There’s now way around it – we all get older. That doesn’t mean you have to stop working out, but it does mean you may need to change the focus and intensity of your workouts. For that reason, we created the Mature Athlete Workouts. We currently have forty weeks of free training available for you, with more being added every week.

Tom Kelso wrote these workouts. Tom is currently an Exercise Physiologist with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. He also trains clients through Pinnacle Personal & Performance Training in Chesterfield, Missouri. For 23 years he was in the collegiate strength and conditioning profession. He is a strong advocate of safe, practical, and time-efficient training.

Mature Athlete Workout: Cycle 1

The first cycle of the Mature Athlete workouts by Tom Kelso. Train progressively using basic exercises and training protocols to safely enhance fitness and strength.

Mature Athlete Workout: Cycle 2

Cycle 2 of the Mature Athlete workouts continues to build strength and endurance, with an added flexibility component.

Mature Athlete Workout: Cycle 3

The third cycle of the Mature Athlete workouts is another 12-week program with a variety of training options and modes. This cycle integrates challenge workouts to keep you competing with yourself.

Mature Athlete Workout: Cycle 4

Cycle Four of the Mature Athlete training incorporates a new training plan. The primary goal is to improve your performance in your sport or activity.

The post Over 40 Weeks of Free Mature Athlete Workouts appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The Hip Thrust

This low impact move has been proven to be the king of glute exercises. It opens the hips flexors, activates your glutes while also working the core. This move improves glute strength, increases glute size, helps you improve aesthetics of glutes by achieving higher, rounder and firmer glutes. Reduces your overall risk of injury, as strong glutes can help take stress off the lower back and also positively affect the mechanics of the hips, knees, ankles, and feet.

Adding bands and elastic resistance are a great variation to strengthen and fired up your glutes. To make it harder use a barbell and increase the load. Another way to intensify and isolate the glutes is by performing Single Leg Hip Thrust. You can also add weights and resistance bands to this variation.

To modify, start by using your own bodyweight during the Hip Thrust and place a mini band around your thighs.

Weighted Froggers

I love weighted froggers since you feel the glutes activating to a greater degree. These are very easy to perform and a great bodyweight exercise to add into your routine. Froggers also made a great regression for those who struggle to feel their glutes during hip thrusts, squats or deadlifts.

You can add these during your warm up as a glute activation drill during the general warm-up prior to the strength workout (3 sets of 10 reps), or as a finisher at the end of a workout to burn out the glutes (2-3 sets of 20-30 reps).

Clamshells

Clamshells are a fantastic way to strengthen your glutes as well as your abductors! This is a hip abduction exercise that you can use to activate your glutes and strengthen them depending on the tension of the band.This a very easy, low impact accessory exercise to incorporate in between heavy lifts, recovery days and during the warm-ups for activation.

To intensity perform Extended Range Side Lying Hip Abduction on a bench. If you are new to this exercise, start with a lighter band or no band at all and pause at the top of the movement for optimal glute recruitment.

The post Get Behind Your Glutes with These 3 Exercises appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The supplement industry sometimes seems like the wild wild west, where you’re left feeling like there are more questions than answers:

Should I take fish oil? Isn’t it good for reducing inflammation and heart health? What’s better? Pill form or liquid?

Or:

Discover supplements that benefit your specific needs with Supplement Advisor

The supplement industry sometimes seems like the wild wild west, where you’re left feeling like there are more questions than answers:

Should I take fish oil? Isn’t it good for reducing inflammation and heart health? What’s better? Pill form or liquid?

Or:

I have recently started the Ketogenic diet. Is it true I should be taking multivitamins and a folic acid supplement because I’m no longer getting folic acid from grains?

Or:

I’m a menstruating woman who doesn’t eat red meat. Should I be taking an iron supplement? And doesn’t Vitamin B12 play a role in red blood cell health, too, helping fend against becoming anemic? Should I take that, too? Do I need a B12 supplement too?

Enter Supplement Advisor’s free assessment test.

Supplement Advisor is a web-based company designed to empower health-conscious people to improve their cognitive function, as well as emotional and physical potential through simple and personalized supplement guidance designed by their advanced AI, ultimately helping you navigate through the wild wild west of the supplement industry easily and quickly.

One way they do this is through their assessment tool, a tool that lets you to either take a full assessment, or select a particular area to see if you might benefit from taking a supplement. The areas include:

• Memory
• Motivation
• Focus
• Mood
• Energy
• Learning
• Sleep.

How it works:

Let’s say you’re curious if you might benefit from taking a magnesium supplement to help regulate your blood sugar levels and stop you from having energy crashes in the middle of the day. And if so, what products might be best for you.

Giving you these answers is exactly what Supplement Advisor’s tool is designed to do.

All you do is select energy, hit submit and answer a few questions, such as:

• Do you feel fatigued throughout the day?
• Do you need an extra boost to get the most mileage out of your day?
• Does caffeine give you any nervousness or restlessness?

After answering the questions, the AI engine—which will continue to get smarter and smarter as more people take the assessment and the database grows—quickly analyzes your responses and offers various recommendations in terms of what products might be best for your specific needs.

Sleep

Because fifty to seventy million people in the United States suffer from some kind of sleep disorder—from having trouble falling asleep, to insomnia to sleep apnea—one of the most common reasons to take a supplement is for sleep.

On top of the natural products, nine million Americans take prescription drugs to help them sleep.Prescription drugs, however, can come with some side effects, including gastrointestinal problems, prolonged drowsiness during the day, daytime memory and cognitive performance challenges or various allergic reactions.

A better option for many is a melatonin supplement.

Why is it better?

Melatonin is a hormone the body produces naturally. It’s responsible for regulating your body’s internal clock by responding to lightness and darkness.

When it gets dark out, melatonin increases in your body and lets you know it’s bedtime by attaching to receptors in the brain that help you relax and feel tired. During the day, on the other hand, your body makes dopamine, which signals you to release less melatonin, thus helping keep you awake.

When you select sleep on Supplement Advisor’s assessment tool, it once again, puts you through a series of questions, including:

• Does stress cause you mild sleepiness?
• Does it take a long time for you to fall asleep?
• How difficult is it for you to achieve a sufficiently restful sleep routine?
• Do you have trouble falling into a deep sleep?
• Do you experience restless sleep?
• Lucid dreaming in the REM stage has shown to be helpful with reducing stress and dealing with trauma. Would you be interested in lucid dreaming more often?

