40fit Radio

View Details

Coach D and Coach Trent are back (finally) with a new episode, broadcasting from THE Wichita Falls Athletic Club, the home of Mark Rippetoe and the birthplace of the Starting Strength model. Today they discuss the role of the power clean for the Masters lifter -- should you be doing it? Should you skip it? What's the point anyway?

While the power clean is a very useful tool for the young athlete, especially in power-based sports such as football, hockey, or track and field sports, it's application to real life for the older lifter is less obvious. Basically, the clean is a fairly simple tool for the lifter to train power, which is a derivative of force production (strength). By training for power, a Masters lifter can not only improve his performance in sport, he can also improve and preserve his coordination, speed, and agility. These other physical skills tend to decline drastically with age unless you do something. Sports may not be in the cards for these lifters, so controlled gym movements such as the power clean can be a useful way of addressing these physical skills without the unpredictable nature of doing explosive sports.

Andy Baker, a fellow SSC, co-author of Practical Programming and The Barbell Prescription, has also spoken at length about dynamic effort training -- adapted from Westside's conjugate method -- can be effectively used to increase power using the basic compound lifts.

Baker Barbell Podcast on Dynamic Effort training: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/baker-barbell-podcast/id1607570442?i=1000555789213

Email us: info@40fit.com

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

After a several month hiatus, Darin and Trent are back with 40fit Radio!

View Details

Coach Darin has said it before, humans like to "complicate to validate." The bigger, faster, more complex, more "science-y," the better! Right? Likewise, the idea that fitness is an intense, all-in pursuit pervades media and popular training programs. Frankly, it's exhausting!

Health and fitness doesn't come easy, and requires hard physical training to obtain and maintain. On the other hand, longevity and sustainability are also part of the game, and demand that you pay attention to your joint and connective tissue health, and spend time pursuing the things that will improve secondary fitness adaptations like balance, mobility, and accuracy. At some level, you also need to have some fun with your training, at least to the point that training is not adding more stress to your life.

Therefore, we preach the path of moderation for your fitness life. We aren't talking about taking the easy road here -- that leads to nowhere! -- but we recognize that training can't always be about chasing numbers and PR's.

We want to hear from you! Send us an email at the address below and tell us about how you've evolved in your training program to achieve moderation in your health and fitness.

Email us: info@40fit.com

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Darin, Trent, and Charity convene for another coaches corner, this time offering some strategies for lowering systemic stress while programming for the intermediate lifter.

The intermediate lifter with some training history on her belt -- we sometimes refer to these lifters as "middle intermediates" -- has a problem when it comes to programming. On one hand, since they are pretty far along the adaptation curve, they need a large amount of stress in the weight room to drive further strength adaptation. On the other hand, too frequent bouts of high intensity (very heavy) sets as well as too frequent bouts of high volume (lots of reps) sets cause become difficult to recover from. These workouts tend to take a few days, if not longer, to recover from, and if done too frequently the lifter may start to experience joint pain. This is doubly true for the master's lifter, who needs to find the sweet spot between just enough stress but not so much that he feels torched for days after a workout.

In this episode, Trent, Darin, and Charity offer a few different models for programming in this phase of training, with the special needs of Master's lifters in mind.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent discuss the most important vitamins you should be getting from your diet and supplements.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D, Trent, and Charity discuss the tendency of strength coaches and athletes to get hung up chasing PR's on the bar, and missing the forest for the trees -- that is, the greater PR's in life such as raising good families, growing mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

You can find Charity on Instagram at: @charity_silverstrength

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

It's January, and that means there are millions of people trying to make good on their New Years' Resolutions. For many, this resolution involves losing weight, cutting body fat, and "leaning up." And predictably many resolutioners first instinct is to hit the cardio machines -- treadmills, ellipticals, exercise bikes, etc.

Losing fat, or rather body recomposition as we like to call it, involves more than just losing weight. It also involves gaining muscle mass. Or, for an already trained person, it involves maintaining muscle mass while losing fat mass. Either way, muscle mass -- lean mass -- is the key to the equation.

Cardiovascular training does little to create new muscle mass. For a completely sedentary, untrained individual, jogging around the block likely will build some initial muscle mass, but the results drop off after a few weeks of training. After that, the force production demands of cardio are simply not enough to stimulate growth of new muscle mass. Moreover, certain forms of cardio, in particular long slow distance (LSD) type training, triggers hormonal mechanisms in your body which prevents you from gaining new muscle mass, and may even cause you to lose it. See Dr. Sullivan's exceptional work The Barbell Prescription for details on the AMPK "switch."

So, what is a resolutioner to do? First, you need to strength train, and/or continue strength training. That will ensure that you build and maintain a high level of lean mass, which in turns drives your metabolism up higher. Secondly, you need to eat in a small caloric deficit. You need to eat less calories than you burn. About 10% reduction in calories is usually as much as you need to get this process started -- that's typically only a couple hundred a day, depending on your baseline.

This can be done without doing any cardio at all! Food and lean mass will be the biggest drivers of fat loss in this process.

However, if you begin to stall with your fat loss and you are continuing with your strength training, you may want to add in one to two conditioning workouts each week. Keep these workouts short and intense, as they will give you the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to fat loss. Tabatas on the echo bike, pushing the prowler, sprints on the rower -- these are all great choices for HIIT cardio training.

But don't be fooled... cardio is not a magic bullet for fat loss!

Muscle cells crash course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktv-CaOt6UQ&feature=youtu.be

You can find Charity on Instagram at: @charity_silverstrength

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach Charity Hambrick returns to the show to discuss her experience contracting COVID-19 and her slow road to get back into training afterward. Though she contracted COVID back in October 2020, Charity had lingering fatigue and muscle cramps for weeks, and loss of smell that lasted for over three months. Despite the mental blow of losing her training momentum -- she had been setting PR's just prior to getting COVID -- Charity has consistently hit the gym and is regaining her strength levels.

It was easy, though, and required a lot of mental fortitude. The mental game, she says, was the hardest part of restarting her training regime. To get herself into the gym when she really didn't want to, Charity came up with mantras she would say to herself over and over throughout the day. Her favorite is: "I have the power to start this today." During her training, when things felt hard or grindy, she would remind herself "the hard work will pay off."

She also focused on process-oriented goals. Instead of trying to get back to her previous PR levels, or hit a prescribed weight in a certain period of time, she focused on just consistently going to the gym. In other words, she focused on the "doing" of training, rather than outcome of training. This kept her coming back to the gym consistently and building training momentum, as well as confidence for completing a goal.

You can find Charity on Instagram at: @charity_silverstrength

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

The last episode of 2020! Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to keeping the conversation about health and fitness going in the New Year.

In today's episode, Coach D and Coach Trent discuss the concept of selecting appropriate volume and intensity for a Masters athlete. These are two of the main programming variables, and all athletes need a blend of intensity (heavy-ness) and volume (how many reps) to drive adaptation in their desired physical skill: strength, conditioning, hypertrophy, etc. And in general, both intensity and volume must go up over time to increase the amount of stress and therefore drive more adaptation.

The Masters athlete must walk a fine line, however, between continually driving stress and chasing PR's and allowing sufficient space in their training for recovery, joint health, and simply "feeling good." This means that, for most athletes, there must be times of the year where PR's are NOT the goal, and other fitness goals take precedent.

Thanks again for tuning in. Happy New Year!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

In the strength community, the typical advice about warmups is to start warming up with the first barbell lift you will be performing. For many people, especially novices, this will be the squat, so the warm-up would consist of a couple sets of five with the empty bar, then a few progressively heavier sets until the lifter is ready for his or her working sets. It's quick, efficient, and, prepares most lifters for the task at hand -- squatting. Masters athletes, however, may find that they need more than the barbell to get warm before their workout.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Coach Trent continue the discussion on sustainable fitness by diving deeper on the topic of joint health. As the saying goes, "motion is lotion," but what kind of motion should we be doing in training, and is there such thing as too much? As with many things, moderation is key, and periods of strength training with heavy loads followed by periods of lighter loads with perhaps more focus on muscle hypertrophy or conditioning is an intelligent way to stay strong, muscular, and fit without sacrificing your joint health in the process.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach Charity Hambrick returns to the podcast for a sort of "coaches' roundtable," an impromptu discussion between three coaches talking shop about training, programming philosophy, and long-term health and fitness. As Coach D reminds us, we're all organisms with a certain trajectory. We're born, we grow and develop, we reach maturity, and not long after, we decline into old age and, eventually, death. As coaches, our goal is to help people maximize their time "between the dash" and live productive, useful lives by helping them build foundational strength, sustainable training and eating habits, and a long-term mindset regarding their fitness and health.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

What if you just don't like exercise? What if you have trouble sticking with anything physically hard? How do overcome these hurdles? Not everyone falls in love with training, and that's OK. You can still enjoy the health and physique benefits of training! Strength coach and accomplished Master's lifter Charity Hambrick talks about some strategies for helping the reluctant trainee integrate training into their life and daily habits.

We have to do many things we don't always enjoy, Charity points out, like going to work, paying taxes, doing yard work. We do these things because we understand that, even though they are unpleasant in the moment, they bring us pleasure or provide some benefit in the future (or at the very least help us avoid negative consequences, like the IRS knocking on your door). We often call these tasks "chores" for a reason.

Fitness is no different. Yes, some people just love to train, and derive a lot of pleasure from the process. But if you're not one of those people, you may not realize that just because sometimes loves training, they don't ALWAYS love training in the moment. Serious athletes are human, too, and have plenty of days they wake up and don't want to. The difference is they have integrated their training schedules tightly into their daily routine, so there are few barriers to doing it anyway, even when they don't feel like it.

One of Charity's goals as a coach is to help trainees weave training into their life in a harmonious way. Training should be something that adds to their life, not distracts. To that end, not everyone needs to be a serious athlete and push their training program to the maximum -- it's perfectly fine to run a modest linear progression, then develop a schedule that gets them lifting, conditioning, and doing fun physical activity regularly. The key is making training part of the daily routine.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Coach Trent discuss the importance of training with a long-term mindset and an eye on sustainability -- training smart now so you that you can keep training for years!

Trent analogizes fitness with cars. If you let a car sit for months, or years, then it starts to deteriorate. A car must run regularly to be healthy. On the other hand, if everywhere you go, you slam on the accelerator and run the RPM's into the red, then slam on the brakes every time you need to stop... well, then your car is going to prematurely break down. The human body is similar. You must train and use your body to be healthy and able, but you can overdo it and damage your connective tissue too.

As always, there is a middle way, in fitness as in life!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

In Part 2 of our interview with Dr. Clearfield, he explains how he "helps the body heal itself" using treatments such as proliferative therapy, joint manipulation, platelet-rich plasma injections, and traditional physical therapy and exercise. Dr. Clearfield also discusses his process for analyzing and diagnosing a new patient.

You can find out more about Dr. Clearfield and his practice here:

https://www.motionismedicinedfw.com
IG: @motionismedicinesportsmed

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

As we've said many times, training for strength improves tissue quality, flexibility, and joint health, especially for Masters lifters who have accumulated some bumps and bruises along the road of life. However, some Masters trainees find that even after they have acquired a solid baseline level of strength, they have lingering issues such as tendonitis/tendonopathy, arthritis, or limited range of motion that cannot be resolved by strength training alone. Enter Dr. Clearfield, DO, board-certified sports medicine physician, and practitioner of regenerative medicine.

The aim of regenerative medicine is to improve tissue health and function using a variety of methods, ranging from traditional osteopathic joint manipulation (a unique feature of DO medical education) to cutting edge stem cell therapies. Dr. Clearfield works with patients to address problems that have proven difficult to solve by typical medical interventions. As he says, he aims to "find health within the body" and use his range of treatments to encourage the body to heal itself, as opposed to stop-gap solutions like steroid injections or more invasive options like orthopedic surgery.

You can find out more about Dr. Clearfield and his practice here:

https://www.motionismedicinedfw.com
IG: @motionismedicinesportsmed

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Want to change your body, change your health, change the way you eat and train? It all starts with the habits you cultivate, and your daily routine. Many folks start a fitness program because they have been driven to change. Something has pushed them over the edge -- the way they look, the way they feel, a negative prognosis -- and they want to make a change now. The problem is, motivation only lasts so long. Real change occurs slowly, over time, and the thing which ensures someone will make long-lasting change, and achieve their goals, is the daily routine.

There are two essential elements to developing positive new habits. First, you need a basic understanding of the thing you are trying to change. Do you want to get more fit? Then you need to understand the 10 general physical skills, and how those are acquired. Strength is the foundation of all physical skills, so you need to follow a program which will make you strong. Do you want to lose body fat? Then you need to understand the basic macronutrients and how the body partitions each of them depending on your activity level, the amount of lean muscle mass you carry, and your caloric intake.

In short, you don't need to be an expert, but you need to understand the fundamentals of health and fitness in order to make logical changes to your habits. A little science goes a long way!

Now, you need to act on that understanding. Integrate exercise and good nutrition program into your daily routine. Train 3-4x per week in a lifting program. Eat an appropriate amount of protein every day. Start small! One change at a time. Start by just attending all of your workouts. Even if you feel terrible and need to take some weight off the bar because you have a cold, show up and do the workout. Once you have hit all your workouts over a month long period, then you can start thinking about making the next small change. If you did that for a year, then you would have twelve new positive habits ingrained in your daily routine. Most people try to change twelve things on day one, however, and they burn out by month two or three, if not sooner.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Consistency is the key to progress in fitness and nutrition, and that often means doing the same thing workout to workout (ensuring you have a logical progression built into your training program) for long periods of time. Fitness is a marathon, not a sprint, after all. But sometimes the slow, steady nature of training creates the possibility for creep -- for trainees, technique or "form creep," and for coaches, coaching creep, or simply losing perspective on the goals and programming for the trainee.

So, how do avoid creep in your training? Get a coach, if you don't have one, even if it's just a one-time session every few months. For those who have a coach, or have been coached in the past, seek out new perspectives from time to time. Coach Darin and Trent often share their experiences in the gym with other coaches, and reach out to their colleagues for help when they struggle. Interacting with other lifters and athletes in the community is not only useful for sharing solutions to training problems, it's fun and helps you to feel connected to a bigger purpose.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D delivers an overview of total joint replacements, their effectiveness, their limitations, and the considerations for training before and after surgery.

Modern medicine has developed artificial joints which can replace damaged or worn out joints in the human body, often with great results. As new materials have been introduced to the protheses, artificial joints have become lighter, more durable, more functional with greater range of motion, and longer lasting. However, they do have a shelf life, and the biological interface of organic human tissue with the replacement eventually fails. Therefore trainees should consider a number of factors before deciding to undergo joint replacement, including whether they are a good candidate for joint replacement (based on their symptoms and current level of strength and fitness), their health and fitness goals, the expected lifespan of the replacement and whether they can or want to undergo a second surgery to replace the artificial joint at the end of its lifespan, etc.

Darin shares some of his 30 years of clinical experience with hip, knee, and shoulder replacements in how to navigate these factors, and what to do after you have decided to undergo joint replacement.

Training and the Artificial Joint by John Petrizzo, DPT

https://startingstrength.com/article/training-and-the-artificial-joint

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

In another 40fit athlete profile, Fort Worth Strength member Brad Lamar joins the show to talk about his amazing journey of losing 50lbs and nearly 10in off his waist while getting stronger and leaner than he's ever been.

Brad is a 49-year old IT professional in the healthcare industry who began training with a history of inactivity and back pain. At 5' 11" and 285lbs he was significantly obese. However, he began a novice linear progression with the barbell, lifting 3x per week with the big lifts: squat, press, bench press, and deadlift. As he gained strength, his metabolism increased, and with careful attention to his diet, he began to lose body fat while gaining lots of muscle mass.

After a year of training, Brad had dropped from 285lbs down to 235lbs, and from a 53in to a 44in waist. During that period he halved his body fat percentage as well, from 40% to 20%. Now here's the interesting part. In his second year of training, Brad gained a little weight, up to 240, but his waist remained stable, increasing just one inch to 45in. His body fat percentage continued to drop however, down to 17% by the end of the year. Not surprisingly, he hit all time PR's as well, squatting in the high 200's, deadlifting in the mid 300's, benching 270lbs, and pressing 160lbs.

Like Clif, who we interviewed last week, the key to Brad's success is hidden in his consistency. He rarely misses workouts, and he eats the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day. He tracks his food every so often to ensure his macros are staying on target, but by being consistent in his breakfast and lunch habits he has freedom to eat out at a restaurant or participate in his family's pizza Friday (now a family tradition), in which they prepare and bake their own gourmet pizza at home.

It didn't always come easy, however. On two separate occasions, Brad's back pain flared up in a big way, causing severe sciatic nerve pain that made him unable to sit for more than a few minutes at a time. Sleep was challenging as well, as the pain often woke him up in the middle of the night. Brad continued to train, however, while seeking medical advice and an MRI of his back. His surgeon gave him an epidural to relieve a bulging disc in the L4-L5 region, which was pressing on the nerve root. The procedure was successful, and within 6 weeks his pain symptoms resolved and he was able to resume normal barbell training again.

Like Clif, Brad moderates his squat frequency and intensity, back squatting heavy once per week and performing a lighter squat variation on another day (lately a front squat). He also leg presses in the middle of the week to get additional leg work without the added compression force on his lumbar spine that a low bar back squat would provide.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Today a member of Fort Worth Strength & Conditioning joins the show to discuss his journey going from overweight and diabetic to fit and strong with well-managed blood sugar.

Clif Hadley is a 61-year old IT professional with no prior athletic background (well, not since high school at least!) and no background with lifting weights. He found himself in his late 50's overweight with midline obesity, high A1C levels, and poor control over his blood sugar throughout the day. Making some basic dietary changes such as cutting out processed carbs (especially breads) and doing cardiovascular exercise on the recumbent bike helped him lose some weight in the short run, but he still had too much body fat, lacked muscle mass, and, most importantly, had high blood glucose levels.

At Fort Worth Strength he began the novice linear progression, squatting, pressing, benching, and deadlifting three times per week, starting a low, manageable weight and adding 5lbs per workout. After several months he climbed to a 250lbs squat for a double, 260lbs deadlift for three, 100lbs press, and 125lbs bench.

After approximately 6 months of training he developed persistent back pain in his lower back, which did not resolve with training modifications. An MRI revealed he had a cyst in one of his lumbar discs, which his surgeon was able to clear with a cortisone injection. This setback caused him to lose a couple months of training, but as soon as he was cleared by the physicians he returned to training, using partial ROM lift variants to regain strength and mobility in his spine.

