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What is 40fit?

40fit supports a community of athletes age 40+ with Fitness, Community and Lifestyle resources. The goal is to support performance, lifestyle and quality of life for 40 plus athletes. By combining the resources of evidenced based science, anecdotal experience, and the community, individuals are challenged to look at aging through a refreshing perspective and reach their maximum genetic potential.

Why?

The more I trained using various methods, the more I realized there was something missing.  I noticed that even though I was significantly more fit than most of my peers, my experience in training was not the same as the “younger crowd.” The higher my fitness level became, the more I realized the value of fitness and lifestyle factors that I paid less attention to in the past. This is true for almost any athlete seeking higher levels of performance and capacity. Any inexperienced athlete can make quick and sometimes astonishing gains.

40fit programming is based on my own personal experiences as an athlete, evidenced based science and the collective experiences of the community. The programming model is a conjugate of these inputs and represents an adaptive construct to support the maximum genetic potential of each individual athlete. There is no one system that can meet the needs of all individuals, and anyone who would tell you otherwise is selling something for the purposes of selling something. The programming in the training model will constantly change and be a work in progress. We will not follow fads or training techniques just because someone else recommends them or they have become sexy. The foundation of any training should be based on what works, not what sells. I know that puts us at a significant disadvantage to spread the word, but I hope that the results of those who engage in our training will be evidence enough.

Jan 29, 2021

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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