mind around, I only have one gear. I have one gear. I'm going forward because I can't go backwards. That's huge.

[00:26:50.990] – Allan
That's the gear. That's the gear. Now you can shift to a higher gear and go faster, but it's always a forward. There's no reverse on a motorcycle versus a car. It has park. It has reversed and it has neutral and has drive. So there's a lot of decision making there about whether you're going to be going forward backwards or whatnot. But if you're going to be successful at anything you're trying to do, you got to put it in gear and go. That's it just in the one gear. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:27:41.210] – Delatorro
Yeah, man, I appreciate you for underlining that and underscoring that for me, Allan. As a result of what you just said, brother, I'm actually going to get a T-shirt design that says, I only have one gear. That's really good, brother. I got to write it down. When the moment of inspiration hits me, I have to write it down in the moment so thank you for that.

[00:28:02.510] – Allan
You're welcome.

[00:28:04.550] – Delatorro
But seriously, so the notion is this and you kind of already spoke to it. What I love about shifting to a higher gear, and everybody, please make sure you grab a copy of the book. You can go to shifting to a highergear.Com. Grab the book, but also grab the campaign workbook that we've created, which takes the learning principles from the book so much deeper. One of the things that we do in the book is we help you understand the difference between living life, the automobile way and living life, the motorcycle way.

[00:28:29.270] – Delatorro
And I want to say this to everybody who's listening. You don't ever have to have ridden a motorcycle before. You don't even have to have an interest in riding motorcycles to be able to learn and apply the principles. Because the motorcycle metaphors are a backdrop to the deeper conversation that we're talking about, whether it's excuses or whether it's fear versus faith or emotional mastery, the motorcycle serves as a backdrop metaphor for the entire overarching concept. So automobile living allows you to have multiple gears in your life, many of which are ineffective for life and business, whereas motorcycle living only allows you to operate like Allan just said in one gear, and that's drive when you turn a motorcycle on and you put it in gear, it only knows drive, it only knows forward.

[00:29:14.570] – Delatorro
However, automobiles give you a whole bunch of other negative options. It gives you park, it gives you reverse, and it gives you neutral. Then the book, we go into great detail to explain the differences between those three different gears and how those gears, more importantly, how they show up in your life and business on a daily basis. How do you know when you're in neutral? How do you know when you're in park? How do you know when you're in reverse? And, Allan, I want to underscore something in the book that's really huge, which is I want to debunk something that most people not only believe, but they teach.

[00:29:47.450] – Delatorro
A lot of people teach that how you do anything is how you do everything. And I absolutely could not disagree more. And I'm going to use that chapter as a perfect example because I know people who are in drive in their parenting, but they're in park in their marriage, or they're in drive in their business, but they're in neutral when it comes to their financial portfolio. Let's just say their investments or they could be in drive in their hobbies, but they're in reverse in their fitness, right.

[00:30:24.290] – Delatorro
So they'll go smoke with cigars with their buddies, or they'll go to sporting events, but they don't take care of their physical body, right? They're actually going backwards. They're not even standing still. They're going backwards. Right.

[00:30:34.370] – Delatorro
So automobiles give us way too many options. That's why when you live life to bike way, you only know forward at the end of the day, because we live in time and time is going forward. We must constantly commit to moving forward each and every day in our lives. And I think that's where the real magic happens.

[00:30:51.410] – Allan
Absolutely. Like I said, that's why when I got into it, I was like, this is a lot deeper than I thought it was when I first started, because it seems simple concept. But then, as you got into explaining it, which you did so well in a book, it was just like, okay. Yeah. We all need to pick our thing and just drive. So the next thing you talked a little bit, you got into a little bit about goal setting. And this was another area where I really felt like you shine some light on it.

[00:31:19.490] – Allan
For anyone that's struggled to kind of make their goals happen. And we all struggle. But if you set up a good enough goal, you set the right goal. It's not easy. There is going to be some struggle here, but you go through the 8 hours to manifest your goals. Can you talk about those? Because again, there's so many ways people talk about smart goals, maybe even come up with a different acronym. But in this case, you're literally almost a roadmap, if you will.

[00:31:47.150] – Allan
How to Manifest Your Goals. Could you talk a little bit about that?

[00:31:52.070] – Delatorro
So first of all, I love this book. Every time I get a chance to talk about it, I get excited, Allan, because there's so much you and I both know, Allan, there's a lot of books out there that are filled with a lot of fluff. Right.

[00:32:07.010] – Delatorro
And what I love about this book is that and you can tell me your experience. And I'd love to hear it literally from start to finish. The pedal is on the metal, it's direct it's in your face. It's very Dr. Phil. The book comes right at you. Would you agree with that?

[00:32:23.390] – Allan
Yeah. The way I kind of put it together was and this fits directly with who you are. What you do is when you go into a good keynote speaker, they know they've got maybe 45 minutes to teach you something and change you to try to in 45 minutes, change you. And that means that they have to cut out every other word that doesn't suit the purpose. It doesn't get them on where they want to go. And so quite literally, yes, you open up a chapter, and the chapter might be 45 minutes.

[00:32:53.570] – Allan
It might be an hour, however long it takes you to read that chapter. But it felt like I was sitting there listening to a keynote.

[00:33:01.730] – Delatorro
Nice.

[00:33:03.650] – Delatorro
That's awesome, brother. I appreciate that. That means a lot. All right. Cool. So let's talk about this whole conversation of goals. One of the big things that we stress in the book is the fact that chapter twelve is shift, and this is another big thing people need to understand about the book, which I love is every chapter starts with the verb shift. And so, in other words, there's an action required, right. And so we did that very intentionally. And then the other piece that I think is important is that we understand this.

[00:33:32.870] – Delatorro
We got to shift from simple goal setting, which anybody could do to transformational goal getting. And I think that's the difference between the average person and, like super achievers is super achievers actually get the goals they go for it. One of the examples that I use in the book is I say, if three birds are sitting by a still pond or three birds are sitting on a branch and one bird decides to jump away or fly away, how many birds do you have left? And most people say you've got two.

[00:34:01.430] – Delatorro
And I said, no, you got three because one just decided, even though they said, I'm going to fly away. Right?

[00:34:09.050] – Delatorro
Deciding is not enough. Decision is not enough. And goal setting is a decision. It's a cognitive process. But there is a massive difference between cognition and creation, thinking and trying, dreaming and doing, wanting and walking. You know this, especially in the wellness space, how vitally important it is for people to shift from it just being something I got to do here into something I really want to manifest. So podcaster to podcaster. I have a podcast, too that I started a little bit earlier couple months ago. It's called Crushing Life with Delatorro.

[00:34:42.350] – Delatorro
And the goal of my podcast is to help people achieve one goal in four ways. I help people develop the mindset, the heart set, the skill set, and the will set to live and lead an extraordinary quality of life right now. The reason why I share that with you, Allan, is because a lot of times goal setting is done up here, but you and I both know we can intellectually know something that we don't emotionally embrace. Right?

[00:35:08.810] – Allan
Yeah.

[00:35:09.410] – Delatorro
We got to go from the emotional embracement to actually living it out, taking that tactical steps, and then they actually have the perseverance to push it through.

[00:35:16.850] – Delatorro
So goal getting, which we talk about in the book, is it involves what I like to call the eight R's. And so for the purpose of time, I'm not going to go into all eight, but I'll share two of them with you that I love. I love all eight of them, but eight is my favorite number. So you'll see a lot of eight represented throughout the book, but one of the big ones, that's a real sticker that I never hear people teach. Never hear people teach this, is the first R. In order to get to manifest a goal, the first thing you got to give your goal is Room.

