Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / The 5 Stages of Fitness Over 40 (Allan Misner) | Ep 229

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The 5 Stages of Fitness Over 40 (Allan Misner) | Ep 229 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: If you're over 40 and have been struggling to get fit despite trying all the diets and workouts, or maybe you haven't yet started your fitness journey and want to reclaim your health, this episode's for you.
• 0:11
  Philip Pape: Today, I'm sitting down with fitness expert Alan Meisner to reveal the five key stages of fitness over 40 that you must go through to transform your health and physique.
• 0:20
  Philip Pape: When you understand these stages, you create a roadmap that clarifies your purpose and your approach to health and physique.
• 0:24
  Philip Pape: When you understand these stages, you create a roadmap that clarifies your purpose and your approach to health and longevity.
• 0:28
  Philip Pape: The best part is that getting this right means you'll actually do less of the ineffective workouts and dieting you've been struggling with, because you'll have a clear path to focus your fitness in midlife and beyond.
• 0:40
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.
• 0:53
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are mapping out the journey to better health and fitness after 40 with Alan Meisner, host of the 40 Plus Fitness Podcast and author of the Wellness Roadmap.
• 1:05
  Philip Pape: Now Alan is a certified personal trainer, nutrition coach and functional aging specialist who's helped thousands navigate the ups and downs of getting fit in midlife and beyond, and he had me on his show recently and I was very excited to sit down with him again today.
• 1:20
  Philip Pape: Today, you're going to learn about the five stages of fitness transformation after 40, from the moment you realize things need to change to finally achieving your goal and then maintaining it for life.
• 1:31
  Philip Pape: Through Alan's experiences and, in my opinion, his masterful storytelling, you'll discover how to make that commitment and build a system that will give you lasting success, no matter where you're starting from.
• 1:43
  Philip Pape: Alan, my man, it is good to see you again and welcome back to the show.
• 1:46
  Allan Misner: Thank you, Philip.
• 1:47
  Philip Pape: This is exciting and I should say welcome to the show, but welcome back to seeing you again, yeah, so let's just start with the moment that someone realizes things aren't quite working anymore.
• 1:59
  Philip Pape: Maybe they've put on a little weight, maybe they're not as strong, they're feeling tired, they don't have the energy.
• 2:05
  Philip Pape: We all have kids and family and obligations as we get older.
• 2:09
  Philip Pape: What is that catalyst for change that you've seen in most people over 40?
• 2:14
  Philip Pape: We're just going to start there.
• 2:16
  Philip Pape: What is that catalyst for most people?
• 2:18
  Allan Misner: Well, most of us over 40 are getting to a point in our lives where we're in this kind of weird place in the middle.
• 2:26
  Allan Misner: Our kids are getting old enough that they don't need us as much.
• 2:30
  Allan Misner: So if you're a woman, there's that.
• 2:31
  Allan Misner: If you're a man, it's like, okay, the kids are out and about doing their sports, I might be driving them around, and then eventually now I'm handing them the keys and they're driving themselves around.
• 2:40
  Allan Misner: So again, it's that stage out.
• 2:42
  Allan Misner: And then we also get to see our parents, who are kind of forecasting our future, and so if we're living the same lifestyle they live, that's our future.
• 2:52
  Allan Misner: And they're seeing the illness, they're seeing the things going on there.
• 2:55
  Allan Misner: So for a lot of people, that's the point where they're kind of bridging and figuring this stuff out.
• 3:01
  Allan Misner: Now, I was in a very weird place when I hit my mid-40s, because I was very successful in my career, but I was not successful at pretty much anything else Relationships, health, fitness, all of it.
• 3:16
  Allan Misner: And so while I had started making the decision that I wanted to change, I went through eight years of just yo-yo.
• 3:24
  Allan Misner: Some people talk about hitting rock bottom.
• 3:26
  Allan Misner: I got drug across rock bottom over eight years.
• 3:29
  Allan Misner: Okay, you got the scrapes to show for it, right, right.
• 3:33
  Allan Misner: And so it started like I was sitting on the beach in Mexico and I had forced myself to take a vacation.
• 3:38
  Allan Misner: I should have been celebrating.
• 3:40
  Allan Misner: I was like I've made it to vice president of a Fortune 500 company at the age of 39.
• 3:45
  Allan Misner: That's the dream, right?
• 3:47
  Allan Misner: Well, so I went down to this timeshare.
• 3:49
  Allan Misner: I literally bought the timeshare, sight unseen, pretty much.
• 3:52
  Allan Misner: I just walked in and said sell me, because I knew if I put the money in, I would start taking that annual vacation.
• 3:58
  Allan Misner: So I'm not going to let that money burn.
• 3:59
  Allan Misner: And so I did.
• 4:01
  Allan Misner: I forced myself to take a week off, and then I forced myself to sign up to take another week off every year, okay, and so I was kind of on my way a little bit, but it was haphazard and it wasn't controlled.
• 4:13
  Allan Misner: And so the next day I was pretty happy because they had beach volleyball on the schedule.
• 4:18
  Allan Misner: So the week the daily schedule was put up and they had beach volleyball every day.
• 4:22
  Allan Misner: I'm like this is gonna to be so cool, because I used to play competitively when I was younger.
• 4:25
  Allan Misner: Well, I wasn't younger, I was in really bad shape.
• 4:30
  Allan Misner: So I went out to try to start playing volleyball, and this was not the two-man volleyball that I played a lot, or the four-man that I played some.
• 4:35
  Allan Misner: This was like six on six.
• 4:37
  Allan Misner: So this is take a step bump, take a step bump.
• 4:40
  Allan Misner: Just one game of that had me completely wiped out.
• 4:46
  Allan Misner: And so I'm just I'm sitting there the next morning and I'm like what in the hell happened?
• 4:48
  Allan Misner: You know where did I go?
• 4:49
  Allan Misner: Cause this isn't me.
• 4:50
  Allan Misner: Uh, I'm not someone who dies on a volleyball court at 39 years old.
• 4:55
  Allan Misner: And so I kind of made the decision to change right there.
• 4:59
  Allan Misner: I even had someone take a picture of me with my shirt off, which was insane, and if you go to my website and you look at my About Me page, you see that photo.
• 5:07
  Allan Misner: It's also in the book.
• 5:08
  Allan Misner: But, yeah, I was not very proud of that picture, but I thought that'll be enough to make me change.
• 5:13
  Allan Misner: Of course, it was an all-inclusive resort.
• 5:16
  Allan Misner: Alcohol was already paid for, so, yeah, I commenced to drink my ass off for the whole rest of the week.
• 5:26
  Allan Misner: I'll start on Monday.
• 5:27
  Allan Misner: You know, yeah, you had the idea, but not quite yet, and so I did try, I did try, I would try this, I would try that, I would look for things.
• 5:32
  Allan Misner: You know what can I do?
• 5:33
  Allan Misner: And there was nothing.
• 5:35
  Allan Misner: There was nothing out there that really told me how to train myself, because everything that was out there was well, you need to do what everybody else does.
• 5:42
  Allan Misner: You're just like everybody else.
• 5:43
  Allan Misner: But I did the Insanity workout, just the benchmark test.
• 5:48
  Allan Misner: I bought the DVD set because it looked cool.
• 5:50
  Allan Misner: Shanti is awesome, it's energy.
• 5:53
  Allan Misner: That's a P90.
• 5:54
  Allan Misner: This was Insanity was also.
• 5:56
  Allan Misner: Yeah, it was Beachbody.
• 5:56
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah, beachbody, this was.
• 5:57
  Allan Misner: Shanti, and so Shanti was just.
• 6:00
  Allan Misner: You know, he's fit.
• 6:00
  Allan Misner: The reason I didn't go with P90X because I had done that when I was younger was that they did require dumbbells and a pull-up bar.
• 6:07
  Allan Misner: So I was like, okay, I can't do that traveling.
• 6:09
  Allan Misner: So I bought these DVDs, I took the time to diligently rip them all onto my iPad and so here I am.
• 6:15
  Allan Misner: I have all the workouts.
• 6:16
  Allan Misner: I said, okay, I'll sit down and do the benchmark test here, so I know where I am.
• 6:21
  Allan Misner: Okay, so I do the benchmark test and it's very, very motivating.
• 6:26
  Allan Misner: They're dancing around, everybody looks great, they're smiling, they're having fun.
• 6:28
  Allan Misner: I'm not having fun, but I'm doing it.
• 6:31
  Allan Misner: The next morning I couldn't get out of bed.
• 6:33
  Allan Misner: It was like men had just sat there and beat me with a baseball bat all night.
• 6:37
  Allan Misner: I'm just laying in the bed like, oh my God, it hurt to reach over and grab my phone to call into work, because there was no way I was going to be able to get it to work and do my job.
• 6:46
  Allan Misner: So I didn't do a single one of those workouts again ever.
