The “Basic” Plan to Get Fit at Any Age
– The MOVEMENT Movement with Steven Sashen Episode 148 with Tony Bevilacqua
A former overweight, beer loving, cancer patient who went through hell and back in his late 20’s, Tony Bevilacqua eventually came out the other side with incredible insight about living a life full of health, opportunity, and service to others. Today, with 23 years of professional coaching experience under his belt, Tony has helped 1000’s of athletes from every sport imaginable, at every level imaginable, maximize their potential to look, feel, and perform their very BEST.
Most recently, Tony has worked extensively in the realm of CrossFit and Weightlifting, where he has developed and coached some of the best athletes in the World in BOTH sports. Tony is now bringing his knowledge and expertise in all things nutrition, fitness, and recovery to guys over 40 to help them discover their previously untapped potential so they can build a body that is strong, lean, and high-performance for life.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Tony Bevilacqua about the “basic” plan to get fit at any age.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How most men in their forties and older didn’t grow up with good strength conditioning program.
– Why having a good strength conditioning program is so important.
– How people must have comprehensive training that includes nutrition and good sleep habits.
– Why the barbell is the most efficient tool at the gym and the different ways you can use it.
– How it’s important to add speed to the strength that you’ve developed over time, creating power.
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Connect with Steven:
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Steven Sashen:
If you’re looking to be fit in any way, whatever that means to you, the way you would do that when you’re in your teens or your 20s or your 30s or your 40s or beyond is very different than when you are at a different age group than the one you’re thinking of. And of course one of the biggest problems I know for me as a guy who’s now 60 is my brain does not know how the hell old I am. And it likes to think that I’m way younger than I actually am. So we’re going to talk about how to deal with that no matter what your age is on today’s episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body. I like to say starting feet first, because those things are your foundation. But there’s other parts that are pretty important too, I’m told.
And here’s where we break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the flat out lies you’ve been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or do yoga or CrossFit or whatever it is you like to do. Dance, Dance Revolution, that’s a fun one. ESAM racing, archery. I’m thinking of some of the sports we sponsor. Whatever it is. To do those things enjoyably and effectively and efficiently. Did I say enjoyably? Trick question. I know I did. Because look, if you’re not having fun, you’re not going to keep it up anyway. So find something that you like to do. I’m Steven Sashen from XeroShoes.com, your host of the MOVEMENT Movement. And we call it this because we are having… There’s a movement we’re helping create and that involves you. I’ll tell you how in a sec, about natural movement, letting your body do what it’s designed to do.
And the way you can be part of the movement part is go over to our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com. Doesn’t cost anything to join. There’s no secret handshake. That’s where the website is. You’ll find all the previous episodes of the podcast, you’ll find the different ways you can engage with us on social media, et cetera, et cetera. And you know what the drill. Like and give us a thumbs up and subscribe and hit the bell icon on YouTube. In short, if you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. So with that said, Tony, do me a favor, tell people who you are and what you’re doing here.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, thanks. I’m founder of a company called Athletic After 40. And what we do-
Steven Sashen:
You have to do the simple part. Tell them your name.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Tony Bevilacqua.
Steven Sashen:
Which by the way, Bevilacqua was one of my I favorite last names. It just has a ring that makes my brain really happy. And I know one other person with your exact name from my past.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Oh, really? I was going to say, do you know someone else?
Steven Sashen:
I know another Tony Bevilacqua Bevilacqua.
Tony Bevilacqua:
No kidding.
Steven Sashen:
Swear to God.
Tony Bevilacqua:
It means “drink water” in Italian. So I come from a long line of water drinkers apparently.
Steven Sashen:
How does one get identified as a water drinker?
Tony Bevilacqua:
I know, right? Yeah, somewhere in there.
Steven Sashen:
So here you are and now you can say more about what you do.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, I’m fountain of a company called Athletic After 40 and we help guys who are over 40 to build what I call the athletic body. We want to help them to lose excess body fat. We want to help them to get into better shape so that they can perform better and enjoy life much, much better. And then the other thing that we want to help them with is sleep, stress management. Because those are big things that guys tend to deal with as they get a little bit older, whether it’s work, family, whatever. And usually those are areas that people struggle with.