[00:35:53.330] – Delatorro
Everybody wants the how to. Everybody wants the strategy. Give me the tactics. Give me the steps to do. But I believe the biggest issue that we struggle with is we don't create enough space for the thing that we want. Space in your heart, space in your mind, space in your household. When a couple is expecting a newborn baby, what's the first thing that they do? They create a space for a baby. It's got its own furniture. It's got its own clothes. It's got its own closet.

[00:36:26.870] – Delatorro
What's the first thing that the womb does when it's ready to actually, when conception happens. The womb creates space to handle this baby because it understands that the baby is going to take whatever space it needs in that mother's body and the mother has to adjust. Period. Your goal is the same way. So I firmly believe that no matter what your goal is, the first thing you got to do is you got to make room for it. So in other words, get clear about what you need to take off your plate before you put a whole bunch of other stuff on your plate.

[00:37:01.070] – Allan
Yeah. I think one of the examples you kind of gave in the book, which I liked was, you want to start working out, you got to look at your schedule and say, okay, when will I actually do this? If I'm going to train for something, when am I going to do it? And something else probably has to not be done. Like, maybe a little less Netflix.

[00:37:22.610] – Delatorro
Exactly. Right, brother.

[00:37:23.990] – Allan
And you can get the audiobook and listen to it while you're running.

[00:37:29.210] – Delatorro
You can go to audible right now and grab the audiobook and listen to the audiobook and shift into our higher gear. We didn't hire an actor. I read it in studio for five and a half hours. I did it. So you get my voice, which is awesome. I'm proud of that. But no, man, that's a big deal. And you're right. It's like no matter what it is. So one of the things that I help when I collect keynote for a lot of corporations and associations and things.

[00:37:52.070] – Delatorro
And one of the first things I talked to companies, sales teams about is I say, listen, whatever that goal is, your current schedule does not support it, or you'd already have the goal. Right?

[00:38:03.830] – Delatorro
So let's take stuff off your plate before we decide what really needs to go on it. And so it's that process of what do you need to pull back from in order for you to go forward.

[00:38:17.090] – Allan
Do you have time to go through a couple more Rs?

[00:38:19.370] – Delatorro
Yeah. I love these Rs.

[00:38:22.730] – Delatorro
So. Yeah. So the first one is room. So I love that one. Create space, another one of the Rs that I'm a big fan of, and I'm not going to go in any particular order here. But one of the other Rs that I'm a big fan of out of all of them, which I love them all is I really believe that you need a Roadmap. I think it's so important that you figure out okay, If I'm here, how do I get from here to there? You've got to have a roadmap.

[00:38:47.090] – Delatorro
And the best place to get a roadmap is from someone who's already done what you're trying to do. Because success leaves is clues. We just got to go find them. So sometimes the best way to get a roadmap is to say, okay, who do I admire and respect in my industry, who's done what it is that I'm trying to do, who is that person? And then once I get clear about who that person is, how do I begin to start to model the results that that person has gotten in order to model the results that they've gotten?

[00:39:15.110] – Delatorro
I've got to do what it is that they've done. I remember I had a chance to spend a day and a half. Dr. John Maxwell. And one of the things that Dr. Maxwell was teaching me, it was a leadership lesson. He said, Delatorro, a lot of people come up to me at events and they say, oh, Dr. Maxwell, I want to be who you are. I want the books. I want the stages, I want the lights. I want all the stuff. And he's like, great. He said, Are you willing to do what I did so that one day you can get what I want.

[00:39:42.470] – Delatorro
And I think the lesson there is we got to be willing to do the work. Once we find what the roadmap is, we got to be willing to take the steps that the roadmap provides. So you got to have a I mean, think about it as soon as you type into Google Maps or Waze. As soon as you type in where it is, you ultimately want to go. It's going to give you a roadmap on how to get there, right. But you got to be willing to follow the roadmap.

[00:40:05.390] – Delatorro
And another one of the Rs that I love to talk about is along your journey of following the roadmap. You've got to create some symbols of relief in the form of rewards. You've got to give yourself some moments of celebration. You've got to enjoy the process and enjoy yourself as you're going through. Because if all you do is work on achievement, achievement, achievement, achievement, achievement without any rewards along the way. The problem with that is you're not going to actually enjoy the process of achieving. And when achievement becomes boring, we quit.

[00:40:40.010] – Delatorro
So you got to be able to make sure that you have more fun. I teach productivity to corporations and associations. And one of the things that one of my top programs is called platinum productivity. Getting more done by having more fun. And one of the things that I teach is, according to neuroscience, your brain is more incentivized to do the things that need to be done if you attach more reward based things to it. But if your brain associates pain to productivity, you're always procrastinating. So I really believe in the importance of rewards, road maps and room.

[00:41:16.490] – Allan
Thank you for sharing that. Delatorro, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:41:30.230] – Delatorro
This is a holistic word, and I really believe that there's three things that I think we can easily do to continue to make wellness a priority. Number one, I'll go back to it. Make room for wellness in your life. That means getting an extra 45 minutes or early or staying up a few minutes later in the evening. So number one, make room for it. Make room for it in your schedule. Let it show up in your phone. Put alerts in your phone that you're going to go take a walk, you're going to go take your supplement, you're going to drink a certain amount of water.

[00:41:59.510] – Delatorro
Use the apps to help you to kind of manage certain habits, whether it's hydration habits where you're checking off, whether it's a fitness app on your phone, do something to make room for the thing that you want. Number two is do it with other people. One of the biggest concepts we teach in the Shift into a Higher Gear book is we teach the importance of doing things as a collective. So who's in your biker posse, who's in your biker community, who's in your tribe, and really getting clear about who those individuals are?

[00:42:30.470] – Delatorro
So making wellness something that you do with others, I think is an important step to keeping it a part of your top priority. And then number three is make it enjoyable. Not everybody loves going to the gym and pumping hard iron. But if your thing is racquetball, then do racquetball. If your thing is golf, do golfing. If your thing is swimming, do swimming. If your thing is, don't feel like you're not fit because you don't want to press iron six days a week. That might not be your way of doing it, and there's nothing wrong with it.

[00:43:00.410] – Delatorro
I think it's sensational, but I do think everyone is wired differently and you got to get clear about what wellness and exercise and moving your body and cardio and what that means to you and how you can find a way to make it fit you and your lifestyle. Do it with others and keep it scheduled in your life, and I think you'll be able to have fun with it.

[00:43:21.530] – Allan
If someone wanted to learn more about you, the things you're doing and your book Shift into a Higher Gear. Where would you like for me to send them?

[00:43:29.870] – Delatorro
First of all, the book is available everywhere books are sold. We're driving a lot of traffic right now to Amazon, so please go on Amazon and grab the book there. It's also available in Barnes and Noble. Our website. Our primary website for the book isshiftintoahighergear.com. So the website is the name of the book shiftintoahighergear.com. We also have a Facebook community. So please make sure that you join our Facebook community, which is Shift into a higher gear global biker posse. All you do is type in, shift into a higher gear global biker posse on Facebook.

[00:44:03.290] – Delatorro
It's a public group. It's a free group to join. You just jump right on in. And we love to have you because we're creating a global group of people who are readers of this book and who are applying the principles and things of that nature. So we do exclusive lives inside that group. It's really exciting. So that's how people can get a hold of us. And also, if you want to have us come speak to your organizations, you can search us for all social media at Dr. Delatorro, that's at D-R-D-E-L-A-T-O-R-R-O. At drdelatorro for all of our social media, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, everything. And then lastly, our primary website for our speaking engagements is delatorro.com. D-E-L-A-T-O-R-R-O.com.