• 6:50
  Allan Misner: They were still on that iPad when I handed them over to IT.
• 6:56
  Allan Misner: So there's that first period where you don't really even know what you need.
• 7:01
  Allan Misner: You don't know what's going on and it's easy to tell yourself this isn't a problem.
• 7:06
  Allan Misner: Everybody's overweight, everybody's living like this, everybody's doing this, so I'm just like everybody else, so there's not really a problem.
• 7:15
  Allan Misner: Problem and so not to steal.
• 7:18
  Allan Misner: We're not stealing from the stages of change.
• 7:20
  Allan Misner: If you notice, there's five stages we're going to go through.
• 7:22
  Allan Misner: They do align with the stages of change.
• 7:25
  Allan Misner: I was in pre-contemplation for those eight years.
• 7:27
  Allan Misner: I would try something, maybe, or do this or piddle, but I wasn't really in it.
• 7:32
  Philip Pape: What's interesting, Alan, is and people can relate to this there sounded to be multiple points that were realizations or wake-up calls that you went through, but then you may have attempted to act on it, maybe not, and even when you did, it wasn't right for you, it wasn't the thing that would work and therefore you didn't stick with it.
• 7:51
  Philip Pape: And so there are these fleeting realizations that probably happen often right Throughout a year, or even a month, or even a day.
• 7:58
  Philip Pape: We're thinking about this stuff often and then it's like what do we do with it?
• 8:02
  Philip Pape: So, even though it's pre-contemplation, you get to the point of taking action, and the action doesn't even seem to get you what you want if it's not the right action.
• 8:11
  Allan Misner: Right, right.
• 8:12
  Allan Misner: So I remember this because I read this email I wrote years ago, but I was in Malaysia and when I was getting there it was Ramadan.
• 8:22
  Allan Misner: So Ramadan is a season of fasting.
• 8:25
  Allan Misner: They don't eat during the day, they don't even drink water.
• 8:28
  Allan Misner: It's like for 12 hours.
• 8:29
  Allan Misner: They don't do any of that.
• 8:30
  Allan Misner: And so what I was doing was I said, okay, I'm going to have a good breakfast, I'll have a breakfast with some coffee and I'll have a water in there, but I won't let anybody see it, and then I'll eat a reasonable dinner.
• 8:44
  Allan Misner: And I did that for the first week.
• 8:45
  Allan Misner: The second week, I'm like, okay, now I'm just going to add some walking.
• 8:48
  Allan Misner: I'll walk for an hour.
• 8:50
  Allan Misner: Well, malaysia is very, very humid, so those are sweaty, sweaty walks, okay.
• 8:55
  Allan Misner: And so I did that the whole second week and I was actually losing weight.
• 8:58
  Allan Misner: I was feeling pretty good going home.
• 9:00
  Allan Misner: I flew home and I got home and I spent the weekend.
• 9:04
  Allan Misner: I kept up with it.
• 9:06
  Allan Misner: Well, like, on Tuesday morning, I'm sitting at work and I start convulsing and I literally threw up and shat on myself at the same time and hit the ground, and they wanted to call an ambulance.
• 9:20
  Allan Misner: I said no, no, no, let me clean up here and then I'm going to go home, clean up, rest.
• 9:25
  Allan Misner: If I still feel bad, I'll go to the hospital.
• 9:26
  Allan Misner: I did go to the hospital later, after I slept a few hours, but what happened was because I had drank so much water and I'd sweated so much, I was dehydrated and I'd washed out all of my sodium.
• 9:40
  Allan Misner: So I was close to going into a coma, doing what I thought was the right thing Quit alcohol, just drink water, exercise hard.
• 9:51
  Allan Misner: It wasn't hard, it was walking, but for me at the time it was hard.
• 9:55
  Allan Misner: An hour of walking and sweating and boom, here I am laying down on the floor, convulsing, almost going into a coma.
• 10:01
  Allan Misner: And so it was that thing of not knowing what I didn't know, thinking I can just do what I've always done, and it didn't work.
• 10:10
  Allan Misner: So you know, for me the next stage started.
• 10:16
  Allan Misner: I happened to also be in Malaysia, which is interesting.
• 10:18
  Allan Misner: I traveled there a lot, though at that time in my life.
• 10:21
  Allan Misner: So my daughter and I got on a phone call and she said to me, because she was getting into CrossFit and she had just become a level one CrossFit coach.
• 10:29
  Allan Misner: And so she says to me daddy, would you come watch me do a CrossFit competition and I'm like I just felt this pit in my stomach.
• 10:37
  Allan Misner: I'm like I'm not supposed to be a spectator in my daughter's life.
• 10:41
  Allan Misner: I'm supposed to be a participant, I'm supposed to be there with her doing it.
• 10:46
  Allan Misner: Well, I did go watch her.
• 10:48
  Allan Misner: I'm not that bad.
• 10:51
  Allan Misner: I did go watch the competition.
• 10:53
  Allan Misner: But that was the moment where there was like a click in my head and I'm like, okay, this is a problem, this is hard, it's really hard, but it's not so hard that I shouldn't be able to do it.
• 11:03
  Allan Misner: So what is different between all the hard things I did?
• 11:07
  Allan Misner: You don't make it to the C-suite age of 39, a fortune 500 company without doing some hard things.
• 11:14
  Allan Misner: You don't do what I did in the military without being able to do some hard things.
• 11:18
  Allan Misner: So I was like what makes this different?
• 11:20
  Allan Misner: And that's when the word hit my head.
• 11:22
  Allan Misner: It was like commitment.
• 11:23
  Allan Misner: For For all those other things that I did, I committed to do it and I became fanatical, obsessed with doing it and doing it right.
• 11:34
  Allan Misner: So I knew that's what I needed to do here.
• 11:38
  Allan Misner: The problem was I was traveling so much that I couldn't hire a coach, a personal trainer, and there was no one doing this online.
• 11:48
  Allan Misner: There were no books, there were no podcasts, there was no nothing.
• 11:51
  Allan Misner: And so I was like, okay, well, I've got to figure this out.
• 11:55
  Allan Misner: So I'm like I guess I have to become my own personal trainer.
• 11:59
  Allan Misner: So I went for the certs you know NASM I got my corrective exercise, fitness, nutrition, the functional aging specialty, all these other things I started doing.
• 12:11
  Allan Misner: And then I started figuring out what I had done wrong all those other times.
• 12:15
  Allan Misner: And so now I had a plan, and now I was starting to train the right way, I was starting to eat the right way and I was able to start making change.
• 12:24
  Allan Misner: But there was still just one piece missing.
• 12:29
  Allan Misner: And this was when I realized I tend to at that point in my life, I tend to not move unless I have something scary to do, something that's going to force me to really push.
• 12:43
  Allan Misner: And now that I've done this and I've worked with thousands of people, I've come to realize there's five of these mindsets, and I had actually worked through a few of them on the way up.
• 12:52
  Allan Misner: But what I am now, or what I needed was then, was I was an Atlas.
• 12:56
  Allan Misner: Now an Atlas, uh, in my vernacular is the is the book, you know the map book that we used to have when we were younger, not the God holding the earth.
• 13:04
  Allan Misner: But I went out and I said, okay, I need something big and scary.
• 13:09
  Allan Misner: I went out and I said, okay, I need something big and scary, a big goal like something big.
• 13:11
  Allan Misner: So I called up my daughter and I said, hey, how about the two of us sign up for a Tough Mudder eight months from now?
• 13:18
  Allan Misner: I had no business signing up for a Tough.
• 13:22
  Philip Pape: Mudder.
• 13:23
  Allan Misner: The 13-mile run in very hard terrain to do anything to move through.
• 13:28
  Allan Misner: And then they're just going to throw in 25 obstacles just to make it fun With penalties too, right?
• 13:35
  Allan Misner: Well, they didn't have the penalties.
• 13:36
  Allan Misner: That's the Spartan.
• 13:37
  Allan Misner: Spartan does the penalties.
• 13:38
  Philip Pape: Oh, that's Spartan right With the burpee penalties yeah.
• 13:41
  Allan Misner: That's Joe, but no, so here's the deal.
• 13:45
  Allan Misner: I realize, okay, I have a level one CrossFit coach daughter and I have this thing I want to do and I don't want to just do it.
• 13:51
  Allan Misner: I don't want to go on there and her have to stay back with me or for me to say, go on without me, I'll finish.
• 13:58
  Allan Misner: That just wasn't the personality.
• 14:00
  Allan Misner: I was like, okay, look, I'm going to participate with her on this thing at her speed, she's not going to have to slow down for me.
• 14:09
  Allan Misner: And that's what I did.
• 14:11
  Allan Misner: I started training a lot harder, started pushing myself and over the course of eight months well, really, 11 months total I lost 66 pounds of fat and I gained 11 pounds of muscle, dexascan to Dexascan Awesome At the age of 46.
• 14:28
  Philip Pape: And that's what we're here for.
