Working Out! - A Chat With Coach Vance

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching, courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. All right, everyone, DSO here from dadstartingover.com. And with me today, once again, I believe this is the third time you're on, Coach Vance. He is from the Dad Starting Over team. He is one of our— we have, counting myself, 8 coaches now, which is— wow, it's getting big. And Vance is our resident expert in all things Fitness and Health. Um, for those Vance that didn't listen to the first couple of, uh, podcasts that we had you on, would you give a brief summary of your qualifications and exactly who Vance is?

Yeah, so I'm not really sure what my day job is or which job is my day job anymore, but most of my adult life I've been in Olympic weightlifting. Um, I've been an Olympic weightlifting coach basically as my main job for most of my adult life. I was a high-level athlete myself, and now I'm a senior international coach. I have, um, a girl right now in the qualification period for the Olympic Games. She's ranked 7th in the world.

Wow.

I am also a PhD in health and human performance, and I am the coordinator of the sport and exercise science program at Bruin Parker College. So right now I'm kind of splitting my time between coaching athletics and then the academic side of teaching people basically how to coach athletics and, um, the health-related field, physical therapy and all that good stuff as well.

Very cool. Well, all right, so we are very lucky to have a guy like you on board and teaching all of us about the wonderful world of health and fitness. Um, I say health, it's funny in our, uh, in our experience, mine as well, because a lot of guys come to me with questions for working out and everything else, cuz that was a big part of my writing in my book and stuff. What I'm finding is, and you tell me if it's your experience, do men overall, from your experience, 30, 40, 50-some-year-old men, do you hear health come first in, in the, in the list of things that they, that they're concerned with? Or is it more aesthetic, vanity sake?

No, I think everybody regardless of age, is actually more concerned with the way they look. And in fact, there's— if you, if you talk about aesthetics as a performance measure, or any performance measure, whether that's running faster, jumping higher, or looking better, uh, health and performance is a, is kind of a bell curve. So as your performance goes up, your health improves because all of your functions improve. And then as you continue to have to perform better and better, train harder and harder, diet differently, all that good stuff, then actually your health tends to peak and then it starts to decline, but your performance can keep going up, right? So there's actually—

Interesting.

There's actually this bell curve. And yes, you will be healthier than the sedentary, obese, overweight person, but there comes a point where you're actually training so hard or you're dieting so hard that your health actually starts to decline than where it could be if you did 20% less training and 20% less diet. So there's actually a little bit of a trade-off when you start to talk about, I want to look, you know, this good versus if I want to look this good, then, you know, health might be actually, um, the opposite of what you're achieving at that point.

And we, we talked about it before in the previous podcast, the, the most extreme example of that would be if somebody were taking some kind of performance-enhancing drug, of course, anabolics and so forth. It's, you know, they look at the numbers and they say, wow, I'm 8% body fat and I'm 270 pounds of solid muscle. And yeah, but your heart health is in the toilet. Yeah. You're 270 pounds. That's very difficult for a body to maintain. And your lipids and everything else are, you know, off the charts. And yeah, but dude, I can squat 400, you know, 15 pounds 100 times. So, but, um, So we talked about before, we talked about the wonderful world of testosterone and we talked about the wonderful world of supplements. And I thought this time we would talk about the, the crux of all of it, which is working out. And in my book, I devoted a— the book is called The Dead Bedroom Fix for those that don't know. I devoted a pretty big chapter to you need to get in shape simply because we have a lot of men out there who are woefully out of shape and woefully unhealthy. And, uh, like we just, uh, talked about, uh, a lot of men that come to me about working out and so forth, they don't take into account the health. And not only that, but they, they start in a very bodybuilder-oriented workout regimen, which consists of a lot of repetitions, a lot of weight, and, um, it may not necessarily be the best thing for them, and it may ironically not get them where they want to go. So the number one goal, I think, is twofold for most men that come to you for help, which is number one, I'd like to be more muscular, put on more muscle, and number two, lose body fat. What's the, what's the best course of action in the gym to get there? And I guess, well, then there's all kinds of follow-up questions to that, isn't there? Your age, what's your prior experience to working out, what's your current body fat? So you got a guy that comes to you and says, I'd like to lose body fat and gain muscle, what do you say to him?

