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Coach D and Coach Trent are back (finally) with a new episode, broadcasting from THE Wichita Falls Athletic Club, the home of Mark Rippetoe and the birthplace of the Starting Strength model. Today they discuss the role of the power clean for the Masters lifter -- should you be doing it? Should you skip it? What's the point anyway?

While the power clean is a very useful tool for the young athlete, especially in power-based sports such as football, hockey, or track and field sports, it's application to real life for the older lifter is less obvious. Basically, the clean is a fairly simple tool for the lifter to train power, which is a derivative of force production (strength). By training for power, a Masters lifter can not only improve his performance in sport, he can also improve and preserve his coordination, speed, and agility. These other physical skills tend to decline drastically with age unless you do something. Sports may not be in the cards for these lifters, so controlled gym movements such as the power clean can be a useful way of addressing these physical skills without the unpredictable nature of doing explosive sports.

Andy Baker, a fellow SSC, co-author of Practical Programming and The Barbell Prescription, has also spoken at length about dynamic effort training -- adapted from Westside's conjugate method -- can be effectively used to increase power using the basic compound lifts.

Baker Barbell Podcast on Dynamic Effort training: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/baker-barbell-podcast/id1607570442?i=1000555789213

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After a several month hiatus, Darin and Trent are back with 40fit Radio!

Coach Darin has said it before, humans like to "complicate to validate." The bigger, faster, more complex, more "science-y," the better! Right? Likewise, the idea that fitness is an intense, all-in pursuit pervades media and popular training programs. Frankly, it's exhausting!

Health and fitness doesn't come easy, and requires hard physical training to obtain and maintain. On the other hand, longevity and sustainability are also part of the game, and demand that you pay attention to your joint and connective tissue health, and spend time pursuing the things that will improve secondary fitness adaptations like balance, mobility, and accuracy. At some level, you also need to have some fun with your training, at least to the point that training is not adding more stress to your life.

Therefore, we preach the path of moderation for your fitness life. We aren't talking about taking the easy road here -- that leads to nowhere! -- but we recognize that training can't always be about chasing numbers and PR's.

We want to hear from you! Send us an email at the address below and tell us about how you've evolved in your training program to achieve moderation in your health and fitness.

Email us: info@40fit.com

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Darin, Trent, and Charity convene for another coaches corner, this time offering some strategies for lowering systemic stress while programming for the intermediate lifter.

The intermediate lifter with some training history on her belt -- we sometimes refer to these lifters as "middle intermediates" -- has a problem when it comes to programming. On one hand, since they are pretty far along the adaptation curve, they need a large amount of stress in the weight room to drive further strength adaptation. On the other hand, too frequent bouts of high intensity (very heavy) sets as well as too frequent bouts of high volume (lots of reps) sets cause become difficult to recover from. These workouts tend to take a few days, if not longer, to recover from, and if done too frequently the lifter may start to experience joint pain. This is doubly true for the master's lifter, who needs to find the sweet spot between just enough stress but not so much that he feels torched for days after a workout.

In this episode, Trent, Darin, and Charity offer a few different models for programming in this phase of training, with the special needs of Master's lifters in mind.

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Coach D and Trent discuss the most important vitamins you should be getting from your diet and supplements.

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Coach D, Trent, and Charity discuss the tendency of strength coaches and athletes to get hung up chasing PR's on the bar, and missing the forest for the trees -- that is, the greater PR's in life such as raising good families, growing mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

You can find Charity on Instagram at: @charity_silverstrength

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It's January, and that means there are millions of people trying to make good on their New Years' Resolutions. For many, this resolution involves losing weight, cutting body fat, and "leaning up." And predictably many resolutioners first instinct is to hit the cardio machines -- treadmills, ellipticals, exercise bikes, etc.

Losing fat, or rather body recomposition as we like to call it, involves more than just losing weight. It also involves gaining muscle mass. Or, for an already trained person, it involves maintaining muscle mass while losing fat mass. Either way, muscle mass -- lean mass -- is the key to the equation.

Cardiovascular training does little to create new muscle mass. For a completely sedentary, untrained individual, jogging around the block likely will build some initial muscle mass, but the results drop off after a few weeks of training. After that, the force production demands of cardio are simply not enough to stimulate growth of new muscle mass. Moreover, certain forms of cardio, in particular long slow distance (LSD) type training, triggers hormonal mechanisms in your body which prevents you from gaining new muscle mass, and may even cause you to lose it. See Dr. Sullivan's exceptional work The Barbell Prescription for details on the AMPK "switch."

