40fit Radio

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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-Ste

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

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

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 impl

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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 traini

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 lo

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

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 f

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

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

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