Over 50? This Is the Lie That’s Keeping You Weak, Tired, and Broken

Congratulations, Juva's found the number one over 50 health and wellness podcast on the planet. Hello and welcome to the Over 50 Health and Wellness Show. I'm your host, Kevin English. I'm a healthy aging expert in the founder of the Silver Edge and I am on a mission to help men and women just like you build lean, strong, healthy, amazing, capable bodies they love for the rest of their lives. Alright folks, I want to know who told you that getting older means weaker, slower and more broken? Because I think somewhere along the way a whole lot of us people over 50 bought into this idea that aches and pains and low energy and losing strength are just part of the deal. But what if that's not aging? What if that's just inactivity? And what if the real problem isn't your age? It's how you've been taught to train or not train your body. So today's guest is here to flip this entire narrative on its head. Today I sit down with Heath Jones. Heath is an exercise scientist, he's a former army medic, he's the founder of active and ageless gems, a fitness company dedicated to helping people over 50 rebuild strength, energy and confident. And here's the wild part. After a whole bunch of back injuries and surgeries, Heath was told to slow down. Instead, he doubled down. We're talking like marathons and ultramarathons and big waves surfing and boxing, you name it. And now he's helping everyday men and women over 50 do the same thing, which is take back control of their bodies and start living strong again. So into this episode, we're going to dive into why most people over 50 feel quote unquote old and how you can fix that. The truth about strength training, mobility and staying pain free and why discipline, not motivation is really the key to long term results. So if you've ever felt like your body is working against you or maybe your best days are behind you, this episode's going to hit you. So whip up your protein smoothies and let's meet Heath. I was a registered nurse for many years working in emergency, working in various departments within the hospital. I was then in the military for four years. I was around that time. I became a trainer and I was probably also around that time. I realized that I probably had a bit of a passion for training mature adults and not just training for you know, beached muscles and aesthetics and kind of training for longevity or just overall health and wellness. So yeah, I probably after the military was on the oil, ribs, oil and gas platforms for many years, eight to ten years. And I still have even before starting in that industry, I had the dream to start a gym for over 50s. You'd get a gym and show you, you know, probably part of your journey. You're saying a lot of people that were we're at gyms that were for, I'm going to say younger people, but just that open gyms and you know, people who looked a little bit intimidated, probably doing the wrong exercises. And you know, I suppose I started realizing that you don't want to help these people. And from the business side of things, I realized there was probably a demand for that as well. So, you know, when I eventually got out of the oil and gas and in hospital industries and that, I probably, you know, I put it all in my first gym. So there was that side of things that also my own journey as well. I have had quite a few, not so much health complications, but muskish, little complications, multiple back injuries or multiple back surgeries from injuries are sustained in the military. And you know, I probably, there was a period of time in my life where I was quite inactive because of back pain, back surgery, being told to, you know, not really do a lot. But enough to kind of, you know, exacerbate the injuries. And you know, I thought that was the right thing to do for many years. And I kind of believed that I was aged beyond my years. So I could probably, you know, probably just say relate to people that were older than me, purely because of my injuries. And you know, I could probably feel their pain. They could feel my pain kind of things. So yeah, and then when I started to come out of that slump, that physical slump and realizing that being inactive and protecting my back, but I was told by so many people, that's the right thing to do. And when I started coming out and realizing that the best thing to actually do is to move your body, you know, to move it appropriately. Yeah. To move, you know, according to whatever conditions you may have, that's when I started realizing that there was plenty of other people out there in a similar position to me. That were probably a little bit older than, you know, they actually just needed to move their body, move it the right way, move it with, you know, to have a special trainer that could show them what to do. And then the kind of orders come together, I suppose, and you know, with my background in the medical field, but also my own personal journey. And yeah, about six years ago, I opened my first GM active in Agilist and it's been a journey since then. We've got a couple now. And yeah, still love them what I do. Divin Agilist. All right. I love it. But before we go any further, folks can probably tell you got an accent there. Tell us where you are, where you located the world, how many locations do you have at this point with your active in Agilist gyms? Yeah. I mean Sydney, Australia grew up on the Gold Coast, which is about an hour flight north of here. So moved down to the big smoke Sydney a few years ago now, 20 years ago. So Sydney is still the biggest city in Australia. I live in Bondo Beach. I'm about 300 meters from the beach, which the synagogues podcast has done. I'll throw myself in the ocean because it's nice and hot here today. So yeah, first year in open in 2020, right at the start of COVID. So it was extremely challenging. We went through two shutdowns and then we opened our second gym coming up the two years ago soon, which is in Canada, also in Sydney. And yeah, we're doing a joint venture at the moment. The nursing home group for specifically kind of a really low impact exercise is out back in the home state of Queensland. And yeah, just assigned at least this week for another location here in Sydney a little bit further south. So yeah, doing another one, same concept. We're a group fitness. So hopefully it's not as hard to set up as the first and second location. You know, the same programs, the same offerings, same time table. But yeah, that's where we're out now. So busy, busy moments. