Let's Say Hello

00:01:20.450] – Coach Allan

Hey, Ras.

[00:01:21.360] – Coach Rachel

Hey, Allan. How are you today?

[00:01:23.150] – Coach Allan

I'm doing all right. Good. Tammy is back in Bocas.

[00:01:26.160] – Coach Rachel

Yay. I'm glad she's back. How's she feeling?

[00:01:29.380] – Coach Allan

She's Well, she's still recovering. Sure. It was a bigger deal than we thought when she went in. So the recovery is a lot slower than we thought. But she's going through that. Everything's good. It's just this get through it, do it, that thing. But she is back home, which makes my life a thousand-fold better.

[00:01:48.420] – Coach Rachel

Good. Well, I hope she gets a little rest and recovers quickly, and then you can get your rest.

[00:01:54.370] – Coach Allan

Yeah.

[00:01:54.950] – Coach Rachel

Eventually.

[00:01:56.070] – Coach Allan

Eventually, yeah. So how are things up there?

[00:01:58.920] – Coach Rachel

Pretty close to I'm the same. I'm on my way into surgery in the next couple of days, and I'll be doing the same thing she is, resting and recovering afterwards. It's just a minor eye surgery. Hopefully, I'll get some better vision out of it, and we'll see how it goes, but it's fine.

[00:02:12.810] – Coach Allan

Oh, good. I'm hopeful for a speedy, easy recovery.

[00:02:16.350] – Coach Rachel

Me too. Thank you.

[00:02:17.810] – Coach Allan

All right. So are you ready to talk about how to get and stay fit over 40?

[00:02:23.310] – Coach Rachel

Sure.

Episode

How to get and stay fit over 40.

So today, I want to take a couple of topics that I've talked about over time, and I want to put them together for you so you can come up with a concrete plan for how you can get and stay fit. So if you've followed me for any period of time, you know I'm a big proponent of making a commitment. Anytime you want to make a change in your life, it has to start with a commitment. This is not a decision, this is not a resolution, this is not a goal at this point, even. You need to commit to change if you want to change. And that's going to mean you're going to change what you do and how you do it. And it has to have a pretty solid backing. Now, when I talk about commitment, I've always said that commitment is a combination of your why and your vision. Now, the why for most of us can be pretty easy. I've told my story, I wanted to be a participant in my daughter's life and not a spectator, and that required me to significantly improve my fitness.

This year, I'm planning a 10-year anniversary trip with my wife to Greece and Italy, and that's going to require some physical things. We went on a bed and breakfast, and I'm often the porter, carrying bags and bottles of water and things around the house. So I need to stay reasonably healthy and fit for who I am today. And I'm going to talk about that in a short term, long term, medium term range. But the point of it is you have to have an idea of who you mean to be. If you know your fitness is not where you want it to be, you need to get a good view of what that's going to look like. Now, the why is always typically about really a who. It's usually about someone else, but it's often, yes, about how you want to live your life, what you want to be. And so building a compelling why, having a very emotional reason behind this is going to help you go forward. But going forward really means you got to know where you're going. And that's where the vision comes in, and some people struggle with this. I like to break down my vision in four different buckets, if you will.

There's the short term, which for sake of argument, I'll say, is six weeks to maybe six months. There's midterm, which is about a year to maybe five years. There's long term, which is five years and longer, maybe up to 15. And then there's lifetime. How do you want to age? How do you want to live the rest of your life? And so if you break down your vision and think about what I need to be and do in maybe the next six weeks to six months of my life. As I'm recording this, we're approaching summer. So maybe it's a summer adventure, something you want to do, a hike, something else you want to do. Maybe there's going to be some kayaking, you're planning a trip. But there's some things you want to be able to do this summer that you can't necessarily do right now. Midterm is going to be something like, how do I want to live the five years of my life? I'm currently 58 years old, so five years is going to probably put me really close to retirement. During my working years, what do I physically need to be able to do to take care of myself, take care of my businesses, and take care of the people around me.

And then the longer term, and this is where long term care of being able to take care of people, being able to live a very adventurous life with my grandchildren that will likely be on the way soon, and just being able to enjoy retirement and being able to look at my life and say, Okay, I didn't just work, work, work, to not be able to do things going forward. So the longer term. And then, of course, lifetime. You've probably heard me say the joke, but it's not really a joke. I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105. Now, that implies a lot of things. Well, obviously, it implies I live a good long life, but also means that my health and fitness keep up with that, and I'm not dependent on other individuals to do things for me. It means I'm able to be there maybe for others instead. And so for me, part of this whole process is making sure that I'm capable of taking care of myself and doing other things, and that's my long-term goal. And so as I put that whole picture together, hopefully now I've shown you, okay, there's short term goals and things I'm going to do that I know are on the horizon that I could train for today.

There are things that a little bit further out that I know that maybe I just need to retain strength and muscle mass and capacity to be able to do those things as I go forward. And then the longer term, I'm starting to look at how I can take care of myself for longevity and making sure I'm maintaining muscle mass and bone density and things like that. So again, I'm living a good, long, healthy life. So when you roll it out like that, doesn't this make a lot more sense? So now that I know what I want my vision to look like, and hopefully as you sit down and start thinking about what is the next six months, five years, 10, 15 years and then beyond, what does that look like for you? Recognize that you have huge opportunities to focus your attention on the things that matter most. So for most of us, we're going to need to do some prioritization because we can't just go out and train everything, particularly when we're first starting out. Now, I would dare say for pretty much everybody over the age of 50 that's looking to get fit and stay fit, you're probably going to need to include include a strength training regimen.

Every one of my clients, regardless of what their overall goals are, is going to have a strength component to their fitness. I feel it's absolutely necessary for you to reach any fitness vision that you might have is to do strength training. Strength training, beyond just making you more capable and strong, also helps you retain and build and maintain muscle mass. It also helps you build and maintain bone density, both of which are really, really important as we get older. So as I start looking at that 15 years down the line, I start looking at that long term, I start looking at the lifetime, really being strong, having good muscle mass Having good bone density is really important for me to have the independence and not have debilitating injuries if I were to take a fall or something like that. The next one I want to talk about is stamina. Now, stamina is more of a short term thing. You can build stamina in a relatively short period of time if you have focused training on it. So as I mentioned, I am planning a trip in May to go do some hiking and hanging out with my wife on our anniversary trip.

I fully intend to be able to have the stamina to do the things. She was telling me about some place where there's a bunch of steps. She's like, I'm not sure. There's another one where, yeah, they say, Don't ride the mules because you'll smell like mule for the whole rest of the day. So we're talking about how we're going to get through and do the things we want to do and have the capacity to do that. I know I'll have it because I'm working right now to have it. So, stamina is an important aspect of being able to keep up, to do the things you want to do. But it is something that you can build for short periods of time and push back and forth. So you don't have to always be working on stamina, but probably going to have some stamina work in your repertor as you go forward. Mobility is a big one. As we get older, we tend to not move around as much and not move around like we did when we were children. And as such, we lose mobility. That loss of mobility can be reflected in our movement patterns, which makes us more prone to injury.

It can make us more prone to falling. So maintaining mobility, much like strength, is something that I think all of us should probably be doing all the time. Balance is another one. As we age, our balance tends to go predominantly because we get less strength. We lose muscle mass, we lose strength. That's a big part of it. But balance is also about fear, and it's about movement. And so the more naturally you move, the more often you move, you're going to notice that your balance gets better. You can train balance. So this is not something that you have to worry that you're just going to lose. You can train for balance, and I do that often with my clients. So things you can do on a regular basis. Again, as we get older, starting early, maintaining our balance is really, really important. And then the final bit, I'll call it speed and sports-specific. So if you're a golfer, if you're someone who plays tennis, if you like hiking or kayaking, any of those things, there may be something sports-specific that you would want to make sure that you are able to maintain so that you can continue to do those sports.

My grandfather stopped playing golf because his balance was out and he had difficulty swinging the club. That was something he could have continued to train for that particular sport, but he didn't, and therefore, he wasn't capable, and fear drove him away from trying. So again, looking at what you want in the future, who you want to be in the future, can help you prioritize the items that you need to train so that you know that you're training to be that person. So after we have this whole idea of where we want to be, now we can sit down and we can plot out how we're going to get there, and this is where goals come into play. I've talked about A Smart goals. I will link to that in the show notes. I'm not going to take you through that process again. But basically, goals are really important because you can set almost like little mile markers along your course of, I've got this trip in May. What training do I need to be doing now, between now and then? How many times per week do I need to train for that? So I know over the course of the next six, eight weeks, I'll be stepping up my stamina training so I can get up those steps.

