Why The Fitness Industry Has Failed Women In Midlife — And What Actually Works

What if I said you could have your workout, you could do it in 30 minutes or less, and you could have a very short recovery time and no real inflammation, meaning no soreness, no muscle damage, no limiting you from the activities that you want to do tomorrow, and you don't necessarily have to rest from yesterday? Well, that's exactly what I'm saying. So stay tuned to this episode. I have a great guest. You're going to want to hear it. You're in perimenopause, menopause, or postmenopause, and you're not slowing down, you're just getting started. But the old rules don't apply anymore. The workouts that worked before, they're working against you now. The advice you've been given, incomplete at best. I'm Debra Atkinson, and I'm the founder of Flipping 50, the pioneer in fitness for women in midlife. For more than 40 years, I've been in the trenches with women just like you, and for the last 12, right here on this podcast, and, and the founder of Flipping 50: The Stronger Way app and membership. Welcome to Flipping 50: The Stronger Way, where science meets strength, where you'll find the tools, research, and real talk to build the body and the life you want in your second half. Each week, you'll get evidence-based exercise and nutrition strategies, conversations with leading experts, and honest answers to the questions your doctor didn't get answers to in medical school and doesn't have time to answer in an appointment. This is your show. Let's get stronger. All right, welcome and welcome back to all of you who might be new listeners or OGs. And I know somebody said to me, what is OG? It's like old goat, goat meaning greatest of all time. Okay, there you have it. But thanks so much for being here. And I think you're really gonna love this. So I hope you have a longer walk or longer workout planned because we are going a little bit longer than we sometimes do, and for really good reason. I was not necessarily planning on the interview that I had, so it's very fun to— I always record the intros after I've done the interview, and I got so much more value from it myself, and I believe that you will benefit from that as well. So lot of little quips and quotes that you want to take with you no matter what you're doing. But if you are— number one, if you're not exercising right now or know somebody who's not, if you're looking for a way to exercise in a shorter duration, there may be something coming around the corner. It's not quite here yet, but it's going to be. And I do think it's going to make a huge impact, hopefully, on getting more people active more regularly and consistently with fewer problems or obstacles, meaning injury or illness or pain recovery problems. So before we dive into this, I want to let you know a couple of things. One, those of you who are paying attention, as you listen, we talk about pickleball in this episode. And if you are one of those who feels vulnerable to knee injuries, which most often occur for women compared to men, it's something else, but for women, it tends to be the knees. So The reason generally is weak glutes. And, you know, it's compounded by the fact you run for the ball, you plant your foot, and you have a ball and socket joint at your hip. But we also have knees that cave in, and there's a term for that, but they generally cave in because we have a wider hip box. And that causes problems with our MCL or ACL, and that is two ligaments that are crucial. In the knee joint. If you want to help yourself prevent that, you're playing pickleball or you want to, you're not injured yet and you want to stay that way, you need glute medial work. And so I'm going to point you to a video that is a YouTube video with some exercises in it, and I want you to go there. If you're already in our membership, I want you to go to the Glute Challenge. Go there right now because that's what you need to focus on. And those glute medial muscles are ranked in order of this exercise helps stimulate them at the greatest amount. And I picked all of the highest reps, however, or the highest ranking exercises. However, they're not hard. Many of them are just, you got to lay down on the floor and do them, but they're not difficult. They don't make you sweat. They don't— they won't make you cry, I don't think. So there's that. I'm going to also invite you to do a very long, in-depth, comprehensive session with me. We call it the Ultimate Assessment, where I will reveal to you using our Halo Method assessment what it is that you most want to spend your time and your energy doing when it comes to exercise. We'll break down your exercise nutrition and how that is supporting it or could better support your results and what what it is that we really want to do lifestyle habit-wise. So talking about your sleep, your stress, the timing of the food that you're eating or the exercise you're doing, all of that matters more now than ever. HALO stands for hormone status, your activity age, your limitations, and the outcomes that you want from that. Not AI, but actually as a person and an individual clinician with 42 years experience, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to go through that with you so so that we know exactly what is the best thing for you to target. We talk a bit about this in today's episode, that you can have one status or condition or one goal or wish, and you can have another condition or status or old injury or history that makes the very thing that's ideal for that a contraindication. But what you're left with when we do this HALO assessment is your sweet spot, the things you can do and the things that we can order in highest priority so that when you have limited time and energy, as most of us do, we can help you spend them in the right direction. So I will put a link in the show notes. This is a regularly $997 assessment with me and we're doing it right now for $497. So we'll put that link in the show notes for those of you who are podcast listeners. My guest today is Andy Baxter. He's a medical exercise specialist, a fellow medical exercise specialist, an inventor and author, and former Olympic trials rower with nearly 4 decades experience in elite sport, clinical rehabilitation, and healthy aging. He's a designer of the FitSpan protocol, a Performance-Based Approach to Fitness Centered on Functional Power Movement Quality and Long-Term Adherence, and the author of Racing Yesterday, his account of training for the U.S. Olympic trials after the age of 40, The Exercise Prescription on Medicine or Medicinal Benefits of Exercise, and he's a world champion and multi-time national champion rower. So Andy's worked with everyone from elite athletes to individuals managing chronic conditions, orthopedic limitations, and age-related functional decline. So I think you're going to love this, the way he articulates, communicates, and we break down medical terminology into practical terms that you can take with you and help you understand better what it is you're doing and what you want to be doing. Today. I think you're going to love this one, and I'd love to hear from you afterward if you do. Andy Baxter, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you for having me.

All right, so everybody just heard me read a very impressive bio, and I'm— I just envisioned— I don't know this to be true, but as a fellow medical exercise specialist, I'm guessing you probably were an early bird adopter of that one because I think some of us were really hungry for something like that with more teeth, right?