From there, you’re given a list of options of various products that might help your particular sleep concern or deficiency.

Giving it a try

As a writer, my focus needs to be one point to handle long days staring at a computer. I tend to be really focused and motivated in the morning, but fade after 2 p.m. before I have completed all my work for the day.

I decided to give the tool a try to see if there was something I could take to improve my focus.

The tool asked me:

• Do you experience attention disruption when your brain is stressed and overworked?
• How easy is it to attend to one task or stimuli while ignoring distraction?
• Are you able to maintain your attention on one task for a long time?
• Are you able to attend to more than one task simultaneously?
• Are you able to shift attention from one task to another without losing focus?
• Do you feel able to focus intently enough to create goals and monitor your progress?

I answered no to the first question, as usually being stressed out and overworked lights a fire under my bum. Similarly, I find it easy to ignore distractions and can remain focused on one task for a long time, so I also answered no on the second and third questions, as well. The final question was also a no.

Where I struggle is with focusing on more than one task at a time and definitely with shifting attention from one task to another without losing focus, hence I answered yes on the fourth and fifth questions.

What the tool recommended as the top product: A probiotic-fermented Vitamin B complex for energy, brain and mood support (it also recommended various other Vitamin B complex options).

(Funny enough, my naturopath also recommended I take a B Vitamin supplement. I’ll call that a win).

I decided to take it a step further and also selected the motivation assessment, as sometimes it’s not that I lose focus so much as I lose motivation in the final couple hours of my work day. I was then asked:

• Do you feel like you want to crawl in bed and watch Netflix all day?
• Is your sleep and nutrition regular and adequate?
• Are you a stressful person? If so, does it influence your decisions?
• Is your blood sugar high?

Supplement Advisor’s recommendation: Mane Brain’s brain-boosting power, a supplement is designed to help you feel more energized, alert, focused, and less forgetful.

Take the assessment now.

The post Discover Supplements That Benefit Your Specific Needs With Supplement Advisor appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I believe that a few other people have had their say, and expressed their opinions about CrossFit’s recent issues on these pages. As someone who enjoyed CrossFit when I first founded Breaking Muscle, and as someone who believes that you should be open to all training modalities, remaining curious about all disciplines and not trying to find supremacy in any one, I think I need to give my perspective.

First, Breaking Muscle has never been, nor should it ever be, about any one training format. Therefore, we are not going to get around talking about CrossFit. I can understand that some of the conversations around CrossFit are tied into the brand and the business of CrossFit, but unfortunately, there is not other way of referring to what CrossFitters do other than to call it CrossFit.

The expression CrossFit, independent of what happens to the people who run the company CrossFit, Inc. will not disappear. There are too many people who are devoted to the training, the competitions, and the sense of belonging that they feel to the workouts.

What is CrossFit? That’s going to be up to the CrossFit community. I don’t want to speculate, and I don’t want to speak for them. I believe that most affiliates face enough challenges coming out of the recent lockdowns and, now, they face an existential threat to their core beliefs as a result of the actions of CrossFit, the business.

What I can say is that there are many good coaches and trainers who found their voice and raised their profiles because of CrossFit. My family is very close to Mike Tromello at Precision CrossFit, and have known Mike since he was a strength and conditioning coach, and before he became a successful affiliate owner.

Mike is probably one of the biggest fans of CrossFit we know. We are sorry that he has been in the position of having to deal with the repercussions of recent events. For all the hard work and years of advocacy that Mike has placed in CrossFit, he shouldn’t have been put in this position.

And, Mike is one of the best strength and conditioning coaches that we have had on Breaking Muscle. It wasn’t that he taught CrossFit. It was his strength and conditioning expertise.

There are many other people like Mike out there, affiliate owners with the same passion for CrossFit, who are also fitness professionals that are good at their jobs, who would thrive as strength and conditioning coaches in any environment, all having to wrestle with problems that are not of their doing and for which there is no easy answer.

We cannot write these coaches and trainers off. And we cannot realistically expect all of them to de-affiliate.

There are also, many great coaches who have risen out of the CrossFit world, Coach Rut and James Fitzgerald, to name two who we have seen evolve over the years.

There are others, who may not want to be named, who were rushed out of CrossFit for not being as deferential as they could have been.

There are lots of war stories about CrossFit; read all of Pat McCarty‘s articles and you’ll get a history lesson on the way the corporation dealt with criticism. It seems as if the bad stories will come out more because the opportunity to be heard is there, and there are, no doubt, good ones that will get lost in the noise.

However, the issues with CrossFit are business issues. The societal fight against racism in its present form may only be heating up and most people are going to be on the right side of that fight because most people can be trusted to do the right thing.

They want to do the right thing. I believe most affiliates will struggle with what that means for them.

However they choose to move forward, CrossFit will still be CrossFit, it’s just going to be difficult to say what that really means for CrossFit the business in six months time.

The post CrossFit Is Not Going Anywhere appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

In an interview with CNBC, Greg Glassman, the 63-year-old founder of CrossFit, said that CrossFit’s success happened without a business plan, without any marketing. Dave Werner, the founder of CrossFit North, the first affiliate.

Talking to Box Pro Magazine, Werner recalled how Glassman’s first reaction to his using CrossFit as a name for his gym was, “No, no, no, I’m not taking any money from you.” From accidental beginnings, CrossFit grew to become the most influential force in strength and conditioning, and fitness training over the course of the last decade.

This is why, in the early days of CrossFit, it was touted as an open-source model for fitness training. Many of the first CrossFit affiliates began as garage gyms that evolved into the “boxes” that we see today all around the world. That is why, even to this day, the word community is often used as a way of referring to the followers and members of a CrossFit gym.

Breaking Muscle started around the time CrossFit was a handful of affiliates, before the rapid growth in CrossFit gyms that occurred in the early part of this decade.

To be a little cliché about it, CrossFit was a breath of fresh air in a fitness industry that was moribund with almost no true innovation in training methodologies fluctuating between bodybuilding and aerobics with nothing much in between.

Greg Glassman should be recognized for taking a seemingly ragtag mix of ideas and putting them into a format that has ended up becoming the de facto standard group training in strength and conditioning.