I'll be continuing to do my strength training because we're rolling in to the summer months, and I intend to be a little bit more active this summer doing some things like kayaking rather than just walking the island. I plan to do a lot more kayaking and kayak fishing. And so to do that, I'm going to need some strength I'm going to need some stamina, and obviously the ability to paddle my kayak and manage that. But all those are things that I will have prioritized and have goals for to know that I'm going to meet that. Now, most of the goals are going to be activity-based, action-based, as I say. And so it's like, what do I need to do today to be the person I want to be six weeks from now, six months from now, six years from now? And I need to start working for those little goals. Okay? Now, I'm not going to say this is completely easy. You can set your plan, plot your goals, and everything's just going to work out because life gets in a way. As Mike Tyson has said, one of my favorite quotes, Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

And so all of us are going to deal with life events, injuries, illnesses. Those are going to come around, and we have to deal with them. Does that mean we quit? No. It just means that the goals we set for ourselves need be realistic within the realms of what's going on in our life. I can want to get stronger in my upper body, but if I've broken my elbow, broken my arm, I'm not going to be able to lift weights with my upper body because of that injury. So I need to prioritize something else for the short term to make sure that I get there. So when you're facing an illness, an injury, or some other life event, you still want to lean into your vision because your vision is probably Probably not going to change. Now, you may say, I wanted to train for a half marathon for this upcoming May or late spring, and you're training for that right now, and you do something to your ankle or to your foot, and you realize that that particular half marathon is probably not going to happen. So the question you ask yourself is, what other training and things do I need to do?

Well, first, obviously, rehabilitating the ankle or foot needs to be priority number one, because that's going to impact maybe not just this short term thing, but if you don't do it right, could impact all of the other things that you expected in your life thereafter. So proper rehab could be your primary goal, and that's completely appropriate. You might say, this is a good time for me to work on mobility and maybe balance. And so those are things that you could work on. Even if stamina and some strength training might be out, there's still things that you can be doing to make sure that you're moving toward those outward visions. And so as you go forward, you begin to adjust your action plan based on what's coming in front of you and what happens around you. And that's the way you put it all together. So to summarize all of this, if you want to be fit or get fit and stay fit over 40, here are the basic things you need to do. You need to define what that is in your vision and be thinking about that vision, not just from what you want to accomplish in the short term, but what do you want your entire aging pathway to look like?

What are the things that will be happening in your life that you're going to want to be able to do? I want to be strong and healthy and happy going to my anniversary trip. I want to be able to do all these crazy fun things with my grandkids so that with them, like I was with my daughter, I can be a participant and not a spectator. I want to be able to have a long, fruitful life where I'm capable of taking care of myself and doing the things necessary to live life to the fullest. So as you sit down and you plot that out, now it becomes very clear what my short term goals need to look like so I can plot the course and do the things that are necessary to get me to be that person. So when you wrap this all up, basically what I'm saying is that fitness is no longer about exercise and fitness is no longer about a look. Fitness This is fit for task, meaning you're training to be the person you need to be when you need to be that person. And putting it all together in this way is a really big step towards staying motivated because it's not just, Oh, I have to exercise every day or three times a week or this or that.

It's really a purpose-driven event. Every time you go in, you are training to be the future you. And when you go in with that mindset, you'll work harder, you'll get more done, and you'll live a better life.

Post Show/Recap

[00:17:30.320] – Coach Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:17:34.780] – Coach Rachel

Hey, Allan. This is a really great outline for the whole idea of how to get and stay fit over 40. There's a lot that we can talk about. I'd like just to start with having a commitment and having a really big vision. I feel like it's different at this age, specifically, because this is a time where we don't need to be passive. We don't need to be willy-nilly about it. We can really come up with a good vision and a good commitment and just set our sights on how we want to be in a few years or a dozen years from now.

[00:18:07.800] – Coach Allan

Yeah. When I originally thought of this topic, I was thinking of it in terms of limiting beliefs. What you believe about yourself, do you believe in yourself? Kind of thing. Sure. And that's where my head was. And I thought, well, let's flip that on its head. What's the opposite of limiting beliefs? And it's the unlimited belief Yeah. Of how awesome your life can be. I think too often people look at it and say, well, of course, I can't do those things anymore, or I won't be able to do those things anymore, or all the stuff, the aches and pains. I've got this, I've got that, I can't do this, I can't do that, I'm going to have to cancel this and not do this. And that just bugs me. I can't wrap my mind around that because I just have this tendency to set really big visions in front of myself. And it's like I wanted to be able to do a tough mudder with my daughter, and that was stupid. It was stupid to sign up for it when I did. I had no business trying to do it, but I did it because I told myself I could.

[00:19:22.130] – Coach Allan

I set that big vision. I set all of the goals for that in line and said, Okay, this is what I have to accomplish Push, and I have to do it every day. I have to be on this every day. So my nutrition had to be on point. My movement had to be on point. Recovery had to be on point. And so I just pushed and pushed and pushed, and I was successful. And I joke about a lot of things, but I say, I don't know what my grandkids are going to be doing, but I want to be doing it with them. Now, to put that into context, I'm 58 years old, and our daughters just got married last year. So So we might have the first actual birth grandchild when I turn 60, which means that if they're in their late teens, 20s, I'm going to be almost 80, if not 80 years old. And if they want to do a tough mother, and I'm going to be the freaking 80-year-old out there doing a tough mutter. That's awesome. You could call me crazy, and I'll agree. But when I talk about vision, that's literally what I mean.

[00:20:29.910] – Coach Allan

It's like aiming for the stars of saying, if it were wonderful, if it were perfect, if everything worked out, where would you be? And so for me, it's just, what do I need to do today to have myself in condition so that if I get that phone call 20 years from now, Hey, grandpa, let's go do a tough mudder. I'm doing a tough mudder. You can train and be ready. I'm training and being ready. And it's not that I can't be ready for it all the time. It's even athletes take an off-season, and then they condition up for their season, and they do their thing. Because we can't necessarily stay that way all the time. That's not healthy either. So just having my body in a good general condition, and then, yes, training for it properly, I'll do it. But it could be as simple as, yeah, when they're younger and they want to do a 5K, it's like, Pick up and do a 5K. That I can do without much, if any, training. I'm there. I'm almost there. The longer race, the mud runs, all the obstacle course stuff, that's going to take some conditioning to get myself ready for.

[00:21:35.610] – Coach Allan

But I want to be there to do that. And if my wife needs me, what is 20 years going to be when she's 75? And so she's I'm going to maybe need some help. Can I do that? And the short answer is, I will be able to do that. Okay. And so that's why I wanted to break it down, because I think it's easy for someone to think fit for task. It's like, okay, I can do the things I want to do today. I'm good. And I can say, maybe you are, but are there things you're not doing that you would like to do today? And the answer to that question is probably yes. But are there things you're going to want to do tomorrow that are going to require you to do things today? And the answer to that question is absolutely.

[00:22:20.540] – Coach Rachel

Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, that's how I like how you broke down the different planning goals, midterm being one to five years of planning, long term, five or longer, and lifetime of planning. Those are all really good concepts to consider. What do you have going on in the next five years? I imagine you could probably do another tough mudder in the next few years pretty easily, can train for it easily, get ready for it easily. I hope to get back to marathoning within the next five years. And then in 20 years, I'll be in my mid-70s. I hope to be able running still at that time, maybe even age myself into some of the like Boston Marathon races is if I could keep up some basic fitness. But yeah, I have no intention of ever sitting in a rocking chair for very long periods of time. There's a lot to do and see in this world. I want to be active. And some of these things that you suggest to prioritize, like the strength training and some mobility and balance, these are all things that are really easy to work into a weekly schedule and to focus on periodically and then maybe throw in a race or tough mudder periodically as Yeah.

[00:23:30.380] – Coach Allan

Anything that's going to challenge you and keep you motivated and keep you moving, that's going to run. But it's even it's just the simple stuff of, okay, can I pick up a 44 pound bottle of water off the floor and lift it up and put it on the counter?

[00:23:47.510] – Coach Rachel

Mm-hmm.

[00:23:48.340] – Coach Allan

Okay. That's something you do. It's something I do practically every day. I have to be able to do it without injuring myself. I need to train to do that because eventually, if I just do that, there'll be a point where I won't be able to do that because I didn't train myself to be physically slightly better than that.

[00:24:09.630] – Coach Rachel

Right. For sure. Yeah. It's important to stay active. And I've got 40 bag pounds or 40-pound bags of salt I got all up and downstairs. So it's something that I just do weekly. And if I stop doing it, I don't know who else is going to do it. So, yeah, it's just fit for task. It's a great concept.

[00:24:30.110] – Coach Allan

Excellent. All right. Well, I will talk to you next week.

[00:24:34.520] – Coach Rachel

Great. Take care, Allan.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Another episode you may enjoy

Do you believe in yourself?

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:03:15.390] – Coach Allan

Hello, Ras.

[00:03:16.450] – Coach Rachel

Hey, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:18.060] – Coach Allan

I'm doing well, I'm doing well. Staying busy. We're heading into busy season at Lula's. So that always comes with a good influx of guests coming in and guests going out. Like, we had three check ins today, so it's like this bring me in a whole new kindergarten class. Idiosyncrasies and things that those new guests like and do it. But yeah, and it was interesting. We had an event this weekend. When I say an event, it's kind of one of those things when you want to tell a story, it's a story about running a bed and breakfast.