[00:44:47.030] – Delatorro
If there's anybody that's out there that's interested in any form of speaking or using public speaking and presentation to grow your business or your brand, I've been in the speaking industry for 20 years, and I've been endorsed by some of the greatest speakers on the planet. I've been a member of the National Speakers Association for 15 years, and I actually train and mentor people who want to become professional speakers, authors, coaches, and who want to make a living, inspiring people with their messages and their story. So I have a program called Crush the stage, which is a three day live boot camp that I do that helps people to master public speaking and presentation.

[00:45:22.250] – Delatorro
And so people can go to helpmecrushthestage.com that's helpmecrushthestage.com to learn all about our three day boot camp.

[00:45:29.390] – Allan
Okay, go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/511. And I'll be sure to have a link in the show notes there to all of those links because you're everywhere. So, Delatorro, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:45:44.130] – Delatorro
An honor indeed. My friend, Allan, thank you to your incredible tribe, your followers, your listeners. And I'm hoping to hear from them sometime soon.

Post Show/Recap

[00:45:54.970] – Allan
Hey, Raz, welcome back.

[00:45:56.890] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, your conversation with Delatorro is really fascinating. And I have to say, I love his analogy shift into a higher Gear, but also better your best. I think that's great.

[00:46:08.950] – Allan
He brings so much energy to what he's doing because he's also a keynote speaker. He's speaking to large, large groups. When you're on a Zoom call with him, it's actually a little intimidating. He's got so much energy. He's like, I got to try to keep up with this guy. Never going to happen, never going to happen. He just brought it. And, yeah, the analogies and the things he's doing in his book, The Higher Gear shift to Higher Gear is just really cool. He takes the Conversations motorcycle, which if you spend a lot of time riding or driving, it gives you time to think.

[00:46:40.630] – Allan
So he sat down. He thought all these things through, and he really gives you some awesome tools. We really only just scratch the surface of the things that he has in that book, and they're all really valuable. So if Mindset is something that you truly struggle with, I strongly consider you. You should strongly consider getting this book because it is a pretty powerful book.

[00:47:03.310] – Rachel
Absolutely. I particularly enjoyed his six Phases of Real Change, and I won't go into them all again. But I just like to point out the difference between I can change. I will change, and I am changing. Those are three very different mindsets. But there's also a gap in between them. And I think you had mentioned in the earlier podcast, and I'm going way back in your earlier days, but there's a big gap between saying I can or I'm going to do something and then actually doing it that follow through seems to just be a challenge sometimes.

[00:47:35.590] – Allan
Yeah. Well, I was 39, sitting on the beach in Puerto Vallarta, and I decided that I needed to do something. I was not healthy. I was not happy. I was miserable, called myself the fat bastard. But I made the decision, like, okay, I'm doing this. And then it was just fits and starts and this and that. And I never really got traction until I did that transition from not just deciding I'm going to do something but actually committing to doing it. And so that step from can to will is huge because it is.

[00:48:15.970] – Allan
I knew. Okay. I'm 39 years old. I should be able to play volleyball. I should be able to get myself fit again. And it just wasn't happening until I really bore down, really kind of pushed forward or leaned into it. As we mentioned on the podcast. And once I leaned into it, that commitment. Once I made that commitment, it started happening. And actually the reality of it was it was very slow at first. A lot of people will lose weight fast at the beginning. And then mine was almost like it was almost like I fell off a cliff.

[00:48:49.450] – Allan
I was just kind of putting along. And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, I am like that swoosh. Oh, this is happening. I'm working hard. I'm getting stronger. I'm losing the weight. Things are working. I found my buttons. I found the things that work for me that make this go. And so, yeah, that transition from Will, can and do those are important. Every one of those is important. And you're absolutely right. We have to go through each one of them to make it happen.

[00:49:20.650] – Allan
The decision isn't enough. You need the commitment, and then the commitment isn't enough. You have to do.

[00:49:27.130] – Rachel
And the excitement between I am changing. And like you mentioned, it gets exciting when you can see results, whatever the results are, better blood work at the doctor. A better number on the scale, the feeling of energy when you wake up in the morning or before you go to bed at night and the power you feel when you're lifting better at the gym or running longer distances. All of that is so exciting. And if you just take that moment to celebrate those wins, no matter how little they are, it really will help propel you forward.

[00:49:59.410] – Rachel
Back to the analogy, though, he mentioned motorcycles only go forward.

[00:50:04.750] – Allan
Yeah, you can reach them backwards with your feet, but they don't have a reverse. The standard motorcycle does not have a reverse. It only has a neutral and a go. And so you're sitting there, you start that motorcycle and you drop it down in the first gear, it goes forward. And you'll see this. If you've never seen anybody riding a motorcycle, you'll see if they pull those first into a parking space and they need to leave, they literally have to walk the bike out far enough to get their nose out so they can drive forward, because that's all the motorcycle is going to do.

[00:50:36.310] – Allan
And all the other gears do is just help you go faster. So his book Shift to a Higher Gear is really about getting more, getting faster, doing more, seeing more, all those different things that are exciting about a motorcycle traveling faster. That fun part of it that inertia the wind, in your hair. If you had hair kind of stuff, that's it. If you just stay in first gear on your motorcycle, you're putting around town at 15 miles an hour, but you get to the second gear, third gear, fourth gear.

[00:51:07.270] – Allan
And now you're flying. And so that's kind of the point of the whole thing is the motorcycle is only going to go in one direction, so you've got to drive it. But you've got to keep shifting into that higher gear to fill that inertia and get where you want to go.

[00:51:21.310] – Rachel
I love that. And then the other part that I wanted to mention that I think people probably should pick up this book would be the eight Rs that he had put together, and he only discussed a couple of them. But the first R he mentioned was room and that you need to make space by taking some things off your plate so that you can add to it. And I think that is a particularly helpful tip, because when we decide to make these types of changes, like going to the gym every day or on a run or adding this exercise to our life, it's hard to find the time for that.

[00:51:53.710] – Rachel
I mean, if we had all the time in the world, we'd already been doing that. So I like his thought about maybe taking something away or rearranging your schedule to make time for these new things that you might add to your life.

[00:52:06.970] – Allan
Yeah, I prioritize sleep. I just always have. And I always will. So I'm not a proponent of getting up half an hour earlier just for the sake of working out. But that said, I made a point of putting on my calendar every day that I was going to get this workout done at this particular time, and it became my calendar. No one else could book on that time, and it meant, okay, I have to eat a little quicker. I might have to eat at my desk, which again, not the healthiest things.

[00:52:36.430] – Allan
But it was that trade off to say, I need to be in the gym for at least an hour, and this is my trade off is eating at my desk, making sure I have something that's convenient. I don't have to go out and get. And so it's right here. It's a packed lunch and just that kind of thing. And if you're in a relationship, obviously, you may not have the support of the people around you to do what you need to do. But you've got to figure out how to make that change.

[00:53:02.710] – Allan
You've got to figure out how to get them on board, at least to the point of allowing you the room, the space to get this done. So you get the hour you need, even if it's just two or three times a week, you get the time you need. If there are certain foods that you're like. No, that's my kryptonite. Please don't leave the cookies on the counter. They may continue to do that, but you've got to give yourself the room and where possible. Engage them to help make that happen.

[00:53:28.870] – Rachel
Yes, I love that. That's a great tip for moving forward.

[00:53:32.110] – Allan
All right. Well, Rachel has been great talking to you. I will talk to you again next week.

[00:53:36.610] – Rachel
Take care.