Steven Sashen:
So are you suggesting that all the women living listen to this right now, tune out? Or is there a reason for them to stay?
Tony Bevilacqua:
No, I think there’s certainly some carryover here. But for the last four or five years I’ve really specialized in helping guys.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. So ladies stick around anyway because you never know.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, 100%.
Steven Sashen:
And there may be a man in your life. Maybe there is, maybe there will be. Doesn’t matter either way, I don’t care. And let’s take it from there. So I’m going to start by saying, when I got back into sprinting when I was 45, it took me literally a couple of years to get my brain in sync with the fact that I was no longer 20 and that I couldn’t work out every day. And that when my brain said, I’m on the track and it says, “Let’s just do one more,” that was the time to stop.
And I’m still learning. Like, at 60, I discovered that when I’m doing strength training, for example, if I’m going to do a five by five, five sets of five reps of something, I can only do that once a week because I need that much time to recover. And if I have less time to recover, I don’t build strength, nothing changes, but I have a bunch time to recover and we’ll talk more about sleep and stress as part of that, then I actually can continue to get stronger. The hardest thing was getting my brain in sync with how old I really am.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, yeah. No, for sure. I think especially if you’re someone who has, I call it the athlete mindset. If you’re someone who’s been in athletics, you’re someone who’s been very driven throughout your years, maybe you hit a high level of sport back in the day. These are the folks that I generally am attracted to and they want to play just like they played when they were in their 20s or their 30s. And then things do inevitably kind of slow down a little bit. So I’m always interested in trying to figure out, what is it that we can do to optimize you even though you’re 60 years old? And in some cases when we do things the right way, in some cases I’ve got guys who are in their 60s who perform better, believe it or not, than they did in their 20s and 30s.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting. Say more, give me an example of someone who’s doing something better in their 60s compared to 40 years earlier.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, so quite a few guys. And one of the things that I think a lot of guys are missing out on, especially guys who are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, even older than that, one of the things we didn’t have when we were younger, at least I didn’t, and a lot of guys that I work with didn’t have was a really good strength and conditioning program. So if we wanted to play a sport, like, I was a swimmer back in the day, I swam in college and swam in high school, we went and we did the thing. We swam and that’s pretty much all we did. We didn’t do anything extra. We’d spend three hours in the pool, sometimes longer, we’d get out of the pool, we’d eat, we’d go to sleep and we’d do it again. That’s all that we did. So there was really no strength conditioning program.
But nowadays if you were to go to… Let’s say you got a scholarship and you went to a college, you almost have to go see a strength conditioning coach. You have to build your strength, you have to build your condition, you have to build some of this general things to keep you, number one, injury free. There’s a huge correlation there with staying injury free. But then also you can perform better. So we didn’t really get a chance to do that stuff. And now these guys are getting older and we’re implementing in some of these strength conditioning routines and their bodies are feeling better, they’re stronger than they’ve ever been. I got ex-football players who are stronger now than they were when they were playing football and they’re like, “I wish I would’ve done this stuff back in the day because I would’ve played so much better.”
Steven Sashen:
That’s fascinating. When it comes to sprinting, what I can tell you, two things. One is, to be a Masters All-American, you just have to hit a certain time. And those times, Master to 35, get slower, slower, slower every five years. Once you turn 60, the times start getting way slower every five years. And I was at the senior games right after I turned 50 and a bunch of 60 year old guys were saying, “Just wait, man. It gets bad.” And a bunch of 80 year old guys were standing behind them going, “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” So my goal is not to think that I’m going to be able to run the times that I was running in my 20s or 30s or even my 40s, but as long as I can keep hitting those All-American times, then that’ll keep me really happy. And then I just need to outlast everybody else. If I’m the last one standing, then I win everything.
Tony Bevilacqua:
100%. Yeah, there’s always that longevity thing. We want to stay in the game. Because if you can stay in the game, that’s of course going to be a huge thing. But even just thinking, some of this I tell my guys is even mindset. Because sometimes we put ourselves in this box that because I’m older, I shouldn’t be able to perform as well as I did when I was 10 years younger. And I don’t even want you to go down that road. I want you to legitimately think that you can be better as you get older.