• 14:29
  Philip Pape: So people, are okay, now people are hearing this.
• 14:31
  Philip Pape: Let's rewind just a little bit.
• 14:33
  Philip Pape: You mentioned the word scary and I know in your book you said that your vision isn't necessarily the highest pinnacle you could reach or the most difficult goal you can imagine.
• 14:42
  Philip Pape: It's the precise image of what you want.
• 14:44
  Philip Pape: Your vision should scare you slightly, but you know that's where you belong in your heart.
• 14:49
  Philip Pape: And so when is your vision not scary enough?
• 14:51
  Philip Pape: Because that's what you just said it's like it's got to be scary.
• 14:53
  Philip Pape: When is it not scary enough?
• 14:55
  Allan Misner: Well, yeah, I mean, some of it doesn't have to be.
• 14:58
  Allan Misner: So one of the ways I kind of talk about it now a lot is I say, okay, what do you need and what do you want?
• 15:05
  Allan Misner: Okay, I live on a Caribbean island and there's not really an ambulance service that you can rely on.
• 15:14
  Allan Misner: So if my daughter, my wife, were to fall and hurt herself or to have some kind of medical emergency and she's laying on the floor and I have to get her to the hospital I suppose about two miles away I've got to be able to pick her up and get her into the car and drive her there.
• 15:33
  Allan Misner: So I need to be physically strong to be able to lift my wife and do that.
• 15:39
  Allan Misner: I live on an island.
• 15:40
  Allan Misner: I don't actually have a driver's license, so I'd be violating the law in Panama by driving her there, but it's an emergency.
• 15:45
  Allan Misner: I'm going to break the law Sorry, panama, but gonna but I don't have a driver's license because I live on an island.
• 15:53
  Allan Misner: From one side of the island to the other is no more than 14 miles, so I can walk anywhere on this island I want to be, and so I need to be in the physical shape to walk where I want to go.
• 16:05
  Allan Misner: If I'm out with my wife and she says, hey, we're going to stay or we're going to go to this other place, it's like no problem, I'll walk home, I can do that from anywhere on this island.
• 16:15
  Allan Misner: Okay, so I need that.
• 16:18
  Allan Misner: But what do I want?
• 16:20
  Allan Misner: Well, I want to have an active lifestyle like kayaking.
• 16:23
  Allan Misner: I kind of wish we had tennis courts here.
• 16:26
  Allan Misner: We don't, but at some point we might move somewhere.
• 16:29
  Allan Misner: I want to be able to just step in and start playing that.
• 16:31
  Allan Misner: When I travel back to Puerto Vallarta, which I do about once a year, I play volleyball.
• 16:36
  Allan Misner: I want to be able to play volleyball.
• 16:39
  Allan Misner: So my vision right now, at 58 years old, is to be a very active 58-year-old.
• 16:46
  Allan Misner: Now our daughters got married about two years ago, both of them six months apart.
• 16:52
  Allan Misner: Congrats, okay.
• 16:55
  Philip Pape: So there's going to be grandkids, and good luck.
• 16:58
  Allan Misner: There are going to be grandkids and I can tell you the same mindset that I had with my daughter I am not going to be a spectator in their lives.
• 17:05
  Allan Misner: So babies and kids crawl and run around on the floor.
• 17:10
  Allan Misner: They sit on the floor and they watch television.
• 17:14
  Allan Misner: They, when they go to the zoo, they lose their freaking minds and they're running everywhere.
• 17:20
  Allan Misner: I want to be the grandpa that can do that.
• 17:22
  Allan Misner: And then, when they're older, I don't know what crazy stuff they're going to be doing.
• 17:28
  Allan Misner: But you know we didn't have Tough Mudder growing up.
• 17:31
  Allan Misner: You know we had our stuff, but it wasn't that.
• 17:34
  Allan Misner: And so I don't know what they're going to be doing 20 years from now.
• 17:38
  Allan Misner: But guess what?
• 17:39
  Allan Misner: I'm going to want to be the person doing it.
• 17:41
  Allan Misner: So I'll be that crazy 80 year old doing this thing.
• 17:44
  Allan Misner: Like, what are you doing?
• 17:46
  Allan Misner: I'm like having fun with my grandkids, that's what I'm doing.
• 17:49
  Allan Misner: So that's what I want.
• 17:50
  Allan Misner: Now I'll tell you this other story.
• 17:56
  Allan Misner: We might not make it through your whole five stages, but okay.
• 17:57
  Allan Misner: So here's the next story.
• 17:59
  Allan Misner: My grandfather loved golf.
• 18:02
  Allan Misner: He loved golf more than people.
• 18:04
  Allan Misner: He was a salesman which, back in that day, you went golfing with potential buyers, to make deals.
• 18:11
  Allan Misner: So he golfed practically every day of his life.
• 18:14
  Allan Misner: He lived on a golf course.
• 18:15
  Allan Misner: He loved golf.
• 18:16
  Allan Misner: At the age of 80, he had to give up playing golf because his balance wasn't there, his strength wasn't there.
• 18:23
  Allan Misner: He could not swing a golf club anymore.
• 18:25
  Allan Misner: Now a lot of people say, oh well, he's 80.
• 18:27
  Allan Misner: Okay, last few years he lived till he was 95.
• 18:31
  Allan Misner: So the last 15 years of his life he didn't get to do the one thing he loved most.
• 18:36
  Allan Misner: I don't want that.
• 18:38
  Allan Misner: I don't think anyone wants that, and so if I can fix it, I won't.
• 18:41
  Allan Misner: Now I'll flash forward 10 years.
• 18:44
  Allan Misner: He can't make it from the chair to the bathroom in time when he realizes he has to go and so he has to call down to the care desk because he's in this.
• 18:54
  Allan Misner: You know homes, he's all these little one bedroom houses, apartments.
• 18:58
  Allan Misner: He can't make it down there, so they send someone up to clean him up because he can't even clean himself up.
• 19:04
  Allan Misner: I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105.
• 19:07
  Allan Misner: Okay, so I need to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105.
• 19:09
  Allan Misner: Okay, so I need to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105.
• 19:12
  Allan Misner: I need to be able to open my own jars.
• 19:15
  Allan Misner: If I want a pickle, I'm eating a pickle.
• 19:17
  Allan Misner: If you can't open the jar and you want a pickle, you ain't eating the pickle.
• 19:24
  Allan Misner: You get someone to help you and now you're no longer independent, you're dependent on tools and other people and you're in this decline and I don't want that.
• 19:31
  Allan Misner: I don't and I don't need that.
• 19:33
  Allan Misner: So when I look at vision, is it scary?
• 19:36
  Allan Misner: Well, my side of the vision is not scary at all.
• 19:39
  Allan Misner: I'm wiping my butt, I'm playing with my grandkids, I'm doing any sport that I want to do my entire life, because I build the foundation and I'm going to keep building on the foundation to be able to do it.
• 19:51
  Allan Misner: And so, as you start looking at vision, the value of vision is it helps you forecast your future and the fact that the human body, the most wonderful gift you've ever been given, is your body.
• 20:03
  Allan Misner: It's a machine that you live in that can repair itself and get better.
• 20:09
  Allan Misner: If you do the right things, it heals itself and it gets better.
• 20:15
  Allan Misner: That's crazy good, isn't it?
• 20:17
  Allan Misner: That's amazing.
• 20:19
  Philip Pape: It is amazing, and it is amazing, and I want everyone to experience how amazing that is, especially at this age, when they don't think it might be possible.
• 20:27
  Philip Pape: Right, that's what we're unlocking here.
• 20:29
  Philip Pape: If you've got one more breath.
• 20:30
  Allan Misner: If you've got one more breath, you could do something to improve yourself.
• 20:33
  Allan Misner: Yeah.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: So maybe to keep us on track with the phases, but naturally segue into the next one.
• 20:38
  Philip Pape: Somebody's saying, okay, this is great, I could do something like I can get a piece of paper and write all the things I need, all the things I want.
• 20:46
  Philip Pape: That's a great starting point, catalyst, for you know, I have some wake-up call that's driving me.
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: Now I'm going to solidify what that really looks like, my future self.
• 20:55
  Philip Pape: But now I have this doubt, I have this self-doubt.
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: I'm critical of myself, I'm not sure of my capabilities.
• 21:00
  Philip Pape: I don't even know if the body can do what you're saying, Alan.
• 21:10
  Philip Pape: And so one of the things you talk about is self-love, and that's one way to empower us.
• 21:12
  Philip Pape: You could take it however you want, but what is the first step toward that next step right?
• 21:14
  Philip Pape: Either embracing the self-love or getting that power to become unstoppable.
• 21:17
  Philip Pape: Know that you can do this before you even take that step.
• 21:20
  Allan Misner: Yeah Well, anything you do to improve your body is an act of self-love.
