Please pardon the errors, this was transcribed by a computer… gotta love artificial intelligence!
[00:00:00] Kevin: Here's a question. How many years do you have left? How long will you live? It's not a comfortable thought. Certainly not a thought our live in the moment culture encourages, but it's worth reflecting on. Whatever amount of years you might imagine you have left. How do you see yourself spending them? What will you do?

Most of us would prefer to remain strong and vital as we age so we can participate fully in life and do the things we love. But just how do we go about making that our reality?

Hello, and welcome to the over 50 health and wellness show. I'm your host, Kevin English. I'm a certified personal trainer and nutritionist. and my mission is to educate and inspire you to become the strongest, healthiest, most vital version of yourself.

My guest this week is Steve Mansfield. [00:01:00] Steve is the 63 year old creator of the Mansfield method, which focuses on longevity and elite level fitness. Steve grew up in rural Eastern Kentucky, where he spent his boyhood being outdoors. Most of us listening to this right now can probably relate to a time when our parents would shoo us out of the house and tell us to go play.

And be back in time for dinner or before dark. Steve got into martial arts at a young age and played sports in school and was a good athlete. He went on to become a decathlete in college. Just as a refresher, the decathlon comprises of of course, 10 events and is generally held over two days. Day one would be the a hundred meter run, a long jump shot. Put high jump.

And then a 400 meter run. And then on day two, you'd have 110 meter hurdles. Disc is throw pole vault, javelin throw, and finally a 1500 meter run. A knee injury eventually ended his decathlon career. But shortly after he found a new passion. [00:02:00] Rock climbing.

Steve: I had a good friend that I played sports with in high school who was really athletic, but not to the point where he could go play college level sports, but he was very athletic and we were both very much into the outdoors and he basically had saw a magazine about rock climbing.

This is probably 1979. And he met a guy that was rock climbing. And in fact, the, this guy eventually wrote the first rock climbing guide to red river Gorge in Kentucky. And he just said, this is really wild. And just one of the hardest things I've ever done athletically, I can't believe that anybody does this because it's super hard athletically for the entire body.

Plus it's mentally challenging to the point of, swallowing panic for up to multiple hours at a time. And so I was immediately interested and so we went out and basically self-taught ourselves with the help of a few people that were very early adopters to rock [00:03:00] climb. And I immediately fell in love with rock climbing because of that things you and I have talked about earlier here today, and even some of the stuff that you've written about on your website, which is it's a full body and full mind experience to rock climb at a medium level or a higher level.

Today you're seeing people that are doing it at a level that this was completely unfathomable to us at that time in the late seventies, early eighties. But I fell in love with that. And then when I felt like I'd reached about where I could reach physically with rock climbing only, that's when I became interested in mountaineering mountaineering, the same thing, just an incredible all over body

workout.

Plus the mental aspects, the engineering mountaineering aspects, all put into one thing. I thought it was just some of the most challenging things that human beings can do physically and so forth. Me being me. I was drawn to that.

[00:04:00]Kevin: So Steve finds himself in love with rock climbing. He likes the physical as well as the mental challenges and eventually finds his way into full blown mountaineering And he's in the right place Red river gorge in kentucky is the climbing destination in the eastern united states

Steve: Yeah. There's river wards for a long time. Was the Mecca worldwide for sport climbing, rock climbing.

And it just so happened. It was in my backyard there in Eastern Kentucky. So I was able to drive to there very easily at 45 minutes away from where I was living. And so, yeah, it was it's on that new river porch in West Virginia. Also those where I lived also a Mecca worldwide for sport climbing rock climbing and traditional climbing, they call it trad climbing out.

So I was lucky in that. And if you've done any rock climbing beyond just taking around in the, in the rock climbing gym, if you've done any real rock climbing. You'll see how incredibly difficult that this [00:05:00] sport is physically and mentally. And I have to say that, you know, rock climbing, mountaineering it changed my whole outlook on fitness and it changed the level of what that I thought a human body could reach physically.

And it still permeates my fitness philosophy today because of just the. The intensity level of it. And one of the things that happened when I was rock climbing and mountaineering, I've trained, you become insular in your environment. I see this in CrossFit athletes also, and you, so you're training and you're doing all these things and you tend to think this is just normal.

This is how people train. This is the level of fitness people reach because everybody I knew was, and it wasn't until many years later that I realized that nobody was doing this. We were part of a very, very small group of people that were pregnant with this company in TSD and region, this kind of athletic performance during that period.

So it was incredibly important, a real catalyst for me [00:06:00] in my fitness journey.

Kevin: I can certainly see how that would be. you said a lot of things there. I wanted to back up though. Not everybody listening. You had made reference to sport climbing and trad or lead climbing. Can you pick that apart for us a little bit and let's start with maybe just the definition between what is sport climbing versus what is trad climbing

Steve: generally? You know, these are pretty wide definitions, but generally sport climb is where you're clipping bolts, meaning as you climb.

There's bolts that are set into the rock. Climbers had done usually on rappel and just use a rock drill and building some bolts. And that is your protection as you go up. So you clip your rope to the bolt using a Caribbean or in a nylon runner. And so it's adventuresome. Certainly, but not as adventuresome as if you didn't have bolts that you could simply clip on the way up.

when this practice first started, a lot of us traditionalist didn't really love the fact [00:07:00] that you were defacing the rock, and also you were looking for adventure and you're not getting as much of it, but it has turned into something that's quite acceptable in certain areas.

and usually the sport climbs are very athletic or gymnastic and you do clip the bolts and that that's the sport climbing in all rock climbing. Remember free climbing means you're only using the equipment to protect you in case of a fall.

You're not climbing the equipment in any way. You're not using the equipment to help you get up the climb. So sport climbing is still that, but you're clipping bolts and they're traditional climbing. You're using. Pieces of equipment and basically sticking them in a crack or, or scalping them over a protrusion.