Soon he was back to performing the big lifts with full ROM and within striking of his old numbers, when the COVID pandemic forced the gym to close. Undaunted, Clif resumed training when the gym reopened and is currently lifting heavier than ever. To keep his recovery high and his back feeling good, he lifts heavy twice per week, alternating intensity and volume days. In the middle of the week, he performs squat variants that are less taxing on the lumbar spine and spinal erectors such as the leg press. He also uses the mid-week workout for conditioning, during which he alternates between short, intense HIIT sessions on the echo bike or rower and longer duration, medium intensity rows.

Clif is a great example for masters lifters, who may feel that they are too old or too long past their prime to feel strong, healthy and athletic again. By trusting the program, showing up consistently, and working hard, Clif has been able to get strong, lose body fat (he donated 27 pairs of slacks to Goodwill because he kept losing inches off his waist), and manage his diabetes, even with some unfortunate setbacks in the process. His A1c levels have decreased from the high 7's to 6.1, and continue to fall. His lifts are strong for his age group, his back feels great, and he has managed to maintain his waistline for several months.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Back pain may be the most common type of pain humans experience, but knee pain is a close second. What do you do if you have painful knees, but still need to train? Coach D and Trent discuss the anatomy of the knee, the various causes of knee pain, and tips for training through knee pain.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Back pain is ubiquitous, and an unfortunate reality of being human. As Darin and Trent described in their four-part series of back pain (see episodes 28, 29, 31, and 33), it is a complex problem with many facets, including structural, psychological, and even social causes. That said, many trainees will encounter back pain during their training, so in this episode Darin and Trent lay out some practical tips for modifying training to accommodate back pain.

As always, we suggest actually doing the program first. Follow the principles of strength training, laid out in Starting Strength, and train the big barbell lifts to built strength in your whole body, especially in the trunk musculature which stabilizes the spine. Often just training your body in a systematic, progressive way -- with good technique, that is critical -- can reduce your pain symptoms by strengthening your tissues, bringing more stability and mobility to those tissues, and training your mind to de-catastrophize the experience of pain while moving.

For athletes that do strength train but still experience back pain that hampers your progress, we have some recommendations for modifying the main barbell lifts, incorporating assistance and/or supplemental lifts, and managing volume and intensity in programming.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent are back after a short break to talk about some trainee's reluctance to increase their calories while barbell training and conditioning. Perhaps driven by a fear of "getting fat," some trainees try to restrict their calories, particularly their carbohydrate intake, during the novice linear progression, frequently causing them to stall early on the program and fail to make body composition changes.

While Darin and Trent have covered the science before in the episodes with Robert Santana, the psychological barrier to eating more calories remains. As Trent points out, once you decide to begin training with barbells, you are no longer a normal person -- you are an athlete. So, you need to eat like an athlete! You can't expect to eat like the people around you who may be sedentary and don't train.

Lift heavy, build strength and muscle, and the body composition will come. But along the way you must eat to fuel the process!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Coach Trent discuss how they modify the barbell lifts and the novice linear progression for trainees with weak, injured, or tight shoulders. As always, they stick by the basic principle of making the lifter adapt to the model and the process, not adapting the process to fit the lifter. Often, simply following the process with attention to executing good technique will solve movement problems related to weakness or range of motion within a few weeks of starting the novice LP.

However, some lifters continue to struggle after following the process, at which point it may be time to modify the movement, the load progression, or change exercises altogether.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Professional hunter, videographer, and host of the show Blue Collar Adventures, Jay Presti, returns to the show to share the progress he's made barbell training during his novice linear progression. After just 12 weeks of training, Jay has increased each of his lifts by more than double, he's dropped his body fat percentage by 6.5 points, improved his focus, and is feeling stronger and healthier than ever.

Jay began the novice linear progression in early March with starting lifts of:

Squat - 95x5x3

Press - 65x5x3

Deadlift - 205x5x1

His starting weights on the press and bench were limited by a shoulder injury he incurred in competition as a professional calf roper. Jay has a severely torn labrum, meaning he lacked both strength and flexibility in the joint. He also found the low bar position in the squat rather challenging, so we kept his starting weight artificially low, to allow more time for his shoulder to adapt to loading.

With careful attention to technique and gradual loading (just 5lbs at a time), over 8 weeks Jay increased his numbers to:

Squat - 210x5x3

Press - 115x3x5 (we inverted the rep scheme to keep his progress going)

Deadlift - 280x5x1

As of the podcast recording, which is approximately 12 weeks into the program, Jay squatted 232.5x5x3, pressed 127.5x3x5, and deadlifted 320x5x1. At this point he is squatting in a heavy/light/medium (HLM) schedule, and pressing five sets of three.

His body composition has also improved notably. Jay had a DEXA scan one week prior to starting LP and measured at 26.5% body fat. At approximately the 10-week mark, he had a second DEXA scan which measured his body fat at 20.0%, a decrease of 6.5%! Here's the interesting part -- during that time period his bodyweight hardly changed, starting at 202lbs and ending at 198lbs. In the process of training, however, he managed to gain 9lbs of lean mass, which accounts for the drop in body fat percentage.

Jay is a walking example of what barbell training in the simple novice linear progression model can do for strength, joint health, and body composition. He did the work, missing only a single workout (he was on vacation, we'll forgive him), ate lots of protein and moderated his alcohol and process food intake, and got plenty of sleep. Jay is a perfect example of what happens when you let the simple process of barbell training do its work!

You can follow Jay at:

Blue Collar Adventures
Blue Collar Adventures on Instagram
Best of the West -- the Long Range Hunting Authority

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent reflect on the recent quarantine and how it has impacted their thinking about health and fitness.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Following Ep. 94's discussion on sets and reps, Coach D and Coach Trent discuss some of the programming changes they make for female trainees during the novice progression and throughout the advanced novice phase.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent discuss the rationale behind the novice linear progression's use of 3 sets of 5 for the squat, press, and bench, and 1 set of 5 for the deadlift. They also discuss how and why these rep ranges can be altered as a trainee reaches the end of the novice phase and transitions through the advanced novice phase into intermediate training.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Where do you draw the line between safety and logic? In today’s episode we discuss the three great “untruths” that pervade American culture.

The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt:

https://www.amazon.com/Coddling-American-Mind-Intentions-Generation-ebook/dp/B076NVFT5P/ref=sr_1_1?crid=556Q9COY5VG2&dchild=1&keywords=coddling+of+the+american+mind&qid=1589741849&sprefix=coddling+of+the+a%2Caps%2C167&sr=8-1

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

View Details

Coach Darin and Trent discuss how to adjust your program after a prolonged layoff. As the world begins to open up from quarantine, many people will be able to go to the gym for the first time in several weeks. Detraining is an inevitable result of such a long layoff, however, so care must be taken when returning to the gym to avoid extreme soreness, injury, or overtraining.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent have extolled the virtues of lifting barbells for years now. Yet some Masters lifters shy away from lifting heavy in fear that they might hurt themselves, or that it's too tough on their joints. Lifting heavy is not only the best way to build strength, it's essential for building and maintaining healthy joints! Like all things, however, lifting heavy should be done in moderation if health and longevity are the goal.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

The fitness world is awash in gurus peddling "the last word" in fitness and health. Even reasonable trainees following time-tested programs can get tunnel vision and fail to address other aspects of their health and fitness. At 40fit, Coach D and Trent believe in a well-balanced approach to fitness driven by the trainee's personal goals. And we temper that approach with an eye on the long game -- that is, training, eating, and living in a manner that maximizes long-term health, not just athletic performance.

RIP Peter Nathan -- coach, athlete, and true Renaissance man.

https://www.copelandhammerl.com/obituaries/Peter-Johnston-Nathan?obId=12455931#/obituaryInfo

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Many of those in the 40fit Nation are in week three (or longer) of city or statewide lockdowns, and dire headlines continue to dominate the media outlets. So Coach D and Trent are sharing today some ways they are staying positive and productive in the midst of the madness.

Be purposeful with your media consumption. Maintain an analytic mindset about the facts, the source of the facts, and be aware when media is making an emotional appeal rather than reporting the facts (which is just about all the time).
Make lists of the positive things in your life right now.
Spend time in meditation or prayer. Carve out some space and time for quiet, solitude, and study or self-reflection.
Maintain your routine. Even if you have to create a new routine, find a schedule that works and stick to it.
Be productive. Take up a hobby. Do some yard work or spring cleaning. Read that book you’ve had on your list for a long time. You don't have to be a superhero here, but getting things done brings a sense of accomplishment.

Lastly, give yourself some grace. Some people are suffering more than others right now, and these tips may seem impossible for those most affected by the virus and economic conditions right now. That's ok. We are calling everyone in the 40fit Nation to do their best and stay accountable to each other, but we also need to be kind to ourselves and each other.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

The COVID-19 pandemic has gotten many people thinking about their immune system, and how well equipped their body is for fighting pathogens. The body's immune system, of course, is the complex integration of multiple body systems (circulatory, lymphatic, integumentary, etc.) which collectively fight and protect against foreign antigens and pathogens in our bodies. In today's episode, Robert Santana (PhD, dietitian, and Starting Strength Coach) returns to the podcast to discuss ways that you can build a more robust immune system.

As Coach D and Trent have mentioned numerous times on the podcast, training and genetics influence ALL of the body's processes, and the immune system is no exception. Some people have more robust immune systems than others due to their genetics, but even those with suboptimal genetics can optimize the expression of their genes through physical training. Nutrition and lifestyle also play a crucial role in fostering a healthy immune system.

It's common sense, but a diet rich in whole foods helps build a strong immune system. As Robert explains, whole foods -- particularly fruits, vegetables, and grass-fed beef or wild-caught fish -- contain anti-oxidative micronutrients which keep inflammation at bay. The typical American diet, on the other hand, which is full of processed, pro-inflammatory foods, creates a drag on the immune system, leaving it less able to fight off foreign bugs... like COVID-19.

Eating a serving of fruit or vegetables with every meal (3-5 times per day) will ensure you have adequate vitamins and minerals and maintain healthy balances of pro- and anti-oxidative nutrients. Healthy fats are important, too, as the hydrogenated oils used in many processed foods have an abundance of pro-inflammatory Omega 6 fatty acids. Highly quality meats, fish, and nuts or seeds are high in Omega 3 fatty acids, on the other hand, so eating a lot of these foods ensures a healthy Omega 3 to 6 ratio.

Lifestyle is another important factor. Getting enough sleep and avoiding psychological stressors helps manage cortisol levels, which in turn influence inflammation in the body. Of course, in these times of great societal disruption it's difficult NOT to be stressed, but doing what you can to eliminate unnecessary stressors -- excessive use of cell phones and digital media, social media consumption, etc -- can help.

If you need help dialing in your nutrition, you can consult Robert via his website Weights and Plates. You can also follow him on Instagram @the_robert_santana.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent talk with hunter, marksman, and former professional cowboy Jay Presti about beginning strength training to stay strong and healthy for his high country hunts around the world. Jay and his partner Crystal operate Blue Collar Adventures, a television show on the Pursuit Channel that showcases their exotic hunts.

Jay frequently hunts in remote locations with difficult terrain and high elevations. In addition to hunting gear, he carries cameras, batteries, and the other equipment needed to film his show -- all of which adds up to a heavy pack! Clearly, developing a higher strength base would make the logistics of navigating his hunts much easier.

So, Darin and Trent will be coaching Jay to lift barbells and get stronger over the next three months in preparation for Jay's 2020 hunting season. We'll be documenting the process, so stay tuned for a follow up episode in a few months!

In the meantime, you can find Jay at:

Blue Collar Adventures
Blue Collar Adventures on Instagram
Best of the West -- the Long Range Hunting Authority

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

The world is on lockdown at the moment as we deal the COVID-19 pandemic, and that means many are stuck at home without access to a gym. We're not letting that slow down the gainzzz train though! Today Coach Darin and Coach Trent discuss ways to keep training and stay fit, with little or no equipment.

Our thoughts are with everyone in the 40fit Nation that is struggling during this time, and we urge everyone that is able to keep training and stay strong. We hope that your workouts can be a sanctuary and a positive time of your day.

We will be posting 20 "quarantine fitness" workouts you can do at home via the 40fit Newsletter. So if you're not signed up yet, head over to www.40fit.com and sign up for the newsletter there!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Coach Trent discuss the current panic over COVID-19, a novel coronavirus which was recently declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization.

World Health Organization

WHO - Current Stats

CDC

CDC - Disease Burden of Influenza

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Today Coach D and Trent discuss how to train and program around a sport or other recreational activity, such as mountain biking, running, rock climbing, etc. And the short answer is... it depends!

There are many variables to consider when programming around a sport or activity, especially when that sport or activity has high physical demands. We only have so much recovery resources in the bucket, so to speak, and while we can make the bucket bigger over time though training, recovery is a finite resource. Both training and sport/recreation will draw from the bucket, so you have to program intelligently to do both at the same time.

Two broad training models, first elucidated by the Soviet master coaches in the late 70's and 80's, can be used to structure a program: the conjugate and concurrent models.

The conjugate model refers to training for one adaptation at a time, with the goal of tying together multiple blocks of training which gradually become more specific to the sport or activity in question. Block periodization, which is popular among advanced powerlifters, is one example. A powerlifter would start a training cycle with lower weight, high volume strength training, perhaps with some light conditioning to improve work capacity. The goal during this block is hypertrophy (muscle growth) and work capacity (improved conditioning and recovery so you can do more stuff in a workout). The next block will have the lifter pull back on the volume a bit and increase the weight, with the same overarching goal but starting to get more specific toward developing force production (max strength). In the final block, the lifter will significantly increase the weight, lower the volume, and the goal of the block shifts toward maximum force production -- in other words, a goal that is specific to his sport, which is lifting as much weight as possible for a single rep.

In contrast, the concurrent model aims to train multiple adaptations simultaneously. An athlete training concurrently will often train strength, conditioning, and perhaps skill work all within the same mesocycle. This models allows the athlete to maintain a high level of ability in several areas, but requires the coach and athlete to walk a tight rope in terms of managing recovery and overtraining. Professional crossfitters are perhaps the ultimate concurrent athletes, as they must be strong, highly conditioned, and posses a wide base of gymnast skills when they walk onto the platform at the Games. However, even most high level crossfit athletes train in a conjugate model during their offseason, furthest out from the games.

Most people are probably best off training in a conjugate style, developing their general strength with the main barbell lifts while they are furthest out from their sport season or event (like a race or powerlifting meet). Then moving closer to the desired adaptation as they move closer to the event.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D discusses four elements of fat loss that he considers when helping trainees lose body fat.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Today we welcome Willie Villareal back to the podcast and join him for a deep dive into testosterone, normal levels we should look for, the pros and cons of TRT, and how training, nutrition, and lifestyle habits drive our hormone and testosterone levels.

You can find Dr. Villareal at his practice in Conroe, TX (Houston area) Core Sports Health. He also performs online consultations via BodMD.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

You asked for equipment talk... so today we're talking equipment. Everything you need for barbell training, basic conditioning, and more!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Nation
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Conditioning is not a magic bullet. It's just a tool. And like all tools. it works best when used for the right purpose. Nevertheless, we receive a lot of questions about conditioning, and have noticed some persistent myths and misunderstandings about it. Today Coach D and Trent put on their mythbuster hats and discuss the correct application for conditioning for a well-rounded athlete and person.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

It's inevitable... someday you're going to miss a rep. What then? One of the most common questions we get is what to do when you fail to complete all your working sets during the novice linear progression. First of all, don't panic! It's bound to happen. In this episode, Coach D and Trent walk through some practical tips for evaluating where you are in the novice LP and how to handle your workouts going forward.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

There's so much to talk about when it comes to health and fitness, but we don't want to just spout off anything. We want to hear from YOU. What do you want to hear in 2020? What topics do you want us cover, what are you curious about?

Send us an email at info@40fit.com with your suggestions, comment on Instagram @40fitradio or Facebook 40fit Nation, and we'll make sure 40fit Radio is putting out what you want to hear!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

It's time to change the story you tell about your health and fitness. New Year? New you narrative!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Happy New Year folks!

We LOVE the big compound lifts, but sometimes you need a little more in your training. Or maybe you need a little extra recovery between heavy bouts of training. In both scenarios, accessory lifts can be used to fill the gaps, increasing the volume of work you're performing each training cycle without dipping too far into your recovery resources.

There are 1,001 accessory lifts we could talk about, so today's episode focuses on the reasons you should incorporate accessory lifts into your training, how to program them, and a few of our favorite accessories.

Remember, accessories are just that... accessories! They should be used to support and augment the compound lifts, not as a substitute for them! The majority of your strength training career (like 75-80% of it) should focus on mastering and executing the Big Lifts.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent wrap up their discussion of the compound lifts with the Bench Press -- sometimes included in the Big Four compound lifts, although we consider it more of an optional Big Lift. To be sure, the bench press is an important upper body lift, and everyone who can do it should do it! The bench does come with some caveats, however, when it comes to shoulder mobility and health that Masters athletes need to understand when programming.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

From the beginning, man has had a need (and a strange desire) to pick stuff up and put it back down again. It shouldn't be a surprise then that the deadlift is one of the Big 3 compound lifts that should make up any good training program.

Despite the growing popularity of Crossfit, strongman, and powerlifting in recent years -- all of which feature the deadlift as a core element of programming and competition -- the deadlift has a negative reputation. This is a shame, because the deadlift is perhaps the most "functional" of all the lifts. Humans have to lift things off the ground all the time, and a properly performed deadlift trains this movement pattern and strengthens the musculature of the back and hips in a safe manner.

The key is properly performed. Unfortunately people do injure their backs doing deadlifts, and inevitably it is because they deadlift with poor mechanics, poor programming, or both.

Coach D and Trent discuss the importance of good deadlift mechanics, walk through the foolproof 5-Step Deadlift Method, and discuss the little details to help you build a stronger back and a more functional body!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent explain why the Press is the most important upper body lift you'll ever do.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent kick off their deep dive into the compound lifts with an examination of The Squat (that's right, capitalized) and why it's the mother of all lifts. If you don't have squats in your exercise program... you don't know Squat!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach Darin Deaton and Trent Jones are kicking off a new series about the so-called "Big Lifts" -- the squat, press, and deadlift -- that comprise the majority of the exercises in any good strength program.

Why the big lifts? They are simple, hard, and effective. With just three exercises (and, for most people, the bench press as well) you can get very strong, and build a functional and aesthetically pleasing body with the least amount of time. They work so well because they fulfill the basic criteria for strength that Rippetoe lays out in Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training (paraphrased here):

They use the most weight
They use the most muscle mass
They use the greatest effective range of motion (also the safest range of motion for the human body)

With the barbell lifts, you can move much more weight, and therefore train your ability to produce force, than you can with dumbbells or any of shiny machines at the local globo gym. The barbell is also trainable for longer than other weight lifting implements. You can start as light as 10lbs with a small barbell or load 1,000+lbs on a standard barbell, with any weight increment in between. You can improve your squat, press, bench, and deadlift for years. How long can you improve your cable row?