If it wasn’t for CrossFit, would we have seen the same interest in Olympic weightlifting, kettlebells, and now, gymnastics? Everything that went into a CrossFit training routine was already there before Glassman came along. However, he managed to do a number of things simultaneously that helped define a generation of coaches and trainers and changed the face of gym-going forever.

First, Glassman popularized a level of intensity and training that did not shy away from its intentions: to leave you utterly spent, as if you had been in the fight of your life, at the end of a short, intense session.

The high-intensity interval training of CrossFit appealed to first responders, the military, fighters, and varsity athletes, all with a vested interest and desire to perform under enormous pressure.

Secondly, Glassman’s personality and presentation were a template for coaches and trainers who, up until he came along, couldn’t really point to as charismatic a guru, and one who managed to avoid creating a dogma for training routines while at the same time managing to stamp them with his brand

Because, at the end of the day, Glassman never told his coaches and trainers what they should do. He provided a framework, and he did provide example workouts every day on CrossFit’s website, but every affiliate was freestyling their own training programs.

Thirdly, Glassman was ruthless is protecting his brand, and promoting CrossFit without ever having to own anything other than the trademarks and licenses of his business.

There was no liability, no actual product, no uniforms, no property or anything of substance that could drag the company down. There was only the CrossFit way and the myth of CrossFit, ending with the ultimate accolade of, Fittest on Earth, at the CrossFit Games.

CrossFit doesn’t have the same luster and appeal as it did at the beginning of the decade. It is growing internationally, but it has had its fair share of criticism in the US, and many affiliates have come and gone, never to be replaced.

CrossFit has probably only ever managed to penetrate 10% of the gym going public. The average affiliate membership is over $100 a month compared to the average gym membership of $20 a month.

It more resembles the martial arts studio model than a gym franchise business and as such demands a devoted, motivated coach/trainer/owner to work. But, all these things don’t matter when you consider how CrossFit’s vernacular has found its way into popular culture.

I remember at my first certification this laid-back, almost nonchalant guy who didn’t at all look like any sort of fitness guru. And yet there was a level of confidence and inner knowing that he had.

Like, for example, the first time he introduced the work out “Helen” – he did so in such an easy, relaxed tone, with a slight smile, as if he knew something that the five of us that were there for the first time didn’t. He knew even though we might have done it already at home, it would be different here, and he knew he didn’t have to do anything to pull our best effort out of us. He also knew the level of “whoop-ass” it would unleash on us.

Up until that moment, I really had no idea. My version of CrossFit on my own was quite subdued, comparatively. I also remember the first time I worked on my squat with him. I had been a squatting and training clients for years at that point, and he said, “Give it about 5 years, kid.”

I thought he was nuts… 5 years?! But he was 100% right. I became a believer (and then an affiliate) after doing my own test of CrossFit. I was a professional, sponsored endurance athlete at the time, and here was this guy saying I could build endurance with short, intense workouts using calisthenics, weights, and a little cardio. I thought it was nuts.

But I decided to give it a try, on my own (all my friends thought I was crazy), in a small personal training gym and surrounding neighborhood. No one in that gym had ever seen anything like what I was doing before. I must admit, it did appear crazy. I plotted out and ran a 5k. Then did nothing but CrossFit workouts (per the main site in 2004) for three months.

After that time, I ran the same 5K course and was almost 3 minutes faster in my time (from 22:00 down to just over 19:00). My training volume had dropped dramatically. From like 8-10 hours per week to below 4 hours per week. My strength had increased dramatically, and I had become highly capable of high volume bodyweight movement. I became a huge believer! Shortly thereafter, I attended my first 3-day cert and affiliated right after. I opened the doors of CrossFit LA in Nov 2004.

Andy Petranek of Whole Life Challenge

You look on social media these days and the influence of CrossFit cannot be underestimated in the number of people doing weightlifting, kettlebells, and handstand walks.

Was there a burpee or a wall ball underground before CrossFit came along? Today, you can find functional fitness areas in increasingly more mainstream gyms, a direct result of the influence of CrossFit. Lifting platforms, pull up bars, and box jumps, and kettlebells, and barbells, lots of barbells.

Glassman and CrossFit redefined strength and conditioning. You are more likely to see people purse CrossFit-like exercise programs than bodybuilding. You will find local gyms that focus on weightlifting, and even when a small, box-type gym is not a CrossFit affiliate, you will find someone who started in CrossFit or was influenced by it.

Greg Glassman and CrossFit helped changed my views on strength and condition and traiing in general. I was collegiate athlete and successfully training high-school and college athletes myself. In fact, I had a great career.

But Glassman created something special. I felt that. I knew how innovative it was, I was using the same principles and having success with my athletes. I wanted to do the same for as many people as possible.

So, I thought I was lucky he also created a business model that has drastically changed my life. Before CrossFit, owning a gym was just a dream. It felt like it would be way over the head of any coach or trainer. It is a significant investment attached to a singular modality of fitness.

Yet, here I am with my own CrossFit affiliate. I have been doing this for nearly a decade. I have a small gym filled with other great coaches, a community that I cherish, and I feel accountable to everyone. It’s very satisfying. I don’t think it would have happend without CrossFit.

Michael Tromello, Coach and Owner of Precision CrossFit

Greg Glassman has defined fitness, strength and conditioning, and the way people go to the gym in the last decade. Whatever you may think about the organization that is CrossFit, or the man that Glassman is, you can never deny the influence both have had in this last decade.

It has been unequaled since the seventies when Arnold shaped the growth of bodybuilding around the world. There are a lot of reasons why Breaking Muscle can call Greg Glassman Coach of the Decade.

Note: check out An Antidote to CrossFit for a counterpoint to this piece.

The post Coach of the Decade: Greg Glassman, CrossFit’s Founder appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

If you’re new to exercise, or coming back to it after many years of a layoff, it is very challenging. You don’t have the same sense of fearlessness that you had in the past. You may lack confidence for many reasons.

If you are over 50-years-old and starting out, the challenge can seem overwhelming. The truth is that we have an aging population, more awareness of the benefits of exercise, and a sense of urgency about reducing the cost of healthcare as we age and expenses go up.

Unfortunately, the fitness industry is still dominated by the image of youth and muscularity, often neglecting older trainees. Most of this neglect is probably best attributed to the fact that it’s only recently that older people have felt encouraged to take up exercise. We live longer and the quality of our life is directly impacted by our ability to remain active. People are beginning to get it.