1,000%. I started with Dr. Mike Jones in 1997. At that time, he was running a small operation in San Leandro, California. He now has his empire in Texas somewhere. He's killing it. In fact, I think he's about ready to retire now. So, but yeah, no, I've been at this since '97. I first started in post-rehab. At, uh, Herrick and Alta Bates Hospitals in Berkeley. At the same time, I owned a gym in Oakland, so I was commuting between the 3 locations. And after a while, that didn't make much sense. So, um, they started sending their patients to me. That worked out a lot better.

Amazing. And I just— to listeners, I want to explain to you when, when we say medical exercise specialist, what that is. So you got a little sample of that, like rehab, post-rehab. But essentially you've got fitness instructors, so you drop into a class at a club or a studio, and you've got trainers who are more precise and one-on-one. Hopefully they're customizing programs for you. And then medical exercise specialists, and often on another side, clinical exercise specialists come in where, where what we used to be taught as personal trainers as special populations, it's almost all we do. And, and at some point, every one of us became a special population, right? I mean, it is, it is everyone, and we are more than one of, one of many, as opposed to, oh, we've got that singular thing. So just to give you an idea, it's— you've got the background and the basics, and then hungry for more, you've gone on. But you also have a very unique background in your experience with Olympic a world champion yourself. So I actually want to start there. So you competed for US Olympic team after the age of 40. So, I mean, first of all, that's a mouthful right there in one sentence, and very, very cool. So tell me about that. What did that experience teach you, first of all, about aging and performance?

Oh my gosh. Well, um, Fortunately, I wrote a book about it. And I say fortunately because I'm old enough now that I may not remember a lot of this. So I can go back and check my notes. But yeah, it was a really cool experience. My pair partner and I were doing really well on the world stage. I'll give you just the CliffsNotes version. But basically, we got it in our heads that we would go to Worlds. And if we performed well at Worlds, that really the only thing left to do would be to go to the Olympics. And so, uh, we decided that if we went to Worlds and got blown out, then we could go home and no one would be the wiser. Um, and ended up actually winning back-to-back gold medals at Worlds. And so that then the handshake took place and, and the, and it was on. So we spent, uh, a little under 2 years, uh, getting ready for the Olympic trials. And the, the rules of engagement for that 2 years was simply that we set markers along the way. Well, we set markers in advance that we would have to achieve along the way, and if at any point we failed any of those markers, we would stop. And so we didn't. We ended up winning every event that we set as a marker, and that led us all the way to the trials. So it was a— it was an awesome adventure. I was happy to have written about it because I, I like writing, so it they, they worked well together.

Yeah. And let me say something about that. I mentioned this before on a podcast, maybe talking with an endurance runner or athlete. Somehow they do go together, don't they? I mean, is it, is it that moving inspires creativity and expression so that you can be a better writer, or is it that writers look for activity to get out of their office and away from the keyboard so that they can inspire it. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Yeah, so depending on which side of my brain is active at the moment, it will dictate the answer because the geeky side of me would say that the athlete brain is more active. That sounds obvious and kind of stupid, but what I'm getting at is what I like to tell people is that when we look at the athlete brain versus the non-athlete brain, it's kind of like comparing an on-off light switch with a dimmer switch. And an athlete brain is able to use the dimmer switch, uh, metaphor in terms of how they control their output and their power. It's just a smarter brain. And this has been proven through any number of, uh, test ways to measure things. A lot of it has to do with what's called the blood wash, which is actually the physical wash of oxygenated blood over the surface area of the brain. Um, and neurologists will tell you, the good ones, I hope, will tell you that, uh, while doing a crossword puzzle will indeed make you better at doing crossword puzzles, it may not necessarily translate into other activities. And the primary difference is the blood wash. So we need physical activity to enhance that, the neuroplasticity and neurogenesis in the brain. Um, it's, that's the differentiator between, you can just think about exercise. But that's not quite the same as doing the exercise. I went a little sideways on that, but anyway, sorry.

Yeah, I hope everybody heard that. That's so good. What did you notice? So I'm guessing if you competed for the US Olympic team after the age of 40, that wasn't your first rodeo. So you had been an athlete all your life. What did you notice from, say, your early 20s to your you're now over 40, would you notice— and then I'm gonna ask the obvious question, so fill in the blank— but for women, I know absolutely it would be the recovery is the biggest difference. What was it for you?

It was absolutely the recovery. And, and when, when we were mapping this out and working with the best trainers and coaches and exercise physiologists in the world, fortunate enough to be able to do that because we were already in this field. So we had access to all the best guys.

You had good friends.

And good friends. And so I mentioned Fritz Hagerman, who was the Olympic ex-phys guru, who helped us a lot. And in thinking about that question, the first thing that Fritz said was, it's not that you can't do the work, you can do the work. It's that you can't recover from it at the same pace that the guys that are half your age are doing. And so the, the specific example was on 3-a-days, if you've got a 5:00 AM workout, a noon workout, and a 5:00 PM workout, that middle workout, you'd be better off taking a nap. So you, you do the morning and the evening workout, but you'd use that middle workout to recover instead. And that's gonna give you a much higher quality of work, um, without increasing the volume unnecessarily with very little positive of effect.

I love that, and I hope that every woman listening to this hears that. Okay, so that means, right, we're not saying do two a days, by the way. That was not the message. But the message was taking an extra day off sometimes is the key to getting the greater fitness. It's— and I think sometimes a woman hears, no, we're asking you to slow down because you're older. No, we're asking you to get fitter faster by taking that extra day off. Yeah.

You wanna train smarter, not harder. That's the, that's the simple advice. And, and I, I, you know, I, this is such a wonderful topic and environment to converse with you on the back and forth because we're of like mind. And, and I think that given social media and the, the access to everybody's opinion, whether it's right or wrong, is, is terribly confusing. And, and I think, you know, there's this implied very sort of US-centric notion that more and harder is better, and that's simply not true.