[00:03:50.700] – Coach Allan

Well, there's this one girl that she stayed with us a couple of times. She'll come into town and she's usually only in for one night and then she well, another thing that this girl does that Tammy doesn't really like, I don't care, but she'll go pick up a guy and then she'll bring him up to a room and that's been kind of her thing. And I think she comes to Bocas so she can do just that and not, you know, whatever. It's her life, not my life. So again, you do you, I do me. That's my philosophy in life and everything.

[00:04:17.170] – Coach Allan

But apparently this guy got really drunk and was walking around the hall naked, and they're making a ton of noise. And it was bad enough that it was Chinese New Year here, and it's pretty much celebrated pretty big because there's a pretty large Chinese community within Panama and particularly within Bocas. So it's a holiday, and all you got to do is give Panamanians a reason to have a party and boom, it's off. So there was a party going on that night, saturday night, and that was going on. And then so that went on till about midnight, and they finished at midnight. I was like, I was kind of excited because, you know, I went to sleep. But I do wake up every once in a while throughout the night.

[00:04:54.200] – Coach Allan

I woke up and it was after midnight. I'm like, oh, they're not doing it? That's great because sometimes they'll go to 04:00 am and then you can hear them out there throwing up.

[00:05:02.530] – Coach Rachel

Gosh!

[00:05:03.400] – Coach Allan

You do you, I'll do me. That's. Again, not judging, but that's just normal. They stopped their party early, but apparently the guests upstairs and they were in the back, so I didn't really hear them much, but apparently they're making quite a bit of racket and all that.

[00:05:17.770] – Coach Allan

And again, then Tammy didn't sleep because the party and then, of course, all the racket and she hears everything. I don't hear anything if you come in my room and as soon as you wake me up, yeah, I'm going to kill you. But until then, I won't even know you're in there. But she heard it all. She was awake the whole night, so she was already kind of grumpy when she woke up because she needs her sleep too. And she woke up and started looking at the video and saw the video. This guy was walking down the hall naked, leaning against someone's door and all that. And then, so Tammy is livid.

[00:05:49.720] – Coach Allan

And I'm like, just go in the room. Just go in the room. Stay away. I'll manage the morning. Because you're going to take someone's head off.

[00:05:57.170] – Coach Rachel

Yeah.

[00:05:57.700] – Coach Allan

he'd already done it a couple of times to me. And I'm like, well, I'm used to it. I don't need my head. But anyway, she saw like now. So here this girl comes downstairs and she's probably 29 years old, you know, not young, not old. She's like right in kind of that age where you should know better, but it's her.

[00:06:12.230] – Coach Allan

And so I just pulled her aside and I said, look, last night I said, that's just not going to work here. And I went through the whole process. We have single women that will stay here. And I said, that would not make them feel safe. So we have families that are here. And I said, that definitely doesn't go with a family atmosphere we want to create here. And I said, our guests. You disturbed our guests. And I'm like, so that's just not going to work here.

[00:06:35.780] – Coach Allan

So she respected it. That was a mistake. And this thing happened. And that she's no longer welcome at Lula's. I think she's the second person, maybe. No, she's the third person I think we've had to ban in a year and a month. But it is what it is. Some people are out, they're not at home. The way they are going to act is different because it's not around people that they care about what they think. And so, yeah, it's kind of interesting but those are the stories. It's like you tell the story, so at some point down the line, yeah, it's going to be a book.

[00:07:05.960] – Coach Allan

All the crazy things that happen when you're running a bed and breakfast is naked guy in the hallway, the smoker who says he's not smoking but you literally see smoke coming out his window. All those kind of things.

[00:07:18.490] – Coach Rachel

Oh my gosh, what an adventure. Always an adventure.

[00:07:22.180] – Coach Allan

How has your week been?

[00:07:23.430] – Coach Rachel

Good. We were really busy this weekend. We are replacing the sink vanity in one of our bathrooms. And, you know, with a home project, nothing goes right.

[00:07:35.650] – Coach Allan

How many trips to Home Depot?

[00:07:37.830] – Coach Rachel

Several. Too many trips. They know me there. But we're getting it done. And it's something Mike and I can be pretty proud of. Once it's all finished, there's still this touch up and what not needs to get done. But we're really happy we were able to accomplish this. This is not in our wheelhouse of things to do, so it was a pretty proud accomplishment. And as I was mentioning to you earlier, I'm hauling salt, softener bags, 40 pound bags of salt up and down the stairs. We have a water cooler, so I've got those big five gallon jugs of water I'm hauling around the house. And I just took a second this weekend to realize how strong I feel right now, just being able to do these creative tasks, these heavy lifting. I'm just so proud of myself for being strong enough to be able to do these things. And your fit for task program that you've talked about in the past, it just was ringing in my head all weekend long, and I'm just so happy for it.

[00:08:31.300] – Coach Allan

Yeah, well, good for you. I'm glad you had it because there's a pride that comes in being independent, because you easily could have just said, hey, Mike, do you mind taking the water? Yes. And Mike would have done it. He's a cool guy and he's strong and he's fit and he's capable, but you were strong and fit and capable and just said, no, my water, too. I'm going to move it and do it. It's not that you have to move five gallon jugs of water at home, but all the time, all the time they do. We order probably about ten of those a week, so I'm carrying them around all the time and luggage. But again, it's just where I want to be. It's what I want to do. And it's that thing of I'm going to still want to do these things and be able to do these things 10, 15, 20 years from now, so I'm not dependent on other people to help me get things done. They bring the water, we put it on the porch, and if I weren't capable, it would sit out there, and if I couldn't find someone to help me, then it's going to sit out there overnight and someone's probably going to steal it.

[00:09:33.560] – Coach Allan

Oh, gosh. Rather than struggle with any pick them up and carry them and do it. And so it's one of the things I'm glad to hear that you were able to do that, and the pride and the strength and just the knowing that you're capable and you didn't injure yourself, and it was just done. And you didn't wake up the next morning saying, oh, my God, what did I do?

[00:09:55.090] – Coach Rachel

Yeah, right.

[00:09:57.790] – Coach Allan

Well, you may move in a way that you hadn't before, but at the same time, that's a good feeling because you know you're getting yourself stronger to be able to do that again, better next time.

[00:10:07.300] – Coach Rachel

Yeah. I'm so proud.

[00:10:09.490] – Coach Allan

You should be.

[00:10:10.420] – Coach Rachel

Thanks.

[00:10:10.760] – Coach Allan

Well, now the question is, Rachel, are you capable of changing your health and fitness?

[00:10:15.900] – Coach Rachel

Oh, you know it!

[00:10:17.000] – Coach Allan

All right, let's have that conversation.

Episode – Are You Capable of Changing Your Health and Fitness?

I want to tell you a little story. There was a kid, a fifth grader named Michael Pigford. He was the son of a military man living on a military base at Fort Meade, Maryland. He was a natural athlete, big and strong, even at that young of an age, and he was pretty darn good at karate, too. Now, Michael wanted to join the football team, and his friend, who lived in the same apartment building, decided he wanted to play, too.

His friend was around the same age, but he was much smaller and not nearly as strong an athletic as Michael. But he showed up at every practice, and whenever there was a drill, he and Michael did the drill together. Now, Michael was this gifted athlete, as I said, strong and big, and he made the team. His friend did not. The coach went over to the friend's family's house and explained to the parent that he just wasn't big enough, strong enough, fast enough, or skilled enough to be on the team.

Now, Michael went on to have a great football season, winning several of the awards because he was by far the best player on the team. His friend watched from the stands, and in the meantime, his friend joined the school band and found out he actually had a little bit of a talent for playing the trombone, although it wasn't his first love.

So we roll around to the next season. What do you think Michael's friend did? He really wanted to play football, but he was still smaller than the other kids, and he hadn't had practices or games to learn any of the skills. What would you do? Would you say or think, I just need to do this band thing because that's what I'm good at? Would you think or say, I'm just not genetically gifted as an athlete?

Now, let's talk about your health and fitness. Have you struggled to do certain things staying away from junk food, sleeping well, running yoga, or doing a fitness class where everyone else just seems to be a lot better than you? Or maybe you're so intimidated by health and fitness that you don't even try? I mean, there's that free weight section back there with all the guys in it, and you don't even want to walk back there.

Are you listening to an inner voice that's telling you you aren't enough? That coach who's telling the parents that the kid overheard, he wasn't enough, he wasn't big enough, he wasn't strong enough, he wasn't fast enough, he just wasn't good enough. Is your internal dialogue telling you that? If that's what you're hearing from your internal dialogue, you probably have what's called a fixed mindset. So what is a fixed mindset? A fixed mindset is the belief that while you may be good at some things, you suck at others. Having a fixed mindset can show up in many different ways. Seeing challenges is a problem to be avoided. Believing that you're either good at something or not. Valuing talent instead of effort, giving up in the face of obstacles, viewing critical feedback is something to ignore. Actually, it bothers you. It offends you when someone gives you feedback. So here's the rub if you have a fixed mindset about the things that you're trying to do for health and fitness, your chances of making it happen are very, very low. What you need is a growth mindset. So you may be asking, what is a growth mindset?