Not only are the barbell lifts effective, they are also efficient. Why do 12 exercises when 3 will get better results? For athletes of any level, the compound barbell lifts will make up the majority of their strength training program. There's no need to make it more complex than that! Your time is valuable, and barbell training honors that time. In one hour of barbell training, you can accomplish far more than a two-hour "bro split" filled with curls and hammer strength machines.

Finally, the compound lifts are functional. Not in the fashionable, buzzword sense that involves chains, ropes, or bosu balls, but in a practical sense. The compound lifts apply weights to basic human movements. You squat every time you sit on and stand up from a chair, every time you use the toilet. You press when you put tools up on the shelf in the garage. You deadlift when you pick anything heavy off the floor, whether it's your kid or a bag of concrete. These basic movement patterns are how humans interact with the world, so it makes sense to train them. They use the whole body as a system, not single body parts in isolation. When's the last time you performed a tricep kickback in real life?

In the following weeks, Coach D and Trent will dive deep into each of the big lifts and discuss what makes them so useful and effective at making humans stronger.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent discuss the importance of setting good fitness goals, and allowing those goals to evolve and change over time. While all novices should focus on building a solid foundation of strength, intermediate trainees can direct their training in so many different directions, it's easy to get lost.

Some trainees get into competition, whether it's racing, cycling, powerlifting, or something else, which naturally directs the course of their training -- the training is designed to produce improved performance in their sport of choice. For the competitive athlete, not much thought is given to longevity and health, or at least those things take a backseat to performance. It's a bargain all serious competitive athletes make, and they are aware of the potential consequences.

Many of the people in the 40fit Nation, however, aren't serious competitors and don't plan to be either. They build a strength base, and a couple years into their training find themselves wondering... what next?

Intermediate training without a clear goal is often fruitless, because the complexity and demands of the programming require the coach to make choices about which aspect of fitness to develop. Top end strength will require more volume in the competition lifts, changing rep ranges, and accessory lifts to address weak areas or drive further adaptation when the competition lifts become too fatiguing to increase any further. High levels of conditioning, on the other hand, will naturally limit a trainee's ability to get stronger as they must cover from high force production strength work as well as sub maximal conditioning work utilizing various energy systems.

Coach D offers a few tips for setting goals for trainees who are unsure what to do next:

Pick something fun -- try a new skill, sign up for a new sport or competition, join a social group that does physical activities, whatever you can do to utilize the fitness you've worked so hard to develop.
It's OK to feel good -- as novices, we often tell them to forget about their feelings, and just put in the work. But experienced trainees have developed their sense of what "hard" is and may be feeling aches and pains as they cross further into the fitness end of the spectrum. It's OK to dial your training back from time to time to give your connective tissue and joints a rest, especially if you plan to continue training for many years to come.
Seek out a coach -- if you don't have one. Sometimes an objective third-party can help you identify gaps in your fitness, or help you develop a more sustainable training program if you're feeling stuck or beat up. This also means being clear about your goals with your coach! Your goals will likely change over time, and that's OK, just make sure you have regular conversations with your coach so that you are both working toward the same goal.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent dive into the topic of diet and weight loss again, this time joined by fellow strength coach Karl Schudt. Karl is eclectic and erudite, with a broad educational background (he has degrees in engineering and theology as well as a PhD in philosophy) and a solid grounding in strength and conditioning.

In his late 40's, Karl is exactly the kind of person we like to see in the 40fit Nation -- strong, healthy, good body composition, and educated. At a height of 5' 11" and weighing about 240lbs, Karl squats and deadlifts in the high 500's, benches in mid 400's, and presses in the mid 200's. Though he is a bit of an outlier, with good genetics and high testosterone, achieving these numbers while having a good body composition was a long road.

A couple years ago, Karl found himself strong but weighing in excess of 260lbs with a burgeoning waistline. After a concerning physical in which the doctor used the words "pre-diabetic," Karl resolved to bring down his waistline and his body fat, without losing too much strength in the process. He worked with our friend Robert Santana, began counting his macros, and re-programmed his behavior and feelings around food.

As a philosopher and a student of the classics, Karl takes a deeper perspective on the topic of diet and nutrition. While most sources are focused on the "how" of dieting -- that is, what to eat, how to make better food decisions, etc -- Karl observed that his motivation to eat was strongly tied to his happiness. In other words, the "why" of eating was more important than the mechanics of how to eat. He sought to divorce his animalistic desire to eat from his emotional state. The first months were hard, but just like barbell training, he developed a stronger mindset and adapted to training on a less-than-full stomach.

Karl notes that nearly all major world religions practice fasting in one form or another. The self-denial of food is an ancient concept designed to help humans access their higher nature. As Aristotle says, food is the "rudder of the soul," and if one can control his food, he can direct his soul.

Karl also argues that, from a utilitarian perspective, denying oneself pleasurable foods (like dessert) ultimately nets a higher amount of pleasure. The buttered roll, to use his words, tastes so much better after 40 days of fasting than it does eaten everyday.

While it's easy and satisfying to talk about nutrition in terms of diet "hacks," all the strategies in the world can't help someone who is not ready to change their behavior. And changing behavior comes first from understanding the motivation behind the behavior.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent discuss some recent conversations with patients and gym members about medical diagnostics and how they present an incomplete picture of health. Nevertheless, a scary looking MRI or conservative advice from a doctor can often lead people to inaction and fear avoidance -- in other words, avoiding taking active control of the problem by training and helping their body recover.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Robert Santana -- Starting Strength Coach, Registered Dietitian, and Head Nutrition Coach for Barbell Logic Online Coaching -- returns to the podcast to talk about the "restaurant trap" and how to avoid going off the rails next time you dine out.

Let's face it, eating out is a big part of American culture. Restaurants serve as social hubs on the weekends and offer a bit of reprieve from the daily work grind. Even supposedly "healthy" restaurants are fraught with traps that can wreck your macros. With a little planning and some basic strategies, however, you can navigate any restaurant without letting it derail your nutrition.

Below are some highlights from our conversation with Robert.

Restaurants are a trap

Let's not beat around the bush. Restaurant food has higher levels of salt, fat, sugar compared to home cooked meals.
These exaggerated flavors override our natural satiety signals, making it easy to overeat.
Fat is hidden in unexpected places: butter, oils, creams, dressings all contain lots of fat.
We tend to desire sweet flavors after savory/salty, and vice versa, leading to overeating. Meals are often structured accordingly: appetizer, bread/chips, main course, dessert.

Plan Your Menu Options

Identify “safe” restaurant choices with reasonable menu options — that way when you’re tired and decide to eat out, you don’t have to think about what to order.
Ask for steamed vegetables and sauces on the side.
Double the vegetables on the side instead of ordering a starch. LPT: more vegetables makes you have a fuller plate, so your dietary choices seem less weird to your friend group who may not understand or support your diet.
Example of a tough restaurant, Texas Roadhouse: 6oz filet, one roll with no extra butter, side salad dipping fork in dressing, steamed vegetables

Over-estimate Your Calories

Use the 50% Rule: assume you are getting double the calories you need, so only eat 50% of the portions you order. Maybe even less for high fat, high carb foods like pasta and desserts.
Dip the butter and dressings, don’t slather it on. Dip your fork in dressings, don’t pour the dressing on your salad.
Simple ingredients — salmon, vegetables, rice — are easier to estimate than complex dishes.

Know Some Common Food References

Fist = 3oz portion protein
If it’s shiny, don’t eat the whole thing. Probably oily, i.e. high in fat.

Routine vs Special Occasion

For most people, dining out should be a special occasion not an everyday event
Don’t try to balance your macros at a restaurant — just follow the basic strategies and stick to your routines and good eating habits at home.
If you know you are eating out, plan your meals accordingly. Eat less during the day in anticipation of the big work dinner, for instance.

Work on Your Food Prep Skills

Trent's 5min food bowl: rice, big handful of chopped cabbage, top with ground beef, and drizzle with a savory/spicy sauce like soy sauce, sriracha, or chili sauce.
Santana’s slow cooked oatmeal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR5jV1-ijik

You can follow Robert Santana and his excellent nutrition tips and diet hacks @the_robert_santana. He also has a new gym that just opened in the Phoenix area! He offers barbell training and nutrition coaching services: https://www.weightsandplates.com

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Coach Trent reflect on dogma in the fitness industry, and why some methods and styles of training become close-minded and insular over time. They explore the idea of using a model as the basis for a training program, and the shortcomings of complexity in the models. Ultimately, your fitness is bigger than your method, to paraphrase Coach D, and it's important to cultivate a skeptical mindset in which you search for good science, good principles, and then search for training methods built on those. It's ok to be dogmatic about principles, but keep an open mind when it comes to applying those principles in your day to day training program.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D examines the popular notion of central nervous system (CNS) fatigue and whether it's an important factor for training and sports performance. He looks at some of the literature, and dispels some misconceptions about using CNS as a measure of training fatigue.

Studies Darin references during the show:

Sustained contraction at very low forces produces prominent supraspinal fatigue in human elbow flexor muscles: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17463302
Study of the Effect of Stress on Skeletal Muscle Function in Geriatrics: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3939594/

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Today our good friend JoJo Brinton -- a crossfitter and strength athlete -- joins Trent and Coach D to talk about her fitness journey from YMCA aerobics to Crossfit to barbell training. In her late 40's, JoJo is a model of healthy aging -- strong, lean, and cardiovascularly fit for just about anything. However her fitness has not always come easily, as she sustained some knee injuries during sports requiring surgery (and will eventually require joint replacement). Through her fitness journey she has learned the value of strength and balancing recreational activity in a way that allows her to have fun while keeping her health and function high.

As we first discussed in episode #40 - How Strong Is Strong Enough? there is a line where training crosses over from a healthy pursuit to an unhealthy one. This is line is usually drawn over competition -- a lifter training for general health and fitness decides to compete in a strengthlifting meet, and the focus shifts from general health to performance, for instance. The competitor takes calculated risks in pursuit of performance, and one of those risks is the chance for injury and general wear and tear that may reduce function later in life. For the competitor this bargain is clear, and competition brings them value beyond recreational fitness that makes the whole endeavor worth it.

Many people are drawn to "competitive" recreational activities, whether it's sport, Crossfit, or other high-impact physical activities. While these can be great fun, they are often high-impact events, with physical contact, explosive movements, and high demands for both strength and cardiovascular fitness. In your teens and 20's, jumping right into an Ultimate frisbee game or a week of downhill skiing is no problem, but going into your 40's and 50's... there may a price to pay without preparation. We're NOT saying you should give up your favorite sports and activities! But a smart 40fit athlete prepares for these sports and activities by training in a systematic manner, prioritizing strength first.

You can follow JoJo and her exploits on Instagram @strongboymomma.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Today Coach D's good friend Cliff Canipe joins the podcast to discuss the importance of strength and pursuing voluntary hardship for developing character and leadership. Cliff is an international minister based out of South Africa. He travels throughout the continent working with local church leaders to develop their theology, their church operations, and leadership presence in the local community.

Cliff is a man of God, but his version of Christianity is by necessity a rugged and practical one. Working primarily in poor, underprivileged areas of the world, he regularly calls upon both physical strength as well as the strength of character he has developed under the barbell to lead others in difficult economic and sociopolitical situations. In his eyes, it is not enough to be merely spiritual, or intellectual; you must develop your physical self in step with the other aspects of your being.

Cliff shared a verse on the importance of strength for leaders. Joshua, a leader of the Israelites who helped lead the conquest of Canaan, said this of his strength (at the ripe age of 85!):

"I am still as strong today as I was in the day Moses sent me; as my strength was then, so my strength is now, for war and for going out and coming in." (Joshua 14:11)

Cliff holds a PhD in New Testament Studies and founded Equippers International, an organization providing teaching and ministry to churches and church leaders throughout the world. He also hosts a podcast called Talking About Jesus.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

In Part 2 of our discussion with Starting Strength Coach, Registered Dietitian, and nutrition expert Robert Santana, we learn how to set appropriate macronutrients for weight loss, and what to expect during the weight loss process for a novice lifter.

You can follow Robert on Instagram @the_robert_santana where he posts helpful nutrition tips and tricks. You can also find him at Barbell Logic Online Coaching and Renaissance Periodization, where he offers customized, one-on-one strength and nutrition coaching. If you're in the Phoenix area, be sure to check out his new gym Weights and Plates!

Got a question about nutrition, or training in general? Send us a message on Instagram or send us an email at info@40fit.com!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Today we welcome back Starting Strength Coach and Registered Dietitian Robert Santana! Robert joins us to talk about making the transition from weak and overweight to strong and lean. Specifically, we look at a theoretical 45-year old woman who needs to lose about 40lbs of bodyfat while increasing her strength and muscle mass.

In the course of coaching hundreds of clients, Robert has developed a nutrition coaching style that revolves around habits and accountability, rather than macros and calorie counting. Although he adapts to a person's preference for tracking, he prefers to start by having the client take pictures of everything they eat for 7 days. From there he will identify which foods the person is not eating of, and increase those in the diet. For most people new to strength training, this is protein. Women should eat between 120-150g of protein per day, while men should aim for 200-250g depending on size and bodyweight. Getting enough protein ensures that the client will recover properly from her workouts and build new muscle mass, which in turns increases metabolism and creates an environment for fat loss.

Once protein intake is in place, Robert focuses on nutrient dense carbs. For most this means eating more vegetables, since most Americans are woefully deficient in vegetable intake. One, they contain a lot of fiber, which many people are short on. Secondly, vegetables take up a lot of space in your stomach and are filling to eat, so you can eat a lot of them without consuming a ton of calories. Lastly, they contain essential micronutrients -- vitamins and minerals -- which are not found in processed foods.

Note that, at this point, Robert has not asked our theoretical women to eat less. In fact he's done the opposite -- encouraging her to eat more of the right things, rather than restrict "bad" foods. This focus on habits is critical, he says, because most clients (women in particular) come to him after years of dieting and calorie-restriction. If he can improve food quality and create a calorie restriction without explicitly prescribing a calorie restriction, then he can help the client create new, healthy habits without developing neuroses around certain foods.

Next week we will talk more with Robert about macros, appropriate timelines for weightloss, and how to properly measure body composition while getting stronger, building muscle mass, and losing body fat.

Got a question about nutrition, or training in general? Send us a message on Instagram or send us an email at info@40fit.com!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Coach Trent welcome runner, rock climber, wakesurfer, and physical therapist Michelle Baker, DPT to discuss her training for the Boston Marathon. Michelle PR'd her previous marathon time for by 23 minutes, ending with a race time of 3:34:51. She credits her success to a combination of regular strength training, interval/speed work, and nutrition experience gained from her previous marathons.

Michelle is an all-around athlete, having played sports from a young age. After a layoff from sports in college, she discovered endurance training while in PT school and began running 5k and 10k races. She quickly became hooked and ran her first half marathon, then full-marathons, punctuated by occasional trail runs as well. Michelle describes her first marathons as brutally hard, as she learned how to develop a strong mindset and properly fuel her body for the hours-long race. Nevertheless, she stuck with them and slowly began getting better.

Recently, she began working with Coach D to improve her times. Together they came up with a plan to incorporate strength training 2x per week, with an emphasis on developing the hips and trunk or "core" strength. This meant plenty of squats, deadlifts, and overhead presses. Coach D also encouraged her to run speed days 2-3x per week, where she focused on power; sometimes this included hill runs, since the Boston Marathon includes several notorious hills (one such know as "Heartbreak Hill"). On long-distance days she progressively increased her mileage, however she never ran more than ~18 miles prior to the race. She followed a model known as "cumulative fatigue" in which she tracked her weekly mileage -- a proxy for fatigue -- aiming to progressively increase that number while limiting the total mileage in a single day. As she puts it, "it's like running the last 18 miles of a marathon."

Her times at the Boston speak for themselves, but most importantly, Michelle is healthy, uninjured, and feels great. Her time qualifies her for the 2020 Boston Marathon, which she is already looking forward to. You can follow Michelle's training on Instagram @akmtnmotherrunner.

Got a question about running or endurance training in general? Send us a message on Instagram or send us an email at info@40fit.com!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Coach Trent dive into the nuts and bolts of conditioning in today's episode. Conditioning Concepts was one of the foundational episodes at the beginning of the podcast, explaining the metabolic pathways or energy systems of the body, and how they fuel different types of activity. Today's show details the nuts and bolts of incorporating conditioning into your training program, including concurrent conditioning and strength training.

First off, a disclaimer. Conditioning is not for novices! If you have not run through a novice linear progression and built a solid strength base, you don't need to do conditioning. At this point, focusing all your effort on lifting heavy will provide all the conditioning you need. You have a limited reserve of recovery resources -- especially as a novice -- and strength training during the linear progression will require ALL of those reserves. Besides, as discussed in previous episodes, strength training works primarily the ATP/Phosphocreatine energy system, but it upregulates the glycolytic and oxidative energy systems too, yielding a conditioning effect.

For those who are mid-intermediates though, conditioning is not only a good tool for fat loss, it's important for improving work capacity (so you can recover efficiently from the higher volume work that come with intermediate strength training), and for trainees with GPP (general physical preparedness) and/or sports-specific goals.

Coach Trent likes to start trainees new to conditioning with simple "monostructural" conditioning workouts: a prowler sled pushed for 5 100ft sprints, for example, with 2-3min rest periods between sprints. Monostructural refers to the nature of the movement -- a static movement with a cardiovascular demand dependent on the intensity (how hard something is pushed, or the weight on the implement in the case of the sled) and duration of the movement. Monostructural workouts are low-skill, and in the case of the prowler do not cause soreness, which could otherwise derail the trainee's strength workouts. They also allow the trainee to get used to putting out large amounts of effort in short bursts without worrying about executing athletic movements.

After introducing the monostructural workouts, slowly at first, once per week, Coach D likes to mix up conditioning types, with an eye toward working in all the energy systems, and increasing frequency to 2-3 conditioning workouts per week. Conditioning "types" or modalities can be broken down into a few categories (this model is borrowed from Crossfit):

Monostructural -- as mentioned above; sled push/pulls, echo/assault bike, rower, jump rope, wind sprints, swimming
Gymnastics -- bodyweight movements like burpees, bear crawls, push-ups, air squats, etc.
Weightlifting -- explosive weightlifting movements such as power cleans, snatches, thrusters, or kettlebells.

As a general rule, one should be careful using weightlifting movements in a conditioning workout. The higher the skill demand in a conditioning workout, the more likely your movement quality will deteriorate as you get fatigued, and thus the more likely you are to get injured. So save the high-rep snatches for time, unless it's something you have to be able to do for your sport (i.e. Crossfit).