[00:53:37.570] – Allan
You, too.

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Eric More	– Leigh Tanner
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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

The 7 health and fitness truths I've learned on 40+ Fitness (Your Wellness SYSTEMS)

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:00:45.420] – Allan
Hey, Raz, how are things going?

[00:00:48.240] – Rachel
Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:00:50.140] – Allan
I'm doing well. We're recording this a couple of weeks in advance, so I'm still on my trip in the United States, kind of rounding down the Miami area, finishing out the last couple of stops up further north in Florida and then into Mississippi. But by the time this goes live October 4, I should be back at the Bed and Breakfast in Bocas Del Toro and trying to get things back into some semblance of normal.

[00:01:20.850] – Rachel
Right. Well, good. I hope you've had a good time visiting all your family and friends.

[00:01:24.490] – Allan
Yeah, it's tiring. And then a friend of mine, he's doing a YouTube channel and he asked me to go out there and like it and comments and do things like that to help him get his YouTube channel going. I went out there and he had a video where he's eating at the restaurants that I would usually be eating at, talking to friends that I would normally be talking to. And so it kind of got me a little homesick, which is strange. I'm in the United States visiting family, but I'm home sick to get back to focus.

[00:01:54.190] – Rachel
Sure. How long have you guys lived in Panama?

[00:01:57.310] – Allan
we're approaching three years.

[00:01:58.820] – Rachel
Oh, my gosh. That's a long time. That's definitely your home. I can totally see that. Yeah.

[00:02:04.790] – Allan
Yeah. So our dogs are there and our place is there and then something happens like this guy, apparently, I don't know. He just decided he wanted to throw a flower pot at the window of the gym and bust the glass. And I did bust it open open, but he busted the glass and so it's now get that fixed. And the guy came back and apologize for doing it and said he would make it right. You pay for it. But it's not my building. So we're, like manager, insert my message.

[00:02:31.580] – Allan
We got to get that window fixed, so just stop. You know, it's like if you're there, those kind of things are not hard to deal with, but when you're over 3000 miles away, it's a little bit more difficult.

[00:02:43.600] – Rachel
Oh, for sure. My goodness. Well, I'm glad you've had a good time visiting family and friends. That's the most important part. It's a long trip for you, though, but I think 4000 miles.

[00:02:53.570] – Allan
You know, when we're getting done with get done with this, we'll put over 4000 miles on a rental car. Yeah. So Tammy is gonna drive down to Key West. I think tomorrow, and I'm not gonna go. She's gonna go down there and hang out with a friend and spend the night and then drive back the next day. But, yeah, I'm not doing that part of it. I'm gonna step here and hang out my family here. So we'll put on over 4000 miles on that rental car before we return.

[00:03:20.050] – Rachel
Amazing. My gosh.

[00:03:22.730] – Allan
So it'll be a long month, long five weeks, but good stuff.

[00:03:28.000] – Rachel
Yeah. I'm glad you got to spend the time here.

[00:03:31.270] – Allan
How are things up there in Michigan?

[00:03:33.320] – Rachel
Oh, good. Good things are good. You know, one of the great grand prizes for turning 50 is a colonoscopy. So I will be prepping for that in the next few days. And hopefully by the time this air, I'll have some good results to share. But this will be my first colonoscopy.

[00:03:50.940] – Allan
That sounds like a show.

[00:03:52.390] – Rachel
It is. It's actually, it's not terrible. The prep work, I'm sure it's going to be real thrilling later, but I'm kind of excited to have this done. Colon cancer does run in my family, and since I've hit that age, it's just one of those things I can check off the list like a mammogram, which I do every year anyway, but, yeah, it's just one of those things that will give me a little peace of mind.

[00:04:16.370] – Allan
Okay. Well, good. I hope it all comes out good.

[00:04:20.820] – Rachel
Good one. Yeah, it'll be fine. But I'll be sure to share my results once I know them.

[00:04:27.600] – Allan
Good. Are you ready to talk about some resistance training?

[00:04:30.880] – Rachel
Yes. Let's do this today.

Episode

Today, I want to take some time and talk to you about some of the more intermediate and advanced resistance training, things that you can do. And these are some of these things that are appropriate for people over 40. So I'll kind of emphasize this that if you're new at training haven't been doing something for more than a year, this episode is probably not going to be for you. You might learn a few things about muscle resistance training and things like that, but just recognize that the strategies and tactics that we're talking about here today are not for the new training.

If you haven't been training for at least six months and maybe a year or more, you might not want to look into these, but this is something, if you're really interested in weightlifting resistance training, you might find interesting. So I do want to start this episode off with a caution. If you're new, if you're new to this, then yeah, definitely think twice before trying some of these. These are not things that you do, particularly for if you're just bored with your program. If you're bored with your program, change up some of the exercises, change up your sets and reps do those other things that change up the workout and make it different and more interesting.

These are not something that you want to do if you're under trained, and that means, yes, probably about a year or so of consistent training, and then you kind of plateaued and you're not seeing the improvements that you wanted to see. Most people are going to be able to get enough benefit out of just basic weightlifting that they don't really need to do these things. You can build strength and muscle without these tools without these strategies, but just recognize that, yes, if you want to optimize your growth, optimize your strength, optimize your power.

These can be very powerful tools in your tool chest. And then the other side of it is when you implement some of these things because of the additional volume because of the way you're working, you do increase your risk of injury. I do take that into account. Injury is a very important thing. It's rule number one in resistance training, do not injure thyself, and so you do not want to injure yourself. So you really have to be very thoughtful about how you approach intermediate resistance training.

To start this conversation, I really want to get into volume because that's what we're really doing when we're doing these processes, we're trying to increase the volume of work or we're trying to increase the volume of intensity for what we're doing when we're doing these exercises. So just recognize that normally we could do weights, reps and sets, and that's going to be enough for us to improve or increase the volume of the work that we're doing. If I do one more set than I did before, then I've increased the volume.

If I've added more reps, I've potentially increase the volume. And obviously, if I'm doing the same number of reps and sets and I've increased the weight, you know that I've increased the volume and each of those is specific to how you're trying to train. So are you trying to train strength? Are you trying to train for muscle growth? Are you trying to train for muscular endurance or stamina or power? And so as you look at the way you're lifting, recognize that the way your lifting needs to align with what you're doing and the volume increases that you do also have to align with that.

So there are different ways. Like I said, we can do this. We can do more work per week. We can do more work per workout. We can increase the time that it takes for us to do each exercise. It's called time and attention, and we'll get into that in a minute. But what you do, what we're doing here is we're basically in most of these, we're trying to increase the volume of work, the volume of work that the muscle has to do. And so we'll get into a lot more detail in that as we go forward, but just recognize, I'm going to keep coming back this term volume and just realize that volume just means more work.

It means more work for the muscle, either in reps, set, time under tension or the weight we're lifting. Before you get started on a program like this, it's really important for you to define the purpose of why you're doing what you're doing, because each of these strategies helps a certain aspect of muscular development. And so you don't want to do something that's going to improve your strength if you're absolutely actually trying to increase power, and you may not want to increase muscle mass if you're trying to increase power.

So in looking at what you're trying to accomplish, recognize that the goal, the purpose drives the strategy that makes the most sense for you. Probably the most common way to increase volume. And the one that I would usually start with someone who's approaching the intermediate lifting stages, meaning they've done some lifting. They're comfortable with the full body workouts. It's an hour or so of work, and they get the reps in. They get the sets in, and as a result, they're seeing some benefit. But a lot of times what happens is then that kind of plateaus, and we need to add volume and a lot of times it's really hard to add volume to a single workout.

