Kevin:  [00:00:00]Hello, and welcome to the over 50 health and wellness podcast. I'm your host, Kevin English. I'm a certified personal trainer and nutrition coach. And my mission is to help you get into the best shape of your life. Regardless of your age. So that you can show up in life as the healthiest, strongest, most vital version of yourself.

I want to let you know that if you enjoy this podcast, I have additional free resources over at www.silveredgefree.com. There you'll find my mini guides on nutrition, exercise and lifestyle. Today we have another edition of the coach's corner. So no guest today. It's just me.

And we'll be back next week with our regular interview format.

[00:01:00]Here's what we're covering in this episode, I'll start out with a brief discussion of how things are going with my new client Brock. If you're not familiar, Brock is a podcaster himself. He's the host of the midlife mastery podcast. And he's hired me as a personal trainer and nutrition coach. And he suggested that we share our journey on our respective podcasts, me from the coaches perspective and Brock from the client's perspective.

If you'd like to learn more about this collaboration or about Brock head over to the show notes at www.silveredgefitness.com/episode63. Next up, we'll take a stab at defining fitness. This came up on Brock's podcast last week and I'll share my thoughts on just what fitness is.

From there, we'll chat for a few minutes about the problem with carbs. Carbs are definitely getting a bad rap these days. So we'll spend some time discussing [00:02:00] why this is and try and cut through some of the noise surrounding carbohydrates. Then i'll do a brief review of a great book called finding milo by dr aaron horsch and we'll wrap up today's episode with some of my takeaway thoughts from last week's podcast guests.

Okay, so let's start out with a quick update on Brock. Our first update was a couple of weeks ago. And at that point, Brock was only one week into his program. He was just getting started. And if you want, you can listen to that. It was my first coach's corner episode. And you can find [email protected] slash episode 60.

Brock has just now completed his third week and he's down a little over five pounds. He's got a goal of losing about 45 pounds. And you would like to hit that goal by January. So right. About six months. On the [00:03:00] nutrition side, I've asked bronc to track everything he's eating in an app called my fitness pal, which allows me to see his total calories each day. I can see his macros. That is his total proteins fats and carbohydrates each day.

And it even lets me see exactly what he's eating. So first things, first Brock is in a calorie deficit. That is he's eating fewer calories than he's expanding. And so far, we've really focused on getting his protein up and I go into detail on that in my last coach's corner. And he's done a great job of that.

I'm a big believer in small steps, even tiny steps. The idea here is that  as opposed to completely changing the way Brock eats all at once. We'll make small changes and give him time to assimilate these changes into his lifestyle. So he's been focused these first three weeks on tracking everything he eats and getting at least 100 grams of protein each [00:04:00] day.

 

And on this week's call, we added two new tasks. The first is Brock will pack his lunch the night before work. So there's no scrambling at the last minute to find something fast and convenient to eat. And the second has to do with Brock's energy drink consumption. He's currently averaging about three of those sugar-free energy drinks a day.

And since he's not a coffee drinker,  he's using these to get his caffeine fix. So starting this week, he's going to replace one of those energy drinks each day with a green tea. Now it's important here to note that I did not suggest to Brock that he replaced a energy drink with a green tea, although that's a great idea.

I asked Brock what he thought he might use as a substitute. And he came up with green tea and the reason I did that is I want his buy-in. I want this to be his idea. And for him to have ownership of this. It's a lot easier for [00:05:00] Brock to fail a task or any client to fail the task. If it's my idea, if I say, Hey, you know, you should really be drinking green tea, instead of say monster energy drinks.

While that's probably sound advice. I'm looking for. Brock in this case to make the suggestion something that he thinks that he can live with. So this is a great start. That. I mean, ideally we'll have him drinking, down the road, just green tea and maybe having one monster here and there,

As opposed to having multiple energy drinks every day.

On this week's call we also started talking about carbohydrates. So far, we've really only focused on his total calories and on protein. And he's been really solid with that. So we'll spend the next couple of weeks working on cleaning up some of his carbs. And as you probably can guess we'll work on fats after that.

On the workout front Brock has been progressing nicely in his [00:06:00] workouts. Now I have him starting out with fairly light weight, high volume routine of primarily compound lifts. Things like squats, deadlifts presses, as well as some basic mobility work. At this stage, we're focusing on mobility and moving with perfect form.