Steven Sashen:
Okay, so needless to say, I’m thinking about the speed thing. So that one’s high… I don’t know anyone who is, so there’s that, but there are aspects of strength conditioning health where I can totally see that without question. So where are the places where we can expect that we can stay better for longer? And is there a place where that drops off? And we’re the ones where it’s like, look, we’re just trying to slow down how things slow down.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah. So again, going back to the… If we’re talking about just performance as a sprinter, if you’ve never really been on a really good strength conditioning program, and maybe you have so that, so that’d be a different discussion, but if we can put you on a really good strength conditioning program, there’s a chance. And some of this depends on where you were back in your career. If you were an Olympian you would hit your true genetic potential for performance, it’s a little different discussion. But if you’ve never really been to that level, if you’ve never really been able to push that potential up to whatever your true genetic potential is, you’ve got a lot of room there possibly to be faster in your 60s than you were in your 50s.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Tony Bevilacqua:
There’s something there. There’s something to the training. There’s some other things too.
Steven Sashen:
Sorry. No, you win. Go.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, there’s something to the training, but obviously we have to look at nutrition, we have to look at sleep, we have to be a little bit more comprehensive. We could get away with a little bit more when we were younger, but if somebody truly wants to perform at their best as they get older, we got to kind of look at all of these things. Let’s optimize all these things and let’s get you to that genetic potential. Let’s see what you’re really made of.
Steven Sashen:
That’s the interesting point, the genetic potential part because most people have not come anywhere close to that. So I’m curious, you mentioned early on just that a lot of the people that you’re attracted to are former athletic whatever. But when you’re dealing with people who are not athletic, so the athletic people are closer to their genetic potential, these other people don’t have a clue, what’s it like working with those different populations? And give me an example. And not just for me, for anyone listening, give me an example of what kind of general strength and conditioning program you’d be talking about. Whether it’s for someone who’s coming not at their peak, but they were doing well before, or people who’ve just starting for the first time to try and do anything for their health or for their athleticism.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, great question. And I think what we grew up on, if we look back at the history of strength conditioning, what did that model look like for us, when we were in our teens and in our 20s and in our 30s? It was kind of a body building model. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the guy, he was all over the place. He was in the movies, you could see him in Conan the Barbarian and we all want to look like that guy. So we’re like, “Okay, well, what was he doing to build that body?” And even if you’re an athlete, you maybe knew that that body might not help you to run faster, it probably would slow you down if anything. But we all got into this mentality of that’s how we need to train is more of a body building style. And if you think of a body building style of training, what do we do to the human body?
We take the human body and we break it down into a bunch of individual muscle groups and then we beat up each of those individual muscle groups. There’s guys spending two hours on chest and trons. And if you want to be a body builder, that’s awesome. But when we’re talking about human performance, I look at it completely different.
So we look at the human body as one giant muscle, toenails to the fingernails. When you see an athlete perform, whether they’re a gymnast, a hockey player, a sprinter, doesn’t matter, when you see an athlete perform, it’s this beautiful orchestration of all of the muscles and all of the joints working together to be able to create these beautiful patterns, these beautiful movements. And that’s super fascinating. And if we can really enhance that ability, we train the system as one giant muscle as opposed to a bunch of individual pieces, that’s where we can really accelerate someone’s performance, overall human performance. And it doesn’t even matter what the sport is, let’s strengthen and condition that system. Let’s build strength, stabilization, coordination, agility, all those things. And it lends itself pretty well to just about any sport that you’re in.
Steven Sashen:
Well, so let’s dive a little deeper into that. So what does it look like, if you can give an example of training this entire single muscle thing? You kind of just hinted about it, but if we can get a little deeper into that, that would be really great.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah. So one of the best tools for the job. So one of the things… Because I’ve got a history of working with a lot of athletes and when we do get them to go to the gym to spend a little bit of time in there, we’ve got to be very, very efficient. So they don’t want to spend a bunch of time in the gym. We want to get them in, we want to do the things that are going to create the most bang for the buck for them and then get them back out so they can go play. They can go do their thing.