And that is your protection. So it's not nearly as solid thing. It's just clipping bolts. And so it's much more adventuresome meaning those pieces. If you don't set them correctly, if you fail on those, they could pop. And that would be a real problem. So it [00:08:00] gets in your head a little bit more if you're doing traditional climbing or trad climbing over sport climbing, a traditional climbing course was my thing.

And that was how it all started. Once they stopped you're slamming pitons into cracks, which was that's how it was done in the fifties and sixties. And so in this way, you leave the rock face completely unbothered, and that you just take that protection out as you go up. So it's, it's a very clean way, a very nature forward way of climbing.

And that's what traditional climbing is. And then of course, mountaineering and alpinism is where you're actually climbing the big mountains. People think about Everest and all that, but certainly there's millions of ways to do that other than Everest. That's just by people, mountains that people know.

But there seem to be in the United States, there's glaciated mountains that you can climb all over. So it's you can get into some serious climing here in the United States, and that's when you have to do everything, you know, winter camping, crampon you use [00:09:00] crevasse rescue rock climbing skills.

You have to put it all together.

Kevin: Right. Okay. So thanks. So there's obviously different types of climbing. Some of us might be familiar with bouldering, which is not using any harnesses or ropes and not therefore, normally not going very high. And that's what your typical casual person walking into say, a climbing gym might experience.

You've got this sport climbing, which as you said, you're clipping in as you go up and you have a bilayer. So your fall risk is pretty well mitigated there. And then you have the trad climbing, which is typically one person going up. And like you said, setting pieces of protection and on natural features and then climbing upwards.

And then the person who's belaying on the bottom is typically then going to take his turn, his or her turn and come up and clean those pieces, as you said, as they go up. But in no case, is the climber at any time say using the rope to pull themselves up right there. It is completely just a natural climbing.

Now I want to go back. You had, I think you called it early on swallowing panic. I think most of [00:10:00] us might imagine that when, when we get up high and we're relying on this, I think you even said it's more adventuresome it. So as you're getting up higher, there's that, of course there's the height, but then there's, there's the fear.

There's the potential for panic. As you start to, worry about maybe equipment failure or your, your mental or physical failure, in these types of situations, what is it about fear and overcoming that that really appealed to you? Cause I have to imagine that's a big part of any rock climbers

Steve: journey.

It definitely is. Even if you're not afraid of Heights, which a lot of people are, but even if you're not afraid of heights it is absolutely in your genetic makeup, in your DNA to not put yourself in danger with height it's it's completely natural. And it's not something that most people can control beyond a certain point, Alex, [00:11:00] Honnold can but if you've seen his free solo videos where he's free soloing, El Capitan, 3000 foot vertical granite slab with no rope, he can, but he's, the most art of climbing, he was once in a thousand generation performer in that particular sport.

But for most, you know, not enough 99.9% of people, you can't get rid of this. So it's all you can do is manage that and managing that fear and managing that panic. because if you don't, you can get in some really, really bad situations. And that appealed to me to be able to try to control that mentally.

And as an athlete in general, so much of it is mental, as you well know, and especially a competitive athlete and learning to control that at that high level certainly appealed to me. And I think it, if you can learn some techniques of doing that, it can affect the rest of your life in many, many ways, in a very positive way, your ability to control things, everything, you know, we talk about [00:12:00] meditation from mindfulness, you know, trying to, to be in the moment and focused on breathing, all that stuff.

You definitely have to do that same type of thing at a different level when you're rock climbing and mountaineering. And then when you're not doing that, it teaches you this kind of mental control that you can use in a lot of different ways. And as you and I are talking about longevity, you can definitely help your mindfulness practice.

If you were able to do that on the side of a vertical or more than vertical concrete, or granite slab, you can apply that to mindfulness.

Kevin: What Steve is saying here can apply to all of us. We don't necessarily need to overcome our fear, but rather learn to manage it. And I suppose a pretty good place to learn to manage fear would be a hundred plus feet up in the air, hanging off the side of a mountain. [00:13:00] But think of all the ways this might apply to the rest of your life.

Certainly, if you can manage fear and panic in these intense but controlled situations. You'd be better prepared to deal with stressful situations in other areas of your life. Hearing Steve talk about climbing and mountaineering begs the question. What kind of person does those things? Who seeks out these experiences? Crazy people?

Adrenaline junkies?.

Steve: they definitely exist. you meet those guys. When you're out there doing this, you meet the guys that are adrenaline jockeys. They generally don't stay with a particular thing long because a great example is sky diving. You know, I've done my share of that too. And it's incredible. The first 20, 30 times you do it, I mean, your adrenaline goes through the roof.

After that it doesn't. And so with adernaline junkies, they usually go onto something else.  This is a different thing. it's the feeling of psychological and emotional [00:14:00] success and which is, definitely makes you feel good. And so I think that is more what you're going to see with these type of athletes than actual adrenaline junkies who certainly they're out there.

But usually they have to get that fix and you're not going to get that fix all the time for very long. There has to be some kind of consistency in whatever the project is that you're pursuing. And so I definitely don't think it's so much adrenaline junkie. I'm sure it's a component, but that's not all of it.

Kevin: Yeah. well said, and I love that you mentioned that. I think you said psychological and emotional success as what you're kind of the outcome you're looking for there. Now, are you still climbing today? Do you still get up? Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: I still get done. I'm usually with my adult daughters we like to climb together.

We've had quite a few fun adventures together. We were just in new river Gorge couple years ago together. So yeah, I try to get out there, but [00:15:00] of course, you know, as a stage of life change, you're not able to do it as much as you could as you used to. But yeah, I still try to keep my hand in. And even in between there, I'll try to go to two gyms to rock climbing gyms just to try to keep some of the skills and body management that you know, able to handle your body using just your arms and legs at a high level. You can do a lot of that stuff in the climbing gyms so still will frequent those from time to time to make sure I'm still doing that. And I think that's an incredibly important part of overall fitness and health.