Uh, actually, the first thing we do is, is look at whether that question is realistic or not. Um, because yeah, that's typically what I hear a lot is, I weigh, I weigh X amount, I weigh 200 pounds, something like that. And, um, I say, okay, what do you want to look like in the next, you know, 16 weeks? Let's say we're gonna do a 16-week training plan. What do you want to look like? And a lot of people will say something like, well, I still want to be 200 pounds, but I want it to be all muscle and no fat in 16 weeks. So, so I typically have to do some math on that. So you're talking about, okay, that might require you losing 10 pounds of body fat and putting on 10 pounds of muscle mass to stay the same body weight, which actually the 10 pounds of fat would be the easy part. The hard part would be 10 pounds of muscle growth does not occur in 16 weeks. So the math already is just way off. So, um, depending on your experience, I always make the suggestion: get as lean as you want to first, and then try to put on, you know, muscle mass very slowly without accumulating body fat over time, um, over a long progression. Because I think the big thing is people are in too much of a hurry You're just starting your fitness journey or getting back into shape or getting back into the gym, even if you're 50, you know, think about like next decade, what I'm going to be doing, you know? Or is it just like, oh, I got to get, you know, ripped. I got to get underwear model shape in the next 16 weeks. I mean, unless you're actually doing a photo shoot in 16 weeks or you are a model, that's not a realistic plan. So the big thing is, is try to get guys to think about, their long-term plan. Like, yes, if you want to slowly lose body fat and replace some of that with muscle, you can do it at the same time. It's going to be very slow. It's going to be relatively inefficient, which is not a bad thing, you know, if you're not in a hurry. Um, we have plenty of research papers that show you can, you can lose body fat and put in on a little bit of muscle mass at the same time, mostly in beginner and intermediate experience. People or people who have been sedentary and they're returning to the gym. But if you have, uh, you know, several years of training behind your belt, um, it's a very inefficient way to actually improve your body composition. You're much better dieting down to the level of leanness that you want and then putting on muscle mass very slowly after that. And, and I think you'll be in a much happier state than trying to put on fat or put on muscle and lose fat at the same time, simply because they'll get very frustrated with, I'm starting to lose a little bit of strength because I've lost all this body weight and this body fat.

And they're constantly playing that game of, well, I guess I better up my calories a little bit and damn it, I just gained 3 pounds. And all right, here we go. A lot of yo-yoing back and forth. It's like, pick your poison. You want to lose the body fat first, get nice and lean, and then build from there.

And I think it's because people think they have more muscle than they do. Um, and, and one encouraging thing is anecdotally, people lose a bunch of weight and they think they've lost all their muscle, but what they've really lost is their fat. And they realize they didn't have as much muscle as they think they did. It was just disguised because it was layered over some, some muscle. So when they actually do Um, when we have better body composition testing now, we've actually found that people don't go on diets, even fairly extreme diets, don't lose a whole lot of, of muscle mass. Now, you know, your muscle contains muscle glycogen, um, uh, even triglycerides within the muscle and themselves. And so you can definitely lose a little bit of strength. You can, uh, you can lose the fullness of your muscle, but it's terms of raw tissue, people don't lose a lot. So what they're finding out is they're skinnier than they actually believe, and then they're unhappy because then they thought, oh, I have a lot more muscle, or I don't have as much muscle as I used to have. The reality is they were just kind of skinny to begin with, and then now they find out they're, they're not going to look as good as they thought they were when they lost the 10 pounds of fat, is, is really what's going on.

And not only that, but if you have a guy who's, let's say, very big into weightlifting, he starts getting into it and he's a chubbier guy and he's very strong and then he's like, time to get really lean and time, it's time to lean out and see how good I can look. And then the guy starts freaking out a little bit because he can no longer bench 405 pounds. Now it's a struggle to get 315, then it's a struggle to, and he's, and he freaks out and starts eating more. So question then, Professor, is what is it? What's the mechanism at play when you're a heavier dude and you're stronger? Is it merely a, is it a matter of the glycogen in the muscle? Is there in fact more muscle tissue? Is it a matter of leverage because, you know, you're, you have so much more body fat around you?

Well, it's, it's a combination of all those. So it's a leverage probably plays the biggest part, um, especially in something like a bench press or the, the, the bodybuilding movements themselves. You're going to see less of an issue in, in when you're pulling the bar because there's no matter of leverage, but anytime you're squatting, um, or bench pressing. There's also the issue even of momentum. Mass moves mass, right? So technically, you know, if you lose some body fat and somehow you can increase— or some body weight or circumference— and you can kind of increase your speed, you can produce the same momentum, which gets translated into force in the barbell.. But most of the time that doesn't happen. These tend to be slow movements to begin with. So leverage is definitely the biggest factor to losing, you know, your strengths. That's why we have weight classes in Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting, because leverage plays a big part. It could be also be over time, the longer you are on your diet, you're going to see greater strength losses. And I think that's just because you get depleted, get depleted of your energy, essentially your muscle glycogen. You don't recover as well is a big thing. So it can have effect on the neurological system as well. But for the most part, yeah, people's, you know, the first thing that you're going to see go down is, is probably your bench press and your squat. Some of the other movements, if you use them, any kind of pulling, rowing, curling, you know, tricep presses, those type of things, you won't see a big, a big loss right away.