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds really exciting. I love that concept. And I'm not going to lie to you. I have thought about that many, many times. I'm, man, I'd love to open a gym. That's it would be the silver age gym and it would be for 50 and over. And you know, I, maybe I would franchise it. But man, that's, there's a lot that goes into a physical gym. I've worked in actual gyms. I've, I've seen the operations there. I know the capital layout for not just the space, but the equipment. Of course, then you got bringing in trainers, all that stuff. So that's a pretty big, that's off to you, man, because that's a really big commitment. And I love that you are, that that is your niche, right? That, that 50 and over. Yeah. Well, all right. So I think it's just kind of interesting here. Before we go any further, you and I were talking before we hit record here. One of the interesting things about this podcast is our number one city, almost for since the beginning of this podcast is actually Sydney, Australia. That's our number one listening city. Our number one country is far away, US. That's where I'm based. But yeah, something about you, Ossies out there, especially on the East Coast, because it's Sydney, Melbourne. And I think Brisbane is usually in the top 10 cities, listening cities as well. So the only non-US cities in the top 20, maybe even the top 20 are going to be you, UOCs over there. So yeah, love it. All right, man. Well, I want to pull this apart a little bit. You had talked about, hey, part of my concept here is I enjoy training people, but maybe I want to transition from, I think what did you say, the training young dudes for beach muscles and more. How did we train for being badass grandparents as opposed to that? And I think you're exactly right. Can you talk about just that gym intimidation, overcoming gym intimidation? Because as I work exclusively with people 50, 60s and 70s, and it's tough sometimes to get them to go to a gym. And I get it. You go into a commercial gym. I don't know if it's probably that's pretty similar there, but here there's probably going to be bad music, blaring. There's probably going to be children basically as the personal trainers there and they're shredded. They're probably wearing skimpy clothes and people, you know, the big dudes are over there grunting and grinding away with the barbells. And the whole thing could be really intimidating, can it? So when somebody comes into your facility as you, as you're thinking through, okay, I want to make this a place where this demographic is comfortable. How did you kind of change that environment? How did you change that vibe? We'll be back after a quick break. Hey there, Coach Kevin here. If you are over 50, frustrated and you feel like nothing is working anymore, I want to let you know that I offer free, silver edge clarity calls where we map out exactly what you should do next. The link is in the show notes if you're interested in learning more. Okay, let's get back to today's episode. Yes, but it's right from when they first come in the door, we are even the first conversation on the phone, which is usually how we first speak to people. Some people come straight in whether they're referred or they're a walk in, but yes, but it's right from the start. You know, it's more of a personal approach. I mean, you've seen big box jimms before where you just become a number and I never wanted to have a business and never wanted to have a gym where people were just a number. They are whoever they are, they're Margaret, they're Dennis, whoever, you know, and they come with the personal and history, they're experienced. Sometimes they're medical complications, they're golfers, what they want to do. They want to just live a more fulfilled, awesome life. They want to be able to pick up their grandchords. And they want to still go on high-starvesies and be able to lift up heavy backpacks. Whatever they want to do, they want to reduce some of their medications that they're on. So instead of just, I think-- I don't think there's anything wrong with this, but the vast majority of people that are at the big box streams there, because they just want to look better. And they said, there's nothing wrong with that. But our people-- they still want to look good. I want to look at the best they can. But they're trying to do functionality. They're trying to do quality of life. They're trying to not only lifespan, they're trying to do health spend. So the years that you will live in absence of significant disease or nothing able to do a lot physically. So I think, for a way, that it's a help out with that provider of vehicle for these people to do that. A lot of the exercises that we have in our classes are very practical exercise. They're very over-court and transferable exercise. One of them is literally mimicking picking up a small child or lifting suitcases or, you know, conveyor belt of the air. Well, things like that. During this type of training, we'll obviously-- you'll lose weight. You'll improve your posture. And all those good things. But we're really focusing on training the individual for what they need at the age and stage of life. Yeah. Yeah. I love that more functional type of strength, right? There's nothing, like you said, nothing wrong with aesthetics. If you want to lose a little fat, build a little muscle, good with going to the beach, whatever. But I think at this stage of our life, yeah, the idea is to be strong and independent, rolling into your 70s into your 80s. If you're blessed enough to live into your 90s and to stave off that, you know, the last 20 years of your life as being, you know, dependent on somebody else. Yeah, I love that. Well, let me ask you this. I'd