And longevity is your ability to control your body at a high level, just with your arms and legs.

Kevin: Yeah, that that's well said. And certainly climbing is one of those body awareness type things where you've gotta be able to control your body and space. And a lot of people might imagine, well, you just need to be really, really strong, right?

I'm going to grab hold of this and pull myself up. But so much of climbing is so much more technique. In fact, [00:16:00] my daughter when she was much younger, 14, 15 years old, maybe 16 was on a competitive climbing team for awhile. And it would always amuse me when there would be some, say some young Marines, big, strong strapping, young lads in the climbing gym.

And. my daughter would watch them climb for a little while and then she would hop on and just, just breeze through the route that these guys are kind of scratching their heads and saying, why can't I muscle up this thing? And she's just this little tiny thing, but it's that, body awareness and that perception coupled with really just that technique, right.

Of understanding your body and space and balance and position. And I suppose that would, that is a great framework for future longevity and overall athleticism. Right?

Steve: Absolutely. What you're describing, I've seen so so many times men and especially, and I think you being in the fitness world, you've seen this like me and so much focus on that upper body strength.

That's easy, [00:17:00] looking like a beer keg on two straws is what I call some of those guys. But and so for, for those guys in the, in the climbing gym or on the, on the rock itself, you know, they're just trying to do pull-ups and you can't do that. I mean, I don't care how strong you are. You can't do 5,000 pull-ups and I've also noticed with females, they, because they genetically don't usually have as strong upper bodies as men

and they will use their legs just instinctively. When they climb, men will not use their leg. Their legs are just hanging dead, dead weight when they climb, which I've always found amusing. And so they, they just, instinctively our climbing with incredibly poor form. And then people like your daughter are just firing through that.

But yes, full body awareness is a big part of doing that. And I think that's something that so many seniors really lose is their body awareness. They, some of the people I've trained as seniors that I've trained their body awareness is at a very, very low level.

Kevin: Absolutely. And yeah, and I'm with you a hundred percent there. And I'm really [00:18:00] thankful there's folks like you out there that are, aware of this and trying to change that tide a little bit.

So this might be a good segue here. You know, it sounds like you've had a very full, very active life. You mentioned early on some sports and decathlon, and of course we got the rock climbing and mountaineering martial arts throughout your life. You had mentioned sky diving. I, I know that you've done, some scuba and hang-gliding as well.

And one of your, I think it was in one of your blog posts, you made a comment that said we were born to be fit and that we have to work at being unfit. Yeah, kind of help us understand that a little bit. What's your, what's your train of thought around that? Well,

Steve: I'll make the point that we were born to be fit.

And I think maybe another part of this discussion or another discussion later, we can discuss what actual fitness really is. But we would want to be fit. We were born to get out there and hunt and gather and move and run and jump. And all those things were [00:19:00] born to do that. And you know, evolution has it works, but it doesn't work very fast.

So we've evolved to a certain point and it took, you know, all the time that it took for us to evolve to this point, physically. But technology evolves really, really fast industry and technology involves really, really fast. So technology and the industry has allowed us to not have to hunt and gather for food, not have to run and not have to jump, not have to do all these things, but our body hasn't adapted to it.

You know, you see these science fiction shows or what was it, Wally that it actually did kind of show this evolution, the speed sped up in space where the humans got kind of really obese and very soft and over time, over a time period as they lived in space and they were catered to by robots and much lesser scale, unless humorous scale that's what's happened with us.

So our evolution can't catch up to the technological and industrial evolution [00:20:00] of our culture and our society. So we're still, we still have the body though, that we were still born with the body to be fit, to be able to run, to be able to jump to be able to be able to gather, to be able to do all those things and all the things physically that go with those things.

in one of my blogs, I don't know if you got a chance to read it. I talked about photography that came into its own in the 1860s. Really. And later, and I said, just go and just check out some photography from 1860 to 1890 or whatever, and try to find the people that look out of shape, try to find the people that look obese.

You won't find them. They just didn't exist because the technology and the industry, wasn't at a point that allow us to have lifestyle that we have today with food and exercise. And it was incredibly rare, even show. At one point there were, you know, the horrible things they used to have called side shows and they had the fat lady of the circus.

And there was a picture of a fat lady at the circus. And I mean, [00:21:00] we saw that lady today. We would think I think I just aren't Walmart though. I don't know. I wouldn't even notice her. In 1890 she was so unique. So unbelievably obese that people would pay money just to look at her. And that's how much has changed in a hundred years, 150 years.

And it's not because of some of the factors. So many of the factors that you hear that maybe it's genetic or whatever, it's our bodies we're born to be fit, but we've really had to work hard to build a culture. And then inside that culture build a lifestyle that makes us so very unfit.

Kevin: Yeah. That's, that's very, very well said.

We have certainly in our technological age have built a society and a culture that that keeps us unfit. And that's an interesting perspective over time fitness wasn't a thing in and of itself, right? It was just baked into the way for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, how we live [00:22:00] the way we moved.

Right. And now that technology in the last, just even say a hundred years or so has moved so fast evolutionarily, our bodies have not caught up to that. So into that as born this fitness industry, right. So somebody like me that's, in front of a computer for hours on end I manufacture a way to work and for me that's, you know, working out.

Right. But once upon a time, we, we certainly didn't do that. The fitness industry is big and wine is a multi-billion dollar industry and there's all these bizarre things we do. If you just stopped to think about a treadmill or a stationary bike for a minute, that's just a really bizarre thing.