You bring up the, uh, the, the big power lifts, if you will, the bench press, squat, and deadlift is the third there. Um, I'm a guy who's never worked out a day in my life. I'm 30, let's say 40-something years of age. It's time to get in shape. Um, there is different schools of thought, but one that is, um, pretty predominant in the world of weightlifting and coaching and everything is focus on the quote big lifts, the big three, because they are what we call compound in nature, which means when I bench press, I'm working a whole bunch of stuff in my upper body all at once. Same goes for the squat, same goes for the bench. Um, what do you think, Coach? Is that something that we should concentrate on? Any guy should concentrate on that, or is there certain body types that are better? Ages?

Well, I actually usually try— have to convince people not to be religious about any one exercise, um, because if you're talking about the population that we work with in, in your group of men, I'm constantly running into people who say, I, you know, the bench press hurts my shoulder, yet they still want to bench press. Uh, so, so it's, it's really just a matter of, yes, I understand where that comes from. Um, the bench press, the squats is going to have, uh, give you a big bang for your buck in terms of efficiency. You know, 5 sets of bench press will probably be more stimulatory than 10 sets of, you know, 2— the combination of 2 isolation exercises like your, your chest flies or, or something like that. Um, but it's going to have the most joint stress as well, and it's the most complex, so it gives you the most chance of an injury, you know, when you're not doing it well and and that sort of thing. So the reality is I'm a big proponent of machines. I'm a big proponent of doing what works best for the athletes, doing what doesn't hurt, right? So again, just don't be religious about the bench press and the squat. And the deadlift is kind of a separate conversation too because, you know, a lot of people suggest that. And I don't see the best rationale for its use in general if you're not, if you're not an athlete. Because yes, it uses like probably the most amount of muscle mass for any lift, but it's so distributed throughout the whole body that you're not going to get big stimulation in one specific muscle group. So, but it's going to create a lot of fatigue. So kind of like you're I don't know what you would call it, your stimulus to fatigue ratio is not going to be great for the deadlift. So I usually, uh, program like stiff-legged deadlifts and those type of things that are more specific to the hamstrings. Um, and I don't actually worry about the, the conventional deadlift, but people love to do it. So sometimes I, yeah, I'll, uh, I'll put it in there or I won't put it in there based on just the preference of the athlete. Some athletes just I want to deadlift. I want to deadlift heavy just because it's fun. So it's kind of risk versus reward.

There's also, for a lot of guys, obviously this is a manly thing going to the gym and lifting stuff. And what's manlier than loading up a ton of weight and everyone standing around and going, holy crap, I can't believe you picked that up off the ground and slammed it back down. There's nothing more, you know, caveman, ugh, watch me, grunt, grunt kind of thing. But you're right, there's a risk reward. Thing with something like the deadlift. And I've hurt my back in the past. And when did I hurt my back? Deadlifting. And I stopped doing it completely. And, uh, but sure enough, if somebody's doing it at the gym and I hear that thump, I go over and go, oh wow, look at you, and give them a fist bump. So there's something inherently just masculine and manly about that kind of stuff. Um, but what I've seen though, those guys that bench press a lot, for example, or deadlift a lot, More often than not, those guys are what I would say very imbalanced in their physiques. You got the guy who bench presses and religiously bench presses a lot, will have that rounded kind of shoulder look about him, right? Where the, the lats are too tight, the shoulders are too— everything is just, there's, there's no balance there. And probably he probably has a herniated disc or something like that. It's just everything's just out of whack. Is that your experience as well? What you've seen?

Yeah. The protracted shoulders. In fact, I kind of, I kind of deal with that a lot in my, my day job as a weightlifting coach because where we're located here in South Georgia, um, we're near Florida, and Florida has, um, uh, the Florida High School Weightlifting is the bench press and the clean and jerk. So they do a combination of lifting and powerlifting. So they bench a lot and A, I have to fix all the shoulder issues, the mobility issues from all these high school kids coming into my program having done a lot of bench press. And yeah, they all have that protracted shoulder and the kyphotic upper back because not only are they bench pressing a lot, but they're using very good, you know, what you call the powerlifting technique where they're arching the back and all that good stuff to give them more leverage, which is what they need to do for their sport, but it's even exaggerated, you know, when you start getting into that kind of stuff. And what's, what's the best technique to move the most weights is not necessarily the best technique for your health.