And what I’ve found to be the best tool for the job is a barbell. So if you can teach someone the ways of a barbell, there’s multiple different things that you can do with it. And I don’t mean bench press. In fact, I actually hate the bench press because who’s lying down in their sport? So not a bench press just for the record, but we can do all kinds of different things with a barbell. So I want my clients, I want my athletes to master the barbell. And if we can master the barbell, we can significantly improve not just the strength of the system, but also the power of the system, the coordination of the system. There’s so much benefit to that. And it takes some time, but if you can learn that, that’s the key. That’s the magic, if you will.
Steven Sashen:
I’m going to keep inviting you to go one step lower, lower, lower. So now we’re into this idea of mastering the barbell. Please, say more.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah. So mastering the barbell, generally what we want to do first is we want to build a foundation of strength. And the foundation of strength, there’s some basic fundamental movements that I absolutely love to build the full body. And you probably heard of these before, but the back squat, just being able to squat down and stand yourself back up. We want to first develop the skill of being able to do that squat and then we can start to build up your strength using that skill. So it’s really important that we learn the skills first because if you don’t learn the skills and we put a bunch of weight on someone, that’s where injuries can occur. And we’ve got to be really careful with that. So I always start my clients, we call it movement mastery. We want to get them to move very, very well first, then we can start to build it up. So that’s one of them. Another one would be the deadlift. Have you heard of the deadlift before?
Steven Sashen:
Oh, let me just say… Well, yes is the easy answer. I’ll say, I’m going to… How do I want to do this? All right, I’m going to dive into something a little deeper a little later. I love squatting heavy. I love pulling heavy. My back does not agree with me because I’ve got an actual problem, not just blah, blah, blah. We’ll talk about that. The deadlift was one of the things that helped me tremendously. When I got back into sprinting and I was getting injured a bunch, there was a sprinting coach who was a big, big deadlift fan. And even more, he’s a big concentric deadlift fan. So basically lift the bar, drop the bar. Don’t even lower it slowly, just let go once it passes your knees. And I called him and said, “I’m getting all these injuries.” He says, “What do you deadlift?”
I said, “I don’t know, I’ve never done it. I don’t know, 250 or something?” He goes, “What do you weigh?” I said, “About 150.” He goes, “Call me when you’re deadlifting over 300.” Once you get over twice your body weight, things start to change. And once I got over twice my body weight, things started to change and then I kept going. And the first time I pulled 400 pounds, it was psychologically terrifying. No reason it should have been. It was only five pounds more than I had done the day before. But nonetheless, it scared the crap out of me. And I remember vividly, I pulled 400 pounds, I dropped the bar and I thought, “Ah, crap. Now I got to go for 500.” And my next thought was, “Hey, moron.”
Tony Bevilacqua:
I love that. That’s that athlete mentality. That’s it.
Steven Sashen:
Yes, exactly.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yes, that’s it. I get that.
Steven Sashen:
So I love squatting, I love deadlifting. I’m going to save this for a little later because I do have literally compromised spine. So I do want to address for what it is for people who are in a situation like mine. But let’s keep going. So we have squatting, we have deadlifting.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Pressing, so just a standing overhead press and then a pull up. And I like even getting into the weighted pull ups. So it’s before fundamental movements that we want to develop over time to build just full body strength. And then the next step would be… Go ahead. Did you have a question?
Steven Sashen:
No, no, keep going. I do have a question, but keep going.
Tony Bevilacqua:
And then the next step is we want to start to develop some power. So whenever I talk about power, I’m referencing adding some speed into this strength that we’ve developed. And we need to have a foundational… At least I believe we need to have a foundational level of strength before we get into some of these power movements. But anytime you see an athlete, the currency of an athlete a lot of times is their ability to create power. Like a sprinter, you want to be very, very fast. And to be strong and fast, that’s the guys that are winning. So we want to develop this power. And there’s a few different exercises, but just to keep it very basic, you probably heard of the Olympic lifts, the clean and the snatch. Both of those things with a barbell are ways that we can teach someone how to use that strength, but in a very fast way.
Steven Sashen:
Have you ever played, especially with snatch, not so much with the clean, have you ever played the dumbbell versions? And I ask only because I love that one. It’s easier to master and there’s something that… I don’t know what it is, but there’s something that when you are snatching a 100 pound dumbbell, it feels way cooler than snatching a 200 pound barbell.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Have you ever snatched a 200 pound barbell?
