40fit Radio

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 n

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 di

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 choic

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

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

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), Harr

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

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,

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 nov

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 I

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 d

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 workout

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

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 co

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 o

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 Sp

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 arbitrar

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

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 c

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 Str