Yeah, that's— there you go. That says it all right there. Just because you're moving a bunch of weight doesn't necessarily mean you're doing the best thing for your overall health. And so, um, let's talk— let's hit on the health thing, talking about the, the term overtraining. Is something you hear a lot. Um, some of your— well, there's, there's this thing called bro science you're familiar with, which is basically the anecdotal stuff that all these guys come up with. Well, here's what works for me, and then that goes, you know, person to person, uh, word of mouth kind of thing. And here's the supplement to take, here's the exercise to do, and all this other stuff. But what we've learned over the years is The reason we call it bro science is because it's not really based on any kind of, any factual anything. Um, where was I going with that? So you, you may be doing, you may literally be doing a workout routine in the gym that is in the long run actually bad for you and could actually hurt you. You want to touch on the topic of overtraining and is that something to worry about? And is this something that is more likely to occur as you get older?

Yeah! Well, this kind of plays into age quite a bit as well but in general, most people don't have a long-term plan. So, a lot of times their training that they're doing is something that A) they've either seen somebody else doing, right? Or they've gotten it off of the internet or, or an influencer or something like that, or an IFBB Pro, uh, bodybuilder, whatnot. Um, or they've kind of just come up with it themselves and they're just kind of Type A personality, you know, if I'm not sore I'm not training hard enough type of personality as well. But, you know, we kind of figured out the stuff in the 1950s. Uh, it wasn't perfected, but periodization is, you know, is true. Periodization will set you free.

So can you touch on exactly what, what that is? What is periodization?

Yeah, well, periodization is just kind of like the organization and management of training over during certain periods. Now typically you're talking about athletics, you're talking about a calendar period in terms of competition when you have events, um, but you know, for the, the average recreational person. It kind of just means a slow progressive overload. Where, you know, you're just getting off the couch. You haven't done any training for years or something like that. You will literally improve with probably one set per body part per week. Right? Will get you improvement. And more won't equal more improvement. It's kind of like, you know, taking the elevator. You push, you know, level 2, it goes up to level 2. You keep pushing level 2, it still only goes up to level 2. The more times you push it, it only goes up that so far. So a lot of guys probably just start too heavy too quick until they get injured or get sick, and that's when they actually tone it down. On the opposite end, honestly, a lot of people just don't, train hard enough to begin with. Um, you know, if you go to the gym and just watch people, most people spend more time on their, their phone now than they're actually training. Uh, most people get on those recumbent bikes and they pedal like this, and it's like equivalent of less than walking, you know, sort of thing. Good for them, they're in the gym. But in general, I think a lot of guys, especially of the population that we work, want to do what they see people in their 20s that have enough time to train that way and have enough time to recover that way, and you just don't anymore. So, um, you have to be a little bit smarter.

And with— on the theme of time and recuperation, um, the world of anabolics and other performance-enhancing drugs is pretty rampant. I don't think the average Joe off the street realizes just how common they are. When you go into a gym and you go, wow, that guy's pretty big and strong. Geez, look at him. He's probably on something. That guy, his workout regimen and his recovery is way different from the average dude just on the couch decides to work out. So when he sees that guy doing X number of sets and just going balls to the wall with his effort in the gym and so forth, Your average dude doesn't want to try to emulate that, does he?

No. In fact, um, you know, I would say that there's smart, uh, performance-enhancing drug users, and then there's performance-enhancing drug users that can get away with not being smart. Um, it allows you to get— I don't want to go around, you know, and just be disparaging to anybody who does that kind of stuff. But you can get away with really poorly thought out training.

Yeah!

On drugs and then there's the other argument that training on drugs requires or even encourages a certain type of training that you wouldn't want to replicate when you're not. So I deal that with that a lot in athletics. You know, you have certain athletes, certain countries that are known for doping and they train a certain way that if you replicated with drug-free athletes, you'd basically have a lot of injuries is what you would have. So, so yeah, just, just doing, copying, you know, what another performance-enhancing drug bodybuilder or whatnot is doing, uh, you really can't. And here's, here's the big thing, and I think we've known this going back to like, you know, the old Flex magazines before we had social media and all that kind of stuff, where they would say, oh, here, here's Dorian Yates and his routine or here's Ronnie Coleman's routine. That was not his routine. Like, that was not anything near what they actually did. Because if you— if he wrote that down and told you what he did, the publisher would say, no way anybody is going to be able to do this. So why even put that in the magazine?