Strength and Conditioning for People Over 50

I am not going to patronize older readers by treating them as if they are children. You’ll see plenty of articles about the need to take it easy, pace yourself, and make sure you have your doctor’s permission to start working out.

You’ll see conflicting advice about what you can and cannot do: don’t squat, don’t lift heavy weights, make sure you take these supplements, don’t bend here, don’t twist there.

Fortunately, at Breaking Muscle, we have access to trainers, coaches, and experts who are in the field and training 50-year-olds at all stages of their fitness journey. Some are older trainees themselves, some are exclusively focused on older trainees.

Matthew Levy of Fitness Cubed doesn’t see any difference between being an older trainee and a younger one, “I would say that people over 50 need the same things as people under 50. The main differences are that you will need to take into account the years of wear and tear on the body and that significantly more time generally needs to be focused on building strength at end range to keep the joints healthy.

Additionally, the anatomical adaptation phase and hypertrophy phases generally need to be longer and the maximal strength and maximal power phases more abbreviated and at the higher end of the rep ranges for those phases.”

Levy continues, “So for example, if the recommended rep range for maximal strength is 3-5 reps, I would tend towards lower weight and higher reps – 5 reps rather than 3.”

Every individual is going to be different. Every aging body will have a history of activity that will determine how much wear and tear already exists. You have to be smart about how you start an exercise program if you are coming it fresh at an older age, but you don’t have to be timid about it, either.

“It’s never too late to start training. As we get older strength training becomes even more important because we start to lose muscle mass in older age. But studies have shown that older muscle still responds to exercise stimulus which, is very important for avoiding falls, for example, in old age.” Says Wayne Bradley, Gabinete Dietetico De Rueda-Bradley nutrition clinic.

Athleticism Declines with Age

Your athleticism will decline as you get older. It starts in your twenties. However, we also see that modern athletes are staying in the game longer than previously thought possible by adopting regimens that take into account that they can’t do the volume of training that they did when younger.

Scott Glasgow, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Brigham Young University, and former Xtremeperfect Weightlifting Club President says, “By the time an athlete is in their 50’s, I would estimate that optimal training for competitive weightlifting should include no less than half of the work being performed in modes that are clearly identifiable as bodybuilding in nature.”

Jesse Irizzary, in his article on Bodybuilding and Olympic Weightlifting Aren’t Mutually Exclusive, says, “Bodybuilding work can be therapeutic, help aid in recovery, and used as a means to increase mobility, not limit it.”

So, even if you are a world-class athlete, you’re going to have to adopt an approach that helps in recovery and increases mobility as you age. By extension, if you are not a world-class athlete and starting out later in life, you need to be cognizant of the need for recovery and an emphasis on mobility no matter how often someone touts the benefits of strength training.

Lift Heavy, Even in Old Age (or Heavish)

Tom MacCormick, an expert in hypertrophy out of London, England, is a firm believer in lifting heavyish. MacCormick refers to The Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University that established 10 biomarkers of aging.

“The top two were muscle mass and strength. The higher the levels of these the lower your age-related decline. Fast-twitch fibers are the first muscle fibers to decrease in size as you age. These are also the ones that are most positively associated with strength, muscle mass, and blood sugar management so, it makes sense to train these throughout your life.” Says MacCormick

So, as an older trainee, you don’t need to try and break any world records or risk injury with maximal loads to stimulate the fast-twitch fibers. These fibers will be fully activated with loads at around 85% of your 1-rep max, which will be age-appropriate. Performing challenging sets of 6 reps mean every rep will recruit your fast-twitch fibers.

“I suggest that you include resistance training, on multi-joint movements, in the 6-10 rep range to promote strength, power, and muscle mass. All of this will have an anti-aging effect on your body and extend your healthspan.” Says MacCormick.

This is where you have to be careful you don’t get patronized when getting advice. For someone starting out at age fifty and up, a lot will depend on the quality of the work they do and not ego lifts, personal records in poundage or any of the other things that could end up pushing you towards injury and failure.

Enrico Fioranelli at 4E Fitness Training adds, “When exercising over 50 you need to place greater emphasis on how your body responds to the exercise you are doing, and how you feel that day. Don’t worry so much about what you are doing on a particular day worry more about how you feel throughout your workout.”

Exercising After 50 Means Having Patience

Jarlo Ilano, Managing Director, GMB Fitness also believes that quality of work matters, “In my opinion, the primary issues for exercising after 50 is that progress tends to be significantly slower than someone half that age and that injuries take much longer to heal.

“So the emphasis should be on the consistency of training rather than intensity. The late Robert Follis (UFC Coach) had a great line that resonated with me: It’s better to do a little bit a lot, then to do a lot a little bit. This especially holds true for older trainers. It’s simply not worth it to exercise intensely, only to get injured and then be unable to train consistently.

“It’s a paradox but, trying to improve faster only makes it slower!”

Pain-Free Training for Older Athletes

Rachel Binette of CrossFit City Line is fully aware of the needs of her older clients. She says, “When training older athletes, I have found that their priorities typically shift from needing to be competitive on the board to feeling good and being able to live their lives pain-free. We are fighting decrepitude versus trying to PR our deadlift.

“What this translates to in classes is ensuring that they are modified appropriately. Distances and reps are reduced to preserve the stimulus of the workout and weights and movements are changed to preserve movement integrity in the face of changing mobility.

“As an example, several of my older athletes have “frozen shoulder” or very restricted overhead mobility. We modify away from barbells to dumbbells, focus on core engagement to prevent overextending the low back, and ensure that they have a path through physical therapy to continue to improve.

“When it comes to body composition, maintaining muscle mass is a high priority for all of our athletes. In our older athletes, it can be the difference between being able to get up after a fall or not.

When we coach nutrition for these athletes, there is no change between what we do for our middle-aged and younger athletes. Their activity level and muscle mass (we have an InBody scanner to take the muscle measurements) are taken into account when they have plans set up for them.”

Mobility is Key for Older Bodies

“Mobility is the closest thing there is to the fountain of youth. As all of us age the goal should be Not to train to add more years to our lives, but rather to add more life to our years,” says Brandon Richey of Brandon Richey Fitness.