Meaning if I have you doing one exercise, two exercises for legs, one for chess, one for back, one for shoulders, and a little bit of core work. That's practically an entire hour workout already. To add more time to that workout isn't practical for a lot of people.

So one approach is to do splits. So typically a split. What that means is that you're splitting up the work across different body parts so that you can do more work each workout. But you're also going to have to do more workouts each week.

So a very common split is the upper and lower split. So what we'll do is we'll come in, say on Monday, and we'll do a lower body workout, so that's mostly leg work. So squats, leg press, lunges, split squats, maybe a little bit of machine work. And that's your leg workout. You'll hear the term leg day called out a lot. So you do a leg workout on Monday, and then on Tuesday, you come back in and you do an upper body workout. So that's where you're doing pushups, bench press, pulls, rows, different things like that.

You you might even throw up in some arm workout, some shoulder workout, and that's your upper body work. And so you've split into an upper lower Monday, Tuesday, maybe you take Wednesday off. You come back Thursday, Friday, and you do another lower upper. As a result, you hit your legs twice in the same week, which is what you would have done before. But now you've actually added more volume because you had more time to do more exercises, more exercises, then more sets and more reps for each of those parts. And as a result, they're getting more volume.

The other common split is called a push pull legs. And the way that works is you would come in and let's say on Monday, you go ahead and do your push and push is where you're moving away from your body. So you think of pushups bench press flies overhead, press that type of thing. So you're mostly working your chest and shoulders and then probably your triceps. A pull is when you're pulling something towards yourself. So you're doing a rows, you're doing lat pull downs and then potentially some other movements where you're working your biceps.

So that would then be the pull. And then your legs obviously is just a lower body workout, and you do a leg workout. Now the advantage of pushpull legs is then you've already given yourself the full two days off from that push workout. You could come right back the next day and do another push and you can rotate this all the way through and not have a day off effectively. Although I'd still encourage you every once in a while. Do take recovery day. There's a lot of volume.

So at some point it's probably worth taking a day off. So if I'm going to do a push pull legs, I'll do a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then I take Sunday off and that's six days of lifting. Each day I'm working a different part of my body. I'm getting each body part in twice per week, which is what I was doing mostly when I was doing full body, and so it gives me the opportunity to add a lot more volume by doing the split.

But it also means you're dedicating a lot more time to the gym than you would if you were just doing two 1 hour full body workouts. Now you're in the gym up to 6 hours a week, which can be quite a bit of time. So recognize to get more volume, you've put more time in.

Now, one way to get around this little bit of volume and time is to mix in a thing we call super sets or monster sets. Now, this is where you're going to do two exercises pretty much in a circuit, and the two exercises work different body parts so effectively you can get an exercise in faster because your rest period is effectively when you're doing a different exercise.

So an example of that would be if I wanted to do bench press and then I wanted to do dumbbell rows. And so I would do my bench press. As soon as I finish my bench press, I turn around and do my set of rows. And then as I moved back to the bench and make sure I'm getting enough rest between exercises. But you can kind of see how because I did it that way. I cut out a rest period that I would have had in between each exercise.

And as a result, I could get a lot more done. A monster set is where you put three or more exercises together in a circuit. And I don't want you to get this confused with circuit training, where you would walk in and there's a series of machines and you're just doing these eight different exercises in the circuit. This is when you're going heavy. If you're intermediate lifting, you're doing a lot more weight than you would be doing on those machines. You're probably working with free weights.

And so you would put together potentially three exercises that could be again, it could be the bench press. It could be a dumbbell row, as I said. And maybe your third exercise is squats or something for your legs. And so you do that monster set, and then now you can go right back into another round, and you basically have eliminated the need for those rest that'll allow you to get more volume in a shorter period of time. So you don't necessarily have to split your workout in multiple days.

You can add super sets and monster sets to reduce the amount of time, which allows you to do more sets or exercises for each body part in the same amount of time. It also can be very fatiguing. And I found that super sets and monster sets really aren't for me because I don't recover from the cardiovascular perspective of just exercise exercise. I need that little bit of rest time to get myself fired back up to really be able to optimize the weight that I'm doing. And another aspect of this is it is really hard in a commercial gym to set up a series of super sets without really just being all over the gym.

And in an age of COVID, that's even worse if someone's trying to work out in a gym and you're taking up three or four pieces of equipment at a given point in time, it's really hard. Unless you're going to a commercial gym when no one else is there off hours or like me, own the gym, then you can go in and do it when you want to. But it's really hard in a commercial gym to do super sets and monster sets effectively without a lot of planning and doing it at times that are just more appropriate for that.

But that is a way to add more volume that you can do. So ways to add Volume Right now, we have split and we have super sets. And I mentioned earlier time under tension.

So when we're doing our normal workout and we're starting out, you probably notice a lot of muscle growth and you probably know, I mean, maybe not physically muscle growth, but you notice that you got stronger pretty quick. You might have started with five pound dumbbells and you're almost within a month, you're up to ten pound dumbbells.

That's 100% increase that's huge. What's typically happening during that period of time is not that you're piling on a bunch of muscle and getting a lot stronger. What you're doing is your brain and your muscles are beginning to communicate more effectively. So your brain is trying to fire off enough muscle fibers to do the movement that you're asking it to do. And as you go to do that movement, you get more efficient and that efficiency of the communication where your brain can know what a weight is and can fire off just the right amount of muscle fibers is a really cool thing that allows you to get stronger. Now, by doing time under tension, which just basically means slowing down our tempo.

So you think normally if you were going to do, let's say push up, you would go down a count of one, you go up. So it's really almost like up up up up right. Now, to do time under tension, I'd say slow that down to maybe 2 seconds, 3 seconds. So it's 3 seconds down 3 seconds up. Another way that you can put time under tension is when you're in that down position, maybe you stay there for a pause and that pause training will keep you fired. The muscles firing longer.

That will help your brain and your muscles talk much, much more. Because as you're trying to do the movement slower, the muscle is going to have to fire off more and more muscle fibers to keep the weight under control and moving. So time under tension is a very effective way of building muscle and strength. But time under tension is not beneficial if you're training for power. So if you're trying to do something like sprints and you want to be able to sprint faster, I would not do time under tension training for your legs because you're training your muscles to fire slowly and consistently, and that's not the kind of thing you need if you're trying to build power.

So if you want to build a little bit more muscle mass and you want to get a little stronger and you're looking for a way to kind of bump up the volume of what you're doing. Time under tension is a really good tool to do that. You can take a smaller amount of weight and make it harder for your body because you slowed down your body's, firing off more muscle fibers, and that's causing more stimulus, which will cause more growth in both the muscular and the strength aspects.

Another interesting approach is called variable resistance training, and you can do variable resistance training even as a beginner. But when you really want to kind of leverage some things, this is where a variable resistance training becomes really, really good. Basically, variable resistance training just means that you're providing a variable level of resistance based on where your strength points are in a movement. So to give you an example, because there's a certain amount of muscular leverage in working each bit of weight. If you think about a bicep curl.

So you're holding a dumbbell by your side and you want to bring that dumbbell up to basically your front deltoid to curl and use the bicep to do that. At the very bottom, you're at your worst leverage point. And so the weight that you can start at that bottom is much lighter than the way you could do. If you had your hands say just six inches away from your shoulder, you're at that point have a much better leverage point and can do a lot more weight.