love to hear what your programming philosophy you had mentioned earlier. You do this as kind of-- is everything grouped? You have free gym. Are you a strength guy, a cardio guy, a conditioning guy? What does it look like for folks that come in and want to work out? Yeah. So we've based-- the way I set up our time table was loosely based on ACSM, which we might know, the American College of Sports Medicine, where it is in all group classes. So we do strength classes, three days a week, conditioning classes, a couple of days a week. We do-- we offer flexibility classes. I'm several of those a week. But in terms of it, in the actual class, I'd like to-- once again, because they're not training just for aesthetics, we're not-- you know, meaning looking at certain way, we-- I try to cover off on the whole body in one day. So push pool, other body, lower body, core with the conditioning class, with a little bit more, which is, say, creative in there, a bit of proprioception, bit of agility, of balance, reflexes, and stuff like that while still getting the heart rate up. So-- and then we have a flexibility class, which is-- it's a yoga-based class. We use a lot more equipment than a yoga class. We're like your sticks and straps and a few other things in there, selling phone rolls and stuff. So yeah, most people wouldn't train with us. Probably three days a week. You know, as you recommend doing-- say, if you're doing three or four days a week, I would say, you know, do two strength, maybe one conditioning, one flexibility class, kind of thing, just to get a nice balanced approach to training throughout the week. So yeah, just try to work really hard when I do the programming, just to balance the classes. And as you know, if you're going train for hypertrophy, for the listens at the hypertrophy, it's just building muscle as in one particular part of the body. You might go and do, say, a chest session one day, which is what a lot of people would do, but you won't be able to train that part of your body again for sometimes a good food as or afterwards. Or to the full extent, anyway, because you're quite sore and you've got that muscle soreness, whereas our class is done in a way that you can pretty much train most days. Because you're working the body globally or all over the body. Yes, you might be sore in some parts. We're not going to-- so we'll just say a focused-- you're not going to have that focused soreness in one particular part of the body. You can't train for a few days. Yeah, and I just try not only training body parts, as in training muscles, I try to train the movement. So the movement is not muscles? Yeah, I love it. Yeah, so that's-- you would have heard that, too. You could have trained the movement, not the muscles. So training movement, like I said, it's a very functional meeting instead of, say, tiring and bystanders. For example, we'll do something, we'll do a squat, we're the bystander, and then maybe a press. So there's multiple movements. If you break that down, that's entire move, which-- that's practical, that's functional. They kind of move you might use in normal everyday life, or you're picking up a pot plant from a garden bed, and you're putting it on the shelf or whatever. Or once again, picking up a small child and playing with them or whatever. So instead of just doing that, I perjure if you type of training where you're as well, because the one muscle group to get that really big. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. So I am a huge fan of basically exactly what you're talking about. Three days a week of professionally designed age-appropriate, functional strength training. And then a couple days a week, that's going to be more for your cardio. I think one of the things that this age demographic misses the most is-- it sounds like you guys have this programmed in, but that flexibility and mobility imbalance, right? Because those things start to go. And it's not going necessarily, especially in 50/60s. Maybe you have a case in '70s and '80s, but you're not losing your mobility, your flexibility, your strength, your balance, because you're getting old so much as you are, because you just don't use it, right? And so getting into the gym, starting to move a little bit. Absolutely love it. All right, well, I've got the million dollar question for you here. Should men and women over 50 do the dreaded deadlift? Yes. Thank you. All right, I was going to say we're going to have to cut this thing short if you said no. But all right, go-- why? Because you see that all the time, right? You said, for whatever you do, people over 50 don't deadlift or maybe it's water, bench press, whatever, right? Yeah, explain. Why would you say yes? Deadlift or a hip-hinging move is one of the most functional movements the human body can do. Thank you. Yes. There's a few exercise that the hip-hinge or the deadlift being one where I say it's kind of like a nose-stoned, left unturned. Women do the move. You do it properly. You're doing your lower body, lower back here, your glutes, your upper back here, back here, your deltoids core. So we target a lot of muscles. And one thing, too, is when people with a lot of people do deadlifts, like the other day, I had a couple of ladies doing-- we were doing dumbbell deadlifts. And I think my done had two, four kilogram dumbbells. And I go, how does that feel for you? I was saying, oh, yeah, it's easy. You can, like, boom. I think I've doubled the weight. And I was like, look, don't look at the number on there. If you can, you know, with good technique, I'll take the matty hands and she was doing them really well. And I'm not-- I've given you six kilograms. And even though that is in pounds, six kilograms is about 10 pounds. 10 pounds, maybe. 