Richey’s sentiments are echoed in comments we get from many other coaches, such as Micki Pauley of Warrior Body in West Virginia, “KEEP MOVING! Moving EVERYDAY is one of the absolute best things you can do for yourself after 50 – even if for a brisk walk. Strength training 2-3 days a week becomes even more important because it helps keep the muscles strong to perform basic, everyday tasks!!”

It’s Never Too Late to Start Exercising

Matt Beecroft of Reality SDC says, “Biologically there are multiple things that age us including, but not limited to- oxidative stress, inflammation and a lowered ability for autophagy.

“We know that in order to help reverse our aging we need to improve the quality of our breathing (including using hypoxia), improve our sleep, experience heat and cold, fast, get sunlight, eat predominantly plant-based, reduce chronic stress and move much more, to help reverse aging.”

Amanda Thebe of Fit n Chips, who specializes in training older athletes and especially women facing menopause, believes that you should just start, “If you are on the fence about strength training, my advice is to start lifting weights straight away- the sooner the better.

With major strength declines as we age and a higher risk for chronic diseases, building lean muscle becomes more important than ever as a source of prevention. There comes a time in your life when looking good naked is trumped (you can replace that word with wins if you want) by living life longer. It’s not sexy but it matters.”

Quality Fitness is Key For Aging Bodies

“When it comes to training over 50 focus on quality over quantity. Place extra emphasis on training intensity versus training duration. In the words of Bill Grundler; More is not better. Better is better.” Says Michael Tromello of Precision CrossFit, Agoura Hills, California.

Jesse McMeekin of Adapt Performance adds, “I’ve found that focusing on making things harder before simply making them heavier is a good idea for most lifters, particularly as we age and accumulate the inevitable aches and pains.”

The real key to exercise and workouts in the later years is consistency and a systemic approach.

Jonny Slick of Straight Shot Training explains it as such, “I can’t stress enough the importance of strength training with my clients over 50. And I don’t just mean “strength training” as in lifting light dumbbells for tons of reps… I mean systematic, progressive resistance training that challenges older athletes.

Whether my clients are 25 or 75, they all need to be relatively strong. We work on this by establishing good mechanics, practicing these lifts with consistency, and gradually adding intensity appropriate to where they’re at in their fitness journey.

Getting stronger makes everything else easier outside of the gym, and it’s one of the best things you can do to prevent injuries, maintain muscle and bone mass, and manage your body weight.”

The Research and Concern About Exercising at an Older Age

There are numerous, popular, sources of research that are widely quoted to encourage more awareness of the benefits of exercise for those over 50, specifically if they are just starting out on their fitness journey.

A study called, Comparable Rates of Integrated Myofibrillar Protein Synthesis Between Endurance-Trained Master Athletes and Untrained Older Individuals, essentially looked at masters athlete men who had been active for some time compared to those just starting out.

Without looking into the genetics or specifics of any of the participants of the study, this study, by Manchester Metropolitan University in England, found that a beginner group could essentially catch up with the group that had been active for a couple of decades.

In essence, one group was into intense exercise, had been for decades, and the other was not. Yet, that was not an impediment to the starters becoming late-bloomer athletes.

In a study called, Association of Leisure-Time Physical Activity Across the Adult Life Course With All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality, the findings are even more encouraging because being inactive but increasing physical activity during midlife was associated with 32% to 35% lower risk for mortality.

If all the experts and expertise in this one article, a small slice of the knowledge we have about these things, doesn’t convince you that beyond 50 is not too late to begin an exercise regimen or, even, intense exercise plan, then let’s just leave it at that.

The post What You Need to Know to Start Working Out After 50 appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

It is, in essence, the antithesis of working out, seeing the gym as almost a nonsensical place for people to reclaim their strength, their mobility, and their health. Le Corre practices what he preaches in his daily life. You can see it in the natural movement articles he has written on Breaking Muscle, as well as in the social profiles of he and his wife.

His book, The Practice of Natural Movement, has been a long time coming. And it is worth it. Firstly, it is a quality print, well laid out, professional in every way. There are a number of popular books on movement methodologies that you can see lying around your average gym, but Le Corre’s book has them beat on a number of levels.

The Instinctual Coach

Firstly, the quality of writing is better than you will see in most exercise tomes. It is vivid and rich, and the explanations are clear enough for the most novice of readers to understand. So, this isn’t a book for the acolytes and disciples, although they will find plenty to enjoy. It should stand as a reference for Le Corre’s teachings for many years to come. It feels like a legacy-defining product.

Erwan and Jessika Le Corre live in the northern New Mexico mountains with their three young children, Feather, Eagle, and Sky

Secondly, because this is not a workout at home or gym equipment tutorial, there’s a lot of application for the ideas that Le Corre espouses. Granted, the origins of Le Corre’s approach in Parkour do come across and may be a little intimidating for some people, but put aside the urge to skim the pages so that you can get a deeper understanding of the core precepts of natural movement.

Finally, and most importantly, what makes natural movement so interesting is that it is very much dependent on the individual and therefore, this manual is a great way for anyone to begin to explore the possibilities for their own capabilities. Natural movement classes and practices don’t make riveting social media posts.

They’re not circus tricks and they’re not things that you would be able to do easily in a gym environment. But, you can’t deny the brilliance of a practice that allows you to freely flow through any landscape, ultimately reaping the fitness benefits in a way that few workouts can replicate.

Revolutionize Your Fitness Thinking

There is no doubt that Le Corre wants to revolutionize the way people think about fitness and their measure of success as a trainee (whatever that means). It’s not an easy battle to win when the vast majority of the fitness industry is focused on short-term goals and gimmicky, overnight success stories. So you have to hand it to people like Le Corre who are steadfast in focusing on lifestyle and longevity in a training modality. It’s pretty zen.

There are no PRs and skill sets to be learned here. It’s kind of sad to think that the focus on this book is to help people realize that they are naturally capable of doing so much more than they do and that we now need instruction on how to run, jump, climb, and fundamentally function with human bodies.

Knowing that your goal is to clear an obstacle or carry a person over a distance is a powerful source of motivation. Are you prepared? Are you physically helpful or helpless?

– Erwan Le Corre in The Practice of Natural Movement, pg. 33

A book on Natural Movement is probably the best location to start your practice in natural movement. Your environment is all the challenge you need, and your body is the only equipment required.