So that's one of the disadvantages of fixed weights like dumbbells and kettlebells. And things like that is that they aren't variable, whereas you can use bands or chains or the cambers on certain machines to change up the resistance throughout the movement. So here's an example, let's say I had that same dumbbell in my hand, and instead of just the dumbbell, I had a chain draped over that dumbbell so that as I lifted the dumbbell closer to my chest, on my shoulder, as the dumbbell came up, more chain is off the floor, meaning there's more resistance against the movement.

So that at the top, I have a much higher resistance than I did at the bottom. Cables do the same thing. I mean, sorry, bands do the same thing. That's probably what you've experienced as you stretch a band. It provides a variable resistance. And then some machines, you may notice that if you're looking at the mechanism, the camber that's lifting the weight, that it typically spins and it's pulling typically a strap or something, it's pulling that and as it turns, if that's just around camber or around pulling, it's a very straight resistance if they put a camber on there where it's like lopsided that can provide variable resistance.

The NATOs machines were really famous for this in the 70s and 80s, as they provided this kind of variable resistance through different movements. So it's very common now to see those on machines. The cool thing about resistance training when it's variable resistance is that it is providing you the maximum amount of resistance or at least a better range of resistance as you do a lift. As you get that muscular leverage going, looking for ways to add variable resistance to an exercise can help a lot. So one way that you can do this is you can use bands.

So if you strap a band to something or you're doing the band curls that's band movements that's one thing. I talked about the chains. So you'll be doing a bench press and you can have chains over the bar. So the bar goes up, more chain is off the floor and therefore more resistance. And then there are bands that you can use to assist you on, like pull ups. So you take one of those bands, you wrap them over the bar, you put your foot in that band.

And then as you go down and you're in your weakest position at the bottom, then the band is fully extended. Therefore, it's giving you resistance up to help you. And as you get closer to the top, there's less pull on that band, and it's giving you less assistance. So there's lots of different ways to use variable resistance in assisting you to have the maximum amount of weight effectively resistance in an exercise. So you're increasing the resistance based on your strength profile and the leverage of your muscles.

So variable resistance is a pretty cool tool, and it can even be used by some beginners. And if you're using bands for your workout, then you've experienced some of that.

Another one is called negatives. And I'll explain this in a little bit more detail, because sometimes it really confuses people. But in every movement, you're going to be constricting muscle. Tighten a muscle to affect that movement. And so basically, if you're doing a curl, a bicep curl we talked about you are shortening your bicep. In shortening, it that is the concentric portion of the movement.

As you shorten your bicep, that brings the dumbbell up as you go back down, that's the eccentric portion of the movement. In the eccentric portion of the movement, you are resisting that resistance. Okay, that sounds weird, but your muscle is preventing the weight, the resistance from going where it wants to go. It's fighting gravity. And that's the point where your body is building core strength, getting really stronger and that you're firing off the things you need to be stronger to hold that weight against that resistance.

So a negative is effectively where you're doing a time under tension thing, but you're only doing it during the eccentric portion of the movement. Let's say I want to improve my pull ups, and I know I can do a few, but I want to be able to do more. I want to get stronger in the pull up. What I can do is I can get myself a little step ladder, and I can step up to a point where the bar is at my chest, and then I can let my body go down slowly fighting that resistance.

So I'm working through the negative portion of that exercise. The eccentric portion of that exercise. And I can tell you that don't do this unless you really want to have DOMS, because this is one of those situations where DOMS is going to happen if you're doing this. Another way that this could be done is you could be doing a dumbbell curl or barbell curl, and someone can help you get the bar up and then you fight it going down. And so that's another very common negative resistance training that people will do.

But again, this is is very extreme. It's a lot of volume and does some damage. So you just be aware that if you're using this as a means for building strength or some mass, but mostly strength, it's a really good tool to break through some Plateau. So if you're struggling with pull ups and you've been lifting for a while and you've been doing pull ups and doing other polls and things like that to build some strength, a negative approach, getting someone to help you through the positive or using step ladder in some cases can be a good way of getting a little bit of extra volume in there.

But again, be careful because this is bordering on more of the advanced stuff, and it is something you have to manage.

Another one I wanted to bring up, and I almost didn't want to talk about this one because it's one, it's a little controversial. And two, it's not entirely safe. You be very careful with this one. And it's called Occlusion. Now occlusion is basically where we're blocking blood flow to a muscle, and then we're doing work. And there's been some studies that basically show if you're looking to build muscle mass, Occlusion can be a good tool for allowing you to add that volume of that work and changing the nature of that work.

So the muscle does some different things. So basically what you do is let's say I wanted to do a bicep curl. I would put a strap on my arm above that bicep and tighten it just enough to slow down or reduce the blood flow to my arm. And then I would do those bicep curls. I've tried Occlusion before. It's moderately effective. It's not great effective. So it's not like some of the other things that we've talked about today, but for the advanced lifter that's looking to add a little bit more mass to a limb, because obviously there are certain parts here you just can't exclude.

So it's mostly used for arms and legs. And if you're looking to add a little bit more mass to those, this could be something you do, but I doubt there's very many people over the age of 40 that really ever need to consider Occlusion training. But I wanted you to know it was out there because you might see someone doing it and wonder what it's about. Now, by no means was this an exhaustive list of all of the things that you could find in a bodybuilding magazine or a power lifting magazine?

But I wanted to put this out there from the perspective of just understanding. There are additional strategies to mix this up. People who've been lifting for years don't necessarily still just go in and do the full body workout. And if you go into a gym, you might see some people doing some relatively strange things. And I wanted to just give you an idea of why they might be doing those things. If you have any questions, I do encourage you to come message me. Let me know what's going on.

If you have a question, you see someone doing something in a gym and you're just interested in why they might be doing that thing. Just let me know now, don't videotape them, but maybe you can just describe to me what you saw them doing.

So let me kind of summarize all this. If you've gotten into resistance training and you've lifted for a while and you find yourself beginning to Plateau with the workout that you have and you want to mix it up, that's cool. Mix it up. Add additional exercises, just pull out an exchange exercises.

Make sure you're covering all your bases. Don't be the guy that doesn't lift with the legs. You need that too. You need to at least make sure you're doing something for your legs. So if you're a runner and you want to build some more upper body strength, cool, do that. But make sure what you're doing is a balanced training based on what you're trying to accomplish. Now, when you're ready to do something more and you want to move into some of these more advanced lifting approaches, you're going to have to manage the volume.

You do not want to jump into these things full board. When I mentioned negatives, I'll only do negatives for one set. So I'll do my sets pull ups or whatever I'm doing. And then if I want to do negatives, it's only going to be pretty much on the last set. So I'm finishing out and I'll do that. Manage the volume. We're over 40. We don't want to get injured. So as you're increasing volume, do it responsibly and then have a purpose. So don't just go into this and say, I want to just try these different things for the sake of trying them.

Understand each of these different approaches has a different benefit. So don't just do something for the sake of doing it. Have a purpose, a mission, a reason why you want to do a certain thing. Time under tension is great, but not for power. It's great for muscle and strength. Negatives are really good for strength. Occlusion is good for additional muscles. So just understand what the work you're doing is going to do potentially different things and do the things that help you do that. Pick the right approach.

Like I said, don't just jump in and do something. Pick the approach or approaches. And I would recommend one at a time. So you see how it works for you. Make that change. Try it. If it doesn't work, check it. It's working for you. Then maybe you keep it. But don't pile on all of these. There's no reason for you to be doing variable resistance training, time under tension, negatives and Occlusion all at the same time. There's absolutely no reason for you to do that.