And I think that recently there's been more of this push towards what we'll call the functional fitness side of that fitness industry. But still the, all the cardio places, all the, you know, the Globo gyms, things like that. they're still having their day as well. I heard on somebody else's podcast, they were talking about when you go into one of these [00:23:00] big commercial gyms, most of the people working out are on the machines.

And they're either sitting or laying down and the person discussing this was just saying, well, think about that for a minute. if the idea is to be functionally fit, to be able to do things like you're talking about just very basic things, to be able to walk, to run, to bend over, pick up something heavy, put it up over your head, et cetera, not really maximizing your time in that gym, if you were with that full muscle recruitment, if you're sitting on a machine or laying on a machine. So it's really interesting how far we've come in this, in his new fitness industry in a way to try to reclaim some of this, what you call our birthright, how we were born to be, to born, to be fit.

Steve: Yeah, I mean the, the gyms can be fantastic tools. Don't get me wrong, the unbelievable tools, but we have to understand that the gyms were created through capitalism as a business, and it's primarily to separate you from a dollar. But you have to make [00:24:00] use of the equipment that you're renting. And a lot of people that, like you said, that's, that's not something that's been real effective for their overall health.

Definitely their overall fitness, health longevity. These are shrines to fake work. they're big, huge temples of pretend labor. And like you said, that we were saying that we didn't used to have to do that. that was, you said like then to our culture, the, where they did their lives. And so sometimes I think it's almost comical that like the treadmills, I can't imagine my grandfather comprehending that someone would need to walk on a treadmill.

These things are, are almost ludicrous in a way, but they're, they've become necessary in this high technological culture that we live in now, but it all is pretend work fake work. But another thing that happens in, in gyms. Gym equipment is it becomes very, very specialized. I have a machine that works my outer bicep and [00:25:00] machine that works my inner bicep.

You know, I have, it becomes so incredibly specialized and that's one of the reasons people just laying down or sitting down, going to work. That's I think a big problem. And I know you you've experienced CrossFit. That's more of a good example of, of trying to get out of that type thing. But, you know, even just most of my training as outside, most of my training is body weight base.

Not all of it. I use kettlebells a lot. I do use some free weights too, but it was so much of it as Cal stank base, looking for that whole, whole body fitness, looking for, functional fitness at a very, very high level.

Kevin: Okay. That, yeah. And that's a perfect segue to what I really want to talk to you about is that whole body functional fitness that, elite level fitness to your point, unless you're a very high level competitive bodybuilder, and you're really working on, you know, just tweaking that peak of your inner bicep, for example th those machines are, have become so specialized.

But what you're talking about is something completely different. You had [00:26:00] mentioned most of it being outdoors, which is where, you know, evolutionary, we spent the majority of our, of our lives and it being a lot of, body weight calisthenic type work. Talk to us a little bit about your philosophy on exercise.

what is it that your, you personally do and what are you prescribing for some of your, your folks over 50 that you're working with?

Steve: So I'll even back it up a little bit more too, I think that there is a, a real dearth of information and I'm glad that you're one of the people that is trying to get the good information out.

You're actually among the few, in my opinion of what, what is it we're really trying to achieve with fitness? What, what does that even mean? And I think it's confusing because when you see media often fitness equals bodybuilding fitness equals for men, big muscles from women, kind of less big muscles and a very, very low [00:27:00] level of body fat, big muscles though.

That's a big one for me and especially, and for women, it's not as big, but, and then a very, very cut body. All of that. I've just discussed with you right then it's an aesthetic. It has almost nothing to do with your health. It has almost nothing to do with your. How could you feel through it through the day has nothing to do with your longevity, it just as an aesthetic.

And that's, to me, nothing wrong with bodybuilding, it's fine. As long as you, you're not confusing that with that is what healthy is. And that is what fit is. It could be, but it's often not. So that's one thing the other thing is, and I saw you, you've struggled with this. I think some on your fitness journey is it doesn't also mean an extreme sport.

Meaning a triathlon, a marathon, an ultra marathon, be able to do more things live longer. If you do [00:28:00] that. But these are the types of things that the media seems to focus on and throw at people that are like, well, you know, I would like to get fit, but I don't know if I can train for a marathon or not.

You know, I'm not sure I have time. No, you don't need to. That's insane. Yeah. Especially for a senior, as I've been training for a marathon or the repetitive use injury or injuries are going to be rapid in bodybuilding, it's not necessarily that's not necessarily functionally fit. That's not, that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to feel better, look better, meaning that your overall fit. So I think there's, there's so much out there that where people are confused about what even does it mean to be fit, but my philosophy is being fit and he's, Hey, first of all, it means being healthy.

If you're healthy, you have a chance to be fit. In my practice, I've seen a lot of other, even drawn a graph for people and it's kind of this big arc and it's so between the ages of like 20 and 40, almost all of your [00:29:00] fitness has been in the static. I want bigger ours want bigger shoulders. If you're a woman you want that our legs want a bigger butt whatever it's all about

and the aesthetic and very little to do with health. 40 to 50 55, that there's a mixture. Okay. It's also a matter of aesthetic, but it's also, Hey, I actually want to be able to do more stuff. I want to be able to play with my kids and won't be able to play with my grandkids and want to be able to have fun on vacation.

Then about 55 and 60, they don't care hardly at all about the asthetic and it's almost all about health and I wish I could move that graft, where it went all the guys at 1560 went all the way to the guys at 20, because my philosophy is if you are fit and you are healthy, the aesthetic will take care of itself.

It doesn't have to be the goal. It doesn't have to be the focus that will just come automatically. And all these other benefits will come. That wouldn't have come. If you'd only focused [00:30:00] on the asthetic. So for me, fitness means being able to run fast, jump high, the strong, be able to get up and down off the ground easily, quickly with little effort.