Otherwise, Coach D likes to mix up these modalities from workout to workout. Conditioning programming can look more "random" than strength training, but the idea is to work all the energy pathways -- short and intense (phosphocreatine), medium and slightly less intense (glycolytic), longer and medium intensity (oxidative) -- while carefully balancing the stress of the workouts with the demands of your strength training program. For instance, if you have an intensity day with heavy 1x5's on Monday, your conditioning workout should be short and intense, so that you can recover in time for your light day Wednesday workout and volume day Friday workout. Likewise, conditioning workouts following a volume day strength workout should be less intense, to allow for adequate recovery for the following Monday's intensity day.

Conditioning can be further programmed as:

single modality workouts -- typically monostructural in nature
couplets -- a mix of two modalities, like rounds of echo bike (monostructural) followed by air squats or burpees (gymnastics)
triplets -- three modalities

The scientific literature is pretty clear that to maximize the benefits of both strength training and conditioning -- in other words, to do both without one interfering with the other (known as the interference effect in ex-phys jargon) -- you should condition AFTER strength training, on the same day. This allows for maximum recovery between workouts. However, this can lead to long workouts, especially if you are doing a full-body strength workout. For those with limited time, you can do one of your conditioning workouts on your lifting off-day, preferably on the weekend when you normally have a two-day rest period.

There are many ways to tackle conditioning programming, and this is just the start! If you have questions about your own training, send us a message on Instagram or send us an email at info@40fit.com.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

It's a busy time of year at Deaton ranch, with tons of hay waiting to be bailed, barns being built, and horses needing to be worked. Recently, while working out a small gelding in the arena, Darin got bucked and -- because he was using an unfamiliar saddle -- was unable to kick off properly to avoid getting pinned by the falling horse. The 800lbs gelding landed squarely on his outstretched left leg, on the knee. In today's show, Coach D walks through his process of dealing with the injury, from assessment to treatment and rehab, as well as maintaining a positive mindset.

Several people were with Darin when the fall occurred, and they responded with alarm, telling him how bad it looked and wondering if he was OK. It's easy in these situations to let the emotional response of others override your logical brain, and convince yourself that you are indeed badly hurt before you've done a calm self-assessment. So Darin told them to give him some space, he got up, and started walking to determine the extent of the injury. In a fair amount of pain but able to walk, he got up on another horse (with a more appropriate saddle) and continued to ride and finish the day.

Fortunately, Darin is an expert in dealing with orthopedic injuries so he was able to self-diagnose that he didn't have any major structural damage, just a heck of a nasty bruise. So, at the end of the day he jumped in the cistern for a cool bath, and iced his knee at night. The next day he trained as normal, carefully assessing his squat warm ups to determine how heavy he could squat without pain.

So by taking a calm, logical approach to a scary and unexpected accident, Darin was able to properly assess the situation, manage his emotions, get back to movement quickly, and maintain a positive mindset.

Coach D's keys to managing injuries:

Don't react, respond. Stay calm, slow down, and logically assess the situation.
Avoid the emotional reaction of the people around you. Focus on how you are feeling, asses your pain level, and decide how urgent you need
Get an accurate diagnosis immediately. The diagnosis will determine the timeline and nature of your recovery/rehab process.
Get moving as quickly as possible. Motion is lotion! Moving will promote healing in the injured tissues and, importantly, keep your mindset positive as you focus on what you can do.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Last week we discussed the importance of work -- especially physical work -- and it's impact on the mind and body. This week is a 180; we're talking about rest. Now, when we discuss training we often talk about recovery in terms of food and sleep. Sleep is a crucial part of rest, indeed, but it's not the whole picture. Rest is both recovery, in a training sense, and recuperation for your hormonal and mental health.

We know that psychological stress is stress on the body, just like stress from lifting heavy weights, doing a hard conditioning workout, or running a marathon. It's not as easily quantifiable as a workout, but psychological stress causes elevated cortisol levels, can impair mood, and, gone unchecked, can lead to "burn out," leaving you in a deep hole mentally and physically.

No one wants that! So Coach D walks through some suggestions for incorporating rest -- not just recovery -- into your life:

Disconnect proactively -- before you hit the wall, unplug and disengage from your work and media/information consumption. Give yourself down time. Take the time to truly unplug… don’t
Meditate -- it's proven to increase brain cortex thickness (thus improving cognition and sensorium) and improve memory, willpower and drive
Try yoga -- yoga is a low impact exercise with an emphasis on meditation and serenity. Look for yin yoga classes which emphasize long, slow, relaxing movements with deep stretches -- great for lifters!
Hot bath / sauna -- a simple, quiet bath can help you calm down and relax after a stressful day.
Journaling -- documenting your daily wins, struggles, and thoughts can help keep your problems in perspective, and prioritize long-term thinking.
Set boundaries from digital world -- turn off ALL digital devices before bedtime, preferably an hour before. When you take time off from work, disconnect completely. Be clear with clients and coworkers about you availability, and fight the urge to check in when you're supposed to be off.
Have sex! It's not just enjoyable in the moment, it releases hormones that help relieve stress, increase bonding, and strengthen relationships.

These are just a few suggestions. Take some time for yourself, and rest. There's more to life than work, training, and recovery, but you need to give yourself space and perspective to discover what that is for you.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D is back with a solo show reflecting on his recent trip to his ranch in Stephenville, TX.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D discusses his departure from CrossFit and the reason he sold his CrossFit gyms to eventually open a Starting Strength affiliate gym. Coach D and Coach Trent also examine the philosophical and practical differences between the two training methods.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Dr. David Puder, a psychiatrist and fellow barbell enthusiast, joins Coach D and Trent today to talk about the research connecting strength training to better sensorium (cognitive function) and reduced cognitive decline in older populations.

Dr. Puder runs an excellent podcast on psychiatry, psychotherapy, and mental health that you can find here: https://psychiatrypodcast.com

You can also follow Dr. Puder @dr.davidpuder on Instagram.

View Details

We've all heard them all before, so often that they stick with us even today. Fix your posture! Shoulders back! Stand up straight! Stern motherly commands reminding us of our postural deficiencies and exhorting us to repair them. This assumes poor posture is a choice, however, and that posture can be changed. Coach D explains how posture is the result of both genetics, environment, and our habits, and discusses whether poor posture is something that can -- or should -- be fixed.

What is good posture, anyway? Coach D explains normal, good posture as measured against a plumb line -- a vertical line that bisects the body in the frontal, sagittal, and transverse planes. From a side (transverse) view, that line should:

Fall in the middle or slightly anterior of the earlobe
Bisect the acromion process,
Down through the middle of the elbow (the hands will be slightly forward)
The spine should show a gentle double S curve from the cervical to sacral region.
The plumb line should bisect the middle of the thorax down through the greater trochanter of the hip,
Bisect the knee,
And end at the lateral malleolus of the foot (the fibula and ankle joint).

Remember, though, humans are not symmetrical! Joint angles, limb lengths, and other structures vary, meaning humans will vary somewhat from the "ideal posture" spelled out above. If there are no symptoms, and movement quality is good, don't worry about it! There is no data that suggests people with perfect posture are healthier than those who don't.

Nevertheless, we sometimes see problems with movement quality that, although they may not present problems at lower loads (for strength training) or intensities, may cause problems as the trainee progresses. In this case, fixing postural issues -- to the extent they CAN be fixed -- becomes important. One example is an older trainee who cannot fully flex their shoulder, i.e. they cannot raise their arm high enough to get their thumb over their midline.

Recall from episode #41 - Why So (Up)Tight? Developing Mobility and Flexibility for Life that the mobility of a joint is a function of both structural (bony structures, ligaments, etc.) and functional (tendon and muscle attachments, elasticity of tendons) components. Barring surgery, bony structures cannot be changed. Soft tissue, on the other hand, can be made more pliable through dynamic, loaded stretching. Soft tissues become more plastic as we age, however, so there is a limit to the mobility gains of soft tissue as well.

Coach D recommends that, in addition to strength training (which is itself an excellent form of dynamic, loaded stretch), trainees trying to correct postural deficiencies focus on the antagonist muscle groups. For instance, a lifelong powerlifter who has only trained the bench press will likely present with forward rounded, heavily developed anterior shoulders. To correct this, she should focus on stretches and strength exercises that work the antagonists of the bench press: the lats, rear deltoids, the traps, and other shoulder flexors.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

As we discussed in Episode #14, life occasionally decides to deload you. It happens in a variety of ways: schedule changes, crazy workloads, moving, or perhaps an injury. Some of these road blocks are just that -- temporary setbacks in training -- and we do our best to train through them, albeit at a slower pace. Other road blocks, like injuries, stop us completely. Often it's not clear, especially to new trainees, what is a temporary setback and what is a true injury. How do we tell the difference?

Coach D and Trent walk through the signs and symptoms of true injuries, including some red flags that indicate going to a doctor, and discuss practical strategies for training through minor injuries such as tweaks, pulls, and other aches and pains.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Fifty episodes in the BOOKS!! Thanks for sticking with us so far, sharing your challenges and successes with us, and walking this fitness journey with us. Today Coach D and Coach Trent have a little pep talk about training through adversity. It's a word that coaches throw around a lot, and it's kinda vague. That's intentional -- adversity can be a lot of things. It usually means different things to different people. Maybe it's lifting the barbell when you've got a muscle injury, maybe it's finding time to train with a crazy busy family life, maybe it's laying off the cheetos when it's time to dial in your nutrition. The details are unique to you, but every person has to face challenges from time to time. How you choose to deal with these challenges often determines where your health ends up -- good or bad -- five, six, years down the road.

Now, adversity doesn't mean injury, not in this episode. There are times when we must intelligently assess and address our training problems, and sometimes that means appropriate rest and rehab. Adversity in this case means those daily challenges, sometimes large, sometimes small, that tempt us away from the gym or whisper to us to stop short of what we're supposed to do.

Training through adversity is, simply put, a mindset, a determination to do something that you don't want to do. Yet it's not all willpower either. Those that train through adversity consistently have made training part of their basic hygiene, like brushing your teeth. Have you ever spent the night somewhere unexpectedly and woken up, having not brushed your teeth because you didn't have any of your toiletries? It's terrible, it feels wrong. Missing training feels that way too, if you have acquired the habit.

If you're still working on the habit, know that you will hit a roadblock at some point. It's part of life. Also know that how you treat those roadblocks determines whether the habit sticks, or fades away.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach Darin and Trent talk about time wasters in the gym, and why (how) you should stop doing them! Everyone is "busy" these days, but we know some very busy people that still make time to train 3 days a week. The key is being intentional with your training, and avoiding some common time sinks. Workouts do not have to take two hours or more!

Darin's first tip: walk in the gym and decide that you are going to train. It sounds simple, but framing your mindset in a positive, productive manner tends to make you more efficient in training. What does this mean in practical terms? Write down what you are going to do in your training log, organize your gym bag and clothes before you head to the gym, and visualize what you are going to do.

Once you're in the gym, do your warmups, but remember they are warmups not the workout! For strength training, we follow the Starting Strength model which suggests warmups (for the squat and pressing lifts) of two sets of empty bar, 1x5 with some weight, 1x3 with more weight, and 1x2 with more weight -- each weight jump being roughly equal until you reach your working weight. It should not take long to do these warmups, only as long as it takes to load the weight for the next set. It's ok to rest a few minutes between your last heavy warmup and your first work set, but you should not be resting on the light warmups. Get 'em done!

It's common to rest between 3-7 minutes between your work sets. During this time period, your body is replenishing it's ATP stores via the glycolytic and oxidative energy pathways. After a few minutes, however, the ATP stores are as full as they're going to get, thus more rest is not beneficial. While the rest period is important, many lifters make the mistake of resting TOO long. Seven minutes is truly the maximum, for days when you are pushing the top of your LP. Otherwise, five minutes is plenty.

Finally, it's important to remember that we come to the gym for training, not exercise, and not for sports practice either. Training is logical, systematic, and intentional. Nothing is added that is not required for objective progress. It's tempting to add movements, especially with the notion that they mimic some aspect of your sport. The way you get better at your sport, however, is by practicing the sport. The gym is for getting strong and conditioned. Keep the two separated and keep your workouts short so you can spend more time doing what you like to do!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D talks to the ladies of Fort Worth Strength & Conditioning today about their experience strength training with barbells. The ladies train in their own class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings, and they bring it every time. There is a wide range of ages, backgrounds, and experience in the class, but all share a common drive to get stronger under the bar and improve themselves physically and mentally.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Doug Eidd, owner of Doug's Gym, the oldest barbell gym in America at the time of its closing in 2018, joins us today to share his perspective on health and fitness after over 60 years of experience training himself and thousands of others. In his own words, after a lifetime of training he has realized he already knew what he needed to know at 16, when he began training with weights to develop his strength and build muscular size.

Looking for work after the Korean War, Doug briefly considered PT school but was steered away by a friend in the field struggling to make ends meet (the nascent industry had yet to fully integrate with the existing healthcare system, and did not bill insurance at the time). Instead he entered the gym business, opening Doug's Gym in downtown Dallas in 1962. Doug's was one of just a few gyms in the area, but as bodybuilding began to enter mainstream American culture, demand for gyms grew, and the term "working out" entered the lexicon of modern working man.

Doug has since trained thousands upon thousands of people, and seen fitness trends and fads come and go. He still relies on the old, basic barbell lifts for the core of any training program, and he preaches moderation in diet and lifestyle. One might chuckle at his moderation comment, as you were likely to find Doug toking his meerschaum pipe in his office while reading the newspaper, but Doug still trains with weights 5 days a week, moves around with ease, and possesses a sharp and curious mind -- at 88 years of age.

You don't have to take it from us... listen to Doug. He's probably been training longer than you've been alive, and he's learned a thing or two about training during that time.

Some articles on the history and closure of Doug's Gym:

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2018/03/20/after-55-years-iconic-dougs-gym-downtown-dallas-see-last-weight-lifted
https://www.keranews.org/post/conversation-owner-dougs-gym-which-closed-after-55-years-dallas

Dallas photographer Norm Diamond has taken some beautiful photos that capture the spirit and essence of Doug's Gym. You can view his portfolio and order prints of his work here: https://www.afterimagegallery.com/Diamond2.htm

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent discuss their motivations for training and living a healthy lifestyle, as well as what draws people to the gym. Most people understandably begin their fitness journey out of a desire to look better in the mirror, to "look good naked" as Darin likes to say. This is a fine goal, and one we probably all share to some extent, but people that end up sticking with it, that end up training for months, years, and decades, usually do it for a higher purpose.

What is this higher purpose? It's a spectrum, with different answers for different people. At 40fit Radio, we are essentially centrists when it comes to training. We train all aspects of fitness, focusing first on the best "bang for the buck" training modalities -- like barbell training -- with the philosophy of doing things that will improve our ability to perform in the real world and feel good at the same time. In other words, we train today so that we can train a decade from now, and more importantly, do the things we like to do in life a decade from now.

Others may find fulfillment in competition and athletic achievement. They accept the chance of injury or loss of function in the future, for the ability to achieve excellence in their chosen sport today. These people have the mind of an athlete, and we respect their drive and dedication.

Other people, like Coach Trent, end up finding purpose in the act of training itself, rather than the goals. They find a sense of calm, balance, and perspective in the process of training, in the objective outcomes. They strive for mastery and perfection, knowing they cannot achieve it, but find value in the journey.

Whatever your purpose, it's important to understand the "why" driving your training. Be honest with yourself. Don't train for the things you think other people want -- train for you. Find your place in the spectrum and occupy it with pride.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent discuss what makes a coach, and how clients can apply the basics of coaching to get the most out of their experience training with a coach.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent wrap up their series on the shoulder joint with a discussion on interventions and exercises for treating shoulder injuries, shoulder pain, and for developing general shoulder health. Coach D outlines some basic principles for shoulder treatment: the importance of a proper diagnosis, your pain doesn't have to be totally gone to begin training and treatment, work the secondary (stabilizer) muscles with isolated movements if necessary, and focus on compound barbell movements like the press for the majority of your shoulder strength work.

Those of you who reside in Texas, help our state join the 21st century and allow patients to see a physical therapist without needing a referral from a physician first. Texas is one of the last two states requiring referral. Please email your State Representative and State Senator and ask them to co-sponsor House Bill 29 and Senate Bill 732!

https://wrm.capitol.texas.gov/

View Details

Coach D and Trent are back with Part 2 in the Strong Shoulders series discussing common injuries of the shoulder, how they occur, and what tissues are affected. Most active people have met someone -- or have experience themselves -- with a shoulder injury. They are particularly common in sports where a large degree of shoulder rotation and velocity are involved (think about a Major League Baseball pitcher). In order to understand the best way to rehab and train our shoulders, we have to understand the nature of the injuries.

As mentioned in Part 1, the shoulder, like all joints, is comprised of several types of tissue:

Bones: the scapula, clavicle, and humerus
Muscles: the deltoids, trapezius, rhomboids, and rotator cuff muscles (supraspinatus, infraspinatus, subscapularis, teres major and minor)
Tendons: connecting the muscles to bone
Ligaments: connecting bone to bone; in the case of the shoulder several ligaments form a sort of "sling" which helps hold the glenohumeral joint together
Cartilage: on the articular surface of the glenohumeral and AC joints
Bursa: fluid filled sacs which stack on top of the humeral head and cushion the joints
As well as the nervous, cardiovascular, lymphatic, and integumentary (skin) components of the shoulder

We commonly hear of strains and sprains. Generally, a strain refers to an injury to a muscle or tendon (elastic structures), while a sprain refers to an injury to a ligament (non-elastic). Both terms refer to tissue that has been damaged due to over-stretching. The level of damage is graded by number: Grade 1 representing a minor strain (perhaps 0-25% of the muscle fibres damaged), Grade 4 representing a complete rupture or tear of the tendon/ligament off the bone. Barring a Grade 4 strain, which will require surgery to repair, training can and should continue to help the tissue heal.

Training increases blood flow and therefore nutrition to the muscle belly, helps removes waste from damaged cells, and promotes release of growth hormones that will promote healing and remodeling of muscle tissue. However, tendon strains will respond better to loading than ligament sprains. Because ligaments are poorly enervated and not very vascular, they should be given additional time to heal and let inflammation subside before loading. Ligaments are not as responsive to training as tendons and muscles, so ligament injuries have longer healing times, up to 6-8 weeks, compared to tendon injuries, which depending on severity may only take 1-2 weeks to heal.

While strains and sprains are acute injuries, tendonitis and it's insidious siblings tendonosis and tendonopathy is typically chronic in nature, an inflammation of the tendon that presents as painful, stiff, and achy. Tendonitis is probably the most common injury to the shoulder. Tendonosis and tendonopathy are more advanced forms of tendonitis in which the structure of the tendon itself is compromised, and bony changes in the joint may occur from the chronic inflammation.