• 21:23
  Allan Misner: And so when you define it that way and you're like, okay, I've got this guy in my head, you can bleep me if you need to bleep me.
• 21:29
  Allan Misner: So just fair warning, I called the voice in my head the fat bastard.
• 21:35
  Allan Misner: Okay, that's that guy.
• 21:36
  Allan Misner: He's miserable and he's terrible, and if I screw up he's all over me.
• 21:43
  Philip Pape: Does he have Mike Myers' voice?
• 21:44
  Philip Pape: Is it that fat bastard?
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: No, no, no, not that one.
• 21:48
  Allan Misner: No, but he's an evil dude, this bastard, no, no, no, not that one, no, but he's, he's, he's, he's an evil.
• 21:53
  Allan Misner: This was even before that, I think.
• 21:54
  Allan Misner: But this is an evil dude.
• 21:55
  Allan Misner: And so if I let him own the frame of the dialogue, I lose.
• 21:59
  Allan Misner: And so I have to realize if I make a mistake, I have to start with forgiveness.
• 22:06
  Allan Misner: Okay, if I forgive myself, I'm a human being.
• 22:10
  Allan Misner: I shouldn't have done that.
• 22:12
  Allan Misner: I did.
• 22:12
  Allan Misner: I can't undo it, but I can learn from it.
• 22:16
  Allan Misner: And so if I go at it and say, okay, I want to show myself self-love, I'm going to forgive myself because I'm not perfect, haven't met anybody who is.
• 22:25
  Allan Misner: I've heard there was one, but I didn't meet him that way.
• 22:29
  Allan Misner: So you know, you start that way and then you learn from what you've done.
• 22:33
  Allan Misner: Now, one of the key aspects of this where I think people get lost is they think that they don't have what they need.
• 22:41
  Allan Misner: You know, it's like I don't have willpower, I'm not disciplined, and that's not how all this works.
• 22:48
  Allan Misner: So motivation is not magic fairy dust that shows up and that you hope sticks around.
• 22:54
  Allan Misner: Hope doesn't get you very far, and motivation is not received.
• 22:59
  Allan Misner: It's earned.
• 23:01
  Allan Misner: And so let me explain how this works, and it's pretty simple, but there's two types of motivation.
• 23:06
  Allan Misner: There's the intrinsic type, which is internal, and there's extrinsic, which is outward, to someone else.
• 23:12
  Allan Misner: So the extrinsic is based on accountability, and so the easiest.
• 23:16
  Allan Misner: And there's two layers there's a leader layer and then there's a social layer.
• 23:20
  Allan Misner: So the easiest way to get motivated is to hire a coach.
• 23:24
  Allan Misner: You're going to show up for that coach.
• 23:26
  Allan Misner: You share your goals, they help you with your programs, and they're there.
• 23:30
  Allan Misner: You show up for that coach.
• 23:30
  Allan Misner: You share your goals, they help you with your programs, and they're there.
• 23:32
  Allan Misner: You show up.
• 23:32
  Allan Misner: That accountability gets you motivated.
• 23:35
  Allan Misner: I don't want to be there at five o'clock in the morning, but I told Dave I'd be there at five o'clock in the morning.
• 23:40
  Allan Misner: I'm there at five o'clock in the morning.
• 23:41
  Allan Misner: Okay, that's accountability which creates motivation.
• 23:45
  Allan Misner: And then maybe I joined some groups so I get in a running group or I do the spin class or water aerobics class or any other kind of group that's going to help me stay accountable.
• 23:56
  Allan Misner: They say peer pressure and people think peer pressure is a bad thing.
• 24:00
  Allan Misner: It's only a bad thing if you have bad peers.
• 24:02
  Allan Misner: If you surround yourself with good people, like Jim Rohn told us, we become good people.
• 24:08
  Allan Misner: Okay, so find a group and get accountability from them.
• 24:13
  Allan Misner: If you want to do CrossFit, as an example, I was in the five o'clock CrossFit class.
• 24:17
  Allan Misner: We same people, we were the five o'clockers and it was the same people that show up.
• 24:22
  Allan Misner: They show up every day, for most days, and you just all know you're all there and you see them, hi, how are you doing?
• 24:28
  Allan Misner: And now they expect you there.
• 24:30
  Allan Misner: If you're not there, they might even call you hey, dude, you okay, what's going on?
• 24:34
  Allan Misner: Okay, that's accountability at a social level.
• 24:37
  Allan Misner: Now, that only goes so far, because you get a workout partner and the workout partner breaks his arm doing something stupid.
• 24:44
  Allan Misner: He's not going anymore.
• 24:45
  Allan Misner: Are you going to stop?
• 24:46
  Allan Misner: And for a lot of people, if you only rely on accountability, you probably will.
• 24:52
  Allan Misner: So what we want to do is we want to focus on the intrinsic.
• 24:55
  Allan Misner: Now, the intrinsic is really cool because that is about self-efficacy, and self-efficacy is hugely powerful.
• 25:04
  Allan Misner: So there's two layers for this as well the leader and the social.
• 25:07
  Allan Misner: The leader level is basically self-management, where you become the CEO of your body and you start making decisions on what you're going to do and what you're not going to do, and then what we do in business and which you know from engineers if something's not working, I've got to fix that process.
• 25:25
  Allan Misner: So I have a failure.
• 25:27
  Allan Misner: I want to fix it.
• 25:28
  Allan Misner: So we put friction in to stop things that we don't want to happen and we take friction away to make the things that we do want to happen easier.
• 25:37
  Carol: Before I started working with Philip, I had been trying to lose weight and was really struggling with consistency, but from the very beginning, philip took the time to listen to me and understand my goals.
• 25:48
  Carol: He taught me the importance of fueling my body with the right foods to optimize my training in the gym, and I lost 20 pounds.
• 25:56
  Carol: More importantly, I gained self-confidence.
• 26:00
  Carol: What sets Philip apart is the personal connection.
• 26:05
  Carol: He supported and encouraged me every step of the way.
• 26:09
  Carol: So if you're looking for a coach who cares about your journey as much as you do, I highly recommend Philip Pape.
• 26:18
  Allan Misner: So we build these frictionless and frictioned areas to kind of wall us in and make it easier and easier to do the things we want to do.
• 26:24
  Allan Misner: Here's one example for me.
• 26:26
  Allan Misner: So I wanted to work out.
• 26:28
  Allan Misner: Two o'clock in the afternoon was the best time to go to a gym, so I knew that.
• 26:31
  Allan Misner: So I told my boss I'm going to work, work out from two to three.
• 26:34
  Allan Misner: That's going to be my lunch hour.
• 26:35
  Allan Misner: I'm going to block it out of my calendar.
• 26:37
  Allan Misner: I'm going to do this thing.
• 26:38
  Allan Misner: Obviously, if you need me I'll be here.
• 26:40
  Allan Misner: But I'm going to go work out Now what I needed, and so I would forget a shirt, pair of shorts, socks.
• 26:54
  Allan Misner: But one day I forgot one shoe, and I don't even know how you do that.
• 26:59
  Allan Misner: I still, to this day, cannot tell you why there was only one shoe in that bag.
• 27:03
  Allan Misner: I do not know.
• 27:05
  Allan Misner: But I just knew this is something I have to fix as the manager or CEO of my own health and fitness.
• 27:11
  Allan Misner: I want to do this.
• 27:12
  Allan Misner: I had signed up for a Tough Mudder, I had to do this.
• 27:15
  Allan Misner: I said, okay, what do I need?
• 27:17
  Allan Misner: I said, well, I got to do stupid checklists.
• 27:19
  Allan Misner: That's what we do.
• 27:21
  Allan Misner: So I made a checklist, everything that was supposed to be in the bag.
• 27:24
  Allan Misner: I laminated it and every evening, when I was brushing my teeth, set the bag out, pull the list out one by one, from the top to the bottom.
• 27:31
  Allan Misner: Everything is in the bag.
• 27:33
  Allan Misner: The list went in the bag.
• 27:34
  Allan Misner: I put the bag right by the door so I would have to either jump over or trip over to go to work in the morning.
• 27:40
  Philip Pape: Yeah, we would call that mistake proofing right, mistake proofing the process.
• 27:43
  Allan Misner: Exactly so.
• 27:49
  Allan Misner: It was looking at the process and say how can I make this easier?
• 27:51
  Allan Misner: Because I would use that bag, especially the one shoe day bag, to not do the workout and I'm like I can't keep doing this.
• 28:01
  Allan Misner: And so over time, you're doing this as self-manager, making it easier, you're developing habits and you're developing values.
• 28:09
  Allan Misner: So now, at the social level, you now begin to identify as that person, that healthier, more fit person.
• 28:18
  Allan Misner: The easiest example I can give you is okay, so someone says I'm going to start a walking program.
• 28:23
  Allan Misner: So they start walking, they're walking and maybe initially 15, 20 minutes, they up it to 30, maybe 45.