15 pounds, maybe. Yeah, these are literally less than doubled. But anyway, I'll put the weights in her hand. And let's hold it up. I've actually lied to her. So there's six kilograms. She said, wow, no, I actually have a look down there. Nothing I'm putting two, eights in her hand. And I think that's one exercise, because we use them such big prime moving muscles, their hands, your hands, your glutes, their cords, or other back, you can lift a lot heavier, generally the more you think. There's some time it's you should cut off and there's their mind is because inhibiting factor. You're doing an exercise like that well. And you're doing with good technique. You can challenge yourself. And it's a very-- it's an metabolic exercise, but you're moving such big muscles. There's so many other benefits to doing those. Compound lifts, compound lifts, many-- we're using multiple joints, multiple muscles, multiple different groups of muscles, all of that one move. So dead lifts a million percent. They need to be done. They need to be done for the functionality of them as well. Because we're serving active with our glutes. Their glutes are our biggest muscle. It should be our biggest muscle in the body. But because we're doing what we're doing right now, it's all from throughout the day. We're sitting on our butt. We're not using the glutes. And if they're not working, then we're doing-- if we're picking up something off the ground, a lot of times they're using lower back muscles, which are spindly little muscles. They know we're near the size of the glutes. And then they blow out my back injuries. And because the glutes have to deactivate, they're not doing their job. So they need to be trained. And they need to be trained quite heavy, too. Yeah. I think there is nothing more functional than bending down and lifting something off the ground. You had mentioned, I think, getting your suitcase or lifting up your grand kid, that I would submit that you don't want to forfeit that basic functional movement lightly. So it drives me nuts when I see that. I think it's getting better. But once part of time, there was a list of top five things exercises. People over 50 shouldn't do it. Every time I read that, it's like, ah, 61, right to be 62. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, stop that. Yeah. I also think you talked about, hey, the. this posterior chain, those big hamstrings and glute muscles. When we talk about the reasons why a lot of people would avoid dead lifts is probably going, "Well, I've got a tweaky back or sore back. I would submit also that a strong back is a much healthier back than a weak back. You are much less likely to get injured with a strong back than you are with a weak back. One of the things, I say, I'm sure you see this all the time as well, is we'll have clients come in, not injured, but with achy something named the joint, right? And lo and behold, two, three months into a well-structured strength training program to go, "Wow, my back feels fabulous. Is that it? It felt this good in a decade." You're like, "Yeah." "No, it's the time for you to have any time to think that when you know, you're a person that walks in and they've never either never done any exercise in their life or they haven't for decades." I come in here, "I want to do some exercise, I want to get fit, I want to get strong, I want to get more mobile." But I probably shouldn't do too much because my knees hurt, my back hurts, my shoulders hurt, I'm basically a mess. Have you had, it was probably a little bit of an internal joke, but I have, I have you have you been in the car crash or like a football tackle or have you had a fall from high? I mean, 97 times the answer is definitive no. Right. So, just look, this just trust the process, if you've got no major trauma on a muscle hospital either system, there's a very good chance just that as muscles aren't doing a work, so we get all those extra stress on the joints. You guys have extra stress on the joints from not having the motor control or the muscle control or be able to do those moves. You're going to have pain and you know, and you have seen it so many times before, exactly what you said is probably a smart, new sign that I remember in one particular lady, it wasn't all that long ago. She goes, "Oh, hey, you thought, you know, it's three months into it. I don't feel any more knees, I'm like, I told you, it's at the start, you believe me." You know, I get it, it's your own body, you're freaking out and you actually think you're a lot more broken than what you want and it's purely because you just see a muscle sound doing their job. Yeah, yeah, it's like one of my favorite sayings is Mark Repetosa says, "Strong people are harder to kill." So, getting strong is always preferable to being weak, right? Especially as we're aging. And I think there's also, you know, there's this medical term, sarcopenia, which is age, you know, defined as age-related muscle loss. I hate that term because, you know, they'll say, "Well, after the age 30, we lose 1% of muscle every year or whatever the statistic is, right?" And look, you know, aging is undefeated, it has a 100% track record of being, you know, the end is the same for all of us, but I would humbly submit that, again, specifically talking to my 50, 60, even my 70-year-olds, you're losing muscle at that stage of your life through inactivity, not because you're old. So there are some really good science now showing people in their 70s, 80s, even 90s that are building muscle with correct nutrition and, you know, programming that meets them where they are. Yeah, never too late. I don't want anybody buying into that. It's all downhill from here, kind of philosophy. Certainly, I know in my, I think I was in my mid-40s, as I looked around at my peer group at the time, I was very, very unhealthy. That was the prevailing attitude. Everybody, you know, all my friends were, you know, they drank some of them smoked, well, they all had beer bellies. And it was kind of, everybody had aches and pains and it was just kind of that. It's just this is how it is, that fatalistic attitude. And somewhere, you know, in my late 40s, I had a little health scare and that's why I'm here doing what I do today. But I'm here to tell you that it's night and day different. I'm, like I said, I'm 61, almost 62 and I feel as healthy and fit and strong and vibrant and purpose driven as I have ever in my life. And I want to share that, right? I'm sure you get that, you get that vibe. Well, I think, right, and that's one of the