Another common type of injury is the garbage-bag diagnosis of "impingement syndrome." Broadly, this refers to damage to the rotator cuff muscles and other soft tissue from getting trapped, or impinged, by the bony parts of the shoulder. In severe cases this bony contact can wear through the muscles and tendons of the rotator cuff, predisposing them to tearing. Some individuals are more prone to impingement than others, depending on how "hooked" their acromion processes are and how much space they have in their shoulder joints.

The last common injury to the shoulder we cover is dislocation,in which the humerus pops out of the joint. Subluxation may also occur, a more minor event in which the joint temporarily pops out of place and back in. Dislocation can be serious if the blood vessels and nerves are damaged, so it's important to seek a medical professional as soon as possible to properly reset the joint. Like ligament injuries, dislocations require time to heal and scar down before restarting training. Loading a dislocated shoulder too soon could create laxity in the joint, which will predispose it to more dislocations in the future.

Next week Coach D will be back to discuss common rehab methods for shoulder injuries, and basic training concepts for keeping your shoulders strong and healthy.

View Details

After lower back pain, shoulder issues might just be the most common form of injury and aches and pains experienced in the gym and on the field. When you consider the anatomy and physiology of this complex joint, it's no surprise. The shoulder is a somewhat delicate ball-and-socket joint, loosely slung by a capsule of ligaments, tendons, cartilage and muscle. Yet it's delicate nature allows for tremendous range of motion, one of the largest ranges in the human body, and allows us to take advantage of our dextrous hands.

Shoulder aches and pains are just a reality of human existence. Injuries, however, are not. And if we want to build strong, healthy, injury-free shoulders, we need a basic understanding of the anatomy of the shoulder joint. Coach D breaks down the basic components of the shoulder, how they function, and why this important when it comes to shoulder training and health.

In Part 2, we will discuss common injuries of the shoulder, and in Part 3, strategies for managing pain, rehabbing injuries, and training considerations for long-term shoulder health.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

In episode #5 we discussed one of the ten general physical skills: flexibility, and it's analog mobility. Most people believe that they are not flexible enough, that they need more mobility, and the path to acquiring it lies in a gauntlet of contortionism. Or yoga. How much flexibility and mobility do we really need though? Is it possible to be too flexible? How much time should we allocate to mobility work? Coach D takes us through the research and his decades of coaching experience to answer these questions.

To recap, flexibility is defined as the range of motion (ROM) in a joint or body segment. All joints in the human body have a normal degree of ROM established in the medical literature, plus or minus a few degrees depending on individual anthropometry, amount of body mass around the joint, tissue elasticity, and other factors. Mobility is a function of flexibility, the combination of a joint's passive ROM and your ability to utilize that ROM by producing force (strength). Skill also plays a role in mobility. Your ability to move a joint through it's passive ROM in a skilled motor pattern is an expression of mobility.

How much do you need? Well, it depends. One way to think about it is you only need as much as your daily activity, training, and sport (if any) demands. Excess mobility is not necessarily a good thing. A gymnast needs to be able to do the splits, of course, but a sprinter does not. More importantly, the sprinter doesn't want to be able to do the splits, because the work necessary to do it would likely detract from their speed on the track. Two different levels of mobility, each specific to the purpose. Likewise, if you just barbell train and perhaps do a little conditioning and outdoor activity, you probably don't need to stretch like a gymnast.

For many masters trainees, however, mobility is an issue. It gets in the way of productive training, because it prevents utilization of the greatest effective range of motion -- for instance, squatting so that the hip crease is below the top of the patella in a low bar back squat. If this is you, you need to work on your mobility. The good news is, the barbell is actually one of best stretching modalities there is, since it is a loaded stretch that involves both shortening and lengthening the muscles over a long range of motion and with a complex motor pattern that requires lots of neural input to reproduce.

Mobility work can be broken into four types, in order from least effective to most effective. We use all types in the PT clinic and in the gym, depending on how much mobility the trainee needs and where their fitness is at:

Passive or static stretching (least effective): a bodyweight stretch held for a period of time, such as touching your toes and holding the position, or a hurdler's or runner's stretch, holding a lunge position. The literature suggests that 30 seconds is the appropriate hold length for passive stretching, with 3-5 stretches per muscle group. People with ligamentous injuries or contractures may require longer holds.
Active or dynamic stretching: unloaded stretch performed by actively moving the joint through a range of motion, such as leg swings or hip openers.
Isometric stretching: a static stretch performed against an immovable resistance, such as a rack, bar, or box. You should stretch to the point of tension; a slight amount of discomfort is ok, as long as there is no pain. Again, 30s holds tend to work best here.
Loaded stretching with movement (most effective): an active stretch performed against a resistance. Barbell movements like the squat are some of the best examples. If a trainee cannot perform the barbell lifts safely, then they may need to use a combination of the other modalities until they are mobile enough to safely perform the barbell lifts.

Whatever method you use, you need to do it daily. Twice a day is even better than. Thomas Kurz in his book Stretching Scientifically argues for stretching multiple times per day, with an emphasis on building strength in the range of motion being trained.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

Stretching Scientifically: A Guide to Flexibility Training

View Details

It's an innocent question... when is strong, strong enough? For most people, the answer is never. They will never be strong enough. Because most people aren't actually training, and if they are training they are not training for strength. Those of us in the 40fit Nation aren't most people though. So back to the question: how strong is strong enough?

Like many things, the answer is "it depends." Mainly, it depends on your goals and interests, and how much priority you place on them in life. For the competitor, the athlete, she may never be strong enough. Every athlete needs a high level of strength, and athletes in strength sports, naturally, need as much as they can attain. For those with no competitive aspirations, it may not be worth the time, effort, and pain to pursue the highest level of strength.

Everyone would benefit from at least running through the entire novice phase of their linear progression. Coach D recommends, for men, working toward a 2x bodyweight deadlift, a 1.75x squat, 1.5x bench, and bodyweight press, for men. Women should scale these multipliers down: 1.5x deadlift, 1.25x squat, 1x bench, 0.75x press. This puts an average sized, 200lbs man at a squat in the mid-300's, a 400lbs deadlift, 300lbs bench, and 200lbs press. A man who has attained these strength levels could be considered strong, certainly strong enough for just about any situation life could throw at him.

As the loads continue to climb, it is common for trainees to experience some aches and pains at some point as their connective tissue fails to adapt as quickly as their muscle tissue. This is the point where a competitor would continue to push through, and accept that aches and pains come with the territory. For the person just looking for general health, this is the time to back off the strength training a bit, slow down the rate of adaptation, and allow the connective tissue more time to adapt.

As you can see, there is no answer to the question: strong enough? If you have to ask it, you're probably not strong enough. But to those dedicated trainees who have made an honest run at a novice linear progression and achieved the strength levels above, it's OK to back off the strength training for a while to focus on other aspects of fitness.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Last episode we posed the question: why do our workouts have to be so hard? The scientific answer to this question lies in the concept of the stress-recovery-adaptation cycle, or SRA cycle, derived from Hans Selye's work in the first half of the twentieth century. Simply put, in order to generate an adaptation, which we would recognize as an increase in one or more of the ten general physical skills (strength, endurance, mobility, etc), then you must progressively increase the amount of stress applied during the training program. That is the nature of training: it must become "harder" over time to continue driving progress.

In the 1950's Austro-Hungarian endocrinologist Hans Selye developed a theory known as the general adaptation syndrome which describes the effect of acute stress, generated by a stimulus (real or imagined), on an individual. Selye observed that the effect of stress on an organism was to disrupt homeostasis and, if continued unchecked, eventually kill the organism. If the stress was removed and the organism was given sufficient time and resources to recover from the stress, then it adapted to the stress in a manner specific to the type of stress imposed.

From this work, strength and conditioning coaches have gleaned the concept of the stress-recovery-adaptation (SRA) cycle, which guides the programming decisions behind our training model. Put simply, an athlete wishing to get stronger, faster, or more cardiovascularly fit must be subjected to a workout which stresses her, then recover from that workout by eating and sleeping. When this process is repeated over a period of time, she begins to see results and -- voila! -- she has performed what we call training, or a systematic, planned series of workouts toward a goal.

This is a key observation that we first covered in episodes #1-10 but we must restate now: in order to get stronger (or faster, or more fit, etc.), you must perform exercises which stress your muscles enough to disrupt homeostasis. This is why our workouts inevitably become hard -- they must generate enough stress to drive an adaptation. And this should be obvious; if you keep lifting the same weight every workout, you cannot get stronger. You are already adapted to that weight, thus there is not sufficient stress to disrupt homeostasis. One of the programming variables has to change -- you must do more reps, use more weight, or otherwise increase the volume or intensity of the exercise to drive adaptation. Yet, we see this time after time in the gym. People perform the same exercises, with the same number of sets and reps, with the same weight, over and over again, expecting results but not getting them. In short, these people are merely exercising when they should be training.

At first, just about anything constitutes a stress. For the completely sedentary person, a walk around the block is probably stressful enough to make them both stronger and more fit. This is known as the novice effect, and explains why people get results in the short-term for nearly anything. As Mark Rippetoe, the author of Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training, is fond of saying, for rank novices "riding a bike will make their bench press go up." Beyond this point, however, a good training program that incrementally increases stress to drive adaptation over a long period of time is needed. Fortunately, novices can make progress nearly every workout for the first few months of their training. In this case the SRA cycle is very short, about 48-72 hours long.

Eventually the novice can no longer add stress to the workout and make progress. This is easiest to observe in barbell training. The novice adds five pounds to the bar each workout, but cannot complete the prescribed number of sets and reps. At this point, he must start adding weight every other workout, and perhaps perform a lighter workout in between, in order to add weight to the bar. Eventually adding weight every other workout becomes every week, then every two weeks, then monthly, and for the advanced athlete nearing their genetic potential for strength, every few months. In these cases, the SRA cycle is stretched over a period of time rather than a single workout.

Though it's beyond the scope of this episode, recovery is equally important. It is, after all, half of the equation. When we recover from a stressful workout our brain makes new neural connections and becomes more efficient at recruiting motor units for the task, our muscles grow, our cells become more efficient at generating ATP and eliminating waste products. Food and sleep are the primary components of recovery. The important thing to keep in mind here is that as you add stress to a training program, the recovery must keep pace, or you risk overtraining and stalling progress, losing progress, and even injury.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

As the saying goes, it's a feature, not a bug. Hard, that is. Any training program worth its salt must be hard, at least part of the time.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Robert Santana is back for part 2 of a deep conversation on nutrition, dieting for bodyfat loss, and fostering healthy eating habits for sustainable weight loss. In this episode, Santana breaks down the roles of the macronutrients in a weight loss situation, and explains why carbs are NOT evil (and in fact do not lead to body fat gain). He explains why it's the combination of high fat and carbohydrate -- especially in processed foods -- that leads to caloric surplus and, therefore, body fat gain.

He also offers some practical advice for very overweight or obese people who need to lose weight. Santana's approach favors a moderate reduction in calories to drive weight loss at approximately 1% of total bodyweight per week (so, for a 300lbs person, about 3lbs per week). This has proven to be a sustainable weight loss target in the short term, and ensures that the trainee will see results fairly quickly while, importantly, not keeping them in "diet mode" for too long. At this point, he will hold them steady at their new bodyweight for a month or two before entering a calorie deficit again. This approach serves two purposes: besides the satisfaction of quicker weight loss, it teaches the trainee how to alter their eating habits to effect a caloric deficit, and it teaches them how to sustain their bodyweight during the maintenance phase. During each phase of the diet, Santana focuses his clients' efforts on developing good habits, one at a time, rather than counting macros.

Nutrition Coaching from Starting Strength Online Coaching

Between now and Jan. 15th, 2019 Starting Strength Online Coaching is offering a HUGE discount for the first month of coaching. You can get your first month of online coaching for $49, or online coaching plus nutrition coaching from Robert Santana and his team for just $79! Pretty sweet. No discount code required -- just sign up before the sale is over and the discount will appear in your cart.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D sits down with dietician and Starting Strength Coach Robert Santana to talk about the million dollar question: how do you lose fat, and keep it off? First, it's important to understand why we get fat -- the body chemistry of fat and muscle gain -- and where we've missed the mark on the science of fat loss in our modern culture.

Santana discusses the phenomenon of the skinny fat body, sometimes referred to as "dad bod," and why we need to shift our ideas about "weight loss" toward "muscle gain." Many people who fall into the normal and overweight category, typically as measured by BMI, don't need to lose weight per se, but rather gain muscle and lose bodyfat. Thus, the scale is the wrong tool for measuring progress. Instead, these people should focus on tracking waist measurement, bodyfat (via a simple test like skinfold caliper test), and their progress under the bar. Yes, they should be weight training!

As he explains, metabolism is largely driven by the metabolic rate at rest. Physical activity only contributes a small amount of the total calories burned each day, less than 25%. Consequently, building muscle mass drives far more calorie burn than cardiovascular training. Muscle mass also improves nutrient partitioning, or the body's ability to route incoming calories toward productive processes like muscle protein synthesis (as the name implies, the production and renewal of muscle mass) instead of fat storage.

Santana will join us again next week to dispel more myths about dieting, nutrition, and fat loss, so stay tuned with 40fit Radio!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Everyone's got one, and they all stink. We're not talking about opinions. We're talking about excuses. As the New Year approaches -- and along with it new resolutions and promises to change old habits -- it's easy to imagine yourself six months or a year later with exactly the body you want, performing exactly the skills you want to learn, achieving all your goals... but it doesn't work like that. Time and time again, people make resolutions and fail, often before the first quarter of the year has come and gone.

Why does this happen? It's simple, really. Consistency is where the rubber meets the road when it comes to training. Consistency is easy when the year is young, spirits are high, and motivation is plentiful. As soon as life gets busy again, as soon as a setback occurs -- travel, sickness, a minor injury -- people often miss sessions, and never get back to the consistency they began their training program with.

They come up with excuses to justify missing workouts. Or worse, they hide behind these excuse before ever starting a workout program. We've heard them all:

I'm too busy to train
I'm too tired to train
I'm too sick to train
I'm too old/injured to train
I don't want to get bulky
And so forth...

The problem is, out of the vast, overwhelming number of these excuses, there is no good reason NOT to train. The key to consistency is not motivation, or willpower, it's simply discipline. Discipline is simply the habit of training, no matter what, especially when you have an excuse. Eventually, the habit takes over and training becomes normal, and consequently, not training becomes abnormal.

Today, that may not be the case for you. That's ok. Let's get started right now. Don't wait until the New Year. Start today. Clear an hour on your schedule, and get started. Refer back to the first ten episodes for the basic overview of how to train if needed. It will be painful at first -- not the workout itself, but getting yourself to actually do it -- but string along enough workouts and it will simply become a new habit. You may even find you start to enjoy it.

Starting Strength Online Coaching

Need a good coach to help guide you through training? Visit our friends at Starting Strength Online Coaching to get paired with a top notch Starting Strength Coach who will coach you through all the barbell lifts and manage your programming on a daily basis. Use the discount code "40fit" at checkout to save $79 off your first month with SSOC.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Coach Trent discuss how routine and habits can impact your mindset and sometimes get in the way of good training. As the saying goes, humans are creatures of habit, and that holds true for training. Whether it's a pair of lucky underwear, a rocking tune, or doing the haka before a PR deadlift, we all develop habits and quirks which help us focus, clear our minds, and prepare to train. But what do you do when something's off? Maybe you left your gym bag at home and you're without a belt and shoes to squat in, or you have to run a new route with unknown surfaces and unfamiliar inclines. Is that workout a bust, or can you adapt on the fly and get some productive training?

Good coaches encourage productive habits and routines. Teaching a lifter to approach the bar the same way every time, for example -- right hand, left hand, then right foot, left foot, take a big breath, brace hard, etc. -- promotes the repeatability of a movement and gives the lifter's mind something to focus on while executing a complex movement pattern. Naturally, over time trainees develop their own personalized routines to mentally prepare for training and get into the right frame of mind to exert a high level of effort.

Sometimes these routines can shift our mental attention away from the body cues we can control -- things like "hips back" or "stay in the midfoot" -- toward ambient or circumstantial cues which we cannot directly control, such as what music is playing, what is going on in our peripheral vision, having clear sight lines outside the normal gaze of the movement. While these details are often what separate the good gyms from the bad, we cannot always choose where we train, and chances are we will encounter unideal environs.

Likewise, equipment can become a crutch, particularly for strength training. Again, a good coach will recommend you to buy and use basic tools which facilitate productive lifting: shoes, a belt, perhaps some wrist wraps for heavy pressing and benching, straps for the advanced deadlifter. However, form creep happens to everyone and equipment use can become a crutch masking poor technique. Using wrist wraps to maintain a moderately extended wrist in a heavy press, for instance, may be masking the fact that the grip is wrong, and needs to be corrected to carry the bar over the supportive bones of the forearm instead of the smaller, weaker bones in the hand and wrist. A lifter that has learned to push out against her belt rather than tighten her abs with a proper Valsalva may find herself unable to control her back position in a heavy squat, because she has compromised her ability to engage the abdominal wall in the lift.

All that said, don't try to fix what ain't broke! Habits and routines absolutely have their place in training. On the other hand, if you find yourself struggling with a lift, a movement, or a skill, examine your routine, and occasionally put yourself in totally new, unfamiliar environments to learn how to self-asses and adapt more readily. Some of us train for competition, where the field of play, the weather, and a host of other factors are unpredictable, and learning to thrive under pressure is a key skill. For the rest of us simply training to live a healthier life... well, life still throws curveballs, and the skills of adaptability and versatility is just as important in life.

Starting Strength Online Coaching

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Trent and Coach D return for round 4 of the series on lower back pain, wrapping up the topic with a meaty discussion about exercise for treating chronic low back pain as well as acute pain from injury.

As mentioned in previous episodes, it's very important to first get an accurate diagnosis to understand what you're dealing with before getting back to training. Hard neuro symptoms such as loss of motor function, drop foot, etc. are more serious and may require a different approach to treatment than chronic sciatica, for instance. The diagnosis helps identify the source of the pain, and provides some idea of the likely healing time of the tissues affected (muscle, tendons, bone).

Once an accurate diagnosis has been made, treatment should -- in most cases -- begin immediately. Rarely is rest the right answer, unless the athlete is dealing with a severe injury. At this point, the coach or medical provider should begin educating the athlete about the nature of their injury and some of the things they may experience during the rehab process, being careful not to catastrophize the injury. Sometimes they are going to experience pain during their workouts, but using the exposure without danger principle discussed in Part 3 will help rewire their pain response while giving the tissue the best environment to heal.

From here, Coach D likes to break down the exercise progression into several steps, with pain and knowledge of the injury and the typical healing times for different types of tissue serving as the guide.