One of the things I just mentioned is run fast and I think that's another thing that's so much missed. Sprinting is super, super important, but we focus on jogging everywhere. Jogging are a little bit faster than a job. When in real life are you ever doing that? We talked about the evolution of humans as a species.

If a bear is chasing me, I'm probably not going to be at a light jog I'm going to want to sprint. And as a 63 year old, man, how many 63 old men have you seen sprint?

And it's one of the most important things we can do. And you know, as well, that sprinting is much better for fat loss and all the and muscle retention and muscle gain than just jogging. But few people focus on. So I have to focus [00:31:00] on those things and I set a very high bar.

One of the biggest things I get, and you might get this too. When clients start training with me is Steve, I didn't even know that the level of fitness that we're shooting for, I didn't even know that level of fitness existed. And that's a problem. People should know this level of fitness exists, but they know because it's just, it's not focused on.

Bodybuilding is focused on triathletes are focused on marathons are focused on none of those things are going to get you to live a really long time at a high level being elitely fit and then taking care, you know, all over run, fast, jump high, do things a long time, run a mile pretty fast. Be able to do a bunch of pushups, be able to do a few pull-ups that's going to get you to where you want to go in my opinion, much faster.

And then the other things that we talked about eating, right. Because that's more critical than anything else. Am I sleeping right? Am i able to practice some mindfulness because all those things are going to add to that longevity.

[00:32:00]Kevin: Steve brings up some great points here regarding fitness. We do a very poor job of defining fitness in our culture. Many of us see a guy or gal with big muscles and assume they must be extremely fit. Or we see an elite marathon runner and assume that they are extremely fit. But many cases, those folks aren't particularly fit.

but rather they are very specialized. The bodybuilder has huge muscles yet may be a very poor runner or have horrible mobility. The marathon runner can clearly cover an incredibly long distance in a fairly short amount of time. Yeah, it would most likely come up short on any real strength test.

Say a barbell back squat. The way Steve is defining fitness is more well-rounded and includes everyday functional movements that our bodies were designed to do. I asked Steve about his thoughts on nutrition and how our diets might affect our fitness and longevity.

Steve: a [00:33:00] moving target, of course, with all the research out there.

And I really think people need to do the research. You should do your own research. Certainly. I know you do tons of research and I always say, don't use use Google use Google scholar, Google scholar is going to take you to actual studies, just using Google is going to bring you to some guy thinks this.

So try to use Google scholar and things like that, other than if you're doing your own research. But that being said, I think currently it's pretty obvious that the Mediterranean type diet is the best for overall fitness and longevity. And I think in my, my personal journey and working with clients Really watching the media intake is also super important.

I, myself has been pretty much a pescatarian you know, red meat especially has to be taken in, in very moderate amounts. I can give you even just colloquial experience that I've had at one point in my [00:34:00] life, I had to I would run a retreat or a retreat where people would come in and through the entire retreat, they would, they weren't allowed any red meat and I would take their cholesterol on Sunday and then I would work them a week and then take it the next Sunday, almost universally, their cholesterol would go down in one week.

Just from that, just simply from that, of course we were exercising, but the biggest thing of course, was the meat intake. So I think in general, you know, the, the blue zone, the Mediterranean type Nutrition. And I do think meat, especially as we get older, especially as we pass that 50 Mark we really have to moderate on our red meat because it has a direct correlation with inflammation, a direct correlation with with higher cholesterol
Kevin: And you had mentioned that Mediterranean blue zone diet. If you're listening to this chances, are you, you've at least heard of that, but that's characterized by whole foods, right? It's going to be to [00:35:00] your point, pescatarians going to be a lot of seafood for that protein portion and a lot of fresh vegetables and healthy fats, right?

So it's famously the olive oil but I think we'll both strongly agree that. Cause we're all a little bit different, right? To your point, should do your own a, your own research and be your own experimenting on yourself. If it, well, if I, if I tweak my macros this way, or if I, if I take this out of my diet, how does that make me feel, et cetera.

But I think we could both agree universally that if we just reduce the amount of processed food, we're eating and move towards more whole foods. That's a fantastic first step in any healthy diet. Is that fair?

Steve: Yes. I think it was concluded, sir. And that's definitely what the Mediterranean type diets are.

And the reality is in this time, it's not hard to do do think when you and I were young, it was a little harder to do because processed foods were just kind of being invented and everybody loved, Oh my gosh, we can do this and we can do that. That's incredible. And it wasn't until later we [00:36:00] realized that those foods were often incredibly bad for us.

So, but these days, I mean, you have so many options with getting better. Whole fresh foods then what you did, even when you were out or younger, that it shouldn't be something that's overwhelming, but it, it often can be the people that aren't used to the concept.

Kevin: Yeah. That that's, that's true.

I've read a statistic somewhere and I wish I had it on hand. But it was, I can't remember. It was the average American's diet consists of approximately 70% of processed food, which has blows me away. That's a mindblowing statistic. Okay. This was actually a study that I had read in an online journal on the Atlantic. And what they found is that 57.9% of people's total caloric intake on average comes from ultra processed foods, minimally processed or [00:37:00] unprocessed foods accounted for 29.6% of our diet. So that's where the 70% of processed food in the average person's diet comes from.

Steve: When you go into a grocery store like a modern grocery store these days, or let's say a Walmart grocery store, a modern grocery store, almost nothing in there is good for you to eat outside of the produce department.

I mean, it's, that's kind of an amazing thing that where our culture is, is that you can walk into the Walmart grocery, which millions of people do and almost nothing in there is good for you to eat outside of the produce section. That's not good. That's a bad thing. That's happened to us in our culture.

So when you and I talk about how easy it is, it's easy for us because we've been studying in a long time. And of course at our age, we want to pass along what we've learned. But if you don't talk to somebody like us or, or haven't grown up thinking that's important, you just go to the grocery, you buy food and you eat it.