We're still adding weight to the bar bell each session, but the weights are light and really shouldn't tax his muscles too much at this point. Now, if you recall, Brock has recently trained for and run a half marathon. And for his first three weeks, we haven't programmed any running just three days a week of mobility and weightlifting starting this week, which is week four.

We'll be adding in two days of running, basically a 30 minute jog twice a week, as well as an extra day, just focusing on mobility. So Brock's week four will look something like this. Say day one, he'll have his lifting session with some [00:07:00] mobility to warm up day to rest. Day three lift. Day four, maybe a morning run and an afternoon mobility session, or he could certainly do those back to back.

Maybe rest on day five, another lift on day six. That will be as third lift. And then on day seven, another run. Now that's a pretty big change from last week, which was just three days of lifting and mobility work. So we'll see how this goes and then we'll make any adjustments on the next week's coaching call.

But for now, Brock is progressing nicely and I'm looking forward to seeing how he does with this week's increased load. Now, if you want to hear how things are going from Broc's perspective, head over to the midlife mastery podcast and I'll drop a link to his site in the show notes here.

Let's move on. I And what it means to be fit.

[00:08:00] as. Witness.

Healthiness, Hmm.

That's not much help and I'm not a big fan of using the word we're trying to define in the actual definition. There are obviously many definitions of fit, but for our purposes, my dictionary defines fit as being quote. In good physical condition. Healthy and quote. Well, that's a little bit better. It's not particularly helpful.

So who is fit? When I was doing marathons, I certainly thought of myself as being fit. And running a marathon does require a certain amount of cardiovascular fitness and some [00:09:00] stamina. But during that time, I was weak. As in very weak, I had no real strength or power and I didn't have any speed to speak of. I was just good at running at a slow to moderate pace for a few hours.

So looking back, I'd have to say that I really wasn't all that fit. But then I moved on to triathlons. Now I was adding in swimming and biking, in addition to my running. And while I probably improve my cardiovascular endurance a bit and maybe added a modicum of strength. Certainly not very much.

But at that point, I considered myself to be really fit. But then I burned down on triathlons. And after a period of doing absolutely nothing, I joined a gym and started lifting weights. And like many gym newbies. I haphazardly drifted from program to program and I have repped my way along until I finally got enough experience in coaching.

So that I was lifting with halfway [00:10:00] decent forum and implementing some sort of progressive overload in my schedule. And it was working. I was getting stronger. And I, again, thought of myself as being fit. Now I was a bit stronger, actually. I was considerably stronger than I was before then those endurance days.

But I had zero cardiovascular health, no real endurance. And I completely ignored any kind of flexibility or mobility work.

Okay. So it turns out that fitness can be tricky to define. One of my favorite discussions on fitness comes from CrossFit.  Now, I know that CrossFit isn't for everyone and certainly they do not get everything right. No one does. But they've put a lot of thought into defining fitness. Basically, they utilize for models to define fitness.

The first is 10 general physical skills. The second is athletic task performance. [00:11:00] Systems.

And the fourth and final model are health markers. So let's take a look at each of these in a little bit more detail. The first are the 10 general physical skills and these are cardiovascular respiratory endurance. Stamina strength, flexibility. Power. Speed. Coordination agility.

Balance and finally accuracy. Now the idea here is that competency in each of these skills determines how fit or unfit you are. So putting this into practice, we'd want a comprehensive fitness program that addressed all 10 of these physical skills. So let's just take a quick look at each of these skills, these general physical skills.

The first is cardiovascular and respiratory endurance. And this is the ability of your body. [00:12:00] To gather process in deliver oxygen to working muscles. Second is stamina. And this is the ability of your body systems to process deliver store and utilize energy. The third is strength,

which is the ability of your muscles to apply force. Fourth is flexibility. This is going to be the ability to maximize the range of motion at any given joint. Fifth is power. Which is the ability of your muscles to apply maximum force in minimum time. So a little different than our definition of strength, because now we have a time component in here.

Six is speed. The ability to minimize the time cycle of a repeated movement. Seventh is coordination. And this is the ability to combine several distinct movement patterns into a [00:13:00] singular distinct movement. Eight is agility. Which is the ability to minimize the transition time from one movement pattern to the other. So a little different than your coordination.

Ninth is balance, which is the ability to control the placement of your body center of gravity in relation to your support base. And the 10th and final one

is accuracy, which is the ability to control movement in any given direction or at a given intensity.