So, yeah. And, you know, unfortunately, I think for a lot of women, they don't learn that until they— school of hard knocks— like they've reached extreme fatigue or an injury, right? And so If we could spare somebody, just one of those, that'd be, that'd be winning for today.

Absolutely. And injury, it's bigger, it's bigger even than I thought. Like, I, you know, in the industry, that's my day-to-day is I'm rehabbing joints, whether they're joints that have been replaced or they're joints that have been injured. And it's pretty surprising how how high those injury rates are in, in the fitness industry, not in the athletic performance industry, but in the general fitness population. And a lot of that is, is in irresponsible planning, uh, not on the part of the exerciser. That's, that's just not knowing any better, but on the, on the part of the practitioner. So, yeah.

Yeah.

That's a whole conversation right there.

That is a whole conversation. I, that is really probably a big piece of why we're here doing this. It's not to shine a negative light in the fitness industry, because if you and I are a part of it, we throw all of ourselves under the bus, not just some people under the bus. But it's so that instead of just talking about what's wrong, that maybe we can make something right about it. And that's the ultimate goal. So To segue from you as a male over 40 getting ready, if we flip that and said, what do you think and what are you seeing in the most common mistakes that women are making who are trying to get fit after 40? And a lot of times, let's just be transparent with everybody listening, getting fit after 40 or trying to means a couple of things. And for a lot of women maybe, okay, I'm past the point where I have really young dependent children, they're a little more self-sufficient now, there's time for me to do that. But also perimenopause is starting to kick in or kick up and losing control of what I used to be able to control. And so we're trying to get it back. But compared to you or a male, you know, what are women doing most often that are mistaken as the path to get more fit that might be actually obstacles?

I so wish I had one answer. I've got 10. So let's, let's start.

Um, did I mention we have 30 minutes? I'm just—

oh no, no. Okay. So I would say, you know, the quick, the quick answer is if someone came into my clinic and I was doing— and I was assessing them. It usually starts with the conversation that we all learn a very specific sequence, and that sequence, when I'm preaching this stuff, is it's always pattern before strength before power. We want to know that our patterns are rock solid before we introduce strength movements, and then we want to take our strength and we want to make it dynamic, and that's what power is. Power is taking a load and accelerating it, and that's far more fun functional in our daily lives than strength in a vacuum. The problem is, I think, in a lot of these group class— and we don't have to name the classes. I think we all have an inkling of who they are.

Or just give initials or something. Yeah, they're—

yeah, I'm not even gonna start. But so, so, but a lot of times we get the cart ahead of the horse. And so if we go into ballistic movements, movements with with sort of a plyometric eccentric phase where you're gonna load up a joint, turn things around with a bit of momentum, then you're gonna get connective tissue injuries. Whereas if we can train good mechanics first and foremost, introduce a base of strength, and then graduate into power training, that's a lot safer. It doesn't take away from the fundamental risk usually associated with power movements, meaning if you take a weight and accelerate that weight, it's typically gonna have an eccentric repercussion. And so that's, that's where the FITS Band protocol comes in. But, but so, so I would say to start with, it would be form, right? So let's make sure that when you're starting a program, if there's a strength training component or any compound movement, that you have your mechanics down pat. So I think that often gets underutilized in classroom class type settings. There's just not enough time for a single trainer to tell 20 people how to do that.

Yeah, agree.

I—

and I'm gonna— sorry to interrupt, but hopefully I'm injecting something of value. Um, you know, I see this quite a bit, and I see it whether it's an instructor in front of a class or it's a trainer in front of class. And sometimes you don't know because they're playing both roles, and, and there's a lot of group things going on. But I think quite often it's also really important that we talk about not just a live class, but we talk about the phenomenon that we're in right now where, you know, since 2020 there's been an awful lot of new trainers certified online who've never seen a room full of bodies or actually trained people in real person who now are delivering online programs, and the only person they're looking at is themselves when they're filming those videos.

There's—

there isn't any intuitive, I need to correct this because I've seen this a thousand times in different lever lengths and joints. And so there's a missing intuitive piece to the teaching. Did you know that helping older Navy dolphins unlocked the secret to healthy aging for all of us? Fatty15 co-founder Dr. Stephanie Van Watt and Debra Atkinson discovered the benefits of C15, an essential fatty acid, while working with the US Navy to improve the health and welfare of older dolphins. How cool! You may be wondering how fatty acid C15 compares to omega-3s. Fatty 15 has 3 times more cellular benefits than EPA and omega-3, and while omega-3s are fragile fatty acids susceptible to oxidation, Fatty 15 naturally protects against damaging oxidation, both in the bottle and in your body. Based on over 100 studies, we now know C15 strengthens cells and is foundational for healthy aging, which helps to slow aging at the cellular level. In fact, when our cells don't have enough C15, they become fragile and they age faster. When cells age, our bodies age too. Look, I'm really thinking about my supplement game, realizing if I'm doing things at the superficial level but my cells are not in good shape, I may not get the results that I deserve from taking said supplements. Fatty15 repairs age-related damage to the cells, protects them from breakdown, and activates pathways in the body that help regulate our sleep, cognitive health, and— wait for it— metabolism. 70% of Fatty15 customers report seeing or feeling benefits within 16 weeks, and that includes deeper sleep, calmer moods, better energy, overall improved health. Now that is essential. But if you, like me, like to test, don't guess, your doctor actually can test, and many already are testing to see if you have low levels. There are some other tests that provide clinically relevant signs of low C15. They include lower hemoglobin, high red blood cell distribution width, high ferritin levels, and elevated liver enzymes. Fatty15 is on a mission to support healthy aging for all, including all ages and stages of life. You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription starter kit by going to fatty15.com/flipping50 and using code FLIPPING50 at checkout.