Steven Sashen:
No, but I have done a 100 pound dumbbell and it’s a blast.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, yeah. It is really fun. And no question, the barbell is harder to learn, but generally we can use more weight with a barbell than we can with a dumbbell. So I can make someone more powerful if I can teach them the ways of the bar.
Steven Sashen:
Got it.
Tony Bevilacqua:
We can push those weights a little bit higher than dumbbell.
Steven Sashen:
So the things you just described are clearly the kind of things that to master, you’re going to need somebody taking a look at what you’re doing. This is not the kind of thing where you want to look at a YouTube video and go hit the gym. So what do you recommend for people if they want to start diving into this, to do it in a way that’s appropriate and safe and correct?
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, if you have zero experience with these things, I would certainly go and get a coach, find somebody to help you and teach you these things. And before even that, you get into any of these more complicated or complex movements, always remember to build your strength first. You want to work on these more powerful movements from a position of strength and stability.
So build your squat, build your deadlift, build your presses, work on your pull ups, do those things, get really good at those. And I’ve got some standards that I want all my guys to hit before we even move into the Olympic lifts. And then once we get into some of those things, we teach it just with a wooden stick. Let’s learn it with a wooden stick and then we’ll… There’s even a 15 pound barbell you can get, and then you can learn it with a 15 pound bar and then you can add a 45. And we’re kind of watching you step by step along this journey to make sure that as we move you up, as we progress you forward, the movements still look beautiful. Because if your movements are beautiful-
Steven Sashen:
How do you deal with, for lack of a better term, the egos of former athletes, when you hand them a 15 pound bar?
Tony Bevilacqua:
That’s one of the hardest parts, especially if they’ve been a lifter in the past or whatever. But it’s amazing how you can… I’ve done enough of these seminars over the years and things where we’ll go for two days and we’ll just drill Olympic lifting with a wooden stick and I will be destroyed by the end of the day, just wrecked, with a wooden stick. So you can usually get people to that point. If there’s something that you really want to work on that you need to work on and we need to spend a lot of time on it, it’s really challenging. Try holding a low squat position for 30 seconds. If you’ve never done that before, just body weight, it’s really challenging.
Steven Sashen:
So as people… How do I want to put this? How do you deal with, or how do you instruct people to progress? And building strength, there’s just the whole idea of progressive overload. You just want to do a little more each time, for example. But it’s not quite so simple because it involves figuring out what you’re going to do for sets, for reps, for rest, for structure. And that again, like I mentioned early on, can change as one gets older. So how do you address that?
Tony Bevilacqua:
As far as just the intensity and how often we’re doing these things?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. What does the structure look like for people of either different skill sets or different ages? Obviously, again, it was shocking to me there was… I’ll tell you, one of my all time favorite exercises, the Nordic hamstring curl. For people who don’t know it, you’re kneeling on the ground, let’s say, and you have something holding your heels down. And while keeping your body relatively straight, little bit of a hip bend, you just kind of lean forward slowly until you can’t, until you basically stop yourself from planting on your face by putting your hands down.
And I was trying this by doing three sets of as many as I could, going as far as I could till I fell down maybe three days a week and I just wasn’t making any progress. And when I went to training it once a week, then suddenly within a month I’m able to go all the way down, all the way back. And that was shocking for me to realize that I needed, again, that much rest and recovery to actually get that super compensation to damage those muscles enough that they could then come back stronger and then do the next workout when I was already stronger. And again, not the way I worked out in my 20s or 30s and I don’t know about my 40s, but it’s effective for me in my 60s.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s a great question. I think it’s person dependent, obviously, to some degree. So there’s a little bit of an art and a science to this whole thing. Obviously, when you get older the recovery is going to take a little bit longer, inevitably. But I’m sometimes surprised that just how well some guys do and where we can train just about every single day and they feel good.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. No, as you were saying that, I was having that same thought. There’s some times where I like to do something every day because it’s easier. And to your point about getting in getting out, doing a 10 minute workout or a 15 minute workout, way better for me psychologically than doing an hour long workout or a two hour workout. And it seems that there are certain things that I can do almost every day and that’s helpful. But there’s some things where I really do need the rest.