The Exercise Prescription

Bodyweight movements while laying on the back. At this point there should be little or no loading of the spine, just introducing light movement.
- Bridges
- Knees to chest
- Trunk rotation
Bodyweight movement, progressing to sitting. The athlete should focus on keeping the spine neutral and using the back as a rigid lever during these movements. At this point we have still not introduced loading beyond bodyweight.
- Sit to stands, from a high box to progressively lower box if necessary.
- Hip hinges, using the back as a rigid lever
Compound movements, with light loading. This is a good time to break out the training bars, broomsticks, and PVC pipe. Adjust the grip, implement, or movement pattern as necessary to accommodate for pain tolerance. For instance, if the lifter is having a hard time holding a regular barbell, try a safety squat bar or buffalo bar. Loading should be conservative at this point; there will be plenty of time to progress to heavy later.
- Squats using a light bar, kettlebell, or even bodyweight squats to a box, but using full range of motion.
- Planks and side planks in short intervals, increasing duration over time, for athletes who still have trouble loading their spine in a horizontal position.
- Sled pulls and drags
- Weighted carries with dumbbells or kettlebells
Compound movements with progressive loading. At this point it's time to reintroduce the compound lifts -- the squat, press, and deadlift -- with some load.
- The lifter needs to pay special attention to executing the lifts with perfect or nearly perfect form. At this point the athlete's pain should be low to moderate on the pain scale, and they can load the lifts using pain as the guide.
- Use common sense with the progression: a 400lb squatter coming back from a minor adductor strain need not make 5lbs jumps every workout, but he probably should not make 50lbs jumps either. Likewise even a strong lifter coming back from a more severe injury such as a hamstring tear may need to make more conservative jumps while the tissue heals. In both cases the progression model will look the same, but the timelines will be different: the lifter with adductor strain may only need 2-3 weeks before he is back to squatting 90-95% of his previous loads, while the hamstring injury may require months, depending on the severity.

At first the athlete should be doing these movements every day. Once compound loading begins, as the loads climb they can start tapering their workouts from every day to every other day, eventually back to their original workout schedule, such as 3 times per week.

The key thing when dealing with pain is motion is lotion, and movement as soon as possible after an injury is the best way to promote healing in the damage tissues. For those suffering from chronic pain and not necessarily an injury, movement is still the answer! Progressing to compound movements with load:

increases blood flow to the tissue, which brings nutrients, facilities cellular waste removal, and brings growth hormones to the tissue
reduces scar tissue, as the muscle is encouraged to heal in the direction that it is used, as opposed to randomly scarring, which can increase the chance of injury in the future
reduces muscle atrophy
improves motor sequence firing and increases muscle stamina, which help make movement and everyday tasks easier

Further Reading on Back Pain, Pain Science, and Exercise Intervention for Pain

In the Spine or In the Brain: Recent Advances in Pain Neuroscience by Nijs J, Clark J, Malfliet A, Ickmans K, Voogt L, Don S, den Bandt H, Goubert D, Kregel J, Coppieters I, Dankaerts W
Effects of Functional Resistance Training on Fitness and Quality of Life in Females by Cortell-Tormo, Juan & Tercedor, Pablo & Chulvi-Medrano, Iván & Tortosa-Martínez, Juan & Manchado, Carmen & Belloch, Salvador & Perez-Soriano, Pedro
Exercise in the Management of Chronic Back Pain by Dreisinger T
The Effects of Strength Exercise and Walking on Lumbar Function, Pain Level, and Body Composition in Chronic Back Pain Patients by Lee JS, Kang SJ
Individualized Low Load Motor Control Exercise and Education versus High-Load Lifting Exercises by Aasa B, Berglund L, Michaelson P, Aasa U
Core Strength Training for Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain
Which Patients With Low Back Pain Benefit From Deadlift Training? by Berglund L, Aasa B, Hellqvist J, Michaelson P, Aasa U

Starting Strength Online Coaching

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D discusses a recent experience observing the "coaches" at a highly regarded (and premium priced) gym while training on the road. These coaches, while well-intentioned, often serve as little more than rep-counters and, essentially, babysitters for their clients, in the absence of a clear, logical training model, intelligent programming for their clients' goals, rigorous training, and plenty of experience of training themselves. So what makes a good coach? And what kind of qualities should you be looking for when you search for a coach?

Need a Coach? Starting Strength Online Coaching

The Starting Strength Coach certification is the most rigorous in the world, and only the very best earn the credential. Visit our friends at Starting Strength Online Coaching to get paired with a top notch Starting Strength Coach who will coach you through all the barbell lifts and manage your programming on a daily basis. Use the discount code "40fit" at checkout to save $79 off your first month with SSOC.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D and Trent are back on the topic of back pain, this time tackling the treatment* of back pain. As discussed in previous episodes, many people experiencing back pain lack both strength in their back musculature and proper control over the motor patterns the back was designed to move through. Back pain can lead to nervous system changes in which the patient becomes hypersensitive to new sensations of pain, and it can lead to maladaptive behaviors, which in turn can lead to comorbidities. So, how do we pull someone out of this spiral?

Darin reaches for education first. Similar to how these back pain episodes are laid out, Darin first educates his patients about the anatomy and function of the spine, pain science, and the literature supporting the use of strength training for building muscle and regaining function. Next, he uses "exposure without danger" therapy to slowly and incrementally expose the person to greater range of motion and heavier loads. These steps help the person reframe their ideas about pain, and rewire their brain to reduce the fear response and perceived level of threat from movement. Now the person is ready to train in earnest, and begin the process of strengthening her back, regaining function, and reducing her pain.

In the following episode, they will discuss specific exercise recommendations and programming for back rehab. Stay tuned for the next installment!

In the meantime, here are some excellent resources for further reading on pain and pain science:

https://bodyinmind.org
https://www.painscience.com

*N.B. if a person has specific neuropathic pain of an acute or sub-acute nature associated with dermatonal changes like numbness or tingling, or myotomal changes such as drop foot, incontinence, or loss of reflexes, these are red flags that indicate consulting with a physician. If you are experiencing symptoms like these, discuss them with your doctor!

Starting Strength Online Coaching

Interested in doing your first strength or powerlifting meet, but need a coach? Visit our friends at Starting Strength Online Coaching to get paired with a top notch Starting Strength Coach who will coach you through all the barbell lifts and manage your programming on a daily basis. Use the discount code "40fit" at checkout to save $79 off your first month with SSOC.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Competition is deeply woven into the fabric of our world. It drives the animal and plant kingdoms; it is the very beating heart of Nature. Removed as we are from physical competition in the modern world -- our survival needs long ago taken care of by industrialization -- it's easy to become disconnected from the essential drive to compete. Western culture, particularly American culture, complicates this urge by placing a high value on winning, often to such an extent that overshadows the merits of competition itself. For many Americans, the last physical competition they had occurred in high school sports, or perhaps college. Competition fades in adulthood, and often gets supplanted by a sedentary lifestyle.

As we outlined in earlier episodes, hard physical exertion is a necessary condition of life, whether we like it or not. We address this need through training, a logical process of stress, recovery, and adaptation to drive strength and conditioning gains. For many people, however, it is difficult to continue training ad naseum without the carrot of achievement, and for those people, competition is a great way to improve their training. Whether you are training with barbells (which you should be regardless of your goals), running, cycling, shooting baskets, swinging a golf club, or anything else, to continue improving at your chosen pursuit at some point you need to sign up for a competition. Competitions offer the chance for achievement, but more importantly they elevate your training in a number of ways:

Accountability: signing up for the meet means you have a date on the calendar, and you'll have to perform on that date. If you've struggled with consistency in the gym, knowing that each workout is preparing you for an important event (that you've paid for!) can be a great motivator when you really don't want to train. Or perhaps you are great with making your workouts, but struggle with nutrition. Knowing you need the right mix of fuel to perform your best at a competition can give you a reason to start tracking your macros regularly and make better food choices in the moment.
Execution: maintaining focus on technique and maintaining a high level of effort is difficult during long training cycles. Knowing that the quality of your preparation will influence your outcomes at the competition, training takes on a new level of importance. You will find your training improve, as you begin to take ownership of each piece of the process, instead of merely going through the motions.
Confidence/Self-Worth: simply competing in a meet, a race, a tournament, even if you don't come close to placing or winning, provides a concrete accomplishment that you can build on.

The last point is a profound one. Many Masters don't compete to win anything, they compete for themselves and the satisfaction of exceeding their previous PR's. And, from personal experience, almost all of the Masters sporting events are full of supportive people that cheer hard for all levels of athletes. Doing your best is what counts in these circles, not your time, or the weight on the bar.

The recent US Strengthlifting Federation meet at Westminster Gym in Maryland is a shining example of this. A young man named Miles competed in his first meet. Miles has cerebral palsy, and trained hard for months to prepare for this meet. He crushed it, going 9/9 and setting a PR on his deadlift. While Miles will likely never win his weight class at a strengthlifting meet, or the overall, it doesn't matter. He won the competition against himself, and became a better version of himself in the process. That's what it's all about!

You can watch a video of Miles' competition on YouTube. Watch his last press attempt, now that is an impressive grinder! A+ effort.

Starting Strength Online Coaching

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

In Part 2 of the back pain miniseries, Coach D and Trent discuss the science of pain. The traditional pain model describes pain as pain messages (nociception) delivered to the brain as a noxious stimulus in response to tissue damage. While this model works well to describe acute pain, such as smashing your fingers in the car door, it does not adequately explain the great number of people who experience pain without tissue damage or other pathology. Likewise it fails to explain people with tissue damage who do not experience any pain. The emerging biopsychosocial model of pain, which describes pain as not only a physical experience but an emotional one, attempts to reconcile these gaps. While our understanding of pain is still developing, it is clear that pain is a complex experience.

Articles Referenced During the Episode

Back Pain and Back Strength by Mark Rippetoe
The Vertebral Column (Spine) on Wikipedia
In the spine or in the brain? Recent advances in pain neuroscience applied in the intervention for low back pain by Nijs et al (no link)

Suggested Further Reading

Aches and Pains by Austin Baraki, MD
https://www.painscience.com

Starting Strength Online Coaching

Need to strengthen your back, but don't have a good coach to help you get started? Visit our friends at Starting Strength Online Coaching to get paired with a top notch Starting Strength Coach who will coach you through all the barbell lifts and manage your programming on a daily basis. Use the discount code "40fit" at checkout to save $79 off your first month with SSOC.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

In Part 1 of a new miniseries on lower back pain, Coach D and Trent dive into the causes, treatment, and prevention of back pain, the most common form of pain reported by patients and trainees. First, however, they lay down the foundation for understanding back pain: the anatomy and function of the spine and the musculature and connective tissue of the trunk.

Simply put, the spine functions in two ways. First, it rotates, twists, and flexes to allow us to move and perform everyday functions and interact with our world. Generally these movements are performed with light weights, if any, and they constitute the majority of our use of the spine. Secondly, the spine can act as a rigid lever to allow us to transmit force from the powerful muscle groups in our posterior chain (the hips) through our hands; think about a lineman driving his opponent off the line of scrimmage, or a powerlifter performing a low bar back squat. In this case, with the help of the spinal erectors and other musculature of the back, the spine extends and becomes rigid while enduring a combination of compressive and tension force, depending on the movement. In real life training and athletics, many movements involve a combination of these two functions, but the distinction is useful when understanding the spine.

Articles Referenced During the Episode

Back Pain and Back Strength by Mark Repute
The Vertebral Column (Spine) on Wikipedia
In the spine or in the brain? Recent advances in pain neuroscience applied in the intervention for low back pain by Nijs et al (no link)

Starting Strength Online Coaching

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

There's a saying that goes "I'll sleep when I'm dead." Well if you don't sleep, you might be dead sooner than you like! We all know intuitively that sleep is very important, and this intuition has been reinforced by the volumes of data coming out of the science community emphasizing the importance of good quantity and quality of sleep. Yet so many of us struggle to sleep well, especially as we age. Coach D offers some tips for improving your sleep habits.

Here's a few interesting statistics according to the NIH:

At least 40 million Americans have a chronic sleep disorder
20 million more have trouble sleeping

Additionally, people with chronic sleep disorders have a:

15% decrease in testosterone
20% increase in driving accidents
30% increased risk of obesity
45% increased risk of heart attacks
2.5x increased risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome

The exact numbers vary by study, but in general humans should get:

Adults: 7-9hrs sleep/day
Teens: 9-11hrs
Children: 11-15hrs
Darin's French Bulldog Dozer: 20+ hrs

Sleep is a critical process of human physiology. A number of important processes happen during sleep. Firstly, our blood pressure and body temperature drops significantly during the dormant phase of sleep. Growth hormones release and reach their maximum levels, promoting muscle repair, muscle protein synthesis, and other cellular repair. Our memories consolidate and brain's nerve cells rewire. The immune system ramps up to deal with the foreign bacteria encountered during the day. Simply put, without sleep, we could not recover and deal with stresses encountered during life, and we would die. It goes without saying that if you aren't adequately sleeping, you're missing one of the biggest components in a training program.

Interested in learning the barbell lifts, but don't have a good coach in your area? Visit our friends at Starting Strength Online Coaching to get paired with a top notch Starting Strength Coach who will coach you through all the barbell lifts and manage your programming on a daily basis. Use the discount code "40fit" at checkout to save $79 off your first month with SSOC.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Last week Coach D discussed the signs and symptoms of overtraining. Today he talks about strategies for preventing overtraining and treating it when it does happen.

Nutrition - this is one area that blocks the progress of many novice trainees. Your eating habits need to support your training. First and foremost, make sure you are getting enough protein. For most men, this is going to be at least 200g per day, and for most women 150g a day. The majority of that protein should be from animal sources. Secondly, don't ignore carbohydrates! As you advance in your training, you will need adequate stores of glycogen to complete heavy strength training and HIIT sessions, and skimping on carbs will impair your performance. How much carbohydrate an athlete needs will be specific to the individual, but most of them will require moderate to high carbohydrate levels.
Sleep - sleep is the body's time to repair, remodel, and build new tissues, and thus it is a critical component to the recovery process. You can't short your sleep for very long before it becomes a drag on your recovery. Aim to get at least 8 hours of sleep every night.
Mental health - psychological stress is a form of stress! Not all stressors are physical in nature. If you have significant psychological stress, either from your job or family or any of the curveballs that life is known to throw from time to time, then that is likely impacting your ability to recover from workouts. Take some time to ensure you are giving yourself space to relax, to let your brain rest, on rest days. Small habits add up here. Try to turn off electronics an hour before bed. Sleep in a dark room. Take a walk everyday. Try yoga or meditation.
Programming - all programming only works for so long. If you've been training consistently and hitting it hard for awhile, it may be time to adjust your programming. There are many ways to approach this, but it could be as simple as reducing the volume or frequency of your workouts, or cycling the intensity so that you're going heavy fewer times per week.
Review your progress and change programming if necessary. Have you made progress in 6 weeks? 3 months? The more advanced an athlete you are, the longer it will take to make measurable progress. But if you're not making progress on a timeline appropriate for your level of advancement, it may be time to change your programming. This is where your training log is a critical tool!

Additionally, for novice strength trainees an excellent resource is Mark Rippetoe's The First Three Questions article. Many novices end their LP prematurely by failing to account for some basic recovery issues, especially nutrition. Rippetoe lays out the first three questions a novice should ask themselves if they find themselves stuck during the novice linear progression.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

In the first ten episodes -- the "Foundations" series - we discussed the Stress Recovery Adaptation cycle, a simple yet powerful model that describes how organisms, including ourselves, adapt to stressors in their environment. It also helps us understand how we go about creating the change we want in our bodies. There must be a stress, that stress must be specific to the desired adaptation (i.e. you have to pick up heavy weights to get stronger), and recovery must be sufficient or else the organism gets injured or dies. The SRA cycle is the heart of any systematic, intelligent approach to programming.

While the model is simple, real life, unfortunately, is not. Despite our best intentions, the Stress and Recovery factors don't always balance, and when one or the other gets out of whack, overtraining can occur. The word "overtraining" has been a hot topic in training circles for a while now, and it's definition is still debated. Is overtraining really over-"training" (too much stress) or is merely "under-recovery"?

As Coach D breaks it down, we really don't know. The difference between the two is a fine line. There are a few possibilities. Endurance athletes experiencing overuse injuries such as stress fractures, for instance, could be experiencing breakdown in connective tissue from the sheer amount of joint impact. We know that training stress transiently increases cortisol levels, but those levels taper off after the training bout and return to normal. An athlete on the verge of overtraining may have chronically elevated cortisol levels from constant training stress. Recovery can mitigate these issues, but they are primarily stress-related problems.

Of course, recovery is very important too. As the saying goes, one doesn't get strong from lifting weights, one gets strong recovering from lifting weights. As training intensity, duration, and volume ramps up over time, recovery becomes more and more important. Athletes need adequate calories, the right balance of macronutrients, good hydration, manageable levels of psychological stress, and plenty of sleep to keep the recovery side of the equation in check. Recovery resources are also finite, so one can simply outrun his ability to recover from training. Thus, a strength trainee stalling in her progression due to undereating protein would be a recovery issue. Her body cannot build the muscle mass necessary to continue adapting to the stress of the weights without protein. A runner suffering knee pain above a certain amount of mileage, on the other hand, would be a stress issue. His nutrition and sleep may be perfect, but the knee joints don't respond as quickly or robustly to the recovery resources compared to muscle tissue. Consequently, they have a limit to the amount of stress they can take. This would be a stress issue. In both cases, stress and recovery play a role, but one factor is the primary influence.

While the causes of overtraining are not clear cut, we do know what overtraining looks like. Some signs and symptoms are:

Decreased athletic performance. Your training is consistent, but your times are going up, your reps are going down, overall strength is going down, mobility is compromised, workouts are generally getting more and more difficult.
Elevated heart rate, beyond what you normally experience during workouts.
Chronic fatigue and generally feeling flat in the gym.
Mood swings. Your ability to handle normal everyday events is compromised.
Poor sleep or restlessness. You start waking up during the night, your overall sleep hours decrease, or you don't feel fully rested after sleep.
Loss of appetite
Chronic/nagging injuries. Don't mistake these with injuries due to form errors or form critique (which can occur when training gets heavy or difficult), but if your technique is on point and you're experiencing nagging injuries it could be a sign of overtraining.
Nutrient or metabolic imbalance. If you notice flareups of IBS, diverticulitis, anemia from low iron levels
Too much stress. Chronic lack of desire to train, depression symptoms, even when things are going well in training and life.

Just because you are experiencing some of these symptoms, doesn't mean you are suffering from overtraining! We all experience some or all of these problems during our training career. Overtraining is rarer than you think. If you notice these problems occurring chronically, even when all signs point to things going well (programming is good, compliance is good, training is advancing, etc.), then that might be a tip off that you are overtraining.