So yeah. And back to the issue of periodization, as I understand it, you could also interpret it as fluctuating or changing the intensity or the duration or whatever. So this week may be a, we're maxing out, let's do our 1-2 rep max on one of the power movements, if that's your thing. And then next week is dial it down to 50%. And then the week after that is take off completely. And then what, you know, I think if I remember right, reading some of my history of like Olympic weightlifting and wrestling and other things, for example, I think the Russian Russians were really big in pioneering that periodization and taking the time off and lowering versus— and this week, well, and this week is the max out, and then the next week is let's dial it down and take time off. And for wrestling, for example, they would get, they would fluctuate their intensity and get much more time on the mat doing, let's go at 25%, you know, and get so much, so many more matches in that way. And versus the Americans, which were balls to the wall, 100%, go, go, go 24/7. And if you don't, then basically you're cheating yourself if you don't go 100% all the time. And we can learn from that when we use our fitness journey that, you know what, when you are so sore that you can barely get up and everything hurts and you're starting to get a little bit of a scratchy throat and you don't quite feel right, it's okay to say I think I'm gonna stay home today, maybe the next 2, 3 days and recuperate. I think I overdid a little bit. Didn't eat enough, didn't drink enough, didn't rest enough, didn't sleep enough. And 20 sets of squats is probably a little too much for a 53-year-old man. That's okay to say that. And we, you know, um, but that, but then again, that goes against our, uh, well, number one, our Western American kind of ideal of if one is good, 15 must be better. And also for It's a manly thing to push all the weight and do all that exercise.

Yeah! And it's difficult to be self-coached in that way because I can show you all the training that I wrote, write for my athletes and all the changes that we make during the week because I'm there in the gym with them, you know, "Okay! Let's stop there! That looks good!" Sometimes we go up, sometimes we go down. Sometimes it's, it's, it's, hey, let's— this workout, forget about it! Go home or whatnot! Most people are not tracking what they're doing to begin with. Go to the gym and see if anybody has a notebook. I mean, really!

Yeah!

In lieu of having an actual coach, an actual personal trainer with a plan or something like that, you really need to be writing down what you're doing, how much, how many repetitions for what sets, Um, and how did you feel the next day? How you feel? Yeah, is a big thing. And then you can set small goals even, like, you know, a lot of people don't know what they lifted last week, and then this week, you know, did you get better from last week or did you get worse or, or whatnot? So I did 200 pounds for 5 last week, so I'm gonna do 200 pounds for 6, you know. Um, just having that is what? Is data, it's notes. It's, it's— so even if you don't have, yeah, a degree from the Soviet-style periodization plans and, you know, you haven't read, you know, "Rad Theory and Practice of Strength Training" by Zatsiorsky and all of these people, at the very least you can have a progressive overload and you can take notes and you can look, hey, every 3 weeks, the 4th week I feel terrible. Well, that would probably mean that every 4th week you should have a rest week where you cut out the volume in half, you cut the intensity in half, and you'll find that periodization tends to be fairly natural and tuned with the body. The research kind of coincides with that. They kind of figured this out about 50 years ago and still true today. The human body hasn't changed.

Do you see, um, you know, there's a big trend I always— I pick on it in my videos and stuff a lot just simply because I hear about it all the time in terms of of some of the more nefarious sides to this world, the world of CrossFit or these garage-style gyms where you go in. Some of these people, I'm sure, are probably going every day if they get really, you know, weird about it. And they have this prescribed exercise routine of go to these different stations and do this, this, and this. And what have we seen? And, um, my wife being an MD sees this with some kids in their sports. And I remember my ex seeing this in the physical therapy world and so forth. Was some really crazy out there stuff like rhabdo, which is the rhabdo, what's the full term? The, it's short for—

Rhabdomyolysis.

Myolysis. Which, can you go into that?