• 28:29
  Allan Misner: Then they start throwing in little jogs and then eventually they say hey, and they get a friend and they all sign up for a 5k.
• 28:35
  Allan Misner: And now they're buying shoes.
• 28:36
  Allan Misner: And they're buying, hey, and they get a friend and they all sign up for a 5k.
• 28:37
  Allan Misner: And now they're buying shoes and they're buying water bottles and they consider themselves a runner.
• 28:42
  Allan Misner: They now identify as a runner.
• 28:44
  Allan Misner: And so at five o'clock in the morning, when the alarm goes off, what are runners?
• 28:49
  Allan Misner: Do they run?
• 28:50
  Allan Misner: It's an automatic.
• 28:52
  Allan Misner: They don't even think about not running.
• 28:54
  Allan Misner: In fact, if they got injured and can't run or the weather was too inclement and they can't run, they feel bad, they'd be frustrated, yeah Right.
• 29:02
  Allan Misner: So that identity of identifying as a person who's fit you've now come full circle.
• 29:07
  Allan Misner: You have unlimited motivation and the person that does the best with this has their feet in all four of them.
• 29:15
  Allan Misner: So you have a coach that's helping you get better at things you want to get better at.
• 29:19
  Allan Misner: You have people around you that are right peers, so the peer pressure is positive and pushing you.
• 29:24
  Allan Misner: You are doing the self-management, so you're making things easier and better.
• 29:29
  Allan Misner: I get on a plane, I'm going to fly somewhere.
• 29:31
  Allan Misner: I go and research gems near my hotel.
• 29:34
  Allan Misner: I go and pre-look at menus at all the different local restaurants to figure out what foods, where's the best place for me to have dinner, what does the gym at the hotel look like?
• 29:45
  Allan Misner: And if that's not good enough, is there another gym that I can get a day pass for?
• 29:49
  Allan Misner: So a little bit of research, and so you're doing that and then, yeah, you identify as someone.
• 29:55
  Allan Misner: That's who I am, this is what I do, this is how I live.
• 29:58
  Allan Misner: So you have unlimited motivation.
• 30:00
  Allan Misner: It's not something you find, it's something you learn.
• 30:03
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and I love that mental model with the grid, cause I'm thinking I'm sure you have something that you know.
• 30:07
  Allan Misner: I absolutely do.
• 30:09
  Philip Pape: I'll, I'll send it to you, Okay, Is it?
• 30:25
  Philip Pape: Is it kind of self-accountability, CEO of your own body?
• 30:28
  Philip Pape: And the other is relatedness, which ties into the social layer but also the individual identity.
• 30:34
  Philip Pape: There's a lot of cross-correlation here with Well it all is.
• 30:38
  Allan Misner: The thing is well, you know, psychology, engineering, accounting, they're all systems, and the human body is a system, you know.
• 30:47
  Philip Pape: Yeah, no.
• 30:47
  Philip Pape: So speaking of that, then it's true, Systems.
• 30:50
  Philip Pape: I heard somebody talking about how they didn't like the word habits because you're creating a system and I'm like, well, that's semantics, but you do talk about this quite a bit.
• 30:59
  Philip Pape: I know in your book you say that it's kind of a lagging indicator right Of maybe all these accountability factors that come first.
• 31:07
  Philip Pape: Does that mean that we put the cart before the horse when we think of habits, kind of in a vacuum, rather than the commitments that lead to what you just talked about, leading to the habits?
• 31:17
  Allan Misner: Right.
• 31:17
  Allan Misner: So what we're going to do is we're going to go on a particular diet.
• 31:21
  Allan Misner: We need to lose weight.
• 31:22
  Allan Misner: Okay, I'm going to do this diet.
• 31:30
  Allan Misner: Well, you're putting the strategy and the tactics ahead of the brain.
• 31:32
  Allan Misner: Okay, you have to have the commitment first.
• 31:34
  Allan Misner: You have to do some self-awareness first to know okay, am I someone who's going to hurt myself because I'm looking in the rear view mirror and seeing the 29-year-old me that could pretty much do anything.
• 31:45
  Allan Misner: I could tackle a freaking car if I wanted to and not get hurt.
• 31:49
  Allan Misner: Or the guy I am today who will definitely get hurt if I get hit by someone on a trike, if I get hit by someone on a trike.
• 32:00
  Allan Misner: So you have to start working through the mindset stuff of understanding what am I?
• 32:02
  Allan Misner: What do I need?
• 32:02
  Allan Misner: So I, like I said, I have the five mindsets.
• 32:04
  Allan Misner: You can go to 40plusfitnesscom forward slash quiz and that'll tell you your primary one.
• 32:08
  Allan Misner: But I worked through all five of these.
• 32:10
  Allan Misner: I was looking in the rear view mirror at who I was, rather than realizing where I'm sitting and where I needed to go.
• 32:16
  Allan Misner: There were points in time when I just didn't get enough traction and I wasn't doing it consistently enough to see or feel anything, and so I would just fall off.
• 32:25
  Allan Misner: It'd be like Monday through Friday I'd do great, and then Friday night I would mess up.
• 32:30
  Allan Misner: And then that rolled a Saturday, sunday, and I might start back on Monday, or three weeks Monday, or four months Monday, and so I needed traction, I needed to see it.
• 32:46
  Allan Misner: So I needed gamification of okay, I need to mark something down every time I do this so that I want to run that streak.
• 32:49
  Allan Misner: I want to see more of this.
• 32:49
  Allan Misner: So I was a tires person and then I was a co-pilot early on, and what I mean by that is everybody else's obligations and needs went above my own.
• 32:59
  Allan Misner: The job was first If I had to work a 16-hour day and I didn't get my workout in, that's good.
• 33:06
  Allan Misner: I put in a 16-hour day, but I didn't get my workout in, and I'm sitting at the hotel bar eating my dinner, drinking some beers, because it just didn't feel like doing anything else, but go in, get myself sedated and go to bed, start it over and do it again tomorrow.
• 33:20
  Allan Misner: So you have to do some self-awareness to know what you need to do, and a coach can help you do that, particularly if they're the right kind of coach.
• 33:29
  Allan Misner: But they're going to hold you accountable, they're going to get you moving.
• 33:33
  Allan Misner: And then that's when you can start figuring some of this stuff out.
• 33:35
  Allan Misner: Do you need to have a list that you pack your bag the night before?
• 33:39
  Allan Misner: Do you need to avoid trying to do too much at one time?
• 33:44
  Allan Misner: Do you need to see your consistency on a map?
• 33:47
  Allan Misner: Do you need to convince yourself that three weeks is not enough time to know that something works?
• 33:53
  Allan Misner: So you start a diet.
• 33:54
  Allan Misner: Three weeks later it's like well, I've only lost two pounds and I actually gained about us three, but I gained one back.
• 34:00
  Allan Misner: So this doesn't work.
• 34:02
  Allan Misner: Quit, put the brakes on, go do something else.
• 34:05
  Allan Misner: Like you're never going to get anywhere.
• 34:07
  Allan Misner: So you have to at least understand what your tendencies are.
• 34:10
  Allan Misner: And then you meet the fat bastard, or whatever name you want to call your bad boys, and you start saying I need to show self-love, I need to be kind to myself.
• 34:19
  Allan Misner: I need to realize when I'm using those words that I would never say to another human being, never in a million years.
• 34:27
  Allan Misner: If a friend came to me and says, hey, even an enemy came to me and said, hey, I want you to hold me accountable, I would not use the words that my internal voice uses when I screw up, when they screw up, I mean because I would never talk to another human being that way, but he does.
• 34:42
  Allan Misner: He does if I let him.
• 34:45
  Allan Misner: So it's understanding all the psychology and mindset and motivation stuff and getting that all in place and then the strategies and tactics begin to make sense and add value to your life.
• 34:59
  Allan Misner: So there is a cart before the horse.
• 35:01
  Allan Misner: You have to have a destination before you start driving.
• 35:04
  Allan Misner: Okay, it doesn't have to be a clear destination because I don't have to have the GPS totally loaded, but I do know I have to get out of the parking lot before I can go somewhere else.
• 35:13
  Allan Misner: So I could start driving out of the parking lot before I really know where I'm going.
• 35:18
  Allan Misner: But after that I need to know am I turning right or turning left?
• 35:21
  Allan Misner: I got to have directions before I get on the road and we don't do that.
• 35:26
  Allan Misner: We just say, okay, well, just keep going left.
• 35:28
  Philip Pape: Right, yeah, so I like how all of these interplay, because what did you just say?
• 35:35
  Philip Pape: Yeah, the direction and the plan, kind of in parallel with the accountability.
• 35:39
  Philip Pape: That helps you gain the confidence that this thing's actually working.
• 35:43
  Philip Pape: And it made me think of in engineering you'll have um, there's a particular guy I'm thinking of.
• 35:48
  Philip Pape: He was an amazing electrical designer, you know could design anything and the joke was that he will design the perfect system to the wrong requirements.