But it's credible. That almost nothing in [00:38:00] a modern grocery store is good for you to eat.

Kevin: Yeah. I'm with you a hundred percent. Yeah. We go to the grocery store because that's where the food is. Right. But to your point, that's not where in the food you should eat is these big agri companies, big food companies that are holding the stockholders and they want to sell you more and you know, ways to do that is making really hyper palatable and maybe leave you hungry for more.

So, yeah. You know, you hear often the very simplistic advice shop the perimeter of a grocery store, which has some, some validity to it. But yeah, seeking out whole foods is certainly much, much better than going to a grocery store and just filling your shopping basket with the contents in there.

Steve: You have to change your life philosophy, you know if you do things like it's always been and you do things, how things have always worked out, then you'll be dead at 74.

That's your life expectancy. Is that what you want? I mean, because that's how things work. That, that that's the average. So, you know, you have. Change your mindset.

[00:39:00] Kevin: Yeah. That's that's you bring up a good point and we also could make a distinction between a lifespan and health span. I know that's been getting a lot of play in the media recently where our lifespan is getting longer and longer, right?

We're we're living longer ages, but our health span is that, that is those years that we're healthy and active and physically capable is actually getting smaller. that's a scary proposition for those of us aging, right? As you're coming into your 50, 60 seventies, eighties, do you want those years to be productive and strong and healthy, or do you want those to be filled with, the metabolic diseases and derangements that come along with unhealthy lifestyles?

The medications, et cetera. And there can be two different paths there for, for aging folks. And while we may be able to keep some of these unhealthy people alive longer, in my opinion, obviously it would be much, much preferable to spend those later years healthy and capable as opposed to, the [00:40:00] opposite of that.

Steve: Yeah. I think there's a little, there's a dualism there too with w with this concept, individually, it's pretty miserable, right?

You're, you're hanging around and you're just existing painful way, in an unpleasant way. So no, nobody wants that. But the dualism is on that. Also our culture tends to discard people once they've passed the age of about 60. And so here you are, you're, you're 60, the new life expectancy, you know, maybe in 2050 or whatever is going to be 150, so that half your life, and you're irrelevant.

Culturally. So, you know, if you're going to make these people irrelevant, then that's also a problem with their aging. So I think things need to change. Things need to change within our culture. Things need to change individually because look, if you're going to be living longer than, like you said, you want a healthier health span.

And so you need to do the things to [00:41:00] ensure that that happens. My philosophy is if people do start living more commonly past a hundred a year, you're not going to have the kind of terrible health spans in general that you used to. I think if you're going to have people living to one 20 or one 10 or whatever regularly, they're going to probably have a better health span.

I think all these things need to be addressed culturally, as well as on an individual basis that you and I work with day to day.

Kevin: Yeah. Abs. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm with you there it's it can be a hard sell, right? For people to your point that have lived their whole life a certain way to, to make these changes because it's not like something that you, you make a change and you're done.

It's, it's it's altering your lifestyle. It's altering the way you, the way you live, the way you eat and the way you go about your everyday life. And I don't know about you, but I'm a big proponent of making small changes that you can kind of weave into the fabric of your life and that are there permanently and [00:42:00] building on those as opposed to big radical, okay.

Stop eating what you're eating today and completely switched to this. That's not shown to have long-term effectiveness in many cases. No,

Steve: it's, it has to be like you said, you have to make these small steps. You have to make the steps relatively easy. And before you know it over the course of time that you're in a completely different habit mold.

But I will add to that, that one of the things I've seen with people that, that do kind of fight that fight me on some things to make their, their lives healthier and longer.

I've even had people say, well, you know, I I'd rather die younger than not be able to eat a hamburger every day or whatever. And I always say, that's easy to say now, but harder to say toward the end. I mean, I don't, I don't think you're going to have people like knowing that the end is nigh steel saying, sure, glad I had those hamburgers, you know, [00:43:00] it's, it's a very shortsighted and a kind of an arrogant philosophy to have, and it's easy to have those philosophies when you're.

Not feeling really bad or, or whatever.

Kevin: Yeah. Once you decide you don't like that philosophy anymore, it's probably too late.

Change those decades of eating the way they want to eat or whatever, poor habit they've, they've chosen throughout their life. It's, it's too late with, towards the end to you can, you can make some changes, but a lot of the damage that you've done is is it reversible and at best you might be able to arrest some of that decline, but too late to change your choice once you're that far along

Steve: that's, that's a good one.

Like I said, my point is that you, few I believe people are going to be at that point in their life and still say, Hey, I did it my way, buddy.

Kevin: Well, let's see. So we've talked a good bit about movement. We've talked a good bit about nutrition and we've alluded a little bit to that [00:44:00] recovery piece of that you've mentioned mindfulness meditation.

You've mentioned, I think, briefly sleep. So for those of us that are wanting to focus on longevity in this elite level of fitness, how does recovery play into that?

Steve: Sure. Well, definitely for your listeners, recovery is an absolute critical thing to learn and, and recovery techniques are critical thing to learn recovery is much more important in the older athlete and the older person.

Then it wasn't the younger athlete. Who's recovering just naturally. One of the things that I also want to mention is connected to that is intense workouts for people that are over 50. You definitely can get by in great success with less workouts, intense workouts. I always say before 40 or maybe 53 times a week after 52 times a week, the rest of the time is basically [00:45:00] recovery.

And I get a lot of pushback on that. They're like, no, no, the more work I do the faster I'll see results. I want to work out hard every day. You won't always say you remember the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Conan where apparently he became huge like that by pushing this plow like thing. You know, when he was a slight, no, he would've died at 14 years old and he wouldn't have looked like on sports center.

I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't work that way. And in seniors, it's very, very important to give much more recovery time. If you even look at some of the athletes that maybe you yourself even kind of idolized as a younger man that continued to. You, if you research them, meaning many of them have had hip replacements.