Huge disconnect there. Yeah, I honestly hadn't thought of that because I sort of plowed right through COVID. We We didn't— we actually had a letter from our governor allowing us to stay open because we are a medical exercise facility. So we were able to ride right through COVID. And because I don't do any social media stuff, that's really not on my radar. But that's a huge point.

And I'm so stuck, probably I'm going to be distracted for the rest of the show. You don't do any social media stuff? I want your life. So, right, right. And back to your point on the order of things, the pattern or the form— before you do anything else, you're adding load or strength, and before speed, certainly. And you mentioned connective tissue injuries, and I would say across the board that's true of anybody, but to the listeners, remembering that with a decline of estrogen, that is one of the things we talk so much about well, that's bad for our bones. We talk about that's bad for our muscles, but often we're also forgetting that's, that's not good news for your connective tissue, your collagen production, your synovial fluid. And so your joints will suffer, and it means we've got to get the move right first before we get it harder, and we've got to pattern so that we're doing it correctly without injury, more so for you now than ever before.

Absolutely. And so with those hormonal changes, compound that with musculoskeletal changes. So if you've got compositional changing as you're aging, sarcopenia-related and otherwise, then, then how your bones are receiving this information, it is a different conversation. Now. Uh, connective tissue, bones, muscles, right? Because your, your compositional makeup may be changing if you're losing muscle mass, potentially gaining fat mass. Um, and then of course, anything that's not supporting our skeleton is, is loading our skeleton and not necessarily in a good way. Um, so yeah, that's, that's a lot to— that's a lot going on there.

Yeah, definitely. Anything else? So I know I interrupted, um, on the list that is like these are bigger mistakes that women are making that are getting in their way?

Yeah, I think, um, I think socially, or, um, the, the— as we sort of touched on, but the idea that more is better and harder is better, um, and realizing that you actually need recovery from these things. There, there, there's good hurt and there's bad hurt. Most hurt is bad, but some hurt is okay. Like, if we're in a controlled environment There's such a thing that's known as a maladaptive pain response. And basically what that is, to get really specific and sort of myopic on that, is that when you have— well, let me back up. Let's talk about comorbidities and contraindications. So let's say you're 50 years old and you have— you're starting to experience some knee pain. So you're starting to maybe get some arthritic pain. And at the same time, maybe you're osteopenic. And so now you've got a comorbidity. You have two things going on at the same time. Well, what may be good for one thing may not be good for the other thing, and that would be a contraindication. So it's really important to have that knowledge to know what may in theory be good for one issue, may be bad for the other issue. In that case, it would be like axial concussive forces on an arthritic joint, whereas you want to get that stimulation for bone density, there are solutions there. We can go to a closed chain. I like to say it's like bending a twig. We can produce lateral forces on the bone while protecting those arthritic joints and get the best of both worlds because we'll get muscular support for the joint, we'll get stress on the bone, but we won't beat it up at the same time.

Yeah.

So, yeah. So it's, we're all bringing baggage with us. There's orthopedic baggage, baggage, right? There's vestibular baggage, there's neurologic baggage, all of this stuff. And as we're aging, it's important that that gets— those ingredients need to get put into the soup. So for each of us, otherwise we're going to end up in a class that doesn't recognize you as the individual and you're going to pay the price for that. Does that, does that make sense?

Makes total sense. Yeah. Absolutely. And I love that. I mean, we all bring our baggage. I like to say the body comes with receipts, you know, at some point, right? It's those little things. And whether it's, you know, the number of Diet Cokes you drank in grad school, or, you know, it's something else, it's— there will be a cumulative effect or a tipping point that will reach at some point. Absolutely.

So that, that term in, in my neck of the woods comes from, uh, from vestibular And so when you're looking at the vestibular reflexes, you have ocular, which is your vision, collic, which is how you hold your head, and then orthopedic. So the orthopedic vestibular reflex is exactly the baggage you, you know, if you were in a car accident and you jammed your leg up into your hip 20 years ago, well, you've had 20 years to create compensatory mechanisms for that injury. And so when you go to balance yourself, that orthopedic vestibular response is based on that baggage, right? So it's a real thing, but we've all got it.

Absolutely. So, and I want to come back because I know you briefly mentioned Fitz-Patrick protocol, and I want to come back to that and talk about it a little bit. So this, we were talking in the green room, I know it's unfair to you listeners, all the good stuff happens happens back there, by the way.

You missed it all.

I know, but it was good. I'll just say, I'll sell you that. So, um, but you talked about one of our problems or challenges, I think, in being in recovery or getting the recovery, and part of that is also this cumulative inflammation that we all have in our tissues from foods that we've eaten that we thought were good for us, and, or the ones that we knew weren't good for us, we ate anyway. And from things we've been exposed to unknowingly in our environment, and, and the exercise and the stress. So many things causing an inflammatory response, but exercise will do that too. So it is like, here's this good thing, you know, and yet it's causing a negative thing, and, and we have to weigh the risk-reward ratio. So that is kind of where FitSpan comes in and the FitSpan Protocol. I'm going to let you do justice to that and explain what that is and actually how was that born, Andy.

Okay. Thank you. I'll start with how is it born. Per our previous conversation, I was coaching a strength clinic for All-American Rowing Camp camp about 10 years ago or so, and all of our coaches were complaining— all of the coaches in the camp were complaining that their athletes were getting hurt in the gym while training the traditional Olympic-style movements, strength movements, dead posterior chain movements, deadlift, high pull, clean. And the, you know, the problem there from athletics performance standpoint is simply that These coaches don't want to lose athletes in the weight room while they're training for a different sport entirely. That just doesn't add up.

Right.