• 35:55
  Philip Pape: You know, if you give him the wrong requirement, that's what he'll design.
• 35:57
  Philip Pape: He'll design the perfect system to the wrong requirements.
• 35:58
  Philip Pape: If you give him the wrong requirement, that's what he'll design.
• 36:00
  Philip Pape: He'll design it perfectly to those requirements.
• 36:02
  Philip Pape: So there is a sense of upfront having the.
• 36:04
  Philip Pape: If you have a coach, for example, yes, they're going to help you with the nuts and bolts and the direction and they'll help you with all the psychology and the accountability along the way.
• 36:11
  Philip Pape: And there's degrees of this.
• 36:13
  Philip Pape: Right, Alan, Just listening to a podcast like yours will be a great first start, because you're a coach in their ears You're not necessarily somebody you hired, but you're the person giving that sense of wisdom and direction.
• 36:25
  Allan Misner: But I will say this information is only valuable if you act on it.
• 36:29
  Allan Misner: For sure, For sure.
• 36:30
  Allan Misner: How many technical manuals have ever been written and never read?
• 36:36
  Philip Pape: Yeah, there's a lot of content binging without the action to go with it.
• 36:39
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 36:40
  Philip Pape: So we've got the realization.
• 36:42
  Philip Pape: Then we have, we have the wake up call.
• 36:44
  Philip Pape: Then we kind of have facing the challenges of starting over.
• 36:47
  Philip Pape: At this age we have the beginnings of commitment leading to the development of system and having accountability.
• 36:53
  Philip Pape: Then we get to the point where maybe things are rolling a bit and we have some momentum, and now we have some sort of setback or life gets in the way, as if life just doesn't always exist right, as if it's supposed to be smooth sailing.
• 37:06
  Philip Pape: But injuries, especially at this age, work stress, family obligations, interruptions to your sleep, you've got kids all of these things are inevitable.
• 37:15
  Philip Pape: So maybe tell us a story about how do we deal with that, because that's super common.
• 37:20
  Allan Misner: It is, it is, and so there's two stories I like to tell.
• 37:24
  Allan Misner: Okay, so I'll tell the base story that I use and I put this in the book.
• 37:29
  Allan Misner: So you imagine you're driving down the highway and you're on a road trip, you know where you're going, and then you see this sign and it's the world's largest carved beaver.
• 37:39
  Allan Misner: Next exit Got to stop.
• 37:42
  Allan Misner: Right.
• 37:42
  Allan Misner: Of course, I got to see this thing.
• 37:45
  Allan Misner: So instead of going in and having a plan, you just go off the highway.
• 37:48
  Allan Misner: And then you see the next sign Albino alligators, one mile down the road.
• 37:53
  Allan Misner: Well, crap, we got to go see the albino alligators, right.
• 37:56
  Allan Misner: And then you get down there and across the street, is this wonderful, you know best ice cream in all of the Northeast.
• 38:03
  Allan Misner: So now you got to go across the street and have the best ice cream in all the Northeast.
• 38:07
  Allan Misner: And now you've been off the highway for well over an hour and a half when all you intended to do was just see that damn Bieber.
• 38:15
  Allan Misner: Okay, so we're going to have detours, we're going to go off path.
• 38:21
  Allan Misner: Now, sometimes they're important.
• 38:22
  Allan Misner: So if my buddy called me up and said hey, alan, I'm going through a tough patch right now and can we just sit down and have a few beers and talk.
• 38:30
  Allan Misner: Guess what I'm going to do.
• 38:31
  Allan Misner: Even if I'm training for something, even if I want to cut weight, I'm going to go have a couple beers with my friends.
• 38:37
  Allan Misner: Now I'm going to buy the best quality beer that bar sells.
• 38:40
  Allan Misner: I'm not going to do crap.
• 38:41
  Allan Misner: I'm going to get a good IPA, good beer.
• 38:43
  Allan Misner: Okay, I know a lot of people don't agree with IPA, but I love IPA.
• 38:47
  Philip Pape: There are two camps.
• 38:48
  Philip Pape: It's okay.
• 38:48
  Philip Pape: You're allowed to have.
• 38:49
  Philip Pape: You're allowed to like inferior beer, it's all right.
• 38:53
  Allan Misner: Anyway, but I'm going to go have beers with my friend, and so that's not a necessarily planned detour, but I can have a plan of how I'm going to do it.
• 39:00
  Allan Misner: It's like, okay, I'm going to have a beer, and then I'm going to have a water, and then I'll have a beer and then I'll have a water.
• 39:05
  Allan Misner: Okay, so that's the plan.
• 39:06
  Allan Misner: And then tomorrow I, just when I first get up, make sure the first thing I do is drink water.
• 39:11
  Allan Misner: Okay, not going for the coffee, because I'm up a little later and I'm going to want the coffee.
• 39:16
  Allan Misner: Have the water first, water before coffee, so I'm good and hydrated, and then I can go to the gym and do what I got to do.
• 39:29
  Allan Misner: Okay, I don't have to skip that workout if I manage my hydration.
• 39:31
  Allan Misner: Okay, I might be a little tired because I didn't get enough sleep, but I'm going to make it work.
• 39:36
  Allan Misner: Okay, that's the plan off, plan on.
• 39:38
  Allan Misner: So if I went in and said, okay, there's the wooden beaver, what we're going to do is go, we're going to stop, we'll get the selfie, and then we're going to go into the bathroom, I'm going to fill up with gas and we'll get right back on the highway, that would have been a successful detour.
• 39:48
  Philip Pape: Instead of just letting it carry you along.
• 39:51
  Allan Misner: Letting.
• 39:51
  Allan Misner: Yeah, I screwed up, I'm off, I'm out, so having a plan going out and a plan coming back in.
• 40:02
  Allan Misner: And so I was 51 and I was getting ready to do a Spartan.
• 40:04
  Allan Misner: I'd signed up with a Spartan because I wanted my brother to do it with me.
• 40:06
  Allan Misner: I have brothers.
• 40:07
  Allan Misner: My youngest brother is 25 years younger than me, but this brother was like 13 years younger than me.
• 40:12
  Allan Misner: So at the time I'm 51, he's in his late thirties, and so I'm like we're going to do, well, let's do this Spartan, and that is the one with the penalties, the penalty burpees, and so we're going to do it.
• 40:25
  Allan Misner: And then it turned out that his daughter was having a recital that weekend, so he wasn't going to go.
• 40:29
  Allan Misner: So I'm like, okay, I'm doing it by myself.
• 40:31
  Allan Misner: But I was training for that.
• 40:34
  Allan Misner: I hired a coach.
• 40:35
  Allan Misner: Yes, coaches should hire coaches.
• 40:37
  Allan Misner: I wanted to get strong.
• 40:38
  Allan Misner: So I had a strength coach and Dave was a really good strength coach.
• 40:41
  Allan Misner: This had nothing to do with him.
• 40:44
  Allan Misner: I was trying to do dumbbell, overhead presses, military press seated, and I was stupid about how I got the weights up and I really didn't need to be pressing 80s, but I was, because Dave's a really good strength coach.
• 41:00
  Allan Misner: I got really freaking strong and I tore a rotator cuff and I knew when I did I'm like, okay, that's like tore off the bone or that's not even connected anymore.
• 41:13
  Allan Misner: I knew it and so I told him.
• 41:14
  Allan Misner: I said, okay, dave workout's over.
• 41:14
  Allan Misner: And he's like what happened?
• 41:15
  Allan Misner: I said I think I just tore my, I tore my rotator cuff.
• 41:16
  Allan Misner: He's like, oh, oh, no, man, I'm like, okay, no problem.
• 41:19
  Allan Misner: No problem, I'll see you on Thursday.
• 41:21
  Allan Misner: He was like what I said?
• 41:22
  Allan Misner: Well, I won't be able to do presses, but I could probably do everything else because I was still going to do the Spartan.
• 41:30
  Allan Misner: I'm an.
• 41:46
  Allan Misner: That was the push.
• 41:46
  Allan Misner: You know, I'm gonna do the spartan.
• 41:47
  Allan Misner: You got one more arm and you got two legs.
• 41:48
  Allan Misner: I got the other arm and I can't tear it again.
• 41:49
  Allan Misner: Yeah, it's true, I feel you man, okay now.
• 41:50
  Allan Misner: Uh, it still hurt a lot, but I kept training and the training itself.
• 41:51
  Allan Misner: We didn't do any presses.
• 41:52
  Allan Misner: We tried a couple different things like using the sm Smith machine and changing angles and doing declines.
• 41:58
  Allan Misner: None of it really worked.
• 41:59
  Allan Misner: And so I went and did the Tough Mudder and then I went in and saw the surgeon and I told the surgeon I said I tore my rotator cuff.
• 42:08
  Allan Misner: He says how do you know?