Who knows if someday we will see natural movement applied in a CrossFit gym the same way Romwods are these days. That would be great. But for natural movement to succeed people just have to realize that it is a real thing, not take it for granted.

Le Corre’s book could be something that sits on your shelf as a reference that you can come back to at any age, under any circumstance, and still find benefit in its approach.

There are some cons, to be fair, nothing is perfect. The two-column layout of the text makes the book manageable in size but it is a little unwieldy to read. And, we probably could have used more of the last segment of the book with lifting and throwing manipulations.

Natural movement adherents can become quite creative in developing routines and expanding into more advanced work, but not everyone has the ability to do that, and natural movement could probably use a more advanced, aspirational, and attainable set of practices.

That may be another book and if it is, hopefully, it will come sooner rather than later.

The post The Practice of Natural Movement appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

He’s come a long way since then, and he still has a long way to go. Like we said, the guy is still very young. He’s still learning, and boy, he loves to learn. You can see it on his social media pages, and if you listen to what he says in the video below, you can feel how serious he is about his coaching. It comes across in everything he does. We want Irizzary to succeed because, well, frankly, we like the guy and what he stands for. No, not because we had a beer with him or hang out, he’s on another coast, but because we believe in the future of barbell sports.

A seriously legit strength and conditioning coach with a background in college sports, Irizzary has also participated in powerlifting competitions, bench pressing an impressive 633 lbs, and now focuses on weightlifting bringing on Russian champion, Vasily Polovnikov, into his gym to coach his members as well as himself.

Barbell sports gyms are an upward trend in the fitness industry. Irizzary does both powerlifting and weightlifting, running the two groups at the same time, which may sound logical but isn’t always an orthodox option for coaches who see themselves as purists in either discipline. We’d like to see more Irizzary’s unorthodox approaches in the indie gym space because barbell sports are a more sustainable gym model than just pure weightlifting or powerlifting. In addition, Irizzary teaches foundational beginner barbell training, as well as big compound barbell movements not focused on either powerlifting or weightlifting. We like that, too, because you need to have an on-ramp for barbell training of any kind. There are very few places where you can pick up heavy weights, and drop them. People coming from traditional globo gyms can get overwhelmed by the atmosphere of barbell gyms. Give them the tools and let them decide where they go with it, and if it isn’t powerlifting or weightlifting competition, fine, let them enjoy it for whatever it is for them.

It works for Irizzary. His membership ranges in age from people into their 20s to their mid-50s, with more female members than male. That’s exciting to see, but it’s going to take more work to get broader adoption of barbell training. Irizzary is a great example of a coach who has found a focus in strength and conditioning that is not just the usual mish-mash of CrossFit type workouts and Olympic weightlifting as an afterthought. He is constantly learning and adapting his approach so that his barbell sports gym will evolve, and drive more new adherents to the disciplines on offer. In the meantime, we hope to encourage more people to support coaches like Irizzary, who are evangelizing on the front lines and helping to shape the fitness industry by creating a really powerful, strong arena for trainees.

Fitness Influencers are picked by coaches and Breaking Muscle editors in a purely subjective manner. They are coaches who are known to Breaking Muscle through their posts on the site and or through the recommendations of their peers. We look for coaches who exhibit a dedication to their craft, who have a physical practice that is respectful of all trainees, and most of the time we err on the side of promoting coaches who are probably too shy or modest to be great self-promoters themselves. It’s about supporting the independent coaches and gyms that need our support and admiration.

The post The Barbell Sports Evangelist appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Plant-based diets offer protection against cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancers. But with so much nutrition misinformation, how can you be sure a plant-based diet is right for you? Read on to learn why you should adopt a plant-based diet.

Why Go Plant-Based?

Plant-based diets are a new trend, but why? For years, we were convinced that animal-based protein sources were best for muscle building and tissue repair. We now know that consuming a plant-based diet may be just as, if not more beneficial.

Plant-based diets are associated with a decreased risk of heart disease, certain cancers, and diabetes when compared to an animal-based diet. More and more athletes and top physique competitors are turning to a plant-based diet for strength and performance gains, too.

The Benefits of Plant-Based Diets

Plant-based diets are associated with an array of benefits including:

• The prevention of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer
• Observational studies have shown¹ that those who consume a plant-based diet tend to have lower rates of type 2 diabetes. This is likely due to increased consumption of high fiber fruits and vegetables and a decreased consumption of saturated and trans fatty acids.
• Antioxidants found in fresh fruits and vegetables also help to reduce oxidative stress, improve the integrity of microvascular walls, and prevent the oxidation of LDL cholesterol – all major players in the prevention of heart disease².

A high meat diet is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease mortality. Plant-based foods may confer protective effects against atherosclerosis and thus the development of heart disease.

According to a statement by the World Health Organization, red meat is associated with increased rates of colon cancer.

Though association does not equal causation, plant-based diets high in fibrous fruits, vegetables, and whole grains improve colon motility and overall gastrointestinal health. Even if you do not go entirely plant-based, simply adding in more fruits and vegetables can have a significant preventative effect.

What About Protein?

Despite the benefits of a plant-based diet, many remain concerned about consuming enough protein. Protein forms the building blocks of every cell in our body – so it’s essential that we get enough.

According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, those people that consume a plant-based diet tend to consume adequate amounts of protein when calorie intake is adequate. Unless you are cutting calories, you are probably consuming the amount of protein your body needs, even without animal products.

It is important to remember, however, that an adequate protein intake does not necessarily equate to optimal protein intake. The RDA for protein is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight for those consuming a mixed animal-based and plant-based diet. When consuming only plant-based protein sources, this value increases by around 10%³ due to the decreased digestibility of plant-based protein.

Active individuals and the elderly have increased requirements.

• It is recommended that the elderly consume at least 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day.
• Athletes require even more: 1.2 – 2.0 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.

Why Should I Choose Pea Protein?

Plant-based proteins such as pea, soy, and rice are nutritious alternatives to the traditional whey and casein based protein powders. But not all protein powders are equal.

Whey protein is typically touted as the most beneficial protein powder due to its complete amino acid profile. But for many, especially those conscious of the benefits of a plant-based diet, it is not the best option.