So I started to work on how can I train athletes to perform these patterns but safely, because we go back to this idea of the idea of increasing telomeric longevity for— that's kind of a fancy term, but, but just making our bodies younger at a chromosomal level, we want to do that without bringing along all of this inflammation because then that becomes part and parcel. And as you just said, then you have to weigh the benefits. Is it worth it to get all that inflammation? And the reason why Olympic lifters, when they lift a weight up concentrically, they're shortening their muscles under load. They get to the top of that movement, they drop the weight, they let it go. And the reason, one of the reasons is, is that the eccentric component is where all the injuries recur. It's where all the prolonged, uh, recovery time is, is realized is through the eccentric phase. Um, so the question then became, how can we create a modality where we can train concentric power without the volatility, without the ballistic nature of throwing free weights around?, and breaking the furniture and breaking ourselves. So, that, that's kind of how it started. And as a rower, working with flywheel resistance and working with water tanks, I, that's, I started putting the two together. And so, I invented a thing called the PowerCube to train deadlift forms and posterior chain patterns. So, that was the genesis of the FITS Band protocol and all of the FITS Band equipment of which there are 6 pieces. All of them are water-based and they all utilize concentric power training.

So that's amazing.

My first salvo there.

Okay, okay. So just for everybody listening, so if you missed anything or felt like eccentric contraction, still not getting that, so that's the— you lift something up, that's your concentric, your muscles are shortening, and you put that thing down slowly, you're controlling it, not letting it slam to the floor. So imagine it's your pet or it's a child. You're going to put them down gently. That's an eccentric contraction. If you've gone hiking with me on a Flipping 50 retreat in Boulder, Colorado, it is not the up that bothers you. You may get breathless, but it is the down that will make the quads hurt tomorrow. That's why you'll whine. Pain the next day when we get up. And of course not you, but somebody else might. So that's eccentric contraction. You've all experienced it at some point, either accidentally or on purpose. But eliminating that helps to eliminate some of the soreness, some of the damage, and some of the inflammation, correct?

Yes, correct.

Okay.

Um, and, and reduce your recovery time as well. And then we can add in another component. So we talked about concentric and eccentric, and then there's amortization. And so the amortization phase is that turnaround between the two, and that can be potentially explosive, more like what we call a plyometric. And a plyometric is the sort of fast turnaround, so a very, very quick amortization phase. Uh, and that can be super inflammatory as well. I was talking about connective tissue tissues. So when we get out of balance, when, when the connective tissue is taking more of the load than the muscle was supposed to, that's when you get tears. Pickleball courts love that kind of stuff. And, uh, you know, I mean, I have nothing against pickleball. Everybody loves pickleball. You know who loves pickleball?

Do you just go and like put a little stand? I was gonna say, just go put your little stand hand up there beside the court, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, the classic— I'm sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, I was just gonna say, let's unpack that for, for 3 minutes because there's a lot of people here playing pickleball because we, we know that's collectively true of anywhere, right? But I think women love it. It's social, it's fun. But why are all those injuries happening, do you think? Are we just not training for it? We're not warming warming up for it? Is there more to it than that?

There is a little bit more to it than that. When we look at the rates of injury, let's use pickleball as the exact example. The primary injury in men is Achilles tendon avulsions. You blow out your Achilles tendon, just separates from the heel. And in women, it's MCL and ACL tears. And so part of the reason— part of that is biomechanical, right? Because women have a greater Q angle because of their hips. Relative to men. So that means that the knees are going to come inward more, what's called a valgus.

Yeah.

Then when you plant a foot, say you're going for that recovery as the ball comes over the net and you plant the foot and you go to turn, once that foot is planted, if the knee isn't aligned over the foot, if there's valgus and you turn, you snap that ACL just like that because you've stressed it and the and you've turned it.

It's a victim. Yeah.

And so that starts as a biomechanical issue. So understanding that what's happening in that instance is the skeleton is taking the load when the muscle should be, because you're not in alignment. So when those bones are properly aligned, when the knee is tracking over the foot, regardless of what position the foot is in, no matter where the toe is pointing, the knee has to track there.. If it doesn't, it ends up looking like this. You go down there and then you turn up. So it starts as a biomechanical issue. Then of course we need sufficient muscular strength that comes actually initially from our glute strength. So here's an interesting factoid for all of your listeners. We've been brought up in biology class to know that the, what's the little disc in the knee that Um, totally blanking. Um, it's your shock absorber. Uh, anyway, that thing—

meniscus.

Thank you. Yeah, you'd think I'd know that. Apparently I didn't go to that biology class. But yeah, so, so typically that's our first line of shock absorption. But what we know is actually when your heel hits the ground, when you're stepping, the first thing to fire before the meniscus can even do its job is your glute. So your glute muscles are essential for protecting the knee. And then secondarily, they're also essential for how the knee tracks. So our medial and maximal glute muscles are an essential part of how our knees function. So there's another case for muscular support.

And if you had to say either or, which of those is usually the weakest, the medial or the maxil— maximus?

Medial. Medial, no question. So we all have lateral weakness., and in fact, I did a study once on, on what's called, we did a, what was called a lateral excursion study. Um, I invented a machine called a Mediolateral Trainer and the therapists at High Point University in North Carolina where we did our study, um, brought in some football players, they brought in some track and field players, MCL patients, hip patients, and then we were doing all of the, um, activation studies on their musculature. And before the study even started, the head researcher said that everybody categorically has some degree of lateral weakness. So we can all benefit from, from having some lateral strength. Now we can also go even further in terms of mortality from falls. Number one mortality differentiator on the fall is the side fall, right? So when we fall to the side because we didn't have sufficient lateral stability, that's a medial, that's a medial glute issue in large part.

And that is how many times would you say a hip replacement?