reasons why you do what you do as well. Because you're going to spawn all those to do that. Yeah. Yeah. That's my mission, man. Yeah. Let's go. All right. So I want to talk about the role of just some other lifestyle factor. So we got people coming into your gym. They're like, hey, they maybe they haven't worked out before. Maybe it's been quite some time, even decades since they touched any weights. You got them doing some workouts. Are you talking to these people about nutrition? Because that's kind of one of the other key tenants. If we're going to improve our health, change our body composition, lose a little fat, build a little muscle, all that fun stuff. Do you guys best with nutrition? Do you give advice? What's your philosophy there? We can do. We're not qualified nutritionists. We sometimes refer out. We work closely with some dietitians. But I mean, we do challenges. And within those challenges, we have booklets that are written by the dietitian that we've worked with over the years. I always do. I mean, I'm really big on nutrition myself. I think nutrition can be pretty individualized with what people should take. Should we should eat? I mean, personally, I eat pretty clean, pretty lean. I try to have a low inflammatory diet, feeling as if all the injuries are bad over the years. It works for me. Yeah. And I suppose I do teach my members that, you know, if you can kind of, quite a lot of them, we do eat the SAD diet, which would borrow it from you. I was over there for the viewers that haven't heard of the sad diet, which is this standard American diet, or we've coined it nowadays, the standard Australian diet, which is the high carbohydrate or high processed carbohydrate diet. We know that there's certain kind of concerts or even the high Gio rice or breads and pastas. The SAE can cause quite a bit of inflammation in the body, which can contribute to pain. So I suppose I'm a big proponent of having an adequate amount of protein. I think they say a lot of people either don't get enough protein, or if they do, they're getting it from sources, which is not the best source that they might get it from a hamburger, as opposed to having a nice piece of salmon or even a steak. So yeah, I think protein is extremely important. If you want to prevent, like you talked about before, sargapenium, which is muscle decline that can be associated with aging, as opposed to what you said during your initial term, which you said kind of makes you cringe a little, and it's true, it's related muscle decline. It can be associated because we've seen it, you and I both have seen that people have been able to maintain their muscle mass, but it's really important that they're eating accordingly, because you can't train your way about diet. So you can exercise all you want, but if you're not eating adequately, if you're not eating the right amount of protein, then you're not getting all your macros, especially with healthy fruits and vegetables, you're going to struggle to achieve any health goals really. So yeah, probably that's kind of what I'm a big proponent of, and I do give that so I'll pass that advice on to my members, because I think it's really important. And you know, the thing is, too, I think a few years back, a lot of unhealthy food is made tastier, so that's why the big companies of the world, big food manufacturing companies have to sign these kind of foods, because they do taste good, and they get people hooked. But if you eat well, you eat really good produce, really good fruit vegetables, good meats, I think it tastes amazing. Yeah, that's pretty delicious too, isn't it? Yeah, our food system shouldn't plan throughout the week. I like last night's, here was my wife fish night, everyone's shoes don't know it's summer night, Monday night's steak night. I have my meals planned out, I don't expect everyone to do that, but I do it for simplicity. And I know that I pretty much eat the same every night, and I have done for a good few years now. I need to decide what I'm going to eat for the night, some people say to me, don't you get bored? Absolutely not, I can't wait for shoes day and hour, it's going to have my salmon, and I love it, I do it every weekend as it's good, as healthy. I love that idea of having, I hadn't thought about that, but having, you know, Monday night's my steak night, Tuesday night's my salmon night, maybe it's taco night the next, whatever, but having those set meals, yeah, that appeals to me, I have to give that some thought. But I'm definitely tracking with you on the whole nutrition thing, right? Because it is highly individual, right? We're all bio individuals and what is optimal for me may or may not be optimal for you, but there are some table stakes that being, hey, you should have some good, clean protein sources and you should eat mostly whole foods. And look, there are PhD chemists that are hired by these big food companies to make this ultra palatable, crazy, delicious food. They get focused groups to study the exact amount of crunch and texture and sweetness and salty and fat just to hit this what they call the industry calls that the bliss point. So there are these foods are engineered to cause you to overeat their calorie dense and their nutrient sparse. Just really bad, bad news. I don't know if you realize this, but over here in the US, we've just recently got a new food pyramid where the primary, yeah, the primary gist of the whole thing is eat real food. And from there, there's other things, but that is a bold statement because for the longest time, at least for us, our policy has been, I don't say dictated, that's a little harsh, but certainly heavily influenced by big food, big egg, big pharma. And now when we have our health secretary saying, something like eat real food. Well, that's a slap in the face to Kellogg and to craft and to nestle into these giant companies. They don't want us to eat real food. And certainly, the pharma companies aren't interested in us eating real food, but it's best thing for us, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think I did a happy dance on that count. It was probably 10, 20 years too late. Yeah. Yeah. When