Pea protein is rich in almost all of the essential amino acids, making other plant-based protein sources inferior. Pea protein can compete with the best animal-based protein sources, as it is high in the branched chain amino acids that decrease muscle breakdown after exercise. It is also hypoallergenic and perfect for people sensitive to gluten or dairy.

Nutrition Tips

It is important to make sure you consume enough nutrients on a plant-based diet, as some vitamins and minerals are only found in animal products. Vitamin B12 is one of the few nutrients that is difficult to derive from plant-based sources and must be supplemented on a vegan diet.

Calcium and iron might also be of concern. Be sure to check with your dietitian or doctor to see if you need a supplement.

References:

1. Michelle McMacken and Sapana Shah, “A plant-based diet for the prevention and treatment of type 2 diabetes.”Journal of Geriatric Cardiology. 2017 May; 14(5): 342–354.

2. Tuso P, Stoll SR, Li WW., “A Plant-Based Diet, Atherogenesis, and Coronary Artery Disease Prevention.” The Permanente Journal. 2015;19(1):62-67.

3. Sharon Palmer, RDN, “Plant Proteins, “Today’s Dietitian,” Vol. 19, No. 2, P. 26, Feb2017.

The post Are You Ready to Go Plant-Based? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Greg Walsh is a sincere man. He looks like he could tear your head off with his bare hands and grind your bones into dust, but he couldn’t be a nicer, warmer, more unassuming guy in person. It’s Walsh’s mind that is brutal, never the man himself.

Walsh is a guy on a mission, a driven coach who desperately wants to get it right. He dedicates his time and his effort to the essentials of movement in every exercise he practices and teaches. He has a sincere desire to do right by his trainees and to stay true to his own beliefs. He is the epitome of the indie coach.

He works out of his own place, Wolf Brigade Gym in Rochester, New York, but travels the country giving seminars, talking to other coaches, absorbing, learning, playing, testing, searching, always searching for ways to tune his teaching.

And when it comes to teaching, he has his own unique approach. While he is assiduously rigorous and devoted to the principles of strength training, he has created his own style, a unique mix of disciplined movement, and aggressive motion that we call subversive fitness.

For Walsh, though, it is all about being part of Wolf Brigade. The message? Learn to crawl before you walk, learn to walk before you run, and learn, learn, learn. Like all great coaches, Walsh emphasizes the foundation of skill building as an essential to finding a true path to greater strength.

He is, at once, a purist and a maverick. When Walsh teaches kettlebells, it’s different, not caught up in the dogma of the competing kettlebell tribes, but completely respectful of the implement and what it can help you achieve. When Walsh teaches maces, it’s continuous movement that bears all the hallmarks of his signature physicality, controlled, smooth, and perfected form.

If you want to know how it feels to be a part of the Wolf Brigade then there is nothing better than trying to finish off one of Walsh’s benchmark workouts. They’re like no other, not in the timing, not in the music, and not in the energy that they create.

Walsh’s background in BMX racing and MMA have shaped his aesthetic, and frankly, that can be daunting for some people to overcome, but the man is about as good a coach as you will find, and the politest guy around. So, yeah, it’s worth the trip to Rochester, to Wolf Brigade, just to spend some time looking at strength training his way.

The podcast below is a great way to become acquainted with the man, and the coach. Indie coaches like Walsh are at the heart of innovation in the fitness industry, and by bringing their own sensibilities to traditional implements like the kettlebell and mace, they create new energy for traditional practitioners and create new enthusiasts who are excited by the freshness of the approach. Support indie coaches like Walsh. Train with them. Learn from them. You’ll never regret it.

Fitness Influencers are picked by coaches and Breaking Muscle editors in a purely subjective manner. They are coaches who are known to Breaking Muscle through their posts on the site and or through the recommendations of their peers. We look for coaches who exhibit a dedication to their craft, who have a physical practice that is respectful of all trainees, and most of the time we err on the side of promoting coaches who are probably too shy or modest to be great self-promoters themselves. It’s about supporting the independent coaches and gyms that need our support and admiration.

The post Greg Walsh’s Brutal Strength of Mind appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

You’re also missing out on working with a coach who coined the phrase fitness improv. This a coach who can usually be found contemplating the mysteries of movement in her studio and helping her trainees discover their own best practices through an improvisational style that emphasizes their own awareness of their bodies.

Pilotti believes that if she can get people to feel themselves in space to understand how the different parts of their body connect then they can feel stronger and more stable in whatever other activities they do.

Jennifer Pilotti’s articles on Breaking Muscle are full of profound observations delivered in a soft-spoken manner with warmth and intelligence. You feel like you’re really learning something and not just following along while someone teaches you to contort yourself.

Educating yourself, the way Pilotti found her own path to knowledge, is an important part of your opportunity to create a better physical experience for yourself. While some people have an innate understanding of their physical presence, most people need to be taught how to find it.

Educating the Educators in Fitness

It was after the great recession of 2008, disgruntled with the fitness industry when Pilotti decided to seek advice to find a path for her self. The result was a decision to become the best trainer that she could be and the way she ran with it was to go back to graduate school to educate herself some more. For Pilotti, the usual industry courses and reading materials weren’t telling her what she needed to know.

What Pilotti discovered in her own quest for knowledge was that in order to be a better teacher and trainer she had to read, do and explore movement more deeply than she had ever anticipated.

She is still on a constant quest to better herself and gain more experience and knowledge of movement. It’s part of why she is passionate now about training other coaches and trainers; she understands the shortcomings of the fitness industry and is trying to do her part to help everyone raise their game.

In the video below, Pilotti explains it best herself when she says, “I was able to begin figuring out how to queue and how to draw attention and how to help clients put things together in a way that made them feel more integrated and people started to do really, really well. Little neck aches and pains that had been bugging people dissipated.”

Pilotti found she was helping people become more efficient and more coordinated, gaining more strength in the process. Today, her space is like her little lab where she continues to learn, research, share, and educate. You can find Pilotti’s studio on her Be Well Personal Training web site, as well as her schedule of online courses and offsite seminars and events.

Take a listen to Pilotti in this video, and remember that we need, we want, more independent coaching minds like her to be accessible to everyone. Articles like this are here to support people like Jennifer Pilotti and her work with trainees and other coaches because we don’t want the limits of the mainstream fitness world of magic elixirs, quick fixes, and false promises. Pilotti and her peers are educators, they are the real deal.