A growth mindset is the belief that anything, a capacity, an ability, a personality trait can be improved with sustained effort. Having a growth mindset helps you do a lot of things, including focus on the process, over the results, focus on the behaviors over the outcomes. You respond productively to feedback and actually enjoy it. That may be not enjoy it, but you want that feedback. You keep persevering when things are hard, when you have setbacks, and you learn from your failures and mistakes, maybe even eventually enjoy them. And you look at things realistically as a constant work in process. So in general, a growth mindset is going to help you deal with ups and downs of life. As you move towards your health and fitness goals, I think you can kind of see the difference. A fixed mindset is going to tell you, well, I'm not good at running, I'm not good at yoga, so I'm not going to do that. Someone tells you if you did this and you did that, you would do better. And you see that as a slight versus an opportunity. With a growth mindset, you like that feedback. That feedback is helpful.

If you fail at something, you just know that you haven't learned what you need to know or haven't developed what you need to have to be good at, what you want to be good at. So there are two different ways of looking at a problem and health and fitness can be a big problem that we're trying to overcome. And there's going to be a lot of ups and downs during this period of time. So I want to take you through a little exercise. This is probably going to require you to get a pen and a paper and maybe a highlighter, a highlighter if you have it. But this is going to take a little bit of time. So this is probably going to be a stop and start type of episode. If you draw driving, you can listen through. But I would say come back to this part because this is where you're actually going to figure out a little bit of this. Okay? So what I want you to do is get that paper and I want you to write in this journal and I want this to be free flow. So not something you're stopping and thinking about, not something you're editing.

Just write down what comes to your mind. And then at this point as you go through this, there's going to be three things I kind of want you to do. Okay? First, I want you to write down several things related to your health and fitness that you're not good at and why you're not good at that thing. Okay? So for me, one example is I'm not really good at yoga, and I'm not really good at yoga because I just really haven't emphasized mobility and flexibility in my training over the years. And so I'm not as mobile and I'm not as flexible as I should be. So that's my reason why. But I'm not good at it, and I know why I'm not good at it, but I want you to think about it in your own terms. Why are you not good at something that, you know, from a health and fitness perspective is important for you? Second, now I want you to write down several things related to health and fitness that you are good at and why you're good at that thing. Similarly, just there's going to be things you're good at and things you're not good at.

Okay? Now set that list down, and with a pen or the highlighter, I want you to underline or highlight the statements that are fact based. Okay? So if you wrote anything that's not a fact, I want you to skip it. But if it's a fact, like, my joints hurt or this happens or that happens, if it's a fact, I want you to highlight it or underline it. Okay, so take a few minutes. You might want to pause this episode here so you can take the time to go through each three of those steps. Okay, so you're going to list things that you're not good at and why you're not good at them. You're going to list things you're good at and why you're good at them. And then with the pin or highlighter, I want you to go back to that list and see how many things that came out of that free flow are true and how many are false. Okay, so highlight the things that are true or underline the things that are true. All right, so if you took that ten minutes to pause this. Good. Welcome back. Okay, now the statements that you made that are not fact based, so some of those statements are probably not highlighted or underlined.

They are self limiting beliefs, and that is a part of a fixed mindset. So these are typically opinions. They're typically exaggerated, sometimes grossly exaggerated. And what you'll probably find is some of those may have words like never, always, and can't, and those will stick out to you. Also look for the ones that point to flaws about who you are and what you lack, for example, genetics or willpower. So you may say, I struggle to not eat sweets because I'm lazy and I don't have any willpower. I struggle to do my workouts in the evening because I'd rather sit on the couch and watch Netflix. Now, wanting to sit on the couch and watch Netflix is probably the truth. It's probably a fact. But I think you can kind of see that's not really something that's true true. If you really want to do this thing. So I want you to kind of map out this process and think about the statements that you just freeflow wrote. How much of that is identifying a fixed mindset? How much of that is a self limiting belief? That's not actually true. So now you've started the process of doing the fixed mindset piece and the growth mindset.

Some of this list might actually have been growth mindset, where you're talking about, I have a rocking program, and I struggle to go as far as I want to, but I'm working on it there. Hear the difference, okay? Until you know your enemy in this health and fitness journey, you're not going to be able to defeat it. So when I talk about being capable of hitting your health and fitness goals, this is where the rubber hits the road, okay? As you look at the statements that aren't highlighted or underlined, if the state I want you to think about it in these terms. So there's like, three levels here, because these are all very important to how you can do this next step, okay? So if the statement is completely false, what I want you to do is take a moment, and I want you to write down an affirmation with the truth. Okay? So I'll give you an example. You may say, for example, I'm not disciplined. Okay? If you're disciplined in some aspects of your life, but maybe not this, that's a completely false statement. You are disciplined in certain aspects of your life.

So another way to write this as an affirmation is, I am disciplined in all aspects of my life that I make a priority. Okay? So that affirmation now is something I want you to keep with you. You wrote down that you are not disciplined, which was not true, because there are parts of your life that you care about that you are disciplined. If your child needs to take a bath every night, you're bathing your child. If you need to pick up your spouse from work every afternoon, you're picking up your spouse. So those things happen. There is some discipline in there. You just need to apply it here. This needs to be important to you. This needs to be a priority, as we talked about before. So that's the point is you need to show discipline in all aspects of your life that you make a priority. Now, when you're writing an affirmation, it's important to write it in the present tense. This is not I will be. This is I am disciplined in all aspects of my life. Okay? Now, some of the statements that you wrote might be partially true, okay? Remember when we did those never and always we may say, I always make excuses to skip my workouts.

Okay? Now, do you always skip your workouts? Do you always make excuses to skip your workouts? And the answer is no. I do some of my workouts, but I do make excuses for the workouts that I don't do. So I would rewrite that as a statement. Often look for excuses to not work out. But I know if I remind myself why I have to do it, I will. Okay, this takes your fixed mindset limiting belief statement of, I always make excuses to a, I often do this, but I know if I do this thing, I'll get better at this. If I remind myself why I have to do this, I will do this. I will get better. So see how you can take a partial statement and now turn it into a growth mindset statement. Okay, so that's a series of those. Now, the final set is this statement is really something you do struggle with. So this is actually you haven't made any progress, and now there's a statement, and here you are. But, you know, it's probably true, but it's just really a struggle. It's not something you can't do. So maybe there's some of even these true statements that you made that are things you're not good at.

You've made these statements and you could still look at them now and say, whoa, that's still kind of very limiting. It's true, but I know I can still do something. So if you said, when I'm trying to unwind from a stressful day, I need a couple of glasses of wine, and in your heart of hearts, you might know that that's true at some level, but you know it's not serving you, and you know that you can get past this. So you could say it's partially true, but at this point in time, from a life experience perspective, that's where you find yourself those stressful days. So instead of writing, I need a couple glasses of wine, I would write, I haven't been able to break my stressful wine day habit yet, but I'm working on it. Okay, even though we know this is a bigger challenge than we're maybe able to do right now, we can put forward a more positive, a more growth mindset approach to that statement. So you should be able to go through all of the things that you think you're not good at and look at it and say, is it completely false?

And if it is, you need to write an affirmation that you're past it. If it's partially true, then you have to do the thing that's necessary for you to make it false. And that means you're going to start working right? So you have to remind yourself why you're doing this, and that can help you maybe push past this thing that you're not good at. Partially true. And then the final bit is, yeah, there's some things that you might really struggle with, and they're on that list. And you look at them and you're like, okay, this is true. This is a real struggle, but I'm not in this just to let things happen in my life. I want this to happen. Am I capable of making it happen. Yes. And so because I'm capable of making it happen, I can acknowledge that it's been a challenge. I can acknowledge I haven't been able to overcome this yet, but I can put in my head the statement yet, but I'm working on it. Okay. And that's a very, very powerful growth mindset statement that you need in your head. Okay. So we've covered a lot today, and if you're really interested in learning more about all of this, this is really based on some work by a psychologist at Stanford.

Her name is Dr. Carol dwick. She's done some really great work. It's worth looking at some of her YouTube stuff. She's got some books out there, and she's keynote spoke everywhere. She's like the growth mindset person. She also talks a lot about resiliency and those types of things. But just to kind of summarize what we're talking about here, when I talk about being capable, I just have to be open and honest with you. If you have a fixed mindset, you're going to struggle. This is going to be a lifelong struggle until you can get yourself to a growth mindset, because changing from who we are to something else is growth. And if your mind doesn't go there and I know you've heard me say this many, many times, if your mind doesn't go there, nothing else will. So you've got to start putting together developing a growth mindset. And this is not an easy thing, but this is something you do need to get done if you want the change to happen. So things that are happening, like failure, you think of the word failure. That's an opportunity to learn. You need to show patience and perseverance.