Okay. So remember that we said that CrossFit defines fitness across four models. So we just talked about the first model, those 10 physical traits, the second model is athletic task performance. And what CrossFit means by this is the ability to perform pretty much any imaginable, physical task. A good example of this is to imagine a group of active friends that are all sitting around and [00:14:00] each one is claiming to be the fittest of the bunch.

Maybe we have a power lifter, a marathon runner. A swimmer, a sprinter. Uh, we'll throw a gymnast in there and maybe even a bodybuilder to boot. Now imagine that they're having this conversation, who's the fittest and they can't agree. So they each get to select one event that the entire group has to do.

And they decide that whoever has the best overall score is going to be the fittest of the bunch. The idea here is that to be considered truly fit, we should be able to handle a wide variety of physical tasks. As the name implies CrossFit doesn't try to specialize in any one area, but encourages a wide variety of work tasks.

The third model of fitness has to do with human energy systems known as metabolic pathways. So bear with me for a [00:15:00] minute. We're going to get a bit geeky here. We have three metabolic pathways that provide energy for all of our activity. These are the FoST Pugin. Or phospho creatine pathway. The glycolytic or lactate pathway and the oxidative also known as the aerobic pathway.

So the phosphagen pathway powers intense, very high output movements that typically last less than 10 seconds. So an all out max effort, sprint, or a heavy one rep max deadlift would be good examples of using this energy system, the phosphagen and energy system. The second system, the glycolytic pathway powers more moderate efforts say from 10 seconds to two minutes. So this is still a hard effort, but it's not that all out max effort, like the FOSS Virgin system.

And finally we have the [00:16:00] oxidative pathway that powers easier efforts that lasts longer than several minutes. Now it's important to note that these aren't really three completely separate systems. It may be more correct to think of them as a continuum. And from a fitness perspective, we'd want to have competency across all three systems in order to consider ourselves to be truly fit.

So in my example, above I was very capable in the oxidative pathway as a marathoner and a triathlete. But I had no competency whatsoever in either of the other two systems.

The last model for defining fitness is health markers. A good way to think about this is to envision a continuum with sickness on the far left. Wellness in the middle. And fitness on the far right. And you lay over that your specific health markers, things like blood pressure. Body fat. Bone density, [00:17:00] cholesterol, muscle mass, et cetera.

Each of these have an objective, poor, fair, and great measure. So your fitness in this fourth model would be contingent on how far to the right, the average of all your health marker scores are. Okay, so let's wrap this up. I bet you weren't quite expecting a dissertation on defining fitness where you, my intent with this diatribe was to help you consider what fitness means, what it means to be fit.

And my hope is that you'll reflect on some of this information and potentially revise your definition of fitness. And keep striving to become your fit itself. But I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments. How do you define fitness? You can feel free to join this [email protected] slash episode 63. There are.

Comment fields below and would love to hear how you define fitness. [00:18:00] What your thoughts are. Did we hit the mark here today? Not so much. Too much, not enough. Let me know. Okay. That's enough about fitness let's talk about carbs.

Okay. If fats were the culprit in causing obesity in the seventies and eighties than carbohydrates, often referred to simply as carbs are surely the scapegoat today. With all the low carb and new carb fads today, the poor carb has received a bad rap. Most of us over 50. Remember the original USDA food guide pyramid, where we were literally told to eat six to 11 servings of bread, cereal, rice, and pasta and quote.

That's a carb lovers dream. Now this current low carb craze was brought to the public's attention by the Atkins diet popularized by Dr. [00:19:00] Robert Atkins. Right about the time the low fat craze was dying down. Today, the Atkins diet is still alive and well as is the keto diet. Which is our exceptionally low or no carbs. And it's close relative, which is gaining some popularity, the carnivore diet, which if you're not familiar is exactly what it sounds like.

Only meat. Now the simple fact is that humans have evolved eating a wide variety of food sources and carbs were clearly a critical component for 99% of our ancestors. Where we modern humans run into serious troubles with carbs is when we get most of our carbohydrates from nutrient poor, highly processed foods.

All carbs are not created equal. And the nutrients in a pop tart or a soda are not the same nutrients found in say fresh fruits and vegetables. The key takeaway here is that complex carbohydrates come from whole [00:20:00] foods like vegetables, fruits, greens, and legumes. These keep us full longer and come with the additional added benefits of micronutrients, fiber and water.