So, what is a resolutioner to do? First, you need to strength train, and/or continue strength training. That will ensure that you build and maintain a high level of lean mass, which in turns drives your metabolism up higher. Secondly, you need to eat in a small caloric deficit. You need to eat less calories than you burn. About 10% reduction in calories is usually as much as you need to get this process started -- that's typically only a couple hundred a day, depending on your baseline.

This can be done without doing any cardio at all! Food and lean mass will be the biggest drivers of fat loss in this process.

However, if you begin to stall with your fat loss and you are continuing with your strength training, you may want to add in one to two conditioning workouts each week. Keep these workouts short and intense, as they will give you the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to fat loss. Tabatas on the echo bike, pushing the prowler, sprints on the rower -- these are all great choices for HIIT cardio training.

But don't be fooled... cardio is not a magic bullet for fat loss!

Muscle cells crash course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktv-CaOt6UQ&feature=youtu.be

You can find Charity on Instagram at: @charity_silverstrength

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Coach Charity Hambrick returns to the show to discuss her experience contracting COVID-19 and her slow road to get back into training afterward. Though she contracted COVID back in October 2020, Charity had lingering fatigue and muscle cramps for weeks, and loss of smell that lasted for over three months. Despite the mental blow of losing her training momentum -- she had been setting PR's just prior to getting COVID -- Charity has consistently hit the gym and is regaining her strength levels.

It was easy, though, and required a lot of mental fortitude. The mental game, she says, was the hardest part of restarting her training regime. To get herself into the gym when she really didn't want to, Charity came up with mantras she would say to herself over and over throughout the day. Her favorite is: "I have the power to start this today." During her training, when things felt hard or grindy, she would remind herself "the hard work will pay off."

She also focused on process-oriented goals. Instead of trying to get back to her previous PR levels, or hit a prescribed weight in a certain period of time, she focused on just consistently going to the gym. In other words, she focused on the "doing" of training, rather than outcome of training. This kept her coming back to the gym consistently and building training momentum, as well as confidence for completing a goal.

You can find Charity on Instagram at: @charity_silverstrength

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The last episode of 2020! Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to keeping the conversation about health and fitness going in the New Year.

In today's episode, Coach D and Coach Trent discuss the concept of selecting appropriate volume and intensity for a Masters athlete. These are two of the main programming variables, and all athletes need a blend of intensity (heavy-ness) and volume (how many reps) to drive adaptation in their desired physical skill: strength, conditioning, hypertrophy, etc. And in general, both intensity and volume must go up over time to increase the amount of stress and therefore drive more adaptation.

The Masters athlete must walk a fine line, however, between continually driving stress and chasing PR's and allowing sufficient space in their training for recovery, joint health, and simply "feeling good." This means that, for most athletes, there must be times of the year where PR's are NOT the goal, and other fitness goals take precedent.

Thanks again for tuning in. Happy New Year!

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In the strength community, the typical advice about warmups is to start warming up with the first barbell lift you will be performing. For many people, especially novices, this will be the squat, so the warm-up would consist of a couple sets of five with the empty bar, then a few progressively heavier sets until the lifter is ready for his or her working sets. It's quick, efficient, and, prepares most lifters for the task at hand -- squatting. Masters athletes, however, may find that they need more than the barbell to get warm before their workout.

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Coach D and Coach Trent continue the discussion on sustainable fitness by diving deeper on the topic of joint health. As the saying goes, "motion is lotion," but what kind of motion should we be doing in training, and is there such thing as too much? As with many things, moderation is key, and periods of strength training with heavy loads followed by periods of lighter loads with perhaps more focus on muscle hypertrophy or conditioning is an intelligent way to stay strong, muscular, and fit without sacrificing your joint health in the process.

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Coach Charity Hambrick returns to the podcast for a sort of "coaches' roundtable," an impromptu discussion between three coaches talking shop about training, programming philosophy, and long-term health and fitness. As Coach D reminds us, we're all organisms with a certain trajectory. We're born, we grow and develop, we reach maturity, and not long after, we decline into old age and, eventually, death. As coaches, our goal is to help people maximize their time "between the dash" and live productive, useful lives by helping them build foundational strength, sustainable training and eating habits, and a long-term mindset regarding their fitness and health.