I was looking at it, it was like, yeah, this new food pyramid is good. It's what we need. It's what, you know, I'll probably eat and accord into that. The new pyramid for a very good few years now. I mean, I'm 40. It's about 748 in, in basically a month. And now I train, I mean, I still train very hard. I train with studio, I still sort of crazy fitness challenges. And, you know, I believe I have my diet, diet pretty well, dialed in. Man, I feel as good as, I feel better in some ways than when I was in the military 15 years ago. Obviously, extremely fit when I was in the army, but it was always broken. And, you know, I probably consume as much beer and pizza on the weekends to cut a can of the fitness you did during the week. But not only was it, you know, when we trained back then, we were trained, you know, twice a day, you know, every day really. And you never gave your body time to recover and rest. Whereas, now, I take recovery is important and nutrition is important as the exercise component. So, yeah. So it's just if you want, you know, I suppose the optimal health at any age, you really need to understand your food. And this is the same with the exercise component as well. I say to people, you know, all well and good, you come to ask with the experts in an exercise. But there's the most important person in the world should always be yourself. So you need to learn about what, you know, what exercise should we do and what shouldn't do on your recovery, what shouldn't do in nutrition. Once you get that dialed in, it's a journey. And I actually really, you know, encourage people to learn about what foods work best for them. You know, some people, certain foods don't agree with them for whatever reason. But when you start to dial that in, this is what I, why I have my weekly programs set out with food because of just those foods work, those foods work, I feel good. I have energy and I recover well too. So yeah, foods, foods great, foods fun and I love it. Yeah. Likewise. And I'm with you because you're right. When you get all the lifestyle pieces, dialed in, you'd mention your recovery, your nutrition. Certainly I would throw sleep in that. I think you would agree with that at the workouts. Man, it's, it's like you're almost unstoppable, right? That you'd mention, hey, I feel strong fit and capable as I ever have in my life, including, you know, back when I was in my younger man, on the day. So that's, that's incredible, right? So I'm with you. I, I work out in a gym, just strength training three days a week. I do three days a week of jujitsu. So I go pretty hard with the guys there and I look up and far away the old dude in my gym and the jujitsu gym. I occasionally serve a place in pickleball, but I love being able to be capable and fit and active and be able to do stuff. And it is the only reason I can do that is because I have dialed in like you said, the nutrition and the managing my stress and the recovery and taking that seriously, dialing in my sleep and all the healthy things, right? It's, it's not rocket science. It's just setting up my life in a way that allows me to have this optimal health and do the things I love to do, which brings me the next thing I want to talk about because obviously not everybody feels the way you and I do about fitness and nutrition, right? And it can be really tough and we see this classically. And I'm sure you as a gym owner must see this. You have this onslaught of people. I'm assuming you guys have celebrated New Year the way we do, but we have all these New Year's Resolutioners coming in. You know, we offer virtual programs. We have, we usually have a pretty big bunch of new people coming in. What do you have to say about mindset and motivation? Because it seems to me that motivation is high when you start anything, but that's kind of at best your fickle friend. It's not going to stick around for long, right? You're not going to be motivated per say for six months or six years. How do you handle that with clients when it comes to making that transition from, hey, I'm motivated. I want to lose a few pounds to, hey, this is my lifestyle. I've changed my identity. This is who I am now. Any thoughts on that? My dad has a tough one. It is very hard to motivate someone else. We can perform resources, the education, sometimes the scare tactics, but I think motivation has to come from within. So, you know, I was, it was once again, so I would refer back to myself, but I have a wide, why do I do this? And I tell other people, when we do our goal setting sessions with people that time, I would say you're going to have a wide whether that she want to, you know, still continue to travel back to the only land of Italy until you're, you know, until you're into your 80s and 90s or you want to see your grandchildren graduate or you simply want to reduce your medication. You've got to have a wide. So, there's going to be days and you and I go through this. There's some days you wake up and it's cold or it's hot. It didn't sleep well or whatever it may be and you just don't want to really exercise that next day. And suppose to me, I kind of, you know, that's when I've got to think about, you know, what's my why? My why is is, you know, I just want to be as fit as I can at any age or I want to be, you know, and I want to be in this race to other people to do the same. So, I think that helps me get motivated. Sometimes I also say to people, you know, because sometimes exercise is hard. We don't need to always train at 100% intensity, 100% the time. So, I think some people think that, you know, if you're going to get on exercises, it's always going to be showing the house and you haven't slept well, you're not feeling 100% or whatever, you know, you shouldn't really do something. I think there's always something you can do. You know, go through a walk, remember, a couple of weeks, that an operation on my eye and you know, for a week or so after was, you know, third bit lousy, it wasn't sleeping that well. So, you know, I did a lot of walking in that week. Yes, it wasn't high intensity, it wasn't high impact. It got me outdoors. It was, you know, it