Definitely. So that when someone says they broke their hip, more often than not, what they've actually broken was the femoral neck of the femur, which is inside of the hip, right? But it's not actually the hip itself. And that's what breaks when you fall on your side. So, Um, that's what gets replaced.

Okay. So come back to the FitSpan protocol. And I know you mentioned one feature, but I'm going to ask you if there's also another feature. So you said shortens the recovery because we're not getting as much damage, we're not getting as much inflammation. So shortening recovery is great. What about shortening the workout, which is what so many women— about 80% of our population clearly wants because they're still not doing enough. Before we dive into this, I've got to share this with you. After living with a dog, dust, and exposure to mold, I realized the importance of clean air. I used to wake up stuffed up, sneezing, and I was so triggered by seasonal pollens. And then I started using Air Doctor. My sinuses and my headaches have never been better. But here are a few things that I cannot make up that really made made me a believer. Cooking bacon over a holiday weekend, the Air Doctor kicked in 2 rooms away. A guest with a lot of perfume walked by and Air Doctor went into high gear to remove the toxic fragrance. My son's bulldog— this guy's 85 pounds, can you imagine?— he passed gas beside the Air Doctor and Immediately, Air Doctor cleared the air. I want cleaner, not only for my own health but for my extended family. I now gift Air Doctors. Here's how it works. Air Doctor's powerful 3-stage filtration captures extremely small particles, about 100 times smaller than what typical air purifiers can remove. It captures airborne contaminants that we don't want to be breathing in, like dust, pollen, mold, spores. Pet dander, wildfire smoke, bacteria, viruses, odors, and other smoke. And in our experience, also bacon, strong cologne, and dog toots. If there's any doubt in your mind, it works. Look, like me, 98% of Air Doctor customers say their home's air feels cleaner, safer, and healthier. Over 93% noticed fewer allergy symptoms, including less congestion, stuffy noses and itchy eyes. I have one I've gifted to my son directly beside the baby's room. Look, if you want to try it, head to airdoctorpro.com. Use promo code FLIPPING50 to get $250 off select Air Doctor purifiers, including the 3500, 4000, and 5500 models. We're so confident you'll love Air Doctor that every purchase is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee. This is an exclusive podcast offer only, available now at airdoctorpro.com. That's A-I-R-D-O-C-T-O-R-P-R-O dot com, using promo code FLIPPING50.

100%. And there's some really good science. I'm sure you're— I, well, I don't wanna assume anything, but are you a Rhonda Patrick fan?

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So Rhonda's got some cool stuff out right now talking about the ratios when we compare this style of HIIT training to moderate aerobic activity and low-level aerobic activity. And yeah, so your bang for— the bang for your buck is, is massive. Sometimes 200, 300 to 1. One. So our protocol is, it's a power endurance modality. So we've got an aerobic component, we've got an anaerobic threshold component, and of course we've got power. So we're generating huge forces, but because it's an adaptive isokinetic, and we can talk more about that, each person is at their own individual peak power regardless of their ability, regardless of their size, regardless of how they feel on a given day, because it's all scaled. It's, it's one of the few environments where the machine is adapting to the user and not the other way around. So that's what really makes it unique.

Very cool. I want to take you and everybody who's listening back in time for a moment, because a very long time ago, there was another franchise that I would assume probably doesn't compare in terms of power and maybe in terms of mechanics, but Curves was set up to also be a very concentric, like you're not going to get sore from doing this. And, um, just speak to that for a second.

Yeah. So you're actually, you're spot on. You're spot on. Curves in many ways is the same thing. They use pistons and the pistons, uh, were somewhat adaptive to the user, you know, you have a certain amount of force that you push against through a given range of motion. The primary difference— well, there's a few differences. One of the things, one of the shortcomings in my opinion of that style of equipment, which was representative of the time, was that a lot of those movements were closed— were open chain single axis movements. And in some cases, a lot of—

To my listener who's like, tell me what he just said. Could you explain that?

Okay. Absolutely. So let's imagine a leg curl or a leg extension. You're sitting on a machine and you, you have a, a pad at the base of your shin and you extend your leg out in front of you. Well, that is an open chain movement because your foot is not grounded in anything and it's a single axis of rotation because the only joint that's moving for that movement is your knee. In therapeutic environments, that's actually a desirable thing because it allows the therapist or practitioner to have full control over that joint and the range of motion of the joint and the resistance applied to that joint. So that's a one-on-one setting that's very safe with a lot of control. In the therapeutic environment, we have three legs in the stool. We've got joint stability, range of motion, and then strength, but the strength comes after the first two are established. The problem with open chain movements in a strength environment is is that the potential to overload that joint goes way up. So we want compound—

And ego, ego never plays a part.

Not at all. Who, what is that?

Okay.

Yeah.

Right.

What is that word? Yeah. Yeah. More is better, right? Harder is better. Got to be. Yeah. No, it's terrible. So a compound movement then is a multi-joint movement. We're using multiple joint structures, which means we're integrating multiple muscle groups. So it has a symbiotic effect. We're recruiting more muscle while while at the same time displacing load over multiple joint structures. So it's infinitely safer and actually much more muscular bang for your buck.

And so much more like picking up the child, picking up the dog food, picking up the potting soil from the ground or the trunk of the car or whatever we're doing in life.

Functional application. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So what I used to say back in the day, it's probably not very PC, but that the leg extension if you're in the habit of kicking your dog, well, then that's a great movement for you. But beyond that, there's very little practical application, and nobody wants to kick a dog. That's terrible. But yeah, so much in my practice, 30 years going now, what I like to tell my folks is that everything, almost everything that you do is going to be based in some variation on a deadlift form or a squat squat form. And so to master— and, and somebody in their 70s might think, oh, a deadlift, I'm not gonna weightlifter, I'm not gonna deadlift. You absolutely do a deadlift every day. It's somewhere in your life. And so you need to learn those good patterns, those good mechanics, because that is your quality of life right there.