• 42:09
  Allan Misner: I said I know.
• 42:10
  Allan Misner: And he says well, let's take an x-ray.
• 42:12
  Allan Misner: I took the x-ray.
• 42:13
  Allan Misner: He says yeah, it looks like you did tear it.
• 42:21
  Allan Misner: And then he did a couple of strength moves, you know.
• 42:21
  Allan Misner: He put your arm up.
• 42:22
  Allan Misner: He said push, push, pull.
• 42:23
  Allan Misner: He said yeah, it's pretty much tore.
• 42:23
  Allan Misner: I said yeah, pretty much tore.
• 42:24
  Allan Misner: He said they, you know, the insurance companies want to send you to PT.
• 42:26
  Allan Misner: I said that's not going to do any good.
• 42:27
  Allan Misner: He said that won't do any good.
• 42:28
  Allan Misner: He said I'm going to ask like okay, he put it in, they got me to do the MRI.
• 42:43
  Allan Misner: It was yeah, I was shredded, it was gone.
• 42:44
  Allan Misner: And so he's like okay, we're going to go in for surgery.
• 42:46
  Allan Misner: I went in for surgery on Thursday.
• 42:46
  Allan Misner: I was out and in PT on Monday.
• 42:47
  Allan Misner: So I walk into PT on Monday and the PT guy's like well, when did, how long ago did you have the surgery?
• 42:52
  Allan Misner: I'm like Thursday.
• 42:52
  Allan Misner: He's like you're already here.
• 42:54
  Allan Misner: I'm like yeah, this is, this is my on-ramp.
• 42:57
  Allan Misner: Okay, it's time to recover.
• 42:59
  Allan Misner: The detour was the surgery and now I've got to get right back on the highway.
• 43:03
  Allan Misner: So that was my plan.
• 43:04
  Allan Misner: I was going to do the tough.
• 43:10
  Allan Misner: I'm just going to do the Spartan, because I was dedicated to do the Spartan and I did it and it hurt like hell and I got it done.
• 43:14
  Allan Misner: And then I'm like, okay, now I get the surgery and I'm on ramp and every bit of homework he gave me I did.
• 43:19
  Allan Misner: I understood why I was doing everything, everything I was supposed to.
• 43:23
  Allan Misner: I literally was probably his best client because I could just I just walk in and say same workout as last time.
• 43:28
  Allan Misner: He said, well, I want to add one exercise and he'd show me how to do the exercise.
• 43:32
  Allan Misner: And boom, I just do the whole workout by myself.
• 43:34
  Allan Misner: Okay, he put the ice cuff on to cut the, to basically bring down information after the workout.
• 43:40
  Allan Misner: But I did all the workouts myself.
• 43:42
  Allan Misner: I got all my but.
• 43:44
  Allan Misner: But the core thing was, because I had done all the training all the way up until the surgery, I never really lost much range of motion.
• 43:52
  Allan Misner: So they lay you in there and they start measuring range of motion.
• 43:55
  Allan Misner: He's like, he's like I know you're in your 50s, but you've got the range of motion at this point that I've never even seen in athletes.
• 44:03
  Allan Misner: What did you do?
• 44:05
  Allan Misner: I said I just kept training.
• 44:06
  Allan Misner: I couldn't do any presses, but I could do pulls, and so my arm is.
• 44:10
  Allan Misner: You know, I just grab hold of the bar for lat, pull downs and sit down and it stretched my arm and then I could pull.
• 44:16
  Allan Misner: So my arms never didn't go through the full range of motion.
• 44:20
  Allan Misner: I never put myself in any kind of sling to avoid the pain because I knew it was already tore.
• 44:27
  Allan Misner: I couldn't tear it again.
• 44:30
  Allan Misner: So I did all these things knowing that that's my plan during this detour, and then my on-ramp is to get my PT done as quickly as I possibly could.
• 44:40
  Allan Misner: I got through because my range of motion was back to about 100% within three weeks.
• 44:45
  Allan Misner: He's like I don't even know if we can start strength training now, right now, because I've never put anybody strength training in just three and a half weeks.
• 44:52
  Allan Misner: So let me talk to your surgeon.
• 44:54
  Allan Misner: Surgeon says well, alan thinks he can do it.
• 44:55
  Allan Misner: He can do it, do it.
• 44:57
  Allan Misner: You know and that was the other thing If you get hurt, get the best, get the best PT, get the best surgeon.
• 45:04
  Allan Misner: Look for someone who works with athletes.
• 45:07
  Allan Misner: Yes, and don't just tell them I want you to fix me and make me stop hurting.
• 45:11
  Allan Misner: Tell them you want to be back to performance of where you were before, and a good surgeon and a good PT will get you there.
• 45:22
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I can relate to all of that because I also had rotator cuff surgery last year and I have my deadlift.
• 45:27
  Philip Pape: Harness was one of the fun toys early on.
• 45:29
  Philip Pape: I'm like I got a deadlift, but it wasn't there with two arms quite yet.
• 45:33
  Philip Pape: So let's get creative.
• 45:34
  Philip Pape: I think the point here that you're saying is these things are always inevitable.
• 45:38
  Philip Pape: They're probably quite yet.
• 45:39
  Philip Pape: So let's, let's get creative.
• 45:39
  Philip Pape: I think the point here that you're saying is things, these things are always inevitable.
• 45:42
  Philip Pape: They're probably more inevitable as we age.
• 45:43
  Philip Pape: And there's something you can do.
• 45:43
  Philip Pape: There is something you can do.
• 45:44
  Philip Pape: Don't make, don't make excuses for yourself, and it's not like a yeah, just get out there and just be reckless.
• 45:48
  Philip Pape: It's figure out a way around it to move forward.
• 45:51
  Philip Pape: I do like that specific advice about finding PTs, doctors, trainers, all who understand lifting and athletes.
• 45:59
  Philip Pape: It makes a massive difference.
• 46:00
  Philip Pape: They'll be aggressive when they need to be and they'll also understand why you do what you do, because the other guys just don't have a clue.
• 46:08
  Allan Misner: These are guys that did the division.
• 46:10
  Allan Misner: One football team in town, they get it, they get it.
• 46:12
  Allan Misner: And so when I walked in and said, no, I performance, I don't care about pain, I care about performance, they're like okay.
• 46:20
  Philip Pape: Yeah, so all right.
• 46:21
  Philip Pape: So full circle back to the.
• 46:23
  Philip Pape: I guess we're we're kind of in the last stage here.
• 46:25
  Philip Pape: I don't know, we'll see how the show notes tie up with all these, uh, what we're saying here but you know some is someone has gone through this process.
• 46:31
  Philip Pape: At this point they're definitely getting results of some kind, both physical, mental and then deeper results.
• 46:38
  Philip Pape: I'm sure that surprised them along the way they get to this point.
• 46:41
  Philip Pape: Maybe it is a fat loss phase, maybe it's something more than that, maybe it's performance related.
• 46:46
  Philip Pape: People always ask how do I maintain that?
• 46:48
  Philip Pape: Now?
• 46:48
  Philip Pape: That mentality probably comes from the quick fix weight loss of like you lose your weight, you gain it, you lose your weight.
• 46:54
  Philip Pape: We're not doing it that way and I would argue that it's almost easier to maintain something when you've done it this way.
• 47:04
  Philip Pape: But tell us, how do we reground ourselves?
• 47:05
  Philip Pape: Maybe have a new goal, have a new kind of thing that pushes us to the next level?
• 47:07
  Allan Misner: So yeah, that was one thing about my book that I wanted to make sure I got into, because so many people think, well, yay, race is over, go back to eating fat food and then you'll end up having to do this whole thing all over again, or maybe.
• 47:22
  Allan Misner: So what I did?
• 47:24
  Allan Misner: I called it CARGO.
• 47:25
  Allan Misner: Okay, so it's an acronym and the C means celebrate.
• 47:29
  Allan Misner: You should be very proud of yourself for doing this, because so many people don't.
• 47:33
  Allan Misner: If it's weight loss, I want you to think about one billion people on this planet are obese.
• 47:40
  Allan Misner: I saw that stat the other day.
• 47:42
  Allan Misner: Dr Lahnke's book and it was like that just floored me and then I realized how right it was.
• 47:47
  Allan Misner: I mean, just even in the United States, there's over 100 million obese people.
• 47:51
  Allan Misner: That's insane, but it's getting worse.
• 47:54
  Allan Misner: So you've done something that a small fraction of people like you're in rare air.
• 47:59
  Allan Misner: You're a very special individual if you've lost a substantial amount of weight, because most people don't, and most people don't keep it off.
• 48:08
  Allan Misner: But go ahead and celebrate Now.
• 48:09
  Allan Misner: This is not celebrate with a jelly donut or cake or a bunch of alcohol.
• 48:14
  Allan Misner: This is celebrate yourself.
• 48:17
  Allan Misner: Or a bunch of alcohol.