And it reminds me, when you mentioned bodybuilders, I’ve bumped into a couple of former professional bodybuilders in the last couple years and I’ve asked them about what it was like getting older and they all said the same thing right off the bat. They go, “The legs go.” And you see that with older bodybuilders from the waist up, they still can look huge and from the waist down they look like they’ve never lifted. So again, I think to your point, it’s an individual thing and maybe even more than just individuals, certain muscles respond differently than others. Certain movements respond differently than others. This is my hunch, you have more experience. So I’m just kind of curious.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah. And I think it’s really hard to compare to bodybuilders. I’m not a bodybuilder, I’ve never really been in that world, but I do sort of believe that that’s probably one of the ways to blow yourself up more so than the way that I’m presenting here.
Steven Sashen:
Absolutely.
Tony Bevilacqua:
The overuse in those movements where they’re single joint and they’re beating them up is just like…
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. No, but it is an interesting thing that I noticed with guys who were serious lifters. Once they get to a certain point, their legs start shrinking. They still have arms the size of Montana, but then their legs are more Rhode Island, I guess. I don’t know where that came from.
I vividly remember when Jack Lane was in his early 90s and they were doing a story about him on the news and they’re showing him lifting on a universal gym, doing a bench press. And most people don’t know, he helped invent the universal gym. And he’s pushing really hard, I mean every ounce of effort. And no one seemed to notice other than me, it seems, that he had 20 pounds on the stack. And look, if I was 90 and I was bench pressing 20, I’d be happy. But it was also sort of shocking. Just like, “Oh, yeah. We do get old.” Anyway, so anything that you want to extrapolate from just the individual thing of where you’re going to have to work with whomever you’re working with to identify what’s working for you that people could at least have in the back of their mind as they’re exploring this?
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, I think a lot of it just has to do with how you’re… When you get a chance to work with a coach and there’s a level of communication there, I think that’s super, super important because you have to figure out what your athlete is capable of, what’s going on in their life on that day, on that week, whatever. And you might be able to push them a little bit more in that week. And you sort of get to know your athlete and you can have these conversations and you can program appropriately. So there is a little bit of an art form to this whole thing.
The worst thing that you want is have an athlete wake up the next day and they can’t get out of freaking bed, because they’re so sore. They’re just exhausted. That’s not what you want. We train so that we can be better in our everyday lives. So you have to find that balance. And I’ve been doing it for so long that I think I inevitably take it for granted a little bit, but it’s amazing just what you can do on a day to day basis. And then there’s some other sort of factors that go into this. What does your nutrition look like? How are you sleeping at night? These are huge factors.
Steven Sashen:
Holy moly, the sleep… Let’s talk about… Wait, before we talk about sleep, let’s put a bookmark on sleep. But I want to back up to something I alluded to a bit ago. So for people who do have some impairment of some sort, how do you make adjustments? So for me, I’ll get technical for those of you who are into it and then I’ll do the non-technical version. So I have a grade two L5-S1 spondylolisthesis with a pars defect. Basically my two lowest vertebrae, my sacrum, and the one right above it, instead of being aligned one on top of the other, the top one is 50% forward and has crushed the disc below it and there’s nothing holding it in place. That’s the pars defect part. So my doctors do not like it when I tell them I’m trying to squat heavier, deadlift heavy.
I took it upon myself when I was long jumping and pole vaulting and I realized, “Oh, that vibrating in my legs. That’s because I just smashed the crap out of my sciatic nerve. So maybe I should stop doing those two activities.” But they’re still upset that I even sprint because that’s pretty aggressive as well. And then similarly, as a former All-American gymnast, I don’t know one gymnast who doesn’t have messed up shoulders in some way and swimmers, of course, very similar often. So just doing a straight overhead press with your palms facing forward, not necessarily the ideal position for someone with a compromised shoulder. So how do you address these kinds of things when you’re working with somebody?
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah. I think, and again, everybody’s going to be a little bit different. So we have to, of course, take those things into consideration and then also have a conversation, like an honest conversation about, in your case, with the spondylolisthesis. Did I say it right?