Check in next week for Part 2, where Coach D will walk you through how to deal with overtraining and get your training back on track.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Continuing from Episode 23, Dr. Steve Lawson recounts his harrowing tale of contracting cerebral malaria while on a mission in Nigeria, then falling ill a few days later in the middle of Siberia on another mission. In Part 2, Steve describes how weak and frail he had become following the sickness, and the utter helplessness he experienced as a result.

As a pastor, Steve had often preached about helplessness, losing faith in God and leaning on others for faith. After one particularly bad fall in the hospital during his convalescence, however, he realized he had never really lived these lessons. He found himself truly vulnerable for the first time, and that vulnerability ultimately strengthened his faith, having watched his family and the global community they contacted pull together for his recovery. Steve also credits his wife as the "human hero" of the story (after God), as she also fought with losing faith while Steve was in a coma.

After returning home to the States, Steve began physical therapy doing simple tasks like sit-to-stands. He walked with a cane for a while as he had developed ataxia and was wobbly on his feet. He eventually progressed to a barbell and began a Starting Strength linear progression, squatting, pressing, and deadlifting first the empty bar and adding a few pounds each workout. Today he is squatting and deadlifting in excess of 200lbs and he has recovered all of the 25lbs of bodyweight he lost while in a coma.

Connect with Dr. Lawson

Dr. Lawson's website
Dr. Lawson's speaking engagements at Leadership Transformation

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D invites Dr. Steve Lawson back on the podcast to recount his death-defying journey to Siberia and back. While on a mission to Nigeria, Dr. Lawson contracted cerebral malaria -- a particularly deadly expression of the disease -- however his symptoms did not manifest until arriving in Siberia a few days later. At this point he quickly descended into a coma, stuck in an under-equipped hospital in Siberia with only his wife and a fellow Russian pastor... neither of whom were allowed to visit him directly.

Most people die within a few days of contracting cerebral malaria sans treatment. Despite the incredible odds, Steve managed to survive for several days longer than that, without the proper medication for treating the disease. He survived long enough for a specialized tropical disease medical team to fly in from France and airlift him to an appropriate facility where he could recover.

Today Dr. Lawson is still recovering from his ordeal, using the barbell to strengthen his body. He credits his miraculous survival to God, and he has gained perspective on the concept of voluntary hardship. What may seem difficult or heavy today is not only trivial in the bigger picture, but a blessing.

Connect with Dr. Lawson

Dr. Lawson's website
Dr. Lawson's speaking engagements at Leadership Transformation

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Journals aren't just for recording your feelz... they are a useful training tool too. Even in today's frenzied technology age, good old pen and paper are the best tools for logging your training and developing a deeper understanding of how well your training is driving you toward your goals.

That's not to say there's no place for apps and spreadsheets. These digital tools offer the ability to track trends and metrics very easily and can be accessed on a variety of devices. Yet, the tactile experience of recording your training and training notes in a physical logbook engages the brain in a way that typed notes do not. A recent Princeton and UCLA study compared two cohorts - one asked to record notes on assigned reading materials by hand in a notebook, and another asked to record the same notes in a computer via keyboard - and found that the group recording notes by hand gained a deeper understanding of the principles in the material, and retained that knowledge for a longer period of time. The researchers noted that handwriting offers tactile feedback, perhaps due to the greater amount of fine motor skills involved compared to typing, which causes the brain to pause and consider what is being written more deeply. Typing on a keyboard, on the other hand, does not confer the same degree of tactile feedback, thus it was not as effective for retaining knowledge.

Needless to say, it's not much effort to log your training on paper. As a novice trainee, learning to use the programming jargon of set and rep schemes by writing them down is helpful when communicating with your coach. As your training progresses, recording notes about how you felt each day - whether it's a formalized assessment of effort like RPE or simply a note about the subjective experience of training that day - will provide useful data on how you respond to various programming methods. Some workouts, like conditioning workouts involving circuits, EMOMs, and anything involving a variety of exercises with different sets and reps, are difficult to log accurately in a spreadsheet or app. Using a journal in this case makes it easier to track your performance in those workouts.

Bottom line, if it's worth doing, it's worth writing down. Go ahead and use your Fitbot account, spreadsheet, or app of choice, but log in your notebook too. Years and many reps later, you'll thank yourself for the wealth of training data you have built!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

In the final installment of the Looking Good, Feeling Good miniseries, Coach D lays his case for training as the lynchpin of fitness, looks, and health. As we've made the case for many times, barbell training is the most efficient and complete method of training for achieving muscle mass, losing fat, and improving physical performance. In fact barbell training is, for general fitness purposes, a complete training modality in and of itself and can be improved upon for years. While no one modality is the "magic bullet" for perfect fitness, barbell training is the closest thing to it.

However, for those with more specific performance demands, or those who wish to have a more athletic physique beyond generally fit, conditioning will be necessary. Darin recommends high intensity interval training, or HIIT, to improve mobility, power, speed, coordination, and work capacity (which can allow for more strength gains as well). The key here is high intensity performed in short bouts, with a rest cycle.

Long, slow distance, or LISS, conditioning can also be used, and may be the better choice for the sport-specific athlete. This is lower intensity work typically done for longer bouts, such as a long row, cycling, or jogging. LISS can incorporate both conditioning and sport training in one session. However, LISS alone is not going to promote good body composition; in other words, you're not going to jog or cycle your way into a good looking body. You need a balance of strength training to avoid losing too much muscle mass.

Perhaps most importantly, he stresses that no amount of exercise can offset a poor diet! As stated in the previous episodes, lean mass burns more calories at rest than bodyfat, so you must support growth and maintenance of lean mass with a high protein, moderate carb / moderate fat diet.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

In the second installment of the Looking Good, Feeling Good miniseries, Coach D takes a deep dive into diet and nutrition for better composition. We covered the basics of nutrition in broad strokes on Episode #6; today we dive deeper into what a diet should look like for achieving good body composition and athletic performance.

At the most fundamental, diet is simply the fuel used to power your body. Since the amount of fuel required is determined by your metabolism -- as covered in the previous episode -- diets can look very different from person to person, even for those with similar body composition goals. Diets can be broken down into three broad categories:

Net neutral caloric diet: meaning you eat, on average, just as many calories as you burn. You're not losing weight or gaining weight, within certain bounds (hydration levels and other factors may cause your weight to fluctuate a few pounds in either direction). This does NOT, mean, however that your body composition will remain the same. Food choice and training can influence your body composition even in a net neutral diet.
Net negative caloric balance: you eat, on average, fewer calories than you burn, creating a caloric deficit. This means that you will lose weight. Remember that "weight" can mean different things in terms of body composition: weight is comprised of bodyfat, muscle mass, and other lean tissue like connective tissue and bone. Strength-biasd training and food choices can tilt weight loss toward bodyfat loss while retaining lean tissue (although it's an unavoidable fact that some muscle mass will be lost if you are losing weight).
Net positive caloric balance: a caloric surplus, i.e. gaining weight.

Calories are very important, but they are not the only variable in the equation. Food choice is important too, for several reasons. One such reason is thermogenesis. Simply put, thermogenesis is the amount of heat that food generates when consumed, or digested, int the body. Not all macronutrients are equal when it comes to thermogenesis. In fact, protein and fiber-rich foods generate more heat during digestion than fats and carbs. Consequently, diets rich in protein and non-processed carbohydrates yield better body composition.

Stay tuned for more episodes in the Looking Good, Feeling Good series!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

In the first part of a new miniseries on not just feeling good, but looking good, Coach D walks you through how to understand and improve your metabolism for better body composition.

Metabolism is the total energy usage of your body and all its activities, which can be broken down into three broad categories:

Resting activity, or all the processes your body uses to maintain life, such as breathing, circulation, digestion, cellular regeneration, and many others. One way to think about it is the total of all the cellular activity in the body; each cell in your body needs a certain amount of calories to survive and carry out its duty in the body. The total energy burn for all these activities is known as your basal metabolic rate or resting metabolism.
Exercise and physical exertion, which is pretty self explanatory. As we mentioned in previous episodes, most exercise and activities burns calories for the duration of the activity. However certain types of high intensity exercise, such as barbell training and HIIT, burn calories during the activity AND burn additional calories (above the basal metabolic rate) for a period of time after you stop doing it. That's what makes these forms of training so effective for changing your body composition.
The thermic effect of food. Food requires energy to digest, and certain macronutrients - protein and fiber - require lots of energy to digest. That energy contributes a small but measurable amount toward your metabolism.

Your total metabolism is primarily comprised of your resting metabolism. Resting metabolism is primarily determined by your genetics and your body type (ectomorphs, endomorphs, mesomorphs). It's unfortunate, but true. However, you can influence your basal metabolic rate through your training and nutrition habits.

We've talked plenty about training and why you need to gain muscle mass, so let's talk about nutrition habits.

As mentioned above, foods that are high in protein and fiber raise your metabolism due to having higher thermogenesis. They also have a positive effect on your body's blood sugar levels, improving insulin sensitivity and nutrient partitioning (how your body routes incoming food particles... do they get burned as energy, shuttled to muscles and lean tissue for repair and growth, or stored as fat). So diet is important.

If you have excess bodyfat to lose, you need to lose weight. Losing weight requires you to have a calorie deficit. The tricky thing is that when you lose weight, you lose a combination of both bodyfat and lean tissue, including muscle. By strength training and maintaining a high protein, high fiber diet, we can shift the percentage toward more fat loss while maintaining muscle.

At the end of the day, it's easy to blame low metabolism on factors outside of our control. Yet it's relatively rare that medical conditions affect the metabolic rate. We can't all look like the celebrities in the magazines, but we can change the way we look for the better.

Stay tuned for more episodes in the Looking Good, Feeling Good series!

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

If you've spent 5 minutes in a typical globo-gym like LA Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness, etc., then you've seen it. Personal trainers guiding their clients through a series of single-joint exercises (tricep pull-downs, curls, calf raises), abdominal exercises, and other isolation exercises. Endless rows of people on treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bikes, working at various levels of intensity. Lots of people achieving various degrees of "hot and sweaty." Stick around long enough and you'll see the same people, doing the same things, at the same weight (or the same intensity), over and over again. Hours and hours of effort put in, but little to no progress to show for it. We'll call the sum total of this activity "gym trickery," to be polite.

Globo-gyms are notorious for fostering this kind of exercise. And that's exactly what these activities are - exercise, not training. Training presupposes the use of a logical process to achieve objectively measured progress. Since getting "hot and sweaty" or "feeling the burn" is a subjective outcome, we can't really call gym trickery training.

So where does this impulse for exercise come from and why should we care? First, without applying critical thinking to the subject of exercise, it's easy to assume things which just aren't true. Like doing lots of direct abdominal work with long range of motion to build stronger abs. Situps, ab rollouts, twisting exercises, etc. On the surface it seems perfectly reasonable. What this approach fails to consider, however, is that abs and other "core" muscles (like the lats and spinal erectors, primarily serve as isometric stabilizers during normal human movement. So why not train them as such with heavy squats and deadlifts, which require strong isometric contractions to keep the back rigid under load? Squats and deadlifts build as strong of abs as anything else.

Humans are attracted to complexity. Complexity is seductive. And, unfortunately, trainers can sometimes feel the need to complicate their training methods in order to validate their fees. As Coach D says, "complicate to validate." Simple is always better, if it gets the results.

The second reason we should care about gym trickery and do our best to avoid it, is time. Time is a finite resource, and should not be wasted. Gym trickery is, by definition, a waste of time, as it is not effective. So don't waste your time! Stick with simple, productive training and fight the urge to complicate before it's necessary.

So, let's avoid the gym trickeration and focus on the things that matter. Simple, hard, and effective. Big compound lifts should make up the majority of our training.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D interviews his father-in-law Lon Wimberly, a decorated veteran, outdoorsman, and an overall rugged and vigorous man who embodies the 40fit lifestyle. Lon was a pilot in the Vietnam War, earning a bronze air medal and 18 oak clusters for his missions.

Despite living a very active lifestyle his whole life, in his seventh decade Lon decided that he needed to get stronger to maintain his function and continue doing the things he loved to do. So, he contacted Darin about learning the barbell lifts and training with the Starting Strength method.

Lon shares some stories about his military service, his civilian career as an aviator, and the fitness and nutrition habits that have allowed him to stay fit and active well into his seventh decade. With his civilian aviation training business Lon has the opportunity to meet a variety of interesting and influential clients, including Bill Galt of the massive Galt ranch in Montana, Vince Gilligan (writer and producer of Breaking Bad, also a fellow aviator), Harrison Ford, and a host of motion picture cameramen and producers.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Barbellophobia is a condition that affects millions of gym goers worldwide, causing strength loss, gainitis, and a plethora of other diseases and negative outcomes...

Ok, maybe that's a stretch, but we do know there are lots of people out there NOT barbell training that nevertheless could benefit. People that want to be healthier, gain back their basic function and independence, look better in a bathing suit - all things for which barbell training is the answer. But why do people shy away from barbells? Coach D and Trent discuss fear of lifting weights, some of the reasons why people fear barbells, and some strategies for getting over an irrational fear of lifting weights and getting stronger.

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

Coach D chats with his partner at Riata Therapy Specialists and fellow Doctor of Physical Therapy, Dr. Tina Neuwirth, about strength training for women, strength training during pregnancy, and how she has built and maintained an excellent physique after 3 kids and over 40 years of life experience.

Tina is a very strong and fit lifter who squats in the mid-200s at 125lbs bodyweight. She has also been active in the Crossfit community. She is a big advocate of the barbell for strength, function, and health, especially for women's health. Tina trained through all three of her pregnancies, despite some late complications with her first. She believes - and there is ample data supporting her view - that exercise during pregnancy, even barbell training, is healthy for the expecting mother and the baby. Of course, training sometimes has to be modified, but it can be done. For her third pregnancy, Tina followed the Starting Strength model, squatting, pressing, and deadlifting 3x a week. Despite a long 30+ hour labor, her abdominal and pelvic floor strength helped her naturally deliver a healthy, 9lb baby boy.

We'll have Tina back on the show soon to talk about other women's issues, so stay tuned!

Shoutout to Tina's husband Patrick, an excellent metal artist and founder of the Iron Chinchilla furniture and accessory shop!

Connect with Tina

Tina on Instagram
Tina's bio at Riata Therapy Specialists

Connect with 40fit Radio

40fit website
Facebook 40fit Masters Community
40fit Radio on Instagram

View Details

It's a fact of life - training isn't always going to go how you like. Whether it's an arduous work schedule, travel, sickness, or any other reason, you will miss training sessions from time to time. If you are training rather than exercising, however, there's a model for regaining the lost ground during that time period. It's called a deload, and it's a useful tool in our training arsenal.

As the name suggests, a deload is simply a term we use to describe a reduction in load, or intensity, of the workouts in a training cycle. Even though we call it a de-"load," it can also apply to volume.

When you miss training, there's no stress being applied to stimulate physical adaptation per the Stress-Recovery-Adaptation cycle, thus detraining occurs. How much detraining depends on the length of the layoff, the reason for it (i.e. sickness will detrain you more than a vacation, especially if you lose weight), and how advanced the trainee is. Generally speaking, more advanced trainees will detrain less than more novice trainees. Age plays a big role too; as many Starting Strength Coaches have observed, older trainees tend to deload quickly without intensity in their training.

So, deloads are both a necessary and inevitable part of training. It's not a negative thing either! Deloading can be a good time to iron out technique issues that have crept up, or dissipate accumulated fatigue from the end of a strenuous training cycle.

View Details

The Starting Strength community is a goldmine of intellectual horsepower, and Jonathon Sullivan - or Sully as we know him - is one of the main reasons for that. Sully is an MD with over 25yrs experience in Emergency Medicine, a PhD who has studied the effects of brain ischemia, and a Starting Strength Coach who runs Greysteel Strength & Conditioning in Michigan. He is now primarily a barbell coach with a mission to help older people get stronger, get healthier, and age with grace and dignity.

Sully is also the principal author of The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40, a groundbreaking text on strength training for the Masters population. The Barbell Prescription outlines the vast (and completely preventable) problem of the Sick Aging Phenotype affecting millions people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond. The Sick Aging Phenotype is marked by obesity, metabolic syndrome, sarcopenia (loss of muscle mass), osteopenia (loss of bone density), dependence on lots of medications, Type II diabetes, and other problems. All of which are preventable by intelligent strength training, conditioning, and nutrition. We highly recommend reading this book - it's the definitive text on aging and strength training.

Sully runs Greysteel Strength & Conditioning in Farmington, MI, a gym committed to helping seniors live stronger, healthier lives. He also runs a very informative and entertaining YouTube channel. You can check those out here:

Greysteel Strength & Conditioning website
Greysteel YouTube channel
Greysteel on Facebook
You can also reach Dr. Sully via email at greysteel.fitness@gmail.com

Sully also coaches clients online for Starting Strength Online Coaching.

The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40

View Details

Darin chats with his friend and college roommate Dr. Steve Lawson, a pastor, speaker, entrepreneur, and athlete. Dr. Lawson is a Crossfit athlete and Level 1 coach as well as a gymnastics coach. He began coaching gymnastics while he was still in college, and eventually started his own manufacturing business, Progressive Sports and Fitness, building trampolines, tumbling floors, and other equipment for gymnastic competitions. His company's equipment is can be seen at every Power Tumbling World Championships as well as the USA National Championships.

After a decade in the manufacturing business, Dr. Lawson decided to plant a church in his hometown of Greenville, TX and spent the next 17 years as a pastor. During this time he earned a Master of Divinity (MDIV) from The King’s University, followed that with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Amberton University and finally a Doctor of Strategic Leadership (DSL) from Regent University. His education combined with his experience as a pastor took him deep into the concept of emotional intelligence, and how to cultivate it. He now gives lectures and leadership seminars on emotional intelligence around the world.

Dr. Lawson has authored three books:

Giant Killers
Marriage is Worth Fighting For
The Prevailing Marriage

Those of us who have trained hard for a long time know that hard training refines us in more ways than just the physical. Doing hard things transforms our mind as well, including our ability to process emotions. But it works the other way too... we bring our behaviors and the way we carry ourselves into the gym, and those elements are reflected in our workouts. So it's important to actively grow our emotional intelligence, improve our self-esteem, and learn how to foster better relationships... just like we grow our strength.

Get in touch with Dr. Lawson here:

Dr. Lawson's website
Dr. Lawson's speaking engagements at Leadership Transformation

View Details

Darin met up with fellow Starting Strength Coach and gifted Masters athlete Peter Nathan at the first annual StrengthCon event in Wichita Falls, TX. Peter is an accomplished athlete, having competed (and set records) in Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting and strengthlifting, Crossfit Games, triathlons, and more. Peter is also a strength coach, and attests to the importance of strength training for the Masters population - both athletes and people just trying to be healthy.