• 48:20
  Allan Misner: This is celebrate yourself.
• 48:21
  Allan Misner: You've shown yourself this much self-love and you're at this point because you did something important.
• 48:24
  Allan Misner: You did hard things and you should be very proud.
• 48:28
  Allan Misner: Now, after that, you need to realign yourself.
• 48:31
  Allan Misner: So the A is about alignment, and what you're going to realize is that you feel different.
• 48:39
  Allan Misner: You are a different person.
• 48:40
  Allan Misner: This change that you went through was not just a physical change.
• 48:44
  Allan Misner: It changed who you are as a human, and other people are looking at you differently.
• 48:49
  Allan Misner: You may even have a whole different new set of friends that you didn't have before.
• 48:54
  Allan Misner: Okay.
• 48:55
  Allan Misner: So just recognize that you will be treated differently based on where you are, and you have to accept that.
• 49:02
  Allan Misner: Okay, the next is to sit down and recalibrate your GPS.
• 49:08
  Allan Misner: Where, where did you?
• 49:09
  Allan Misner: Where do you want to go next?
• 49:10
  Allan Misner: A lot of times, people will climb out of a hole.
• 49:12
  Allan Misner: I was in this hole.
• 49:14
  Allan Misner: I was over 60 pounds overweight and I climbed out of the hole and I could have just stayed there.
• 49:20
  Allan Misner: But there's this mountain in front of me that I can also climb.
• 49:25
  Allan Misner: So we go from dealing with a problem or despair to aspiration.
• 49:31
  Allan Misner: So what do you really want?
• 49:33
  Allan Misner: You know you could lose 30, 40 pounds, but what do you really want?
• 49:37
  Allan Misner: Well, I want to wear the jeans that I wore in college.
• 49:39
  Allan Misner: You still have those old things.
• 49:41
  Allan Misner: Yeah, pull them out.
• 49:42
  Allan Misner: Pull them out and get ready.
• 49:44
  Allan Misner: That's your new thing.
• 49:46
  Allan Misner: I'm going to be wearing these jeans by February.
• 49:48
  Allan Misner: Tell yourself that, set that as the standard.
• 49:51
  Allan Misner: That's your new vision.
• 49:52
  Allan Misner: Okay, I'll be wearing the same size jeans when I go to my class reunion next year.
• 49:57
  Allan Misner: I'll be wearing the same size jeans I was wearing in high school.
• 50:00
  Allan Misner: Okay, set the goal, set the aspiration.
• 50:03
  Allan Misner: Okay.
• 50:04
  Allan Misner: So you recalibrate your GPS.
• 50:06
  Allan Misner: I'm like, okay, I feel good at 205, but I'll be optimal at 185.
• 50:12
  Allan Misner: That's where I want to go.
• 50:13
  Allan Misner: And then go.
• 50:14
  Allan Misner: That G-O is go, go, do it.
• 50:17
  Allan Misner: And this is a cycle that you'll just roll over and over and over.
• 50:21
  Allan Misner: So, if you look at, what we emulated here is the cycle of change we went from pre-contemplation.
• 50:29
  Allan Misner: I didn't really know, I had a problem.
• 50:31
  Allan Misner: I was okay with it, I was accepting it To recognizing I have a problem in contemplation, to determination or preparation, which depending on which one you look at.
• 50:40
  Allan Misner: But basically this is where you make the decision, where you really commit to doing something.
• 50:45
  Allan Misner: Then you have action, then you have maintenance and then it's a cycle.
• 50:50
  Allan Misner: Now, the cycle doesn't always have to go in a positive direction, but if you do this right, you just keep cycling through.
• 50:56
  Allan Misner: Okay, I want to get the fastest speed for over 80 in the a hundred yard dash.
• 51:03
  Allan Misner: I want to continue to play tennis and beat the kids when I'm 80.
• 51:09
  Allan Misner: I want to be doing whatever crazy thing my grandkids are doing when I'm 80.
• 51:12
  Allan Misner: So you kind of get the idea that this is just these cycles of your life.
• 51:17
  Allan Misner: As you go through, we age and we don't want to follow the curve, the way the curve is taking us.
• 51:23
  Allan Misner: We see where that curve takes us.
• 51:25
  Allan Misner: It's illness, it's chronic, it's horrible and we lose our independence along the way.
• 51:30
  Allan Misner: I don't want that.
• 51:32
  Allan Misner: So it's a loop.
• 51:34
  Allan Misner: I don't have to do another Tough Mudder, so that's not my loop anymore.
• 51:41
  Allan Misner: I have to carry five-gallon bottles of water all over this place.
• 51:49
  Philip Pape: That's what I have to do fun and I think it opens up more options.
• 51:58
  Philip Pape: When you have all these loops, you may you may have the setbacks, like the surgery, but it just you know, you have the confidence from your past cycles of this that you can then go for something else.
• 52:05
  Philip Pape: So, yeah, I love that recalibrating, not not only climbing out of a hole.
• 52:08
  Philip Pape: You've done that.
• 52:09
  Allan Misner: Now it's just the sky's the limit, I mean no-transcript pieces of advice that I think are kind of wrong.
• 52:42
  Allan Misner: And one is just start, and I used to think that was right, but now I know, just think Really, get your head straight first, because if you just act and you just do the thing, you won't stick to it because you haven't built, you haven't made it easy enough.
• 53:00
  Allan Misner: So fix your plan, have a plan and execute on the plan.
• 53:05
  Allan Misner: In that order Okay.
• 53:07
  Allan Misner: And then the other one that people like to do is just for exercise, just do something you enjoy.
• 53:11
  Allan Misner: And I think that's a bad one too, because if you, you know, I I enjoy laying in a bathtub, but that's about as strenuous as I would want to get if I just did something.
• 53:22
  Philip Pape: I'm so glad you said that, because that ties with the doing hard things.
• 53:25
  Philip Pape: I'm so glad you said that.
• 53:26
  Philip Pape: Nobody likes back squats when they start, but when you get good at it, you start to.
• 53:31
  Allan Misner: I want to.
• 53:31
  Allan Misner: If I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105, I'm going to have to be able to do squats.
• 53:37
  Allan Misner: I'm going to have to have the dexterity to twist and do the paperwork, and then I'm going to have to have the speed and agility to be able to get up from where I am and make it in there in time.
• 53:47
  Allan Misner: So there are fitness aspects of everything we do in our lives.
• 53:51
  Allan Misner: Train to be that person.
• 53:54
  Allan Misner: Be fit for task, and if the task is making it to the bathroom and wiping your own butt, that's the task.
• 54:00
  Allan Misner: Train for it so you can keep doing it.
• 54:03
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and I think a good physical analogy is when you go to the gym and do a set, you're always doing something harder than last time.
• 54:09
  Philip Pape: It's never going to be easier, but that gives you the results.
• 54:12
  Philip Pape: So I mean a good analogy for that.
• 54:14
  Philip Pape: All right, I love that.
• 54:15
  Philip Pape: So just start is should be really just think, you know, come up with a plan, fix it, go after it and then just doing something you enjoy should be.
• 54:23
  Philip Pape: You know, choose hard things, do hard things and maybe you'll enjoy them, maybe not, it doesn't matter.
• 54:27
  Philip Pape: Almost it's going to give you the result, but you'll enjoy the things you do enjoy.
• 54:30
  Allan Misner: Like you like hiking and you build stamina on an elliptical machine because it's six feet of snow outside when a season comes around, you're going to have the stamina to do the hiking you want to do.
• 54:41
  Allan Misner: So you do hard things, so you can do wonderful things.
• 54:46
  Philip Pape: That's great, Alan.
• 54:47
  Philip Pape: Where do you want listeners to find you?
• 54:49
  Allan Misner: Okay, well, the 40 Plus Fitness Podcast is available.
• 54:52
  Allan Misner: Wherever you're listening to podcasts, including here where you're listening to wits and weights and I have the website 40plusfitnesscom.
• 55:01
  Allan Misner: That's 40plusfitnesscom, and all my stuff's there.
• 55:07
  Allan Misner: You can links to the book, links to the podcast, link to everything I do Love to hear from you.
• 55:12
  Allan Misner: So come out there and say hi, and I hope you get fit and healthy and enjoy your life.
• 55:17
  Philip Pape: Awesome.
• 55:17
  Philip Pape: I'll include those in the show notes.
• 55:18
  Philip Pape: Everybody here go follow 40 Plus Fitness Podcast, because he gets into all the details, the nitty gritty, all the training and nutrition stuff, as well as mindset psychology we talked about here, and he's going on 600, well over 600 episodes, so you guys will love that.
• 55:32
  Philip Pape: Thanks again, alan, for coming on.
• 55:33
  Philip Pape: It was a lot of fun to do the back and forth with you.
• 55:36
  Philip Pape: Appreciate your time.
• 55:37
  Allan Misner: Yeah, thank you, philip.