And they often contain healthy proteins and fats and to keep our blood sugar and insulin levels stable. Compare that to simple, refined and highly or ultra processed carbs, which digest quickly. And often leave us feeling unsatisfied. These carbs tend to spike our insulin and be void of any nutrients and often contain very high amounts of sodium and industrial chemicals, such as flavorings, colorings.

Trans fats, preservatives, et cetera.

So just quickly a word on fiber. It's important to consider fiber when we consider carbohydrates. A recent study found that over 90% of Americans do not get adequate amounts of fiber in their diets. Fiber is critical for gut health, [00:21:00] our GI bacteria, ferment them and produce helpful fatty acids. In addition to gut health fiber can help you feel full longer. It can lower blood lipids and cholesterol.

It can lower the risk of colon cancer. And reduce constipation. So for optimum health, you'd want to eat a variety of fiber, rich foods. And some of those might be things like oats, beans, peas, nuts, flax chia. Fruits vegetables. Certainly the dark leafy green vegetables. And all of these foods had the added benefit of being loaded with minerals and vitamins.

So the problem with carbohydrates. There's a red hot debate on this topic with many in the keto camp, claiming that carbs are the root cause of obesity. And in a way they're half right.

Carbohydrates are our body's preferred fuel source. The carbs we eat are converted to [00:22:00] glucose, our cells, primary fuel source, and any extra is stored in the liver for future use. So far so good. We've got some energy to fuel our bodies right now, and we stashed away just a little bit for future use.

The problem with carbs is two fold. Many people's diets consists primarily of carbohydrates and they lead a very sedentary lifestyle. As mentioned above leftover carbs are stored in the liver. But if the body still has leftover carbohydrates, after that, it stores these as fat.

And chronically overeating carbs and under exercising leads to increase body fat, which kicks off a nasty chain of unhealthy events in your body. Not all carbohydrates are created equal. As we said earlier, and many people, not only over-consume carbs, but they choose these hightly processed foods. Again, there's a huge nutritional difference between processed foods like [00:23:00] store bought bread, pastas packaged foods.

And wholesome whole carbohydrate sources like vegetables, legumes, and whole grains.

So how much carbohydrate should you eat? Keeping the above in mind, the average adult over 50 should shoot for 20 to 40% of their total calories from carbohydrates. Now the amount of carbs you require in your daily diet really depends on your activity level. If you're inactive, you probably want to aim for the low end of that scale.

Whereas folks who are exercising intensely would probably do better at the upper end of that scale. Some of my go-to carbs are fruits. Beans lentils oats, but not the instant or quick cook kind, whole grain rice potatoes, sweet potatoes. And I'll occasionally throw in there some sprouted bread. Oh, yeah, we should all be eating more vegetables as well, which I throw into the carb [00:24:00] category.

The key here is to avoid as many of the processed carbohydrates as possible things like conventional bread cereal, including 99% of your granolas. Pasta white rice juices. And of course you should try to avoid the worst offenders such as sodas muffins energy drinks chips ice cream fries pastries donuts et cetera

The key takeaway here is that eating excess carbs and being relatively inactive is a sure way to increase insulin sensitivity, which leads to obesity and other nasty health problems. Now for a deep dive on that you might want to check out my podcast interview that I recently did with Dr. Morgan. Nolte

and I'll drop a link to that show into the show notes here.

Moving along to this episodes. [00:25:00] Book review. My book review this week is titled rebuilding Milo by Dr. Aaron Horschig now, if that name sounds familiar it's because Dr. Aaron is the man behind squat university. And if you're not already following him on social media, I strongly suggest that you do.

He's a sports physical therapist and a weightlifting coach and his educational content is excellent. But before we talk about the book itself, I want to take a minute to talk about the significance of the title of this book. So the book is again, it's titled rebuilding Milo. And in case you're not familiar, Milo of Croton was born in ancient Greece during the sixth century BC.

And was the most reviewed athlete and wrestler of his time. He was a five time Olympic champion and his feats of strength were legendary. But how did Milo [00:26:00] get so strong? And what can we learn from this ancient strong man? Well, the story goes that one day a calf was born near Milo. And every day for four years, MIlo would lift the calf on his shoulders and carry him.

Until one day he was no longer carrying a calf, but a four year old bull. So in this simple story, a couple of things jump out as relevant and timeless strength, training principles. Number one, consistency is key.MIlo carried his calf every day. Carrying the calf once a week or sporadically would not have worked nearly as well and eventually would have led to failure.