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What if you just don't like exercise? What if you have trouble sticking with anything physically hard? How do overcome these hurdles? Not everyone falls in love with training, and that's OK. You can still enjoy the health and physique benefits of training! Strength coach and accomplished Master's lifter Charity Hambrick talks about some strategies for helping the reluctant trainee integrate training into their life and daily habits.

We have to do many things we don't always enjoy, Charity points out, like going to work, paying taxes, doing yard work. We do these things because we understand that, even though they are unpleasant in the moment, they bring us pleasure or provide some benefit in the future (or at the very least help us avoid negative consequences, like the IRS knocking on your door). We often call these tasks "chores" for a reason.

Fitness is no different. Yes, some people just love to train, and derive a lot of pleasure from the process. But if you're not one of those people, you may not realize that just because sometimes loves training, they don't ALWAYS love training in the moment. Serious athletes are human, too, and have plenty of days they wake up and don't want to. The difference is they have integrated their training schedules tightly into their daily routine, so there are few barriers to doing it anyway, even when they don't feel like it.

One of Charity's goals as a coach is to help trainees weave training into their life in a harmonious way. Training should be something that adds to their life, not distracts. To that end, not everyone needs to be a serious athlete and push their training program to the maximum -- it's perfectly fine to run a modest linear progression, then develop a schedule that gets them lifting, conditioning, and doing fun physical activity regularly. The key is making training part of the daily routine.

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Coach D and Coach Trent discuss the importance of training with a long-term mindset and an eye on sustainability -- training smart now so you that you can keep training for years!

Trent analogizes fitness with cars. If you let a car sit for months, or years, then it starts to deteriorate. A car must run regularly to be healthy. On the other hand, if everywhere you go, you slam on the accelerator and run the RPM's into the red, then slam on the brakes every time you need to stop... well, then your car is going to prematurely break down. The human body is similar. You must train and use your body to be healthy and able, but you can overdo it and damage your connective tissue too.

As always, there is a middle way, in fitness as in life!

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In Part 2 of our interview with Dr. Clearfield, he explains how he "helps the body heal itself" using treatments such as proliferative therapy, joint manipulation, platelet-rich plasma injections, and traditional physical therapy and exercise. Dr. Clearfield also discusses his process for analyzing and diagnosing a new patient.

You can find out more about Dr. Clearfield and his practice here:

• https://www.motionismedicinedfw.com
• IG: @motionismedicinesportsmed

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As we've said many times, training for strength improves tissue quality, flexibility, and joint health, especially for Masters lifters who have accumulated some bumps and bruises along the road of life. However, some Masters trainees find that even after they have acquired a solid baseline level of strength, they have lingering issues such as tendonitis/tendonopathy, arthritis, or limited range of motion that cannot be resolved by strength training alone. Enter Dr. Clearfield, DO, board-certified sports medicine physician, and practitioner of regenerative medicine.

The aim of regenerative medicine is to improve tissue health and function using a variety of methods, ranging from traditional osteopathic joint manipulation (a unique feature of DO medical education) to cutting edge stem cell therapies. Dr. Clearfield works with patients to address problems that have proven difficult to solve by typical medical interventions. As he says, he aims to "find health within the body" and use his range of treatments to encourage the body to heal itself, as opposed to stop-gap solutions like steroid injections or more invasive options like orthopedic surgery.

You can find out more about Dr. Clearfield and his practice here:

• https://www.motionismedicinedfw.com
• IG: @motionismedicinesportsmed

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Want to change your body, change your health, change the way you eat and train? It all starts with the habits you cultivate, and your daily routine. Many folks start a fitness program because they have been driven to change. Something has pushed them over the edge -- the way they look, the way they feel, a negative prognosis -- and they want to make a change now. The problem is, motivation only lasts so long. Real change occurs slowly, over time, and the thing which ensures someone will make long-lasting change, and achieve their goals, is the daily routine.

There are two essential elements to developing positive new habits. First, you need a basic understanding of the thing you are trying to change. Do you want to get more fit? Then you need to understand the 10 general physical skills, and how those are acquired. Strength is the foundation of all physical skills, so you need to follow a program which will make you strong. Do you want to lose body fat? Then you need to understand the basic macronutrients and how the body partitions each of them depending on your activity level, the amount of lean muscle mass you carry, and your caloric intake.

In short, you don't need to be an expert, but you need to understand the fundamentals of health and fitness in order to make logical changes to your habits. A little science goes a long way!