Steven Sashen:
Spondylolisthesis. Took me a while.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, yeah. But in that case, there’s a mechanical issue there. We’ve got one vertebrae that’s literally sliding off of the other one. So you’ve got to be very careful with some of these things. But now you make a decision, you make this decision whether or not you want to continue to strength train, you want to continue to do functional movements, like pick things up from the floor, you want to continue to sprint. And you have to make that decision. I believe that it’s still in your best interest to continue to do those things and to keep yourself strong. Is it an ideal situation? 100% not. We have to be really, really careful with the mechanics, with the biomechanics, with maintaining a rigid spine and pelvis as you create a hip extension or as you create movement in the hips. So there’s things that we have to look at. We just have to be way more diligent with you than we would with somebody who has a healthy spine.
Steven Sashen:
In terms of picking things up, I’d rather just hire someone, but I’m not in that position.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Right, right. Some people would. My doctor told me I can’t do anything anymore, so they sit on the couch. As soon as I hear that, I’m like, “Yeah, I’m probably not your guy.”
Steven Sashen:
A late comic named Rich Jenny, who 30 years ago had a bit that I loved. He says, “I don’t understand how a Rolex watch can be $40,000. For $40,000, I could just hire a guy to follow me around.” ‘Jim, what time is it?’ ’12:15.’ All right I’ll come later.'”
Tony Bevilacqua:
I love that.
Steven Sashen:
It’s like, “Yeah, I could lift weights or I could just hire someone to lift weights. What the hell?”
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, there’s always that option, right.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, the mechanical thing is very interesting because it’s one of those things, and I appreciate you talking about being careful about it. But I’m going say to humans who are listening/watching, if you are in that kind of situation, you’re going to want to grill who you’re working with to make sure they really understand what you’re talking about instead of just trying to make up a story to get you what into whatever the next workout is. And I say that because I’ll never forget, I talked to a chiropractor, I was invited to a lecture, happened to be at a chiropractor’s office and I said, “Well, what would you do in my situation?” He said, “Well, we put you in some traction to put this vertebrae in the right place.” I said, “But with the ‘pars defect,’ the muscles that hold that vertebrae in place are not attached to the vertebrae, so there’s nothing that’s going to hold it in place. So what’s it going to do to temporarily realign things?”
And the guy was stumped. And so I was like, “Oh, well, I definitely can’t do anything with you because you don’t understand the situation.” So you’re going to want to talk to someone who gets it. And conversely, this is another one, I’ve talked to doctors and sprinters, there’s a non-zero chance that at some point I’ll have to get those two vertebrae refused. And so when I talk to doctors, I go, “How many times have you worked with a sprinter or someone doing high intensity power moves where you’ve done the surgery and what’s been the outcome?” And similarly, I talked to people who are sprinters and power lifters who’ve had the surgery and said what worked, what didn’t work, et cetera, et cetera. So you’re going to want to really grill people and don’t just take a simple answer. If someone’s saying, “Oh, yeah. Not a problem,” it’s probably a problem.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, 100%. And I’m a big believer too in a team approach. So if you’re going to find someone… For me and my guys, we have a physical therapist that we have on our team. We have even an orthopedic surgeon that will come in and have conversations if needed. So we’ve got other people on the team too, because it’s not just one person. You want more than one mind on this whole thing. And if you’re an athlete, I believe you also have to have someone who, like you has mentioned, “Have you ever worked with a sprinter before?” There’s different providers out there. If you just walk into any physical therapy clinic, there’s a good chance you might be working with the wrong person because they’ve never really worked with an athletic population. So you have to be really careful with that.