Many of them have had knee replacements. Many of them have, myriad injuries, chronic use injuries. And I think it's because didn't have the information we have today. You need much more recovery time as you age than you did before. And then of course the recovery time itself is not simply resting.

You can still [00:46:00] be moving. Recovery is fine, walking, jogging, playing tennis, whatever it might be. And then the things that were the research is really showing us now there is so important, which is sleep and overall mindfulness.

Kevin: Yeah. So that's, that's well said. Certainly we don't recover. No, like we did when we were 20, right.

We didn't have to give any thought to recovery back then, but certainly over 50, over 60, over 70 that's were, our bodies are different and recovery becomes a much, much more critical piece of that. And recovery takes a lot of forms. It's it is that time off between intense workouts. And to your point, I think you were kind of alluding to let's get that minimum effective dose.

Let's get the most bang for our buck out of these, none of these workouts, but let's not go a hundred percent. Every day. Yeah. That's, that's a recipe for over-training and long-term ill health, not longevity and elite level fitness. So but it's other things, right? It's certainly it's sleep.

One of the most [00:47:00] anabolic substances known to man is sleep and good, healthy sleep hygiene makes everything better. Certainly nutrition plays a piece into, your recovery, and I can tell you're really big. Cause you, you keep bringing it up on that whole mindfulness being present, having some sort of, I would guess a practice of whether that's a meditation practice or a journaling practice.

What are your thoughts on. Quote unquote, practicing this mindfulness that you're talking about

Steve: a little bit, like you said, as far as you have to kind of start slow and mindfulness and you haven't found your way. The great thing about mindfulness is it doesn't have to take any specific form. I mean, you brought up journaling, you brought a meditation, it doesn't even have to take up any specific form, but it's a matter of centering yourself as a matter of, being clearly and completely in the moment.

And men with us boomers, that's just was not something that was ever discussed, not something that was ever valued. And I think it's, it's a tough sale to seniors, a much easier sale to [00:48:00] my younger class and it just the seniors, but it's, you know, every study is going to show, there's going to add to your longevity to be able to have these moments every day, if possible of, being completely in the moment, completely focused on just your breath, completely focused on.

Whatever it is some other activity that can bring you to that place, even if it's just for 10 minutes, even if it's just for 12 minutes, it's been shown to slow cognitive decline. It's been shown to add years to your life. It's been shown to slow telomere shortening. So I think I said in one of my blogs and it hits the critical centerpiece for your senior overall health and longevity journey.

It's not, Oh, and I'm also going to do that after I get done doing preacher curls, you know, it, it, it has to be the center of it. And like you said, it can take many, many forms. It's so esoteric in a way that you don't, which is also hard for boomers, [00:49:00] also hard for people our age to get into that type of thing.

But it's actually a good thing.

Kevin: Yeah, I agree. Wholehearted with you love all of that. I love that you call it the critical center pieces. I think what you said for, those of us as we're aging and along with that being present in that mindfulness, and however that is manifest in your life, I think hand in hand with that goes stress reduction, right?

Cause we, the more we find out from researchers on the ill effects of stress, the more we're realizing that just all the bad things that come along with stress, and clearly going back to your point about. once upon a time being able to sprint away from a bear. Well, that stress response would have been probably life-saving right.

That fight or flight response. The problem is we get that exact same biological response when somebody cuts us off in traffic or spouses, something that we don't like, or we have a tough day at work. And for a lot of us that accumulates into this chronic [00:50:00] stress, which is extremely unhealthy for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because it's absolutely pulling you away from being present and being mindful.

Is that a fair way of saying that?

Steve: No, I couldn't have said it better. This is really great. And it does describe the, the modern land so much. And so much of this, the stress stuff like you said is this is my cut me off in traffic. Right. If we can not go all the way back to where I talked about, you know, mind, body control with rock climbing and learning those kinds of techniques and how to control that all the way up to the mindfulness that we're talking about right now.

A lot of the stresses that we have are not even real. There there's something that can be controlled and utilize a mindfulness can get you to a place where you can control those things so much better, because like you said, stress is the killer stress causes, inflammation, inflammation, causes, disease and death.

So inflammation, huge, huge by-product of, anxiety and stress. And so much of the stress is a Phantom. I would say, if you really [00:51:00] experiencing a stress, a stressful event, like you're experiencing it and you can only manage it to a certain level, the only way to get rid of complete stress and anxiety is getting rid of the thing that's causing you, the stress and anxiety.

And sometimes you can't, but let's say you have a boss that is causing you constant stress and anxiety. You do need to, you can change that. You can get another job. I might be hard, but it'll be worth it because your boss is literally killing it. But a lot of times you can, I have an intense fear of X.

Well, unless you can get it out of your life, then, you have to learn to manage it. But so, so that's important managing that stress, that so much of stress these days is kind of a Phantom stress. And so you can definitely remove the Phantom stresses to a great extent by practicing the things we're talking about right now.

Kevin: you're right. Most of the things that we as modern people are stressed about are Phantom stress. But unfortunately we're still having that [00:52:00] biological, biologically identical response to that stress, which is the cortisol and the inflammation, which leads to your point to illness and eventually death, so bad, bad stuff.

All right, well, Steve, it sounds like then you've been active all your life. Certainly. You're passionate about your focus on, fitness and on longevity. What, what keeps you motivated? What keeps you grinding away day in and day out with this?

Steve: Well, two things you know, I have a five-year-old son as 63, so I want to be around for him.

I want to do the same things with my five-year-old that I did with my 30 year old, the older children. So that's a big thing, but, and overall, I also have a great passion for, like you said, what we're just talking about, which is all this, this fitness and physical activity. And, and you know, I still train people.