Now, you need to act on that understanding. Integrate exercise and good nutrition program into your daily routine. Train 3-4x per week in a lifting program. Eat an appropriate amount of protein every day. Start small! One change at a time. Start by just attending all of your workouts. Even if you feel terrible and need to take some weight off the bar because you have a cold, show up and do the workout. Once you have hit all your workouts over a month long period, then you can start thinking about making the next small change. If you did that for a year, then you would have twelve new positive habits ingrained in your daily routine. Most people try to change twelve things on day one, however, and they burn out by month two or three, if not sooner.

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Consistency is the key to progress in fitness and nutrition, and that often means doing the same thing workout to workout (ensuring you have a logical progression built into your training program) for long periods of time. Fitness is a marathon, not a sprint, after all. But sometimes the slow, steady nature of training creates the possibility for creep -- for trainees, technique or "form creep," and for coaches, coaching creep, or simply losing perspective on the goals and programming for the trainee.

So, how do avoid creep in your training? Get a coach, if you don't  have one, even if it's just a one-time session every few months. For those who have a coach, or have been coached in the past, seek out new perspectives from time to time. Coach Darin and Trent often share their experiences in the gym with other coaches, and reach out to their colleagues for help when they struggle. Interacting with other lifters and athletes in the community is not only useful for sharing solutions to training problems, it's fun and helps you to feel connected to a bigger purpose.

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Coach D delivers an overview of total joint replacements, their effectiveness, their limitations, and the considerations for training before and after surgery.

Modern medicine has developed artificial joints which can replace damaged or worn out joints in the human body, often with great results. As new materials have been introduced to the protheses, artificial joints have become lighter, more durable, more functional with greater range of motion, and longer lasting. However, they do have a shelf life, and the biological interface of organic human tissue with the replacement eventually fails. Therefore trainees should consider a number of factors before deciding to undergo joint replacement, including whether they are a good candidate for joint replacement (based on their symptoms and current level of strength and fitness), their health and fitness goals, the expected lifespan of the replacement and whether they can or want to undergo a second surgery to replace the artificial joint at the end of its lifespan, etc.

Darin shares some of his 30 years of clinical experience with hip, knee, and shoulder replacements in how to navigate these factors, and what to do after you have decided to undergo joint replacement.

Training and the Artificial Joint by John Petrizzo, DPT

https://startingstrength.com/article/training-and-the-artificial-joint

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In another 40fit athlete profile, Fort Worth Strength member Brad Lamar joins the show to talk about his amazing journey of losing 50lbs and nearly 10in off his waist while getting stronger and leaner than he's ever been.

Brad is a 49-year old IT professional in the healthcare industry who began training with a history of inactivity and back pain. At 5' 11" and 285lbs he was significantly obese. However, he began a novice linear progression with the barbell, lifting 3x per week with the big lifts: squat, press, bench press, and deadlift. As he gained strength, his metabolism increased, and with careful attention to his diet, he began to lose body fat while gaining lots of muscle mass.

After a year of training, Brad had dropped from 285lbs down to 235lbs, and from a 53in to a 44in waist. During that period he halved his body fat percentage as well, from 40% to 20%. Now here's the interesting part. In his second year of training, Brad gained a little weight, up to 240, but his waist remained stable, increasing just one inch to 45in. His body fat percentage continued to drop however, down to 17% by the end of the year. Not surprisingly, he hit all time PR's as well, squatting in the high 200's, deadlifting in the mid 300's, benching 270lbs, and pressing 160lbs.

Like Clif, who we interviewed last week, the key to Brad's success is hidden in his consistency. He rarely misses workouts, and he eats the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day. He tracks his food every so often to ensure his macros are staying on target, but by being consistent in his breakfast and lunch habits he has freedom to eat out at a restaurant or participate in his family's pizza Friday (now a family tradition), in which they prepare and bake their own gourmet pizza at home.

It didn't always come easy, however. On two separate occasions, Brad's back pain flared up in a big way, causing severe sciatic nerve pain that made him unable to sit for more than a few minutes at a time. Sleep was challenging as well, as the pain often woke him up in the middle of the night. Brad continued to train, however, while seeking medical advice and an MRI of his back. His surgeon gave him an epidural to relieve a bulging disc in the L4-L5 region, which was pressing on the nerve root. The procedure was successful, and within 6 weeks his pain symptoms resolved and he was able to resume normal barbell training again.

Like Clif, Brad moderates his squat frequency and intensity, back squatting heavy once per week and performing a lighter squat variation on another day (lately a front squat). He also leg presses in the middle of the week to get additional leg work without the added compression force on his lumbar spine that a low bar back squat would provide.

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