But by being consistent, Milo's strength grew as his calf grew. Which brings us nicely to our second point. And that is apply the principles of progressive overload. MIlo's load got a little bit heavier every day. [00:27:00] His body was forced to adapt to these heavier loads. And as that calf grew heavier over time.

Milo's body grew stronger as a result.

Okay. Back to the book review. The subtitle of this book is the lifters guide to fixing common injuries and building a strong foundation for enhancing performance. And what I love the most about this book is that it puts control and responsibility for your body and the way it moves well or otherwise directly into your own hands. This book should be required for any of you out there that are coaches.

But for the rest of you, you can think of this book as an owner's manual for moving well and pain-free. And really how to go about troubleshooting pain and injuries. Here's a quote from the intro of the book. Quote. The commonly held belief that pain is a medical problem is incorrect.

Treating the symptoms with painkillers and [00:28:00] anti-inflammatory rather than addressing the cause of the pain will simply not resolve the problem. Instead you need to correct your movement patterns, address your mobility limitations. And rebuild your strength in a safe and effective way. End quote. Now this book is broken into body parts, the back hip knee, shoulder, elbow, and ankle.

And each section contains some very useful information on common injuries, and then it gives you some screening and troubleshooting tests. Then when you've uncovered your problem areas based on these screening tests, Dr. Aaron provides a treasure trove of helpful rehabilitative exercises. That help you rebuild with the idea that you are fixing the root of the problem.

You're correcting basic movement patterns or addressing mobility limitations. So that you not only eliminate your pain, but you come back stronger and with improved movement and mobility [00:29:00] to help ensure that you stay healthy in the future. For those of us over 50, I can't recommend this book strongly enough. I'll include a link to the book as well as Dr. Aaron social media in the show notes of this episode. Again, you can find [email protected].

Slash episode 63.

Okay. Let's finish up here with some of my thoughts on the last couple of episodes. My last episode was with Jim Owen. And he's a remarkable man to say the least. I often tout the fact that I'm in the best shape of my life. And we'll use those four models of fitness we discussed earlier today as a measuring stick.

But Jim is in the best shape of his life right now at age 80. In this episode, Jim talks about finding himself at age 70, being overweight in poor [00:30:00] health and with crippling back pain. But slowly and surely he started exercising, cleaned up his diet and within three years or so, he was completely pain-free.

And found himself in great shape. And he was so moved by this life-changing experience that he wrote a book titled just move a new approach to fitness after 50. And he's the producer of a docu series called the art of aging well, And I'll leave links to both of those in the show notes.

And along the way, Jim also shared with us six traits of what he calls super agers and those six traits are being physically active. Eating sensibly. Managing stress. Good sleep hygiene. The importance of positivity. And that sixth and final one is a sense of purpose. Now, if you haven't yet listened to this episode, I know you'll find it inspiring, definitely worth checking out. [00:31:00]

The episode before Jim's was with Dr. Morgan Nolte and Dr. Morgan is a geriatric physical therapist, turned weight loss coach. And she talked to us about her top tips to lower insulin resistance, to lose weight and prevent disease.

She discusses what insulin resistance is and how it's at ground zero for weight gain diabetes, heart disease, dementia. And how aging can increase insulin resistance. We talked a lot about the importance of mindset, how it's the foundation for basically all successes. And then she shares with us, her four pillars of leading a low insulin lifestyle.

And those were number one. Nutrition and the importance on what, and when you eat. As opposed to how much you eat. So that was an interesting conversation. Number two. Movement with an emphasis on strength [00:32:00] training. Number three. Stress management and self-care. And finally, number four, the importance of sleep, and specifically how it affects your hunger regulating hormones, ghrelin, and leptin.

Dr. Morgan also gave us lots of great tips on ways to eat, to support a low insulin lifestyle. And this was definitely a very informative discussion and I personally took away a ton of great info. So again, if you want to check this out, I'll leave a link in the show notes.

Well, that's our show for today, folks. I'll put the links to everything we talked about in the show notes. And you can find that again, [email protected] slash episode 63. And don't forget to check out silver edge free.com for more great free resources on how to live your healthiest, strongest life after 50.

Three decades of [00:33:00] experience.

Working from people from couch potatoes to pro athletes, and she's got a fun and great personal transformation story. I'm sure you're going to love it. Anyway, thanks so much for spending your time with me today. And until next time. Stay strong