I still train not only seniors, but I train young people. I train military, I train law enforcement. [00:53:00] And for some reason, they keep getting younger, even though I tend to get older very quickly. I still want to do that. I'm still passionate about it, and I think it's important for seniors to have that thing that the thing you're doing right now that you're passionate about is important for you to have this it's important for you to still feel valuable, to still feel plugged in, to plugged into society, plugged into the culture.

And for me, I want to still be plugged in. I still want to be able to do the things that I love to do, and I don't want to have to stop doing them because of mental and physical decline. I want to put that off as long as possible. And so that's the kind of motivations that keep me in this and I don't feel like they're unusual.

I feel like most people, if they really thought about it, want the same thing, no matter what they may area at least tell their buddy. I think most people want this to it just so happens that because I've been. I reap the benefits of an [00:54:00] active lifestyle. My whole life. I've been able to do things and see things that the vast majority of people didn't get a chance to do and never got a chance to do.

And so you know, I guess I'm passionate about life and passionate about the outdoors as well. And so I want to keep that going as long as possible for natural reasons. And I really don't think I'm unique in this. I just think I focus on it more than most people.

Kevin: Yeah. And I agree wholeheartedly that especially as we're aging, that it's critical to have that passion in your life.

And for me, it's obviously it's very similar to you, right? It's, it's very much that healthy lifestyle. And that really lights me up and certainly sharing that with other people and being connected in that way. But whatever, as you're aging, whatever that thing is that really lights you up and it really gets you going.

I think it's important to have that passion because when you lose that, I think you lose a lot of, you're just kind of will to live. [00:55:00] Right. And that's, that's not good for LUNGevity and vitality.

Steve: We understand it from a scientific point of view, but I think colloquially, we we've all seen it when you don't have this passion, you don't have this feeling of connectedness to the world and to the things that you're passionate about.

It, it affects you physically and mentally, you know, how many times have you heard? Well, you know, mom's doing really good. But she, we, we did have to put her, she did need extra care and we put her in a nursing home and she died in a month and it seemed incredible because everything, she seemed pretty well off or, you know, that was doing really good, but, you know, he retired and he got his first social security check and he was dead in the mall.

You know, how many times have you heard these stories locally? I don't think we understand it from a scientific point of view yet, but there's a lot of objective evidence out [00:56:00] there that this causes cognitive decline and physical decline when you, when you don't have that. And it's a real danger, particularly in the United States where people over the age of 60 become devalued very quickly, I think in other countries, not so much but in this country for sure.

And it, you got to fight that you got to fight that if you don't want to just live an average lifespan,

Kevin: that's very well said. Yeah. I agree wholeheartedly with you in, in our culture. We, we don't honor the, the aging and the wisdom that comes with that the way other cultures do. And to your point, colloquially, we do see that's a very, you, you just made a couple of examples there and I think a hundred percent of the people listening to that can certainly relate to that.

They know somebody like that, right? Yeah. Okay. Well, Steve, what's next for you? What? What's on the horizon?

Steve: So, you know, I've really tried to grow my practice with the same people you're working with which has not been my [00:57:00] focus up until I started the masculine method. Mostly I was with Mo more lead athletes military guys that wanted to go special operations federal law enforcement, things like that.

And obviously I've, I've had civilian class too, but I'm really trying to grow into training more and more seniors because it's incredibly rewarding. I'm sure you've been, you've been doing it. So you see it. It's incredibly rewarding to do that because. Not only am I working with guys that, Hey, they want to do better.

They want to have a specific career, like all those kind of things. Working with people that it's really completely changing their life, maybe even adding years to their lifespan or adding years to their health span. And that's pretty rewarding. So I want to kind of focus on that. And one of the things that I think you, you can definitely understand as you get older and you do gain this wisdom use.

Ah, and I think I see it in other people to really want to share it really want to share that the things that [00:58:00] we've learned, we see people out there doing really crazy things and it would be inappropriate for us to go up, tap on the shoulder, saying you're doing something that's really crazy because I've learned in my 63 years, how bad that he was.

So you can't do it that way, but you're, you're almost genetically predisposed to want to share it. And That's what's next for me, I hope is growing. My practice is worth working with seniors and trying to show them what elite fitness is and show them what real fitness is and healthiest and achieve some real longevity.

Kevin: Okay. Thanks for sharing that. And that you had mentioned the Mansfield method and that's the name of your practice? Right? So if people are hearing this and they would like to communicate with you, reach out to you potentially work with you, what's the best way for folks to get in

touch with you?

Steve: Yeah, the best way is through the management method, you know, mass with the website and that's dot com.

You can email me a Steve at the Mansfield method directly. And I, I can consult with you that way. You know, especially in today's times, a [00:59:00] lot of the stuff's done remotely zoom, all those kinds of things, and I can do those kinds of things just from a consulting point of view, all the way up to nutrition and workouts, whatever you want to do, those are the two easiest way.

Instagram, of course I think it's where I'm at. You. You can also ping me on Instagram. I saw a ball prose from you about only 20% of seniors are listening to podcasts. It's tough. Crowd market is pretty tough. Yeah, it is.

Kevin: I'm on a mission to get more seniors, to listen to podcasts as well. I want him to be healthy and I want him listening to podcasts.

There's a podcast about every subject known to man. It was shocking to me to find out that so few people are especially older. People are using this technology.

Steve: Yeah. And it was similar to Instagram that I'm not seeing them on, on that either. You want to mention that's where you can, you can get a hold of me, but most seniors at least know how to email me and how to get to my website, which is the primary way to do it.

Kevin: All right. Well, Steve, I'd like to thank you so much for coming on the [01:00:00] show and sharing your journey and all of your knowledge with us, you are a fantastic ambassador for healthy aging, and I just wish you all the best in all of your future endeavors.

Steve:  Appreciate you having me.