Yeah. The rhabdomyolysis, first of all, it's fairly rare in terms of athletics. Where you do, where you did see it quite often was in endurance sports, specifically ultra endurance sports like marathon, the long cross-country ski events. It's, it's literally, um, you know, when you train, you get muscle protein breakdown, breaks down, enters the— just very small pieces enter the bloodstream, which is, is nothing that the kidneys typically can't handle. But when you have such high degree of muscle protein breakdown, it actually— essentially, your kidneys are kind of like a big sponge. It essentially, uh, clogs up your kidneys, and you literally, instead of having a heart attack, you're basically having equivalent of a kidney attack, right? And you'll see, you'll know if your urine turns brown or something like that. But usually you're in the hospital before that happens. So yeah, if you're having rhabdomyolysis in an actual workout class, that's usually pretty bad. So, you know, I don't want to be disparaging to all the CrossFits out there saying this is commonly happening. But one of the issues kind of with workout classes in general is you have a— you could have a big group of people. They all have differences in their tolerability to training and experience levels. And then, yeah, you don't really have preplanned rest weeks and that sort of thing because it's you show up, you pay your money, you get a— you get a workout and people will probably complain if you didn't kick their behind as well. So that's kind of the periodization kind of stuff doesn't really apply too much to the exercise classes. So I think you really have to have some, you know, have some— the ability to basically say like, hey, this is how much I'm going to do today.

Yeah.

And even if the instructor wants to yell at you.

Yeah. Well, there was a high school coach here recently who got in big trouble. I don't know if you saw this, made the news. He, uh, I think he had some— it was a punishment, or maybe it was a challenge to his team. I think there were football players, don't quote me on that, but he said something like, I want 400 push-ups out of each of you. He sent 13 kids to the hospital and one of them died.

Wow.

Rhabdo. Um, that, that's— that can be serious stuff. And, uh, my wife recently had a, um, a kid here who Um, I don't want to give away too much info, but something happened which led to an injury. And she looked at this kid's records and it's like, your injury and your pains and your everything else, it doesn't line up with what you say you did. Like, something's off here. Let's run some blood work and stuff. And sure enough, rhabdo. And it's like, have you done anything intense lately? And, and it's like, yeah, I'm in this sport and we did like 3 2-hour practices in a row or something ridiculous. It was some way over the top. Our coach punished us and made us run a bunch of laps and everything. Yeah, you overdid it. Could have killed yourself. Good thing you had this completely coincidental injury that led to some pain and that you're here with me because we discovered this. This could have been bad. So it seems to be— it is some— maybe it's just coincidence I'm hearing it so often, but culturally it seems to be a lot more prevalent these days. Yeah.

Yeah. And I can get off on a tangent on kind of some of the problems with youth sports and, you know, I teach long-term athletic development in a lot of my academic classes. And the number of MCL tears and all that kind of stuff with people under 13 and whatnot has increased tremendously. And a big thing is just playing the same sport year-round. Early specialization is a big one. And then what you're talking about, of course, just pushing youth athletes too hard as well. And, you know, in my sport, it occurs to a great degree as well in Olympic weightlifting where, yeah, we're producing youth, you know, youth world record holders that don't make senior teams, you know. They don't, you know, things like that because they're pushed too hard too early, so they peak really early and all that kind of stuff. So it's a difficult problem to handle. In, in general. And usually only the communist countries in terms of athletics have handled it fairly well. It's counterintuitive, um, but they have kind of the ability to say, okay, at the— at this age you only lift this much, and at this age you only lift this much, and from 17 to 18 is when you start to actually peak and, and whatnot. Um, but in the United States, we kind of have the opposite where we have the top youth athletes and kind of poor performance at the senior level as well. So it's kind of— it plagues the culture here for sure, for sure.