When there's a setback. A setback is an opportunity. It's not a failure if you quit. Yeah. Then you go back to start and game over. But that's not what we're doing here, right? So work on building that. Understand that anything worth having is worth working for. So if you want this bad enough, you're going to have to work for it. And it's not just the physical parts of watching what you eat and moving more and doing those things. This is a mindset game. But I can tell you, if you do this mindset work, it will pay more dividends than anything else you can do, because it's going to keep you in the game and it's going to help you be successful.

Post Show/Recap

[00:26:37.070] – Coach Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:26:38.440] – Coach Rachel

Hey, Alan. Capable is such a strong word, just like we talked about a minute ago. It's just we are absolutely more capable of doing things than we can even imagine.

[00:26:50.470] – Coach Allan

Yeah. And the unfortunate thing is this is anyone listening to this, anyone who's been there, done that, tried anything, you might have struggled first time, the second time, 100 times, but if it was important to you, you got it done. And I know everyone has a story of someone who. Told them, you're not enough. You're not good enough. You're not capable. You'll never be good at this. And what happens then? Is that programming? Because we let it become programming. We're like, oh, that person told me I couldn't, and they told me I couldn't right after I didn't. And therefore, they have more evidence of me being terrible at this, or not good enough, whatever the adjective or word you want to use to talk about it. But it's basically you've been told you're somebody, and you start to accept that as reality. And aside, was it from the Ford cars? His quote, and I'm going to butcher it. But if you think you can't, you're right. If you think you can, you're right. And that's really where this goes to, is where your brain takes you, you go, and where your brain tells you you can't go, you don't go.

[00:28:06.810] – Coach Rachel

Right? Yeah. You know, I shared the story a few times recently, actually, with a couple of my running friends. I was a gym flunky, PE class flunky. If I could have hid behind the Bleachers for gym class, I would have done that. Every sport that I tried, I would quit just because I had no talent. I couldn't get anywhere, wasn't picked for the team. After a while, it wears on you, and it's strange, but I just had no interest in anything athletic. And then look at me now, running ultra marathons and lifting heavy things and staying as active as I am in this life, at this part of my life. But it took a while to overcome that mindset. In fact, the other story I share a lot with my friends is when I first moved to Florida and met one of my really amazing running friends down there, we did a lot of five KS together, which is a huge feat for a lot of people. Absolutely. And then she said, well, let's do a ten K, and I thought she was crazy. And then we did a ten K. Then she said, well, let's do a half marathon.

[00:29:09.050] – Coach Rachel

I thought she was totally crazy. There's no way I could run for 13 miles. But we did. And same thing for the full marathon. I thought she was totally bonkers, even suggests we could do a marathon, but we trained for it and we did it. And it was probably that haunting of my PE flunky days. I can't.

[00:29:27.330] – Coach Allan

But you know, in your heart of hearts, you pull out that yearbook, you're going to see an overweight guy wearing those polyester blue shorts. You know, it may be, oh, my God, I let that guy live in my head.

[00:29:44.970] – Coach Rachel

That's it.

[00:29:45.740] – Coach Allan

That's just it.

[00:29:46.720] – Coach Rachel

Those thoughts get stuck in your head, and it takes a while to overcome that. But now I have such a strong mindset, and absolutely, the growth mindset is wholeheartedly strong in my brain that I feel like, well, now I can attempt anything if I so choose that's the difference is that I need to want it and then put the priority behind it to get it done.

[00:30:09.190] – Coach Allan

I'll openly admit I still have my hang ups. I still have places where I struggle with a closed mindset. One example is when I was younger, my endurance level was off the charts. It hadn't been a priority. And so from an endurance perspective, I can walk forever. I could literally walk forever. But when it comes to doing something that's going to put me into like a level three or level four cardiozone, so that I'm at that point where I wouldn't be able to comfortably have a conversation. So now I'm labored breathing while I'm moving. When I get to that point, I burn out pretty quickly. What that means though, is for me, because I've never been comfortable floating. I'm going to say not comfortable, but I've actually never floated. I see. And so when I get in the water, there's a natural feeling that I'm sinking and that if I'm not moving, I'm sinking. And so when I swim, I have to swim. And that puts me at that level four. And I can only do it so long, so far. And I can practice it, I can train for it, and I can do better with that.

[00:31:20.760] – Coach Allan

But it's just the other aspects of feeling comfortable, floating, stopping, moving, and actually just be in the water, which I know I should be capable of, but it doesn't just naturally seem to happen when I get in the water. I just start going down. There's been a couple of situations where I was in water and struggling to get to this point because I was running out of juice. My energy systems were not giving me what I needed to keep moving, and I would stop moving and I would sink. And then it's like, okay, I have to keep moving or I'm going to stay down here under the water and not come back up. And so it's good fear there, and there's a lot of things going on in my head, but I'm aware of that. I'm aware of okay, that's an area where I do struggle, but I'll say it in this way. I just really haven't gotten to a point where I'm comfortable in the water yet. Okay? And that's the key. This is not that you just say, well, yeah, I'm actually good at this, even though someone told me I wasn't. And I'm actually good at this when someone else told me I wasn't, or I thought I wasn't good at this, but I actually am.

[00:32:29.310] – Coach Allan

This is when you've find yourself at that hard point. It's where you've maybe you said, okay, I'm going to cut back on my carbohydrates and I'm going to do this. And then here you are on a Sunday night with a Haagen-Das bucket in your lap watching a movie. And you're like, this is hard. And it is.

[00:32:47.590] – Coach Rachel

It is.

[00:32:48.770] – Coach Allan

So it's not that it's hard. You just have to get to the point where you're comfortable trying and pushing through and doing hard things and realizing one slip does not make the battle. You have to keep fighting. And so you get to those points and that's what it is. And where the real value of all this will come in is when it's the really hard things. And you just keep your head positive in that. I may not have done it yet, but I will. I haven't done this yet. I haven't solved this yet. I am struggling to lift this weight, but I will. I've struggled to lose weight, but I will. And I know I'm on the right path. I just have to persevere.

[00:33:31.210] – Coach Rachel

Yeah, that's a perfect mindset.

[00:33:33.210] – Coach Allan

Capable, capable, capable.

[00:33:35.000] – Coach Rachel

You got to remember, and you are.

[00:33:36.900] – Coach Allan

That's what's important. Yeah. So my Google assistant heard me say that word, and here's the definition, if you wanted to know, because Google's got on here having the ability, fitness or quality necessary to do or achieve a specific thing. So, again, thank you, Google. It's just one of those concepts where we struggle with hard things. And particularly if at one point we were told we couldn't, and particularly if we couldn't and we were told we couldn't, then it's reinforced. But I told the story about a really good football player and his friend who was not a good football player. Well, I was that friend. He didn't figure that story out. Gee, we're going to figure this out, of course. But I was Michael's friend and Michael was the athlete. He was the karate dude. He was the athlete. He was £25 heavier than me. He was just a big dude, a strong dude and everything. He was a natural athlete, football player, all of it. And I was not. But by the time I was in high school, I was that athlete. I wasn't physically that big. I wasn't physically. So from an athletic perspective, I was never naturally athletic.

[00:34:49.850] – Coach Allan

All of it was that I wanted it bad enough and I just didn't listen. I was not really good at listening. And so when the coach said I wasn't good enough, in my head, it's like, well, yet it was like, no, I will play football. And the thing that bugged me more than anything else was that we went through all this pre season stuff. I was the guy who was paying attention to all the videos. I was the guy who literally, when we would get out there and do drills, I knew every position on the football field because it was like my best chance of making it is to be good or at least know what to do everywhere. So the coaches never had to tell me how to play a position. They just had to say, Alan, go play that position. Now, was I good at it? Absolutely not. I was literally less than £100. Playing on the 110 pound team. Michael had to try to cut weight before the season started because he was too heavy. He weighed over £115, so he had to lose a little bit of weight right before the season just to make the team.

[00:35:51.040] – Coach Allan

And then he bloomed up to two to 120. So, like, literally, yeah. This guy's £25 heavier than me or more, but he was my best friend, and so when it was carrying someone up the hill carrying Michael up the hill. When it carries them up the hill, it's Michael carrying me up the hill. And I was just a sandbag to that guy. But that's the whole point. You're going to have some natural talents, and you should enjoy them, use them, be motivated by them. But then if there's something you're struggling with, don't use that as an excuse to say, no, I just not good at that. I can't eat that way. I can't do that thing. My knees hurt when I run, so therefore I can't be a runner. Okay, well, maybe there's some things you could do to make the running less painful, less damaging. It could be shoes, it could be a running form, it could be different things. But you're capable. You just have to find the way. And maybe that's just it. Maybe your knees are just they're just completely freaking shot. But what else can you do? You can walk.

[00:36:51.250] – Coach Allan

You can walk. Okay. I can walk. I can walk forever, okay? That's my thing. I don't need to run from one side of the island to the next. I can walk. There.