was very hard at the time. It was beautiful weather. So, I still got to get out there and did something. But, yeah, and I just, I think, I think that we can make it, I mean, human beings, human brain is designed to find reasons where we shouldn't do something. And, you know, exercise is, people, I thought I'd often do one of those things, I want you to know why you don't want to train today. But, you know, ask you a question, okay, have you ever regretted your workout? No, never. Yeah. Now, I've, there's been times when I've kind of just not been feeling it, walking into the gym, but I have never left the gym, regretting a workout. I mean, you know, I was excited to be able to, you know, before you're trying is, so if you're trying to first thing the morning, I don't think there's, it's been ever telling me my life, it's kind of been the morning, yeah, I'm going exercise now. That's, you know, thousands of sessions of dining my life. You know, I think there's ever been a time that I've done that. However, I get out, I go through the motions that usually have my, my exercise kit there, set up my shoes, my, you know, my shoes, my shirt, whatever, water bottle, good to go. Don't think you'd be able to get up, put it on. If you think about it too much, your room and air, you can quite easily come up with, you know, a list of excuses is to why you shouldn't train that day. But as soon as you start training, the endorphins start kicking in, you're like, hey, this is not so bad after all. You finish your session like I am so thankful and proud myself that I did that session because now I feel amazing. So I think we've regular exercising. You do, you have that foresight that once you finish your session, you're going to feel amazing. But it does take, you know, a lot of time and conditioning to get to that point that once again, you and me, but you know, both know I've been doing it for a long time now that's weak and wake up. Not feel 100%, but you will feel 100% better. After that session, I think if you, you know, further the listens out there once they get to that point in their life or their exercise and training journey, that is, that is beautiful because, you know, it's a must so much that you see to get out of bed and go and get that session down because you, you know, you know, at the end of it, you're going to feel, you know, so much better than you did prior. Yeah, I'm 100% with you that feeling when you finish that workout, you've accomplished something difficult. You've got some endorphins, you know, got some good hormones going for you. I feel like that accomplishment and that confidence you get from the gym leads into all other areas of your life. Very often, the most difficult thing I've done in the day is done, you know, at 630 in the morning when I'm doing my workout. The rest of it, you know, for me is I'm doing podcasts, I'm coaching clients or, you know, whatever I'm doing. The hardest part is already done. It's behind me. I've done something difficult. So I feel like there's just this sense of accomplishment. It bleeds over into everything. Absolutely. Love it. So yeah, I think that's a critical part of staying motivated and making that transition as somebody who, hey, I want to get in shape because, you know, here in the US, it's getting ready to be summer. I'm going on vacation. I want to look good in my bikini or something. There's that motivation. But when that turns into, hey, I've just, I'm setting up my life differently. I'm becoming the kind of person who goes to the gym and enjoys the effects of that and makes healthy choices that really honor my body. I love the idea of you had mentioned. having your folks know their why. I think that's really critical. I love the idea of people actually writing out, thinking about writing out a health mission statement. Why is this important to me? And you probably know this as well. We'll ask people, hey, why do you, you know, they'll often come in and they'll say, well, I want to lose 20 pounds. Well, why do you want to do it? Well, you know, because I want to be healthy. Well, why is that important to you? Well, because this and then why is that important to you? Well, and you ask why five different times. And eventually you get to probably the real cause. Maybe it's an insecurity. Maybe it's, you know, some, it's something. But spend some time really questioning, why is this important to you? You get through some of the superficial things. Maybe you get into some things that aren't so pretty, but you kind of work through all that. And you end up with something, hopefully that looks like, hey, I want to be healthy and around for a long time. I want to, you know, want to watch my grandkids grow up. I want to play with them, et cetera. I want to go into vacation and enjoy things. So yeah, absolutely, absolutely love it. All right. So as we're just kind of wrapping up here, what else do you have? What advice do you have to somebody who's listening to this and wants to get started on some sort of a strength training regimen, just wants to get going. Maybe they're nervous, gym intenidation. Don't know what to do. How do we talk to people to get them to start to adopt this lifestyle, eating healthy, working out, trying to be strong, fit and capable? Yeah. I think a lot of people, when they first come in, like I said before, they may not have trained ever in their life. They may not have trained for decades. You're not alone. There's a lot of people in that same situation. So, and I get it, I must be challenging and intenidating to go to somewhere and it's the complete overhaul of your life. But trust the process, trust the experts, we've been doing it for a long time. There's plenty of people in your position that started, like you, started from a low base point and they've really overhauled their life and they are a brand new human being. It takes time. If you've had 10, 20, 30 years of inactivity and probably not the best habits or the best mindset habits, it's not going to happen within a couple of weeks. But with consistent practice, I look at the trial out of health, the mental health on one side, the trial on the nutrition