So find the thing that works for you and start working it in. And if it works, then keep it. If not, toss it out and then know when to say when. I was talking to a client, and he was asking the question, when am I strong enough? When is this enough? And the reality of it is it is enough when you can live the way you want to live now. I mentioned earlier in one of the earlier episodes that I'm planning to do a tough Mudder, and so now I have very specific purposes for my training, which is what I kind of needed.

So as I go into my training, I need to build strength, particularly in my ability to pull, because a lot of the tough Mudder activities are climbing related. So the ability to pull my body weight, it also means, yeah, I got to kind of lose a little bit of body weight and I get to build some stamina and then this one other little caveat, which is probably going to be the biggest challenge for me overall. Is there's one obstacle called the Everest. And it's a ramp that you have to run up and then jump and grab.

They do have a rope there, but I'm not sure about that, but they didn't have that when I did the first one. But running and jumping requires some speed. It requires some athleticism. And so I've got to do some work to build up a little bit of speed. So my training is going to be very specific to that. Now I know that doesn't relate to this whole process of talking about intermediate weightlifting, but just recognizing that to run faster, I need power in my legs. I don't need a lot of strength in my legs.

I need power. So I need strength in my upper body. I need grip strength. I need power to be able to run a little faster for at least a sprint. And those are the things that I'll be working on as I build what I got to build, to be able to be competitive and do what I want to do in this tough mudder. And I say you need to do the same. But also then know when to say when if you get into splits and you're working out every day of the week, eventually you're probably going to break yourself so kind of build in those rest days, build in those recovery periods and then pay attention to your body because your body is going to tell you when things are not going well, and you just have to be open minded and check the ego and listen to when your body tells you to stop.

Post Show/Recap

[00:32:27.880] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[00:32:29.160] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. I do love to talk about resistance training, and sometimes I often use the word weight training, but I do my fair share of weight training and body weight training. But whenever I think about increasing what I'm doing or making things a little bit harder, I just simply think about adding weights or adding more weight to what I'm doing.

[00:32:52.800] – Allan
And for most of us, that's exactly the approach to take. You get to a certain strength level where you feel good about the amount of weight you're moving, then you're good. You're maintaining muscle, you're maintaining strength. And as long as you're not struggling with that same weight, then you're staying about where you need to, because that's quite frankly, no reason for anyone to be able to put 160 pounds over their head. The most you're ever going to probably ever try to put over your head is 25 pounds and that's just putting luggage

[00:33:22.920] – Allan
The overhead bin on an airplane. So if you want to be independent and be able to do that and then being able to open a jar, so there's things that you're going to want to do for independence purposes, but you're not going to have your body weight that you're trying to put into an overhead bin. That's just unless you're bringing a person with you, we don't want to talk about that. But just realize a functional level of strength for most of us is all we need.

[00:33:50.570] – Allan
Now I have set up to do a tough Mudder in August of 2022, and you can go to 40plusFitnesspodcast.com/Chicago. I'm on the 10 to 10:45 run of that. And so if you're interested in doing a tough Mudder, there's one in Chicago I'll be doing it. I'd love to see you. If there's enough people that are interested in, we might do a little meet up or something afterwards, have a couple of beers and have some dinner or whatever. So yeah, if you're interested in maybe doing a tough Mudder, the classic is the one I'm doing.

[00:34:23.940] – Allan
There's also a 5K in 10K. There's shorter versions of it. If you don't think you're going to be quite up to that. But that said, my training for the tough Mudder is going to fundamentally alter the way that I approach training. I'll be using several of these intermediate principles of ways to increase the volume of what I do. I'll definitely be using splits because for me to get done what I got to get done, I won't be able to get it done. Just doing two to two and a half workouts per week, on average, just doing full body, and then I'll be doing a lot of things and there'll be a lot of two days kind of things where I'll do the weight training in the morning and then later on I'll do some endurance work to get myself to a point.

[00:35:12.570] – Allan
But the way I do my training will change because I'm trying to affect different things. I'm trying to affect strengthen some places, I'm trying to affect power in others and then muscular endurance and others. And so as I go through my training more so towards the back end of it is I'm starting to specialize for that sport, if you will. But on the front end, there will be some basic things that I'll be doing to build up core competencies and strength, power and endurance so that I'm able to get that done.

[00:35:42.350] – Allan
And it won't be about muscle mass. So I'm not going to try to become a body builder for the sake of doing this event because that won't benefit me at all. In fact, the goal will be to actually get stronger and smaller, so it will change a little bit about what I do. But again, that's where these kind of these intermediate level things come in, because I will be specializing. I will be doing something different as you're doing longer runs, looking at doing an ultra or anything like that crazy stuff you did this weekend with the five K, ten K half and then full marathon, four days in a row, that kind of mileage.

[00:36:19.630] – Allan
Do you really want to have leg training in your full body workout? The Monday after you do all that and short answers? No.

[00:36:28.070] – Rachel
Definitely no. Yeah.

[00:36:31.360] – Allan
So you have opportunities to use some of these principles is intermediate principles to have volume where you need it and specialize it for the types of things you need where you need it.

[00:36:42.620] – Rachel
Well, that's exactly right. My goals right now are a little different than yours, but that's the whole point about putting these types of plans together based on your goal. And you mentioned you're not going to be adding muscle mass. You want to be leaner. So you're gonna choose activities that correspond with that goal. In the offseason, I'll probably spend a little bit more time in the gym not gaining mass. Like you said earlier, the keyword for me is maintaining strength. And so in the winter, when I'm not running as often, I can do some more of those leg days to keep some strength.

[00:37:23.240] – Rachel
And yeah, it just fluctuates with what my schedule is. And just like you, you've got your eyes set on this tough Mudder, so you'll be putting your training together to address those goals.

[00:37:34.660] – Allan
Yeah. And so in that specialization, and that's where this stuff really becomes critical as a beginner. It's really just about building fundamental skills when you first start lifting weights and to go back to the whole weight training because I will go back and forth. But just recognize, I know when I say weight training is like we don't want to go pick up iron bars in a gym. If all these sweaty guys grunting and all that stuff, it's about resistance is the end game of it. It's a little bit more technical term for what we're doing.

[00:38:05.300] – Allan
We're applying resistance to build strength, muscle endurance or muscle mass or power. And so if I use one interchangeably to me, it's all the same. But I understand that some people get turned off by terms like bodybuilding and weight lifting and all that. So just realize it's all resistance training just how you decide to do it, whether it's your body weight or its weight or its resistance bands or chains, whatever it is, it's still the same are generally the same. But the perfect example would be there's an obstacle called Everest, and it's basically it's a ramp that as you get to the top of it, it gets steeper and steeper until it's straight up.

[00:38:47.950] – Allan
And to get up this thing, you have to sprint, you have to sprint and you have to keep running. And then you reach out and try to grab the edge. Now, truly athletic people can run up, grab the edge, pull themselves up and over. But because this is a tough mudder and not a competition, there'll be plenty of people that will be sitting up there ready to help you. Oh, you reach your arms out as you're running up this thing, and they'll reach down and credit grab you and help you over.

[00:39:13.950] – Allan
So it's a very helpful, very cool vibe there. But that said, I'm not a sprinter from perspective of being 56 years old at that time and trying to sprint, I'm going to have to build some speed. I'm going to build some power into my legs. And that means when I get on like a squat or a leg press, I'm not going to have a whole ton of weight on there. And I'm not going to go slow, like time under tension, like I would normally do for muscle mass.

[00:39:41.210] – Allan
It's going to be about quick, high rep, low weight stuff to get my legs faster, pumping get with the strength relative to weight that I need to build the power so that a sprint will help me at least get myself halfway up that wall and then hopefully the other half of my body up his body length. And so hopefully at that point, I'll be able to grab the edge. And then I'll probably need one or two of those guys up there to help me over. And then I'll reach out and help the person behind me, which is what it's all about.