Peter talks about the progression of his athletic career, discovering Crossfit early on and balancing the performance demands of the program with the need to stay strong and injury free. Like many Games athletes, Peter trains primarily for strength until a few months out from competition, at which point he starts to work in conditioning. He's also learned an important lesson about his Crossfit experience - that giving 100% every workout can be detrimental to long-term progress. Consistency and not missing workouts, or screwing up workouts by overdoing previous workouts, are the keys progress.

View Details

Coach D and Trent bring the Foundations series of episodes full circle with a discussion of the Big Picture of training. Put simply, the "big picture" is to think about training in a logical, systematic way. Too often people eat up whatever the latest magazine or Instagram fitness guru says without thinking critically about how progress is made. Or they hop from program to program with little regard to the amount of stress they are imposing on their bodies. In all of these instances, a training model and a framework for thinking could have helped these people from falling prey to poor fitness advice.

The Foundations series was designed to give you a very basic framework for thinking about fitness. We laid out the various physical adaptations or attributes one can cultivate, and a model for driving those adaptations - the Stress, Recovery, Adaptation model. From there we applied the SRA model to strength - the basis of all physical skills - as well conditioning, mobility, and more. In each episode, we tried to build a case for how and when to apply stress to your body, in order to gain these physical attributes.

We discussed recovery - the R in SRA - in terms of nutrition and supplements as well as the hormones that control metabolic processes in the body. Paying attention to these factors ensures that your body can recover from the stress you're imposing on it, so that your hard work doesn't go to waste.

In the future we will expand on all of these things, and apply them to specific athletes, sports, and discuss the way programming varies at different phases of an athlete's training advancement.

Stay tuned for more on 40fit Radio!

View Details

Today we are joined by Dr. Loren Bertocci, a biochemist and one of the foremost experts in mitochondrial research as well as the Director of Science at Pangea Biomedical, a company he founded to make high quality supplements for the Masters athlete. He holds an AB in Human Biology from Stanford, a PhD in Physiology from Washington State, and a post-doctoral fellowship in Advanced Radiological Physics from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. His special area of expertise is the biochemistry of skeletal muscle and exercise, where he conducts research to identify and characterize atomic-level triggers for mitochondrial biogenesis.

Dr. Bertocci is also an accomplished weightlifter, having won a Bronze Medal in Olympic Weightlifting at the 2015 Pan Am Masters Championships and currently training to compete at the World Weightlifting Championships in the 65+ category. He also has an athletic background in swimming, water polo, triathlon and track.

Proper training, nutrition, and recovery are the cornerstones of progress, but supplements can help optimize your gains, especially if you are an athlete. The Masters population has special supplemental needs, as various metabolic and muscle building processes begin to slow with age. Dr. Bertocci helps us understand the essential supplements for the "athlete of aging."

Here is some additional information about the supplements mentioned in the show by Dr. Bertocci:

**Tell us about your company.**

I started and own Pangea Biomedical. Its purpose is to produce dietary supplements with a product line targeted at active adults aged 40+.

We currently have one product called Origins. Its primary characteristics and features include:

Some limited anti-inflammatory effects;
Some limited effect at attenuating post-exercise muscle damage;
Stimulation of the growth of new mitochondria. Most people notice this as a “gee, doing x for this long a duration is easier than it used to be” kind of effect;
Generalized anti-aging;
Its effects are noticed proportional to two things; (1) the age of the person taking it and (2) the training intensity of the person taking it.

We have two other complimentary products ready to release once we get Origins up to enough profitability to be able to launch these next two products.

Do you recommend masters supplement with vitamins? Minerals? Things to look for, stay away from.

I am a strong supporter of dietary supplements for masters-aged athletes. There are three major reasons for this:

Market pressures on modern agriculture have resulted in crops with lower levels of minerals, complex oils, and proteins than in ages past. Thus, regardless of how good your diet might be, it is increasingly difficult to have all you need in your diet;
With aging comes an unavoidable reduction in daily metabolic output. In order to eat enough even very good foods to satisfy your real mineral/oil/protein needs, your caloric input would be so large that you would likely gain weight;
Also with aging comes some decreasing capacity to absorb some of the complex molecules you do actually ingest.

The vitamins and minerals that, for most masters-aged athletes, might be most in need of supplementation are:

Vitamin C (ascorbate) because of its role in the ascorbate-glutathione oxidation- reduction cycle;
Selenium (the mineral in the center of glutathione);
Calcium and phosphorus (bone minerals);
Zinc (an important metal ion in the middle of some important metabolic enzymes);
Vitamin D (for anyone who lives a largely indoor lifestyle).

My current dietary regime is representative of what I would recommend for any active masters athlete:

An “age-specific” multi-vitamin (I happen to take Centrum Silver);
Origins with a dose of 4 capsules 2x daily;
An additional 2,000U of vitamin D if you are not normally exposed to a lot of sunlight.

Other:

There is an enormous amount of data supporting the use of creatine as a supplement. I personally do not take it because I think my daily protein consumption is sufficiently high that I already consume plenty of its amino-acid precursors. I mention this not only to support it as possibly useful but also to warn against contamination by β-quanadino- propionic acid (aka β-GPA). This molecule is a competitive inhibitor of creatine kinase, the very enzyme required to convert phosphocreatine to free creatine and in the process make ATP. It is not at all uncommon to find β–GPA in the creatine you can purchase.

   **What supplements do you recommend based on good science?**

Obviously creatine – this is addressed above. Beyond that, the following molecules are supported by the largest number of publications in top-level journals (in no particular order):

Resveratrol – this is the closest thing to a magic molecule there is. Its value was originally elucidated as a result of the famous French Wine Paradox study. Its health benefits are numerous;
Quercetin – this is almost as effective as resveratrol;
Pyrroloquinoline quinone (aka PQQ);
Pterostilbene – a naturally occurring derivative of resveratrol with similarly broad beneficial effects;
Ubiquinol – essential but for a somewhat more specific audience – those of us who take statins for hypercholesterolemia;
Acetyl-L-carnitine;

Others that might be useful:

BCAAs – leucine is required for activated mTOR gene to begin transcription, so an adequate amount of leucine in the diet will allow for the strength training adaptation to proceed maximally. All three of them can lead to the production of succinyl-CoA to anaplerose the citric acid cycle. This will have the effect of allowing acute responses to endurance-type exercise to (also) proceed maximally;
HMB – this is a product of leucine catabolism and has been implicated in several pathways related to muscle protein synthesis. However, insofar as it is a product of leucine catabolism, it is not clear to me that it has any additional value if you already have enough leucine;
A combination of curcumin and black pepper extract – there is a lot of (at least) decent evidence that this combination is an effective anti-inflammatory agent.

What do think about protein intake and the older athlete?

I would say this is a minimum. I consume at least 2g protein per day per lb body weight. Aside from the negatives resulting from possible protein-related fat load, there is no real reason to limit this. If you consume more than you need, you merely deaminate the amino acids and use the carbon skeleton (directly) as a CHO or indirectly to store the C-C bonds as fat.

Should Masters stay away from many supplements? Unfounded claims etc. wasted money and junk?

Generally speaking, there is not much benefit to consuming anything other than what we have addressed already. For the most part, all you do with most supplements is functionally make expensive urine.

Aside from the waste of making expensive urine, there are several factors to consider as you stroll down the aisles at your neighborhood (or online) supplement store:

   1. In most cases, there is no guarantee that the ingredients on the label actually provide nutritional value. In most cases, the people making these kinds of ingredient decisions are not sufficiently knowledgeable about the underlying science for their ingredient decisions to be trusted. The only way to avoid this problem is to assess the qualifications of the scientist(s) making the ingredient decisions. For most non- scientists, this is difficult if not impossible;

There is no guarantee that what is on the label is actually in the container. Currently, in the USA, nutritional supplements are not subject any regulatory oversight;
Similarly, and for the same reason(s), even if what is on the label is actually in the container, there is no guarantee that there are no possibly harmful and/or illegal contaminants;
The only way to avoid the latter two problems is to only consume products with some sort of external certifications. The three most common certification processes are:
1. USP – a pharmaceutical product produced by a company the follows the “U.S. Pharmacopoeia” standards set up by the FDA. Mostly, this is designed to ensure efficacy in comparison to existing and similar drugs. It does not apply to nutritional supplements. This is the kind of certification common to things like prescription drugs;
2. GMP – a product produced by a company that follows the “Good Manufacturing Practices” set up by the FDA. Mostly, this is designed to make sure that the end product is not contaminated. This is the kind of certification common to things like multi-vitamins;
3. BSCG – a product produced by a company that subjects its products to testing by the Banned Substance Control Group. A BSCG certification means the product has exactly what is on the label (or if proprietary, what it is supposed to have), does NOT have what is NOT on the label, and (perhaps most importantly) contains nothing that would trigger a positive USADA test. It is this certification that should be considered to be the “gold standard” for any nutritional supplement you consume. Unfortunately, the vast majority of nutritional supplements are not BSCG certified.

How can people get in contact with you?

Email: labertocci@pangeamasters.coM
Via our Pangea web site: https://www.pangeabiomedical.com/ >
Visit our Pangea FB page: https://www.facebook.com/pangeabiomedical/

View Details

Coach D and Trent discuss the basics of programming for the Masters athlete. Our programming philosophy is built upon the Stress-Recovery-Adaption cycle, originally outlined in Hans Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome in 1936. When we talk about training, we think of individual workouts as stressors, and the time between workouts spent sleeping and eating as recovery. If the stressor is sufficient to disrupt homeostasis AND the recovery is sufficient between sessions, then an adaptation occurs. It's easy to apply to strength training - the tonnage moved (weight x reps) is the stressor, the food and sleep in between the session is the recovery, and getting stronger is the outcome, the adaptation - but it applies to all aspects of physiology.

Thus, programming is the manipulation of the basic training variables to achieve a desired outcome over a period of time. We also subscribe to the Minimum Effective Dose principle. This principle is taken from medicine, and means that we use the absolute minimum amount of stress needed to drive adaptation. Hard is good. Hard is necessary, if the workout is going to provide a stress. But more is not better, and we want to make our workouts just hard enough to drive progress, and no more. We can't forget about recovery -- if a single workout is so taxing that it leaves us sore and "wrecked" for a week, then it prevented productive training during that week, and may have cost us whatever adaptation we gained from doing that workout (since we tend to detrain without engaging in the SRA cycle).

So, we aim to make our workouts just hard enough, and to change a single variable at a time. The basic variables are intensity (the weight on the bar in a strength program, or the target speed at which a row is performed in conditioning work) and volume (how many sets we perform). Other variables include exercise selection, which we rarely change in a strength program since the basic compound lifts drive the most strength gains, and frequency (how often you do an exercise in a week or training cycle). Importantly, when designing programming we only change one variable at a time, so that we know what works (or doesn't). Changing multiple variables at once does not give us useful data regarding what is actually driving progress.

View Details

Coach D brought on a good friend and the first guest appearance on the podcast, Willie Villareal. Willie is a Family Nurse Practitioner in the Houston, TX area and a highly accomplished Masters athlete as well, having gone to the Crossfit games and regularly placing highly in the open. Willie is an expert on hormones and hormone therapy, and joins 40fit to talk about the basics of good hormone health.

Hormones are an essential part of body function, they control all metabolic activity in the body. Consequently, if your hormone levels are out of whack - even if you are training and eating right - your quality of life can be severely impacted. Mr. Villareal recommends doing four things to measure and maintain good hormone levels:

Bloodwork - know what your testerone levels are
Nutrition - follow good nutrition habits, eating a high protein, low sugar, mostly whole foods diet
Training - strength training
Sleep / Recovery - with an emphasis on quality sleep

You can find Willie on his clinic website Core Sports Health. He is also on Instagram @coresportsrecovery and Facebook.

View Details

Coach D and Trent lay out the basics of nutrition for the 40fit athlete. It's easy (and tempting) to overcomplicate the subject, but fundamentally nutrition is about providing the fuel we need for our bodies to grow and function as we want. Our diet, the things we eat every day, should follow our physical goals. If your goal is to get stronger and you are underweight, you need to gain weight (muscle) and strength train. Simple.

Except we often get distracted by things that don't matter. It's common in western culture to be concerned with the number on the scale. When we talk about diet we say things like "I want to lose weight." What do we mean exactly? Weight is a vague term. Often what we really mean is that we want to lose body fat and look better, which involves gaining more muscle mass. What if we lost body fat, our waist measurement went down, but we gained muscle, and the number on the scale went up? Is that not a desirable outcome? The important point here is that the number on the scale is arbitrary, and simply losing or gaining weight is not a very specific goal.

40fit Pearls

Diet is dependent on goals
Gaining/losing “weight” is too vague. We typically want to gain muscle and lean mass and lose body fat (recomposition).
Compliance is key. Plans and macro budgets don’t matter if we don’t consistently hit our targets.
When we gain weight, we gain lean mass (muscle, bone, other), and adipose tissue. When we lose weight, we lose muscle and fat. Strength training skews the ratio toward gaining more muscle and less BF, or toward maintaining muscle while losing BF. But you can’t have both at the same time.
You can’t exercise off a bad diet.
Protein drives the diet, and strength training drives body composition. A more muscular body burns more calories at rest.
The weight on the scale doesn't matter. The amount of muscle you have matters.

View Details

At some point we've all desired to become more flexible and more mobile, but do we know why? In short, we really only need as much mobility as our lifestyle - and maybe our sport or recreational activities - demand. If you are a gymnast, then you will need a high degree of mobility. If your goal is simply to be generally healthy, then trying to attain the mobility of a gymnast is unnecessary, but also a waste of valuable training resources.

Drawing on his nearly three decades of PT experience, Coach D breaks down how much mobility you really need, and shows you the best way to obtain it.

40fit Pearls

Flexibility and mobility are not the same thing. Flexibility is the normal range of motion a joint should move through. Mobility is the functional use of your flexibility; it is both range of motion in the joint and strength throughout that range of motion. It is possible to be flexible but lack the strength to support yourself in that range of motion. So, strength is a very important ingredient in mobility.
Mobility should support function, and be outcomes driven. Too much mobility is bad, as is too little. Your need for mobility - and thus your choices when working mobility into your training program - should be based on the demands of your life and your sport.
Tissue fibers become less elastic, and more plastic as we age. So, Masters athletes will be less mobile than younger athletes.
Don't perform static stretching before strength workouts. Use dynamic movements to warm up.
The best ways to stretch are dynamic stretches (movements under load), contract/relax techniques, and isometric stretching under load. Duration of 30s to 1 minute is the sweet spot. These are more effective than static stretching.
Yoga, tai chi, and other practices can be good ways to gain mobility, but don't neglect your strength.
Strength trumps mobility.

Connect with 40fit Radio

IG: @40fitradio

Facebook: 40fit Masters Community

Website: http://www.40fit.com

View Details

Coach D shifts from strength training to conditioning this week as he and his intrepid co-host Trent cover the basics of implementing conditioning into a training program. Beginning with an overview of the three basic energy pathways of the body, Darin walks through various ways of training each of the energy pathways and the most effective approaches.

Strength training, yet again, plays an important role in developing a base of conditioning. Heavy compound movements in the five rep range and below, as described in Episodes 2 and 3, rely primarily on the phosphagen and glycolytic pathways, that is, the high-power, short duration (anaerobic) pathways which supply large amounts of ATP to the muscle cells. Importantly, intense bouts of training in these pathways upregulates or ramps up the aerobic (oxidative) pathway as the body prepares for the possibility for longer duration exercise. Thus, strength training alone actually improves your conditioning or "cardio," without having to do traditional "cardio" or conditioning workouts. And it makes sense -- your heart doesn't just take a break when you squat a heavy set of five.

Nevertheless, conditioning as such plays an important role in any serious training program after the novice strength training phase. In general, we like short, intense bouts of exercise (sometimes called High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT) without a lot of eccentric loading, which can lead to undue soreness. Equipment such as the prowler or plate-loaded sleds, the C2 rower, and the airdyne bike are good choices. In the absence of equipment, circuits of bodyweight movements like chin-ups, burpees, and push-ups can be done. Unless there is a sport-specific need, we do not recommend long, slow distance (LSD) for Master's trainees. If you compete as a long-distance runner, you need to train with LSD, sure, but if you are not, the conditioning benefits are limited and the risk of overuse injuries are high compared to HIIT.

Connect with 40fit Radio

IG: @40fitradio

Facebook: 40fit Masters Community

Website: http://www.40fit.com

View Details

Following last week's discussion about the importance of strength as the foundation of the 10 General Physical Skills, Coach Darin and Trent walk through the basics of how to train for strength, including:

What a strength training program looks like (exercise selection, number of reps and sets, intensity, etc.)
What kind of equipment you need
How to find a coach to learn correct lifting technique, and how to identify a good coach
The Novice Linear Progression as laid out by Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training 3rd Edition, suitable for all trainees who have not yet done a linear progression (even experienced athletes!).

In addition to Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training, which is a must-read for all lifters, we highly recommend Dr. Jonathon Sullivan and Andy Baker's book The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40. The Barbell Prescription addresses strength training specifically for the Masters lifter, and is an excellent complement to Starting Strength. Whereas Starting Strength details how to perform each of the main barbell lifts and why they should be performed that way, The Barbell Prescription details the reasons why a Masters athlete (or the "athlete of aging" as the book describes) should pursue strength training as their primary form of training, and some special programming considerations for older populations.

Finally for more information on what to do on your first day at the gym doing a strength workout, check out the podcast of our friends at Barbell Logic. Start at the very beginning and listen to the first ten episodes for excellent, detailed advice on how to get started.

Connect with 40fit Radio

IG: @40fitradio

Facebook: 40fit Masters Community

Website: http://www.40fit.com

Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training (3rd Edition) by Mark Rippetoe (2011-08-02)

View Details

Dr. Darin and Trent dive into the first of the Foundations series of episodes with an exploration of the 10 General Physical Skills, which are in no particular order:

Endurance
Stamina
Strength
Flexibility
Power
Speed
Coordination
Agility
Balance
Accuracy

In this episode Coach D explains why strength is the basis for all the other physical skills, and why it should be trained first and foremost. Strength is, simply put, the ability to produce force against external resistance. That external resistance could be other objects, like a barbell or a kettlebell, even common household items like lawnmowers and sacks of rice; however the most common external resistance we face, every moment of our lives, is gravity. The mass of the Earth tries to pull us down into it, and we must use our muscles to produce force to keep our bodies upright, to walk, run, bend, stand up... you name it.

As a result, increasing force production, or strength, makes us better at all of these things. Put another way, strength is essential to all human movement, and thus affects all other physical skills. So in our journey to achieve better fitness and better health, we prioritize strength first, then train the other skills. As Mark Rippetoe, a barbell coach of over 40 years and author of Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training, puts it: "Strong people are harder to kill... and more useful in general."

In the next episode we will discuss how to get strong, what exercises you should be doing, how and how often you should perform them, and the best sources for learning how to strength train.

View Details

40fit Radio: Recent Episodes