[00:36:59.410] – Coach Rachel

Sure.

[00:36:59.800] – Coach Allan

No one's chasing me. Okay, well, now I just had to be big and strong enough so that they are chasing me. I can kick their butt. They're no longer chasing me. So chase me, yeah, please. But, you know, it's just that whole thing of saying, yeah, I'm going to have some skills, I'm going to have some capabilities, and then I'm going to have some things I'm not as good at or not good at yet. And you just have to go at it and say, okay, what do I need to do to be able to do the things that I want to do? And I work in coach online, if you didn't know that. And what does that mean? It means that I have to know the technology behind the things that I do. Now, I could hire all of that out, but then what's happened is I'm dependent on the guy who built my website. I'm dependent on the guy who's running my checkout stuff on my software. I'm dependent on the guy who writes and puts the quizzes together for me, and I'm dependent on those people because I don't know how to do it myself.

[00:37:49.510] – Coach Allan

And I'm like, well, okay, this is hard. It's a new software. I've never used it. It's not working like anything else I've done before. I got to figure it out, because this is mine and this is important to me. And as I was talking about a couple of weeks ago, this is a priority.

[00:38:06.260] – Coach Rachel

There you go, that word.

[00:38:08.620] – Coach Allan

That's that word again. So if it's a priority, even if it's the hardest thing you've ever done in your life, you're going to get it done right. And if you're struggling, you just haven't figured it out yet.

[00:38:20.350] – Coach Rachel

And the struggle is not the problem. It's uncomfortable. It's not easy to figure out a new task. It's not easy to try a new task. But once you get there, it all will make sense. It all becomes easier as you go. It's something that you got to try. Practice makes perfect, as they say.

[00:38:36.970] – Coach Allan

And those are wins or things that they can never take away from you.

[00:38:39.940] – Coach Rachel

Exactly.

[00:38:41.350] – Coach Allan

In addition to Naked Guy and having to have that conversation, I started working on another quiz because I've had a couple of ideas and concepts coming up, and I'm like, I'm going to do another quiz. So I started working on this new quiz, and the software is a little non intuitive. There's some things that are intuitive about it, and then there's other things like, why is that image there? It's not there. And then I look at the page and it's there. I'm like, where is it? I don't know where it is. And so I'm trying to figure all that out. And I asked for help when I needed it, I reached out and I told their help desk, I'm like, I'm trying to do this one thing, and it's not working the way I thought it would. So I did this little thing and I thought that might fix it because it made sense that it would fix it. And they're kind of like, well, no, you actually have to do it this way. And then there was just a different path that I had not thought of. It was not that I was dumb.

[00:39:34.700] – Coach Allan

I'm instead of saying, oh, I don't know how to do this, I'll just hire it out. Because I could literally go on there and say, do you know someone who could build this for me? I don't want to do it. And they would do it. I think they charged like $500, but they would have done what I did. That literally just took me about an hour and a half before I walked in here to do this recording. Once I understood how to back it out and do it, I was like, oh, now I can do everything I want to do. And other than, like I said, an image being where it's just not there, I deleted that image. It's not there. It should be gone. It's not gone. What do I do? And it's like, well, okay, don't worry about it. Just take your time, try a few things, figure it out, get past this with a little coaching, because I had to ask the guy a big question, and then once he answered the big question, a lot of things just fell in place. So when I talk about capable, I'm not saying you don't ask for help.

[00:40:24.540] – Coach Rachel

Oh, sure.

[00:40:25.370] – Coach Allan

I'm just saying you've got to get out of your own way and realize that and realize you got to do the work, but you can, and you're capable of doing these things, and you just have to keep persevering and pushing. And I did make the team the next year.

[00:40:41.550] – Coach Rachel

Good.

[00:40:42.020] – Coach Allan

It wasn't very good. I didn't get a lot of playing time. But in practice, the coaches realized I knew every position on the field. I could be anywhere they wanted me to be for squib team, because I, quite frankly, knew every play, I knew every position, I knew where every player was supposed to be at every single second of every play. And I carried that all the way into high school. And when you can do that in high school and you know where everybody is supposed to be, you're a coach on the field.

[00:41:10.780] – Coach Rachel

Oh, neat.

[00:41:11.420] – Coach Allan

And you're able to basically get in there and be a leader at a very young age, because you just know what everybody is supposed to do. So you're in practice, and it's like, no, look, think about this and do that. And it's like, I get it. You're on the other side of the field. For me, you're the tackle, and I'm the guard. And I'm like but I'm second string right now because we're practicing you at defense. So let me give you a couple of tricks of the trade. This is why I'm able to block you, okay? And do this. And so was I ever coached on defense? No. But every time the coach was coaching defense, I was listening. And every time that something was happening, I was figuring it out. And so the coach knew it could put me in, in fact, in one football game, because we didn't have enough players to play both our varsity and junior varsity, some of us varsity players could play junior varsity positions as long as we were not in that position as a varsity player, okay? So that meant I was the punter for the junior varsity team.

[00:42:11.120] – Coach Rachel

Wow.

[00:42:11.630] – Coach Allan

And I was third string punter for the varsity team. So it's like, okay, I'll just punt for the junior varsity, and I'll let the games. Sometimes I ran the flags, but a lot of times, I'll just be their punter. And we're sitting there one day, and we're in a game, and the quarterback gets hurt.

[00:42:24.470] – Coach Rachel

Oh, no.

[00:42:25.180] – Coach Allan

Coach looks on the sidelines. Misner, come on out here. So here I am in a football game about to play quarterback. Well, I was an offensive lineman, not a quarterback. But he knew I knew the place. He said, you know, crossback left, cross pick right. And I'm like, yeah, you know what? You're supposed to do. I'm like, yes, you turn the opposite direction, hand the ball. They're going through the tackle gap. Okay? And he's like, first one, I just want you to run up the middle. Just get comfortable taking a snap. Just run it up the middle. And I did that.

[00:42:52.340] – Coach Rachel

Cool.

[00:42:52.970] – Coach Allan

And then I did the crossbuck left and the crossback right, and both of those plays got nowhere. And then I was back there punting again. But the whole point being is if you told me beforehand you're not good at a quarterback being a quarterback, I'd be like, well, right, I'm not even on the depth chart. But that day, he needed me, and I did it.

And was I good at it? No. But one of the things that taught me again, it was just one of those things of, oh, I realized when I was back there taking the snap for the punts and taking the snap for the football was, I have to think a lot faster in this position than I did as an offensive lineman. An offensive lineman. I had like my very first task was like, what's next? That's all I had to think about as an offensive lineman. But a quarterback had to actually think about three or four different things at the same time. He had to catch a ball that's being snapped back at him or under center, take the snap. He had to be aware of what was happening, one of them with the linebackers and the linemen, to make sure, again, no one's coming that gap, he can get the ball cleanly and get out of there.

[00:43:52.350] – Coach Allan

He had to know where his wide receivers were going to be at a given point in time, where his running backs would be at a given point in time. And he had to also not trip, gosh a lot. It is, but again, was I good at it then? No, but I kept practicing again when it was instead of me lining up as an offensive lineman against this first team defense, hey, can I play a little bit of quarterback? This will be fun. And I was the quarterback. Good luck to getting tackled. And so, yeah, it's just fun. But I made things fun. If it was hard, I just made it fun until I learned it. And that's, again, there's a lot of different ways to look at this, but you got to get to the first one of I'm just not good at it yet. I got to figure out a way to get it done, make it fun, make it a challenge, get help if you need it. There's just so many different ways that I could have taken this episode, and we have a little bit now, but as I was going through it, I'm like, first thing is, you have to believe yes.

[00:44:47.120] – Coach Allan

And then you just got to figure out the rest.

[00:44:49.600] – Coach Rachel

That's right. And it always works out somehow it does.

[00:44:52.860] – Coach Allan

Yeah.

[00:44:53.600] – Coach Rachel

I went from a gym flunkey to an ultra marathon or so. Crazy things can happen.

[00:44:58.530] – Coach Allan

Yeah. Yeah. And and heaven forbid, if they chased you with that ball after probably about the first three or 4 miles, they're going to stop.

[00:45:06.260] – Coach Rachel

Yes. You can't hold me on that field. Allen. Kind of a longer yeah.

[00:45:11.890] – Coach Allan

Most of them are not most of them are not going to catch you after you get those first three or 4 miles done. Because yeah. She's going to run 50 miles just to get away from us. I don't even understand. She does not want to get hit by this little red ball.

[00:45:24.010] – Coach Rachel

That's right.

[00:45:28.070] – Coach Allan

I don't think they played that sport anymore, but I don't know. I don't think so. I think it was deemed one of those it's too mean to play sports in school. But I don't know. If your parent if your parent and your kid plays dodgeball at school, let me know. But if you're a kid and it's like, yeah, that's ball. Barrett. Who would allow a sport like that? Who knows? It was fun. Even when you were not the best player out there, it was fun. And such as life. But all right, so talk again next week.

[00:45:58.000] – Coach Rachel

You bet. Take care.