So, um, if somebody had a gun to your head, uh, and said you have to choose, is it the deadlift or the squat, which one would you say for the rest of my life, I can only teach this one to my clients, what, what's it gonna be?

Man, that's tough. I'd have to go with the deadlift. And the reason being is that the deadlift has elements of the squat in it, whereas the squat does not have sufficient posterior chain that the deadlift offers you. And I would also offer answer number 3, which is if stranded on a desert island, clean and press. If I could only do one one movement that's going to hit my entire body, it'd be clean and press. So picking a weight up from the ground to a clean position and then driving that overhead. That requires significant range of motion conversations to be had in your body, especially as we're aging, because usually if there's any forward contracture in the thoracic spine, which is called kyphosis, we want to fight against that. We want to pull ourselves back and open ourselves up.

Up.

Shoulder mobility also becomes a factor. So we have a, we have a thing called a FitSpan score where we measure thoracic contracture as well as shoulder extension.

Excellent. Okay, and I'm going to come back to FitSpan, but I want to ask you one more question. So in regard to what you just said, you know, the, the bringing something up to the chest and then the forcefully lifting it up and overhead, not all that long ago And I don't spend a lot of time anymore in gyms, you know, and for years I was, and we would office or lease space with physical therapists. So there's a lot of communication going back and forth there. But we also had a smaller community. I knew a lot of orthopedic surgeons, and a lot of times clientele would come in and say they have been told verbatim them by their orthopedic surgeon.

Yeah.

Never do any overhead work ever again.

Yeah. Yes.

Um, so talk to me, where are we today with that?

Absolutely. That reminds me of, uh, 25 years ago with, with breast cancer patients where the doctor would say, don't lift anything heavier than your purse. That was the exact— yeah, had to throw that out there. Uh, so what we now know, of course, is that the lymphatic system supported entirely by the muscular system. So to increase flow, we want to exercise and flex and release those muscles because it's literally like a pump for our lymph system, for lymphatic drainage. So anyway, but no, in some sense that's true. So certainly there are exercise protocol for specific shoulder injuries like an impingement, for example. So if a shoulder is impinged, what you've done is you've reduced the subacromial space between the acromion and the arm bone, the humerus. And so when you go to press overhead, you've got traffic. Those two bones are running into each other. And then that gets compounded even further by the supraspinatus tendon, which is part of your rotator cuff, can actually get trapped between those two bones. Then they start to work like a scissor and they start to chip away at that tendon and then it tears. So there's a lot of bad things going on there. But that's because we're not dealing with the first line of offense which is sufficient range of motion. So, first we need to treat the impingement to reduce or, excuse me, increase the subacromial space so that it can travel freely. But that would be an example where a doctor says that and it makes perfect sense because if you have an impinged shoulder you don't want to be up here. You have what's called a reduction in the glenohumeral ratio. Video, and it looks like this. If I have, if I have an impingement and I go to press overhead, watch my shoulder, it'll do this. It'll hike up and the arm hasn't moved yet because it's stuck because those two bones are jammed up. So we need to make sure we've got clearance and integrity. And once we have that joint space integrity, then we should be able to travel freely. So there's a, there's a sequence there that has to come.

Yeah. And I love that, but I want to draw the attention to both the listener and, and back to what you've said, that I think all too often, maybe it wasn't said by the physician, but it was heard by the patient, right? I should never lift overhead ever again. Yeah, that's, that's like, oh, okay.

And then, and if you, and if you buy into that over the years, that will fulfill itself in the way that all of a sudden you do have to go overhead, you're gonna get injured.

Yeah.

Because your alignment won't be there, your range of motion won't be there, certainly the muscular support won't be there. Here's a perfect case in point would be getting your suitcase into the overhead bin on the airplane. You know, unless you want someone to do it for you, that you're gonna clean and press that case.

Right, right.

Got some wonderful stories about people doing.

Right. Absolutely. So come back to the FitSpan protocol and what you're doing with this, because I— this sounds so like this is the future, because it is the exercise we all want and need, even if we're not self-expressing with, I know I want that exercise. We want the outcome of the exercise. We all do. And, and we want to reduce the inflammation or the recovery and the pain or the downtime that we have between it. So you're actually doing this on a bigger scale. So how long will it be before a listener can find one in her neighborhood and around the corner?

Thank you. Yeah, good question. I wish I could tell you the total answer to that, but I can tell you right now we're in the process of opening our first facility, our flagship Jim in Medford, Oregon. And then I think number 2 is going to be in Connecticut. You can go to our website, which is fitspanstudios.com, and that'll tell you pretty much everything you need to know. There's a blog on there. That's me. It's not mine. It's theirs, but I write the content. But yeah. Yeah, fitspanstudios.com. And then we're opening nationally. So we're looking for franchisees. If I may be so bold to plug that.

Okay. So, question that everybody wants to know, how often is it recommended that somebody would come in and how long is the workout? Second big question.

Yes. So, our— this protocol is exactly 30 minutes. It is— there are 4-minute— there are 6 pieces.

So many women love you right now.

Right, right. And it's more effective and there's less inflammation, less recovery time. You're not beat up afterwards. You're rejuvenated. So I can tell you— I'll tell you that, but let me lead in with a story very quick. There is a professional basketball team that uses this system. And when they adopted that system, they took it for approval to their general manager, who's also a famous basketball player. So those of you that are into basketball this will start to add up. And so they said, hey, where the blah blah blah, why do we need this? And the trainer said, because your guys can do a game on Wednesday, do the FitSpan protocol on Thursday, and then play another game on Friday with no repercussions, no downtime, no delayed muscle soreness. It literally— you can actually do this every single day without adverse impact on your body. On your cells. Um, the, the wonderful thing about adaptive isokinetics is if you're having a good day, you go for it. And if you're having a so-so day, then you don't go for it as much. The machine adapts to you. So there's no predetermined baseline or constrictural adherence to a given RPM, for instance, which, which most isokinetics, that's what they do. They have a fixed rate and then you have to adapt to that Well, in this case, the machine adapts to you. So the rate is whatever you want it to be on any given day.