And, uh, one of the biggest sports that we see so many injuries right now is youth football. And, uh, those kids are getting faster and bigger and they're all giants out there. I mean, my kid's in high school football and I look at his teammates like, Jesus. And of course it's this kid's got a bad knee, MCL, ACL, tore his hamstring, and just on down the line. And, uh, my wife sees and she operates on these kids who, uh, you know, tore their, their, their spleen and all kinds of stuff. And, you know, from that hard collision in football. And on top of that, they're overdoing it with the 2-a-day workouts and the dehydration. Yeah, it's a— it's culturally, it's a oof. Um, but it appeals to that. If 1 is better, 15, you know, 1 is good, 15 must be better. And go, go, go, ultra, kind hyper-masculine to a fault kind of, kind of culture there. Um, but, um, yeah, so it's something to watch out for and something as a guy my age getting close to 50 years of age, uh, yeah, my workouts have definitely changed and what is dictating that change is simply my recovery rate is that much less than what it used to be. Um, I used to be able to go to the gym 2 days in a row with weightlifting and be cool with it. Now it's one day of working out, next day it's kind of an active recuperation of light cardio, you know, 40 minutes, 40 minutes on the treadmill at, you know, 3 and an incline of 7, something like that. Get my heart rate up to like 130 and get a nice sweat. And then, then I'm ready for the next day. Sometimes I'm not. And I, what gate, what I used to gauge that is my sleep quality, my soreness, just my overall, just. Lethargy, I guess you could say. And I'm noticing that I'm getting more and more of those. I think I need to take a rest today. And it's kind of bothersome for a guy that's, you know, spent so many years working out and stuff. And I'm not as muscular as I used to be. So now— but so now at the forefront of my list of stuff I'm worried about is health. And I think we all eventually get to that point. And I think the big 5-0 is probably where a lot of us do. For a lot of guys, it's I went to the doctor and I got a big scare. He said, your blood lipids are woof, your blood pressure. I'm gonna need to put you on some meds. Are you exercising? Are you getting on your exercise bike? Like taking your walks like you're supposed to? No, but I can bench press 315. I don't care. You're overweight. You need to work on your health. So guys, be aware of that. And don't go at this all by yourself. I'd say to a lot of guys, because you're right, there's so much information out there. I go to Instagram right now, for example, or some social media something and find probably within the hour 100 different ways of tackling this fitness workout thing. And I would say probably the majority of them are aimed at youngish guys and may not necessarily be for a guy like me. So I would suggest everyone get with somebody like Vance. If it's not Vance, who, by the way, you can book time with Vance, the guy I'm talking to right now, he's available. Go to dadstartingover.com/coaching and you can book a session with Vance right there. For you DSO fraternity members, the cost is considerably less, but you will work with guys, you will work with guys and their spouse if they want to, or some kind of family plan, right?

Yeah, in fact, um, you know, just working with guys has kind of led, uh, to that as well because I've had guys like, oh, you know, um, because they know I, my background in athletics as well, so most, most of the guys I work with have, have some young kids and a lot of them are involved in sports too. So that's kind of how that's gotten started. So I said, oh yeah, I'll work with your kids too. So yeah, family packages are available as well.

So here's a political— can't speak today, too much coffee. A possible politically incorrect question to ask. Depends on the answer, I suppose. Men versus women. First of all, who is more apt to come to you to say, "It's time to get my butt into shape! I want to hit the gym! I want to gain muscle, lose body fat!" Is that going to be typically a man or a woman?

I think it depends on what age category you're talking about because I have no problem finding female athletes, right? Um, but yeah, a lot of the men I've worked with have said, oh, my wife is interested too. And, um, beyond initial email, I have not gotten one single female client. So maybe it's just the fact that I am a male. Maybe she would be more comfortable having a female to work with.

Could be, yeah.

Um, But for the most part, what tends to happen, I think, males see a problem to fix. You know, they got, like you said, a bad report from the doctor or they're just finding themselves like in a bad state, you know, at some period in their life and they really want to get, you know, their ass back in gear and yeah, I just haven't found the same. Uh, with the female species. So, uh, so yeah, you're putting me in that politically incorrect.

Yeah, yeah. But, but in defense of the ladies, uh, who are we talking to? We are mostly in the Dad Starting Over world. We're talking to men who had a big holy poop moment in their life, and, and a component of that is I need to get my butt in shape. I've lost my sense of self. My health is down. I look at myself in the mirror and say, ooh. And so, and yes, and naturally men are fixers, and, but we could go on and on about, um, there doesn't, doesn't seem to be much of a, uh, oh, well, this, but this isn't necessarily true. I was going to say there's not much of a push for women to get in shape. If I say that, I'm going to have about a million emails saying, are you freaking kidding me right now? Um, there's, there's an intense amount of pressure on women to look a certain way, and there always has been. And, uh, you know, look at every social media, everything, all the women look perfect. And so, but I'm not sure what the disconnect there is between the other men and women in terms of how to remedy that.

Yeah, I think the incentives are there for women to get in shape, and I don't know what the data is, like male versus female gym goers. Um, if I had to take a guess, I would say they're fairly equal. You could make—

I would think so too, just anecdotally I would say so.

Yeah, yeah, you can make sociological experiments in terms of like what the preferences are once you're in the gym. Males seem to preference weights and females might preference cardiovascular or the class type setting and that kind of stuff. So I don't think it's an issue of women not wanting to be physical— physically fit. Um, I'd have to look at like, you know, moms versus— a lot of times I'd probably look at, you know, moms versus dads sort of thing.