Fitness Influencers are picked by coaches and Breaking Muscle editors in a purely subjective manner. They are coaches who are known to Breaking Muscle through their posts on the site and or through the recommendations of their peers. We look for coaches who exhibit a dedication to their craft, who have a physical practice that is respectful of all trainees, and most of the time we err on the side of promoting coaches who are probably too shy or modest to be great self-promoters themselves. It’s about supporting the independent coaches and gyms that need our support and admiration.

The post Fitness Improv – An Educator’s Approach to Movement appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

In the last decade, the fitness industry has seen some major changes. From CrossFit to obstacle course racing to kettlebells to Olympic weightlifting to gymnastic bodies to a general explosion of interest in all things functional fitness, strength sports, there’s been a lot happening in a short span of time.

It gave rise to the box gym, a sort of iron dojo for strength and conditioning, what we prefer to call the indie gym, a place where you can drop weights, shake the foundations of the building and flop onto the floor into a pool of sweat without feeling like any of it is extraordinary.

For a while there, it seemed like we were witnessing the demise of the globo gym and the emergence of a fitness culture that was going to turn everyone into a warrior athlete. However, sadly, as many indie gyms that sprouted up over the years, the same number would disappear. It seemed almost faddish.

But, we don’t want to see the indie gym disappear, we don’t think it will, the genie is out of the bottle and the magic is going to happen. What we may not want is to revert to archetypal coaching approaches. A recent conversation on building an indie gym culture really opened our eyes to what the essence of the indie gym should be all about. You can read about that and see the video of the conversation all below.

What we want to leverage from this discussion is what we don’t want to be. We don’t want to be the person getting screamed at by some macho coach who thinks we are all preparing for war. We don’t want to be the person who needs a pat on the back for doing something as basic as making their first pull-up.

It’s great and all but it’s a blip in your life. We kind of like some of those 30-day challenges but we don’t want to think that they actually have long-term benefits or inspire you to do greater things. What we want to acknowledge is that your fitness life is your life and your life is, we hope, a long, fruitful existence which will, no doubt, have many ups and equally many downs.

We owe this article to a coach who we have known for over a decade and who we have watched build a sustainable business as an indie gym owner the right way. It’s Mike Tromello of Precision CrossFit.

We kind of give him a hard time because he is so passionate about CrossFit and, well, we were kind of over it but, we learned an important lesson, one that we kind of always suspected but never really pushed enough, it’s not the system, it’s the coach that makes the gym.

Mike may be one of the best advertisements for CrossFit out there, the way he teaches it and develops his membership around it. But, it’s not really the CrossFit part that makes Mike unique, it’s his relationship building skills. There are a lot of good CrossFit coaches and there are a lot of good strength and conditioning coaches but, sadly, not all of them are good at building relationships and without relationships, an indie gym ceases to exist, sooner or later.

We have always been about connecting great coaches to great athletes. That was how we started. That’s how we aim to go on. That doesn’t change. However, how we do that has to change because, to be frank, seeing great coaches come and go, stagnate, lose a gym, get a gym, lose a gym, is not fun.

Sometimes, some coaches shouldn’t own a gym or try and run one. Some coaches because of that demon of coaching ego, don’t always think about their students, trainees, members or the people who pay them. It’s almost a distraction as they pursue a golden athlete to train or as they stick to tried and true methods that they have developed over decades.

That’s not the way the fitness industry works. While CrossFit was surging in growth in the early part of this decade, it helped to lift many coaches and their indie gyms on the crest of a trend. That’s not the case today, arguably, because fitness is faddish, it’s fickle. There wasn’t enough emphasis on good coaches and there was way too much emphasis on gym building.

Therefore, it is really, really important that we figure out the best way to keep promoting great coaches and great indie gyms. The globo gym market is, for us at least, the fast food of fitness. The indie gyms are where you get the innovation, the organic knowledge, and expertise that can change a life, make a champion even, or just provide a family to support you on your fitness journey. And it is this sense of family that permeates the best indie gyms, something that you cannot replicate in anodyne globo gyms where the best thing that can happen is you put a membership on autopay and never show up.

Mi Casa, Su Casa

It is about family. We talked to Mike Tromello and you can see his video below where he gets into his philosophy of gym ownership. We can attest to the fact that Mike’s approach succeeds and that all successful coaches that we know have very similar traits. We need more Mike Tromellos and that’s where we feel inspired to pursue a more focused direction in our editorial and our plans for Breaking Muscle.

“I live in a community. I love my community. I grew up in another community. The difference between a community and a family is one very important thing: you can leave a community, but no one wants to leave their family. So, when it comes to building a gym, I wanted an environment that was as supportive as a family. I didn’t want to build a community, that’s a great buzzword, but I did want to build a family.” Says Mike.

He also says, “I have been involved in CrossFit since 2008. I got into an affiliate, Precision CrossFit, about seven years ago. We started out with 30 members, and 20 of them are still here. I know my members, and they know me. I’d say to anyone running a gym that they have to be able to ask their members how they are and know when they’re good and when they’re not so good. Your members should be willing to feel comfortable enough to tell you what’s wrong.

“Sure, that means you become involved with your members, but I also have a line that I don’t cross. Stuff happens. Someone has a bad trip to Vegas and they can’t pay their membership dues. I get it, but that’s not my problem. I am still a business and members have to pay their dues.”

Indie gyms are needed more than ever. We need stronger coaching practices. We need better trainers, mentored properly, and working in secure environments where they can grow over time. We need more people to be aware of the advantages and benefits of indie gyms.

There are great coaches in every city and town, they are, often, well hidden, maybe not out of choice, and they need to be seen. The superficial charge that people get from watching Instagram coaches, athletic and good to look at, is not the same as finding a gym, a coach, a family environment that will nurture and support you for the long term. This is your 60-year challenge.

Fitness Influencers are picked by coaches and Breaking Muscle editors in a purely subjective manner. They are coaches who are known to Breaking Muscle through their posts on the site and or through the recommendations of their peers. We look for coaches who exhibit a dedication to their craft, who have a physical practice that is respectful of all trainees, and most of the time we err on the side of promoting coaches who are probably too shy or modest to be great self-promoters themselves. It’s about supporting the independent coaches and gyms that need our support and admiration.

The post Building a Gym Family for Better or for Worse appeared first on Breaking Muscle.