So when you say I could do this every day, do I need to? And is there greater benefit for doing it more frequently?

Good question. So a lot of that has to do— and this comes from my experience in clinical settings in the medical community— a lot of that has to do with the intensity and the volume. I'll give you a case in point. MS patients can only tolerate a very limited amount of exercise because of the massive inflammatory potential. So oftentimes they will do 1 minute, 2 minutes, even just 3 minutes of work, they leave, they come back later after lunch maybe, and they do another 2 to 3 minutes. And so they might come in twice a day every day, but the intensity is very low and the volume is very low. So to answer that question, kind of depends on the intensity and the volume. Since our workout is a half hour, it's 4-minute stations with 45 seconds of downtime, what we call a Category 6 energy system, which is low intensity, followed by 15-second bursts. And that's our HIIT protocol. So our high-intensity interval training is 45 off, 15 on, 4 times. So that's 4 minutes And then we have a 1-minute transition from one machine to the next. During that minute, we go through some balance, memory, motor skills, communal interaction, because we're going in small teams of 4 and you're working together. So there's a fun component as well. Um, and then, like I say, 6 pieces and 4 minutes on each with that 45 off, 15 on. So we have a rowing machine, we have a climber, we have an upper body ergometer, which is like a bike crank for the upper body. We have a ski erg. We have a squat press, which is like a thruster. So it's a yoke, you squat down, you come up, press overhead. Speaking of overhead, the arc of that overhead is actually accommodating the limited range of motion for thoracic contracture and shoulder mobility. So rather than going up into extension like this, we're actually going up and forward. So it's not as stressful to the joint structure.

So nice.

Yeah, nice.

Okay, so what have I not asked you about FitSpan or just about exercising wisely, more intelligently as we age, for what it is that we really want? And I think, I think at some point in our lives, you coming from an athletic background, we're probably more honed in on performance maybe than someone else males. My listeners who are females may have been more honed in on aesthetics, you know, and how we looked and how we felt about how we looked, importantly. And I don't, don't discount that. But I think as we age, we all kind of collectively come together and we want to age independently, doing the things we love as long as we can. And Do it pain-free.

Yeah, um, that's— there's a lot there, and I'll, I'll reduce my 10 answers to one. Um, so let's, let's go with, uh, let's dispel some myths. So the— when we talk about aesthetics and muscle, um, muscle mass versus fat mass, there are different ways to skin that, right? Certainly one would be if we want to utilize that as a fuel source then embracing the Category 6 Energy System, which is a low intensity. There are some simple ways to do that. One is nose breathing. I do this with my athletes when I train rowers. If you can breathe through your nose only and perform the activity without feeling like you're going to pass out, you're good. If you're gasping for air because you're nose breathing, you're working too hard. Simply take it down. Don't let your ego get in the way. Embrace the nose breathing. Breathing rather than thinking you're supposed to be working at some given intensity. So that's, that's, and that's one facet of the total fitness picture, right? But to, but to utilize fat burning processes at lower intensities, that's a good way to do it. If you're into heart rate training, another way to do it is find, find a movement that you can do for 5 minutes and keep your heart rate under 180. 8, right? So if you're 50, keep your heart rate under 130 for 5 minutes and then correlate that activity to that heart rate. So if you're walking around a track, correlate your split, or if you're on a bicycle, correlate your RPM and load or your wattage output, and then use that as your marker. That's the aerobic— that's the low-intensity aerobic side. The other part is, is more, I think, more important and more often misunderstood, and that's the strength training training side of things. And so when we talk about hypertrophy and muscles, here's an important distinction. Fibromillar bone density— I think I'm saying that wrong— versus sarcoplasmic muscle density. Excuse me. And so sarcoplasmic muscle density, when we talk about hypertrophy, would be kind of like the high rep stuff. If you're in that 15 rep range, lots of slow eccentrics, you're gonna get muscle size that doesn't necessarily correlate to muscle muscle strength because it's mostly fluid versus fibromyalgia— still saying that wrong— that's muscle density where you're actually increasing the density of the muscles and the contractile relationship between the fibers. So there you're getting stronger, but you're getting leaner, denser muscles without the— and that's what comes from concentric power training and very heavy, heavy lifting. As we discussed, I think, in the green room, though, the very, very heavy lifting part, that's a dangerous learning curve. And so for a lot of our population, we don't really want to go there. And so we've solved that with the FitSpan program.

Amazing. Andy, so great to talk to you. Thank you so much for being here and for the work and the explanations, I think, to everybody who's listening. So where can people find you? I know you mentioned where to find FitzPan. Say it again, and if you're on social media or have a presence there, let everybody know where to find you.

I'm not, and so, but certainly, certainly FitzPan is. Or so you can go to fitzpanstudios.com. Okay. And if you want to reach out to me, find a phone book and just call me up. Let's, let's go with that. How's that?

All right. You're going to have a lot of stalkers. All right. Thank you again for your time. Thanks for being here.

My pleasure. Thank you for having me. It was great.

The information shared on Flipping 50: The Stronger Way is for educational and informational purposes only and not intended as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or qualified healthcare your provider before beginning any exercise program, making changes to your diet, or adjusting any medications or supplements. Individual results may vary. Debra Atkinson and Flipping 50 are not responsible for any injury or adverse outcomes resulting from information presented on this podcast.