#122 - Don't Call It Come Back! Power Cleans for the Masters Lifter
40fit Radio
Coach D and Coach Trent are back (finally) with a new episode, broadcasting from THE Wichita Falls Athletic Club, the home of Mark Rippetoe and the birthplace of the Starting Strength model. Today they discuss the role of the power clean for the Masters lifter -- should you be doing it? Should you skip it? What's the point anyway? While the power clean is a very useful tool for the young athlete, especially in power-based sports such as football, hockey, or track and field sports, it's application to real life for the older lifter is less obvious. Basically, the clean is a fairly simple...
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#121 - We're Back!
40fit Radio
After a several month hiatus, Darin and Trent are back with 40fit Radio!
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#120 - ALL or NOTHING: Getting Away from the Extremes in Your Health and Fitness
40fit Radio
Coach Darin has said it before, humans like to "complicate to validate." The bigger, faster, more complex, more "science-y," the better! Right? Likewise, the idea that fitness is an intense, all-in pursuit pervades media and popular training programs. Frankly, it's exhausting!
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#119 - Coaches' Corner: Low Stress Programming for Intermediate Lifters
40fit Radio
Darin, Trent, and Charity convene for another coaches corner, this time offering some strategies for lowering systemic stress while programming for the intermediate lifter.
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#118 - Exploring the Micronutrients: Vitamins and Minerals
40fit Radio
Coach D and Trent discuss the most important vitamins you should be getting from your diet and supplements.
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#117 - Why You Should Stop Worrying About PR's
40fit Radio
Coach D, Trent, and Charity discuss the tendency of strength coaches and athletes to get hung up chasing PR's on the bar, and missing the forest for the trees -- that is, the greater PR's in life such as raising good families, growing mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
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#116 - Cardio Is Not a Magic Bullet
40fit Radio
It's January, and that means there are millions of people trying to make good on their New Years' Resolutions. For many, this resolution involves losing weight, cutting body fat, and "leaning up." And predictably many resolutioners first instinct is to hit the cardio machines -- treadmills, ellipticals, exercise bikes, etc.
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#115 - Getting Back Into the Gym After COVID
40fit Radio
Coach Charity Hambrick returns to the show to discuss her experience contracting COVID-19 and her slow road to get back into training afterward. Though she contracted COVID back in October 2020, Charity had lingering fatigue and muscle cramps for weeks, and loss of smell that lasted for over three months. Despite the mental blow of losing her training momentum -- she had been setting PR's just prior to getting COVID -- Charity has consistently hit the gym and is regaining her strength levels.
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#114 - Masters Programming: Volume vs Intensity for Longevity
40fit Radio
In today's episode, Coach D and Coach Trent discuss the concept of selecting appropriate volume and intensity for a Masters athlete. These are two of the main programming variables, and all athletes need a blend of intensity (heavy-ness) and volume (how many reps) to drive adaptation in their desired physical skill: strength, conditioning, hypertrophy, etc. And in general, both intensity and volume must go up over time to increase the amount of stress and therefore drive more adaptation.
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#113 - Getting Warm When the Weather Is Cold
40fit Radio
In the strength community, the typical advice for warmups is to start with the first barbell lift you will be performing. For many people this will be the squat, so the warm-up would consist of two sets of five with the empty bar, then a few progressively heavier sets until the lifter is ready for his working sets. It's quick, efficient, and, prepares most lifters for the task at hand -- squatting. Masters athletes, however, may find that they need more than the barbell to get warm before their workout.
info_outlineIt's January, and that means there are millions of people trying to make good on their New Years' Resolutions. For many, this resolution involves losing weight, cutting body fat, and "leaning up." And predictably many resolutioners first instinct is to hit the cardio machines -- treadmills, ellipticals, exercise bikes, etc.
Losing fat, or rather body recomposition as we like to call it, involves more than just losing weight. It also involves gaining muscle mass. Or, for an already trained person, it involves maintaining muscle mass while losing fat mass. Either way, muscle mass -- lean mass -- is the key to the equation.
Cardiovascular training does little to create new muscle mass. For a completely sedentary, untrained individual, jogging around the block likely will build some initial muscle mass, but the results drop off after a few weeks of training. After that, the force production demands of cardio are simply not enough to stimulate growth of new muscle mass. Moreover, certain forms of cardio, in particular long slow distance (LSD) type training, triggers hormonal mechanisms in your body which prevents you from gaining new muscle mass, and may even cause you to lose it. See Dr. Sullivan's exceptional work The Barbell Prescription for details on the AMPK "switch."
So, what is a resolutioner to do? First, you need to strength train, and/or continue strength training. That will ensure that you build and maintain a high level of lean mass, which in turns drives your metabolism up higher. Secondly, you need to eat in a small caloric deficit. You need to eat less calories than you burn. About 10% reduction in calories is usually as much as you need to get this process started -- that's typically only a couple hundred a day, depending on your baseline.
This can be done without doing any cardio at all! Food and lean mass will be the biggest drivers of fat loss in this process.
However, if you begin to stall with your fat loss and you are continuing with your strength training, you may want to add in one to two conditioning workouts each week. Keep these workouts short and intense, as they will give you the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to fat loss. Tabatas on the echo bike, pushing the prowler, sprints on the rower -- these are all great choices for HIIT cardio training.
But don't be fooled... cardio is not a magic bullet for fat loss!
Muscle cells crash course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktv-CaOt6UQ&feature=youtu.be
You can find Charity on Instagram at: @charity_silverstrength
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