Um, also let's be, let's be fair, when a guy comes to you, for example, and says, uh, I think I'd like to get my wife involved in this, It's, it's not because wife came to him and said, oh, can I go to the gym with you? I'd like to get in shape. It's, she's just kind of a bystander, so he's trying to pull her along. And when you try to pull anybody along for something like that, they're going to be resistant, especially if she sees it as an insult to her physicality. And what are you saying, I'm fat? Is that why you're trying to get me the gym? Oh geez, here we go. Um, so the guy's buying the 8-ball right there, right away. So it's going to be a little bit more difficult than, uh, yeah, if she did it completely on her own, for sure. Okay, so if you're listening to this and you want to get into good shape regardless of your age, if you're a dad starting over, if you're a dude that's just getting up there in age and you're tired, sick and tired of being sick and tired, give Coach Vance a shout. Check him out at dadstartingover.com/coaching. You can fire him. And do we have— yeah, you can fire him an email from the website or just book time with him right there and get started on a one-on-one program. And it's, it's going to be tailored to your needs. It's not like, oh, you're a dude, here's your prescription. You know, talk to you next month. It's gonna be, what do you, I'm putting words in your mouth. What's your goal here? What are you looking for? What's your experience? What kind of shape are you in? Well, let's, let's take care of the body weight first. Let's take care of the body fat first. Let's take care of your health. Oh, you're on what kind of meds? That's gonna have an impact on what you can and can't do. So it's the, the world of fitness and health, for whatever reason, unfairly is associated with dumb. It's associated with, you know, like being a big muscle-bound Neanderthal type of— there's no intelligence. But meathead, thank you. But the more you dig into it and the more you get in that world, realize what an insanely complex, smart, very interesting world it is, especially the more you get into the advanced, what's the word, kind of hyper-competitive, or for example, you know, like super elite. Yeah, elite. So like, uh, like extreme bodybuilding, for example. It's not healthy. I'm not, I'm not saying everybody should go for this by any means, but the level of science behind what you see when you see those super, super lean, super, super muscular guys, it's insane. The amount of work they go into it, the nutrition, the drugs, all that stuff is— it's at an extremely high level of of education, intelligence to get to that level for sure. So with something as potentially complex as that, especially given your unique scenario, for whoever's listening to this, you need help. It's good luck just saying, I'll figure it out. You probably won't, simply because you'll have 18 different voices coming at you telling you exactly how to do it. My advice to find a good person who knows what they're doing, whatever the, uh, the, the endeavor may be, whatever the specialty may be, we can talk, you know, whether it's health, fitness, or whatever it may be, find somebody, a mentor who knows what the hell they're doing and just say, please help me. Somebody who can take you down different paths depending upon what your situation is. And that would be a perfect guy for that would be Coach Vance here that we have on the team. So. Everybody, please give him a shout. Any, uh, last words of wisdom about the world of working out you want to end on?

Yeah, uh, probably the last thing, um, just real quick is I think one something encouraging is as you age, um, you can still make great progress. Um, we, we have plenty of studies that, that kind of show that Young men and older men, um, take adolescents out of the equation, but young men and older men tend to have the similar rate of progress if they have similar experience. So 40-year-old beginner versus a 20-year-old beginner is going to make not equal, but, but, you know, fairly close progress to each other. So that's very encouraging. This idea that like, oh, you lose everything as you age is not true. Um, I would just say be careful about training load, increase the number of repetitions you do per set, stay in the 12 to 20 range, stay out of the heavy as you can go for 5 if you're an aging, uh, aging adult. And you can make great progress. Um, you don't have to lift huge, huge weights to, to, to be really good at this.

There are some 60, 70, hell, 80-some-year-old men out there that make you go Oh, wow. And because you look at them and their physiques, they're like, Jesus, that's impressive. Why? Because they figured out a formula for them and they figured out a nutrition, a rest, a workout, and they're probably genetically blessed. Let's be honest. Not everybody's, you know, on equal footing here. But yeah, it is possible. So if you're a 50-some-year-old guy and you've never touched a weight, it is not too late by any stretch of the imagination. You could put work in for the next year and look like a completely different human being.

Mm-hmm.

I've seen it. We've all seen it at the gym. Some guy, you're like, Joe, is that you? It's like, yeah, he just finally decided something clicked. He figured out his formula and he probably got help with it. So Coach Vance, thank you so much. Appreciate it, buddy. And everybody check it out, dadstartingover.com/coaching and book time with Coach Vance now. All right, buddy. You have a good one.

Yeah. Thank you.