[00:45:59.380] – Coach Allan

I'll talk to you then.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Ken McQuade	– Melissa Ball
– Debbie Ralston	– John Dachauer	– Tim Alexander
– Eliza Lamb	– Leigh Tanner
– Eric More	– Margaret Bakalian

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

How to get going and keep going on your health and fitness goals

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

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

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Thank you!

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Let's Say Hello

Due to Allan's travel we recorded our hello and wrap up sessions beforehand and did not do our standard hello section for this episode.

Episode

Today we're going to talk about pace and how life isn't all sprints. I want to start this with basically two contrasting stories from my life. The first one was my tough mudder training. Now I've told the story in the book, and basically the concept here was that I decided I wanted to do a tough mudder with my daughter. And this was March when we made this decision.

And the race that I wanted to do was in November. My daughter was going to be 21 years old, close to 21 years old. She was a level one CrossFit coach and quite fit. And so in my planning for this tough Mudder, my training for this tough Mudder, I knew I was going to have to push myself pretty hard and pretty fast if I was going to be in shape for that tough Mudder. So going from March, where I was already generally training to November, I still had a lot of ground to make up, and so I did what I call a sprint.

I trained really hard. I worked on my nutrition really hard, and I sprinted, and I got it all done. I got the work done. The results were great. You can see the before and after picture on my Facebook and on my website, 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com.

And when I did it, I felt really good. I got that sprint done. I accomplished everything I wanted to do, so good for me. Right? Well, let's flash forward about five years, maybe a little bit further when I did the Spartan training.

Now I plan to do the Spartan race as a function. We were going to be traveling to Chicago, and there was a spartan in there, and I thought, hey, I could do a Spartan. And so I asked my younger brother if he wanted to do it with me, and he did. So I'm like, okay, let's do this Spartan. Let's go to Chicago and do a Spartan together.

The difference was I was in okay shape, but I needed to be in Spartan shape within about two and a half months. And so I started my sprint, and I pushed hard, and I worked on my nutrition, and I did everything I could do to be ready for this Spartan race until I broke my rotator cuff snapped in the middle of a workout. I was trying to do overhead presses with dumbbells, and the reality was I didn't hurt myself doing the presses. I hurt myself trying to get the weights up into the starting position.

I felt it snapped, and I knew immediately what I had done.

And in fact, it was a very bad tear. But it wasn't a tear that had happened just during that sprint. It was a tear that had been happening over a long period of time. And the only reason I tell you these two contrasting stories, I still did this part. It hurt like heck, I still did this part.

But the stories I'm telling here are really just to emphasize the fact that if we go too hard, too long, we will break. And that's not the purpose of what we're trying to accomplish here. The goal in health and fitness is not a destination. You might approach it and say, oh, I need to lose 40 lbs, and that's my goal. That's my thing.

That's my finish line. But after you've lost that 40 lbs, it's not like honey and roses for the rest of your life. You're still going to want to train and need to train. You're still going to have to focus on nutrition and do the things you're doing for your health. That doesn't change.

So don't feel like there's a finish line. Just like if you're saying you're going to do the couch to 5K and you complete that 5K, hopefully you're not hanging up your running shoes and saying, I'm done nothing more. No more training. I'm out. I accomplished the great thing, the 5K.

That's not how this works. We train to live and be the people we want to be, to be better tomorrow. And yes, while we might have goals in mind of certain things that we want to accomplish, be it a weight loss goal or completing a race or doing something else, those are just motivating goals. Those are just things that drive us the measurement criteria. So we know that we're successful at getting better.

The true goal here is to come up with a sustainable lifestyle and a sustainable lifestyle basically means you can eat the foods you like and not feel deprived. Now, are you eating as much of it as you want? Maybe not. Maybe you used to have pizza every night, and now you're only having pizza maybe once a month. But you're still having pizza.

So you're eating the foods that you enjoy and you're enjoying your foods. You're just not eating as much. And maybe you've changed your palette to a point that some of the foods that you used to enjoy, you don't enjoy as much now. So you've found a sustainable way of eating that you can eat most of the time, if not all the time. And you've also in sustainable lifestyle,

You've built a movement pattern that improves and helps you maintain your fitness without breaking you. So sustainable is something you can do for the long term. And that should be the overall objective of everything we do with our health and fitness is to find the sustainable path that we can stay on the vast majority of the time. It's not that you wouldn't depart from that, that you wouldn't take a detour. But once you take the detour, you know, to get right back on your sustainable path and keep pushing forward.

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So let's talk a little bit about pace. The faster you go, the longer you go, the more likely you break. That's true in everything that we do, particularly when you're over 40. Now, my story at the beginning of this episode, we're about pushing too hard training for an event, and I broke, but the same can hold true for nutrition. If you deprive yourself of a type of food or you eat a certain way, that's really restrictive, the likelihood you're gonna fall off the wagon goes up substantially.

If you tell yourself I'm never going to have another drink, that might work for you. But the reality is for most people, they're going to find themselves at a party, they're going to find themselves at a bar and they're gonna have a drink, and that's okay. There's nothing substantially wrong with that. But the harder you push yourself, the more restrictive you are, the more likely you're going to fail at some point, it's just the way it works. So when I talk about pace, I like to think of them in three terms.

Okay. The first is the sprint or the Ferrari, the second is a moderate pace. I call the pickup truck, and the third is slow, which I call the minivan. And there's reasons for each and every one of these paces that goes beyond what you want to accomplish. So let's talk about sprints first.

Sprints

When you are ready to do a sprint, there should be nothing between you and the finish line. You want to be able to do straight forward without having to stop. You want to do it as quickly as you can responsibly. And that means there's nothing there to stop you. There's no one there to bother you.

There's nothing that is going to be in the way. So if you're training for something and you want to do a sprint, it's got to be there in your eyesight, in line of sight. And so in that case, it's got to be close enough. You're trying to go from A to B, not A to T. And while it might look from my before and after picture A to T, realize not all of that was really a true 100% sprint.

I wasn't sprinting every day, all day, but I was working toward getting better and better each day. And as I got better, I pushed harder and harder. So it was a sprint, in a sense, but it was an A to B, B to C, C to D kind of approach. I wasn't looking to go A to T. And if that's what you're trying to do, you're probably going to break before you get there.

And then the final bit with sprints, that's really a big one for me is you've got to keep the ego in check. Ego is your enemy when you're doing a sprint, because at that point, you're not looking at your red line. You're not looking at what's going on with the heat and your engine. And if you're pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing and you're not paying attention, snap, there you go.

Honest Truth, the weight I was doing when I was doing those overhead presses was far more than I should have been doing. I didn't need to be doing. I did it because I could until I couldn't. So you've got to keep your ego in check and know what you're doing is building you rather than breaking you. So sprints are important.

Moderate

You're in your Ferrari, you're rooming down the road, and as long as there's nothing to hold you back and you're not going to red line and break, go for it. Next is the moderate pace. So I was a big fan of tailgating when I lived in the United States, and so I had a pick up truck with a tonneau cover so I could put all of my tailgating gear in the back of the truck to go to Hattiesburg for the games. Now, here's the thing. I couldn't own a Ferrari and take all my tail gaining gear because it wouldn't fit.

And my pickup truck doesn't travel as fast as a Ferrari. So I couldn't get there as fast. I could get in the Ferrari. And other than law enforcement, pretty much be there from Pensacola to Hattiesburg. And I don't know, 3 hours, maybe.

Okay, but that wasn't going to work in a pickup truck. I had to go a little bit slower. I take a little bit longer, not much longer, but it would take longer. So it was a more moderate pace because I had baggage to carry. So what's the kind of baggage that would hold us up in general?

Well, we have vacations planned. We have family members that are around that maybe we need to do some things with them. Maybe we have a job, all those little things you got to carry around with you that might slow you down a little bit. And that's okay. If you're patient, you find yourself a sustainable pace that fits your lifestyle, again

That's the objective here. And then you move and you're in this for the long haul. So in general, you should probably be spending most of your time over the course of the next several years in the pickup truck going a moderate pace, you can carry the things you need, do the things you need. There's a lot of utility there to get things done. You just have to have the patience and look at this as the long haul.

Slow and Steady

And then the final pace that I like to talk about is slow. And that's where you're in the minivan. And so you got the kids and the wife and this and that and you got to stop and go to the bathroom, every other exit. And so these issues, these people, these things, they're all happening. And it's not necessarily outside, outside your control, but it's generally outside your control that these are things you also have to focus on.

Your health and fitness may not be the ultimate number one priority in your life, but it's got to be important enough that you're still moving forward. And that's the key. If you have even more patience and self compassion, you do keep moving forward. And that's the key of moving slow is that you're not sitting still and you're not sliding backwards. So at worst times, you're holding your ground.

But most of the time, there's this little push forward a little bit forward. And while the minivan can't go as fast as the pickup truck or the Ferrari, you're still doing something positive for yourself, and you have to keep your head up and realize that's the case. And so I titled this episode, you can't sprint all the time or something like that. But basically, it's not all about sprints for sure. So what is the right pace for you?