[00:40:15.370] – Allan
So it's a very different type of training. Then I would be doing otherwise because otherwise, like you, I'd be like, okay, add more weight, slow down time under tension splits to add volume. I'm not a big fan of super sets and monster sets. That's just not something I've ever really enjoyed when I was trying to put on muscle mass. Those were actually valuable for me, and I've used them, but I'm not a fan because I actually like to lift. I like to rest. For heavy weights,

[00:40:52.210] – Allan
I will easily take two minutes to three minutes off between each set so that I've got the maximum amount of energy to apply into the next one. And that really helps me for building muscle mass. But that's not again, not the type of training I'm going to be doing here. If I did a monster set, it would be because one I didn't feel like I had enough time to get everything in or it would be where I was actually just trying to do something fast. Again, building power in parts of my body.

[00:41:18.490] – Allan
So for my legs, I might put together a period of time where I did. I'm probably not a monster set, but a super set with two exercises that were working my legs in different ways and then just the quick back and forth between the two. So there's limited rest and trying to just raise my energy level for that. But each of these has their place. But probably the only one I'd say is just don't do is the Occlusion training. There's not a lot of reason unless you're going to try to do some kind of Masters level body building or something like that.

[00:41:58.970] – Allan
Occlusion is not safe. Unless you do it wrong. You can do it really wrong. So it's not one of those things I would encourage most people to try. I've done it before when I was trying to put on mass, and again, it shouldn't have been putting on mass because I was also training for a sport, but I don't always do the right things, but there's a lot to this stuff. There's some books, ebooks, volumes of books on how to do this stuff. So simple is good.

[00:42:32.620] – Allan
And then over time adapt because most of my clients all train for a while and it's like they get that neuromuscular connection and they start getting a lot stronger and that feels good. And then now you're starting the Plateau and you're like, oh, no. What am I going to do? And then I'm like, okay, well, you're just going to change the workout up a little bit, give you something new, some workouts, some exercises that are going to complement what you've been doing and build strength in a slightly different way.

[00:42:59.410] – Allan
And then you just keep doing that. And that can work for most people almost all the time. But then there's others. They'll say, okay, I want to take it to that next level, and that's where splits and time under tension and variable resistance. All of those things can come into play at one level or another. Not all necessarily at the same time, but at different points in time, we're going to do it. I will definitely be doing negatives. I talked a little bit about negatives. I will definitely be doing negatives to build strength in my back for pull ups.

[00:43:32.130] – Allan
there's gonna be pulls. So I will do like, I think I said it in there, that I'll climb on a ladder or step, and I'll get my chest up to the bar. And then I will hold myself in that position and slowly lower myself down as a function of trying to build more strength in my back and arms.

[00:43:53.630] – Rachel
Perfect.

[00:43:54.770] – Allan
It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt a lot. And I'll have DOMS the next day. But over time that's going to build a lot more strength in my back. I'll be able to hold positions that I wouldn't normally be able to hold because there's there's all kinds of, like monkey bars and swings, and that. So there's a lot of upper body strength required climbing ropes, all of that. So I'll want to build that that up to a really high strength level and one of the fastest ways for me to get there,

[00:44:27.350] – Allan
again, someone who's lifted for a while will be these negatives. But I would not encourage most people to do negatives unless you just really want to hurt or you want to build a much stronger back than you would normally have if you became a goal. Like Rachel, you said, okay, I want to do ten foot pull ups. I want to be able to do ten pullups. We would start with just you using doing lap pull downs and some other rows to get your body basically strong. And then we'd get a resistance band, and we would use that resistance band to assist you or have Mike stand behind you and give you a little bit of assist on your pull up, and you'll be able to start being able to do pull ups.

[00:45:06.560] – Allan
You'll get to a strength level, you can then it's just a function of doing more volume to get to where you can do. The ten that you want to do is your goal that if that is the goal, but a way to get past even that would be then as an intermediate lifter to start looking at negatives or effectively, maybe even attaching weight to your torso or your legs. So you're pulling more weight up than just your body weight. So then that might be again, another strategy that I use to increase the strength that I have in my back.

[00:45:41.560] – Rachel
Wow, that all sound like really wonderful methods that we could try to employ in the gym when it's time to do something different.

[00:45:50.460] – Allan
But not all at the same time.

[00:45:52.240] – Rachel
I know. One thing at a time, right?

[00:45:56.790] – Allan
I don't want you having straps around your biceps, and then you're doing variable resistance, negatives and trying to stay time under tension the whole time. Don't.

[00:46:09.680] – Rachel
But this is great because like I said earlier, whenever I think about making any advances in the gym, I'm sure a lot of people think the same way. Just add pounds, just add weight to your weights. And obviously there's a lot of other tactics that could be employed.

[00:46:26.300] – Allan
And no, like I said earlier, that's a perfect approach if you're getting there. But there's a point you're saying, okay, I did X weight, and then I did X plus five, and then I did that plus 5. And then it's like, okay, now I'm stuck at this weight. And so let's say your original weight was 40 pounds, and then you're doing 45, and then now you're doing 50. But now you just don't seem to be able to go past that. Every time you try to put 55, you get stuck, you're like, okay, I wanted to do this many, and I didn't.

[00:46:58.580] – Allan
And I can't yet. I can't yet. And so the question will be is, what can we do then, to get you past that? Because just adding more weight won't necessarily get you there. If you can't move that weight so we can look at things that would change it up a little bit and be a little bit different, taking long, sometimes even taking a longer rest before you try to do the next set can be all that you need to get that weight moving. But you can look at some of these strategies and say, okay, what's a way for me to do this.

[00:47:31.880] – Allan
I probably should have put in here now that I'm thinking about it. And that's called drop sets. And so let's say you're trying to do deadlifts and you're doing 50 and you want to be able to do 55. I might tell you. Okay, put the two and a half on the outside of the callers, start doing them, and then maybe you only get three done. Pull those two and a half off and finish your set. And so that drop set there again. It's just a strategy.

[00:47:59.340] – Allan
There's a lot of them. But I should have probably covered that one, how they think about it. But it's just there's these strategies. And so if you're struggling with something, particularly with your weight lifting, in this case, because we're talking about, come on to the Facebook group, ask that question, say, hey, I'm stuck at this or this isn't working the way I wanted it to or I want to understand this concept a little bit better. That's why we have the Facebook group. You can go to 40PlusFitnesspodcast.com/group

[00:48:27.890] – Allan
and ask any of those questions. I'm on there regularly. I've been on there less, of course, over the last few weeks because I'm spending time with family and taking some vacation and doing that. So I haven't been out there nearly as much as I was. But as this goes live, I'm there. I'm there for you. So if you have questions about weightlifting, resistance training, all of that, just feel free to come out there and give us a call. Let us know what's going on.

[00:48:51.480] – Rachel
Perfect. And you've got so much experience in the gym. I appreciate all your insight on this. This is great.

[00:48:57.690] – Allan
Well, thank you. But I'm serious about that colonoscopy. So we're going to get you on the line. We're going to have a conversation about your experience there. And because it is something we all need to be considering. I'm looking forward. I'm actually looking forward vicariously experiencing this three.

[00:49:16.750] – Rachel
I appreciate that. I'll take copious notes and I'll let you guys know how it goes.

[00:49:23.140] – Allan
Awesome. Well, Rachel, you'll enjoy your week and I'll talk to you next week.

[00:49:26.590] – Rachel
Thanks. Bye now.

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