on one side, the trial on the exercise component on the other side. If you can kind of learn a lot about those, how they, you're, we just say your best approach to that trial of health and you look at experts, get nutritionist and you need to learn as much as you can be a sponge and just be consistent. And within short amount of time, it's a good few months with really consistent practice. It's you'll start to notice a difference. You should say within six to eight weeks, you really start to feel better. You know, you're more upright, you're craving better foods, which is great. You're sleeping better, you're happier. You've met friends at the gym. And like I mean, this is a really cool story. My, some of my first time in her, so whichever I've had now for 60 years, no five or six years now, they're wrong. There's a big group of them. There's that 10 of them were going to barley this week. And so, you know, which is really cool. And you know, these people probably wouldn't have met if it wasn't for active and ages. Now they're all going with big, big group. And one of the daughters actually messaged me a couple of days ago saying, you know, this is, you know, be proud of what you've done, which is, it always brings the tears of my eyes, all these people are hanging out. And you know, so you, there's the exercise component, but you're going to meet people in this, people in a symmetry trajectory to you. They're all there doing the same thing. They want their best for their own life. They want their, you know, they do optimal health. So intimidation, I completely get it. It must be intimidating. But you know, if you find the right place to go to, if you've got a friend there, if you've got a relative or joined with a friend, and you got that accountability, and it's, you know, I suppose it makes it slightly less intimidating for you. But yeah, get it done. If you're on the best, you know, most optimal life possible is just get the body moving because you will not as a difference. And you'll, you'll, you'll thank yourself so much. So yeah, you just, you just got to start. Got to start. Yeah, I got to start and got to be consistent. I love that. That is really solid, solid advice. I think that you got to meet yourself where you are with self love, with patience. But I'm 100% tracking with you on your metrics. I think you give it six to eight weeks of, is about the time people start to feel the difference. Like you said, the mood, the energy, I'm not crashing at 3 PM in the afternoon anymore. I'm sleeping better. All of those metrics I'm getting stronger. I've got more confidence. My posture is improving. Maybe some pain subsiding. Then you give it another six or eight weeks and somebody you haven't seen in a while says, oh my god, you look great. What are you doing? Right? So, and then, and that I think just goes a long ways towards refilling that motivation. Well, if you will, keep in people, keep in people going. All right, well, I guess he said before we wrap up here, if there are any venture capital folks out there or any investors who are looking to invest, we got heat out here with active and ageless gyms. Let's cover all of Asia pack with those things. And then if you guys want to do something over here and buy them this fear, I'm willing to talk to you about putting silver edge gyms all over the US. Maybe we do something together. But before we wrap up, tell people, how can they connect with you? How can they learn more from I for all my folks that are in your neck of the woods? How can they potentially find you, join your gyms, all that, all the good stuff? Yeah, sure. So, our Instagram gym, Instagram pages at active and age was gym. Locations in hersfield, canabry, soon to be genali in sub-alems. My personal Instagram is he's Jones 1.618. So, you know, I post another different kind of physical challenges in that that we do. Crazy stuff that me and I through my mates do. So, but yeah, I'd obviously come into one of the gyms and say hello and, you know, we can do an assessment on your movement assessment. Do you, yeah, free class and we do events every kind of, say, four months or thereabouts and unhealthy aging events, different kind of guest speakers and that. But we open those up to the public as well. So, yeah, and to be intimate, I did like it's, it's really easy for me to say that. Try not to be intimate at it because we're pretty nice. And, you know, our members are so nice. I bet you wouldn't be able to walk into too many other gyms around the place and, you know, get two or three people introduced them. So, other members introduced themselves, try to like, but they will do at our gym because they're great bunch of people and it's fun. - Yeah, absolutely, love it, man. All right, well, hey, I'm so glad I got a chance to connect with you. I absolutely love your mission. Love what you're doing there. I love the idea of having a physical gym for this specific age demographic. Man, I appreciate you taking the time. Coming on the podcast, sharing your wisdom, your knowledge and all of your passion with us. I just encourage you to keep up the great work, man. - Thank you so much and you too. (upbeat music) - Okay, that's our show for today, folks. If you are over 50 and you feel frustrated or stuck and you want a clear plan, I invite you to book a free clarity call with me. You can find a link to learn more and the show notes for this episode. You guys can find that on whenever app you're listening to this on or head over to silveredgefitness.com/419. As we wrap up our time together today, you can show your support for this show in two critically important ways. The first is to tell a friend about this podcast and encourage them to give it a listen. The second is for you, YouTube folks, to please click the like and subscribe buttons and for your podcast folks, to please consider giving this podcast a five star review on whatever platform you listen to podcasts on and be sure to subscribe and follow so you don't miss any future episodes. I really appreciate you spending your time with me today and until next time, stay strong. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)