Well, the reality of it is it's probably at different points in time going to be all three. There are going to be times when a sprint makes sense. So you say, hey, I'm going to sign up for a 30 day challenge to do this thing, and that can be an awesome motivator. You can sit down and say, when we get to next spring, I want to be able to run a 5K, and now you're moving at a moderate pace, taking a very cool or easy couch the 5K program to get yourself to a point where you can complete that race safely.

And then there's going to be times when things are going on in your life that you just have to slow it down and get in the minivan.

So having the self awareness to know which one makes the most sense for you, and using that as a tool where you're moving forward, you're sprinting when you can. You're going a moderate pace most of the time, and occasionally a slower pace, so that self awareness gives you kind of the gist of all of it. So again, find the pace that you don't break yourself. Find the pace that keeps you moving forward and not going backwards and stay at that pace until it makes sense to change and do something different.

You have health and fitness goals. You know what your vision is, of what you want to accomplish. You have to go the right pace or it's not sustainable. So again, the overall objective of your health and fitness should be to find a sustainable lifestyle and understanding pace and being self aware are key components of making that happen.

Post Show/Recap

[00:16:18.293] – Allan
Hey Ras.

[00:16:18.860] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, while you're talking my language now. We're talking about paces and life is not a sprint.

[00:16:25.820] – Allan
Life is not a sprint in and of itself, but it should and probably will include some sprints. And so that's really kind of one of the cores of this. There's kind of three areas. And one is that so many people want to skip to the end. They come back and say, Well, I want to be able to run a marathon or I want to lose 75 pounds. And so they want to go from A to T and they want it now. It's like, I want it now. Just give it to me now.

[00:16:57.290]
And the reality is that's not how things work. If you push, you're going to probably break yourself, particularly in fitness. And then with weight loss, you've got to do sustainable over time. And so we got to go and we got to tick all the boxes, A B C all the way through. And then it eventually. If we keep at it, then we'll get to T.

[00:17:18.490] – Allan
And so it's just that function of we didn't get here in a day. For some of us, it was 40 years ago for some of us, it was 50 years ago. For some of us, it was more years than that that we weren't doing the right things all the time. And as a result, we have something to work on.

[00:17:32.610] – Rachel
Right.

[00:17:34.020] – Allan
And we work and we gradually get there.

[00:17:37.290] – Rachel
Well, we all want the short, quick, easiest way to lose weight or get stronger or whatever it is. We're always looking for the right diet or the right exercise modality. And the fact is that it's different for everybody. And there is no shortcut to success. It just takes time and hard work. And you mentioned if you push too hard for too long, you'll get injured in the running world. We call people like that weekend warriors. Were you think you can go from the couch to a 5K in a weekend?

[00:18:10.690] – Rachel
And in reality, it takes weeks to adapt. I mean, if you haven't run a mile, you need to start with a quarter mile or ten minutes or 15 minutes or 20 minutes out there and ease your way up. Otherwise, you'll get injured real quick. And how disappointing would that be?

[00:18:25.040] – Allan
So just realize that there needs to be a process. You've got to go through the hoops, you got to get from A to T the right way.

[00:18:34.880] – Allan
And the next piece of this is part of the reason why that happens is people just aren't patient enough. They think the process should be faster, they think that it should be consistent and that you should know if I lifted £100 yesterday, I should be able to lift 105 today. And it's like that's not how it works. It's seldom any of this weight loss, strength, endurance.

[00:18:59.330] – Allan
It's never linear. You're going to have days when you go out and run and you just feel like you've got all the energy in the world and you have this great run. And you're kind of like, wow, I did that run and I probably could have done it again. You know, I felt that good. And then another day you go out there and it's just trash. And then what happened? I was at this mileage and I had to stop and walk. What's going on? And so just recognizing that the human body was not built for linear change.

[00:19:31.450] – Allan
And so we've just got to have the patience to realize that if we have intelligence behind what we're doing, well, nudge ourselves to where we need to be. And we have to care about ourselves enough to say, okay, I'm not going to break myself by being silly. And then I'm also not going to punish myself for not being what I thought I was going to be. You just have that patience for sure.

[00:19:56.820] – Rachel
And we all hit these plateaus. I had mentioned a few episodes ago that I had a lot of weight to lose after my first child was born, and I gained a lot of weight over those nine months. And it took longer than nine months to take it off. But I also hit a few plateaus, which meant that my body was hitting like a homeostasis. My body got used to what I was doing, and it was time to switch it up. And sometimes you need, you know, a trainer or somebody to kind of guide you to try something else or do something different.

[00:20:27.140] – Rachel
It's not always easy to figure that out on our own.

[00:20:29.700] – Allan
That is one of the things having clients and talking to them, and they're setting their expectations and setting it at the right level. And then, yes, when those inevitable plateaus and they're good, you actually want plateaus to exist because that's your body protecting your body. And so we need that. If you're not getting enough food, your body is going to tell you, if you're trying to do too much work, your body's going to tell you. And so we have all these great feedback mechanisms to say, okay, what we were doing was working, but it's not going to work now.

[00:21:02.240] – Allan
And so what does that actually mean? And what can we do about it? And one of the core ones. And that's why I wanted to talk about these different paces of sprint and moderate paste and slow is that those are your tools. And there's going to be times when you say, okay, I've plateaued. I've been at this wait for now for a month and a half, and I'm ready to do something about it. So you say, okay, I'm going to do the sprint, meaning I'm going to try something a little different.

[00:21:31.570] – Allan
And I'm going to do the sprint for a period of time and see if that doesn't jump start things to coax my body to do something different. And so it can be something as simple as saying, okay, no alcohol for six weeks. Okay. And before you were having a couple drinks on Friday and a couple of drinks on Saturday and still losing weight, just say, okay, I'm going to try cutting out the alcohol for six weeks and see what happens. I would call that a sprint going from some to none is a sprint in the nutrition world.

[00:22:06.270] – Allan
And so you do that now. You don't do that with the expectation this is going to be my forever life. But some people do they actually get to that point. They're like, you know, I really didn't need that in my life, and I'm better off for it. And some people don't go back and they don't go back to drink. And so that's there. I think a lot of people get stuck in something comfortable, and particularly when it was working for a period of time and they're like, Well, I can have my cake and eat it, too.

[00:22:31.380] – Allan
And then eventually, maybe you got to forgo the cake a little bit more often because you are carrying that cake with you and you're not able to get rid of the weight you want to get rid of. So finding different paces when it matters. Like kids are going off to stay with grandma's for a few weeks instead of turning that into a holiday for you. Adult staycation stuff. And you guys are having mimosas and martinis and all of that. Maybe you say this is a great opportunity for me to do something a little bit more aggressive.

[00:23:04.470] – Allan
I can get out. And maybe I do two workouts today because I have this extra time that I don't have to worry taking care of children or taking them to practices or whatever I would have to do that would take up my time. Now I can dedicate more time to myself, self care and use that as an opportunity to sprint. So you come out better for it. But don't just do one pace. Don't think you're locked into one pace for the rest of your life. Your life will change, and that will give you opportunities to go faster.

[00:23:33.740] – Allan
And then there's just going to be times when you have to take the opportunity and go slower. My vacation. I took it slow, you know, they got out and did some things that played volleyball. I went for walks on the beach. I did some things, but I just told myself it's like, okay, I'm not going to stress out. This is a vacation. So I slowed down. I got out of the Ferrari. I got out of the truck and I walked over and said, oh, here's my minivan seat belt and I'm ready to go.

[00:24:02.270] – Allan
And then as I'm traveling, I know that I'm doing research. I can figure out where different things are. I know there's a YMCA in Asheboro, North Carolina I can go to. They charge $5 a day. I know where other gyms are along the route. Unfortunately, I don't have my anytime fitness gym membership anymore, so I won't be able to use that as a way because that was a key way that I would always find a a gym where I was going. So I have to pay some more drop in fees.

[00:24:30.220] – Allan
And I know that. And I know my progress won't be as fast because I'm driving and I'm going to be in the car a lot of days. But anyway, I know that I'm going to have to have a different pace at that point in time. And then when I get back, I get back in the fast lane. You know, it might not be a Ferrari. At first it might be the pickup truck until I feel like I've got my legs under me again. And then I'll go a little harder.

[00:24:53.860] – Rachel
That sounds great. Allan. I hope you enjoy your vacation and all the different places I can enjoy. Where all the cities where you get to spend some time. At least you can hike the trails or walk through parks and enjoy the different foods that you'll get to experience in all these different areas as well. It sounds like a wonderful time.

[00:25:14.270] – Allan
Yeah, Pensacola, I'm coming. I'm going to eat all your oysters.

[00:25:21.390] – Rachel
Well, enjoy that when you can.

[00:25:23.980] – Allan
I will. All right, Rachel, I'll talk to you next week.

[00:25:28.040] – Rachel
Great. Take care.

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