Steven Sashen:
And I would argue this is also true, even if you didn’t start out as an athlete, because if we’re thinking that all humans are fundamentally athletes or athletic, then you’re going to still want someone who understands where you think you may be going or what it is you enjoy or whatever. I’ve had this argument just about sprinting. It’s very hard to find people to work with because there aren’t a whole lot of us and we’re notoriously hard to study as a result, but blah, blah, blah. Let’s move on to sleep. Not because you’re putting me too, but because it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
I called my sister last week and said, “Do you remember how mom used to sleep?” And my sister said, “Oh, yeah. She didn’t.” It’s like, “Yeah, I’ve realized that I’m living her life.” I go to bed around 11:00 or 12:00, I wake up around 5:30, which is not what I used to do. Oh, and getting up once or twice to pee, preferably in the bathroom so far every time. But watching my sleep patterns change is another thing that’s been shocking. And I’m still trying to figure out how to play with that. So jump on in. Not about me, just about sleep in general and wherever it goes.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah. I find that’s a huge problem for so many guys over 40. And the most common thing that I hear for guys over 40 probably unsurprisingly, is the pee thing. “I got to get up to pee.” That’s the number one thing. 75% of the folks, that’s what it is. And honest to God, we fix that one thing and they’re good. It’s crazy, just fixing the pee thing. And then of course the other one is, “I don’t know why I wake up. My mind is just going and then I can’t fall back asleep,” or whatever. But I’ll tell you what, man, the pee thing is… And it’s a fairly simple fix. It’s like, “Well, what time are you drinking water at the end of the night?”
Steven Sashen:
One would think, one would think. I literally had this thought last night when I was sitting on the toilet because I like to pee sitting down in the middle of the night, just in case, because you never know. And I was thinking, “When’s the last time I had something to drink?” And it was at 6:00 in the evening. So it had been a good nine hours since I had anything to drink. And in fact, last night, I don’t remember if I got up twice or three times, but when I finally got up, which was at 5:30 in the morning, then I was peeing even more, as if I had gotten up in the middle of the night and had a gallon of water to drink. So in my situation, not that I’m trying to play stump the band, but I have done that experiment about “when’s the last time I had something to drink?” and that was not the limiting factor.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Interesting. Usually that works and I would even play with that a little bit more. I would go to 5:00. Okay. Honest to God, I would go to 5:00 and I would test that and see if that helps.
Steven Sashen:
All right. I’ll give that a whirl. Fascinating. Yeah, I can imagine that would make… Well, the other thing, and I’m going to get into this in a slightly different direction, I’m curious about anything supplemental for any of the things we’re talking about. But let’s talk about the sleep one first. When I had shoulder surgery, let’s call it four years ago, because I don’t remember, so I had to sleep in a chair for eight weeks. And I didn’t want to take opioids mostly because they last so long in my system that I’m non-functional. They’re enjoyable but then I can’t do anything for a day. And that was right after pot had gotten legalized in Colorado. So I walked into a pot shop and said, “What do I do?” And they said, “Oh, take these little indica gummies.” And they just knock me out.
And so when I do get up at 3:00 in the morning, it’s all I can do not to walk into the walls because that’s when they really kick in. So I’m curious not only just about anything you’re thinking about supplemental to help with some of the stuff we’re talking about, but not surprisingly, the number one conversation that comes up for older men and women is the question about hormone replacement. Well, let’s not use the term hormone replacement therapy because that’s often not what it is, but supplemental hormonal therapy, let’s call it that.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah. Huge conversation nowadays. My goodness, it’s expanded so much over the last few years. I’m of the belief, let’s start with the fundamentals first. Because a lot of guys are trying to put a bandaid on something that we could potentially fix by just sleeping better at night, doing some exercise. A lot of guys over 40, even athletic guys aren’t doing any resistance training. They might be out running, they might be out biking, they might be out doing some of these things. They’re not doing any resistance training. Their nutrition is probably not very good. Let’s fix those things first. Let’s build the foundation. And if that’s still not getting better, then maybe have that conversation with your doctor. I feel like there’s so much room to fix the foundation for so many people. Let’s start there.
Steven Sashen:
Look, I’m going to throw on the other part. I don’t know one… How old are you?
Tony Bevilacqua:
47.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. I don’t know one guy who’s older than you who is a fitness professional who isn’t taking testosterone or various other compounds similar to it and who admits it. Actually, I take it back. There’s one guy who admitted it, but he tried to frame it like it was totally normal, it was paleo-friendly and he was spinning it like there’s no tomorrow. But I know a bunch of these fitness guys who are… They’re showing pictures of how they look and are not admitting that they are jacked on testosterones, like. “Well, I’m just on the high end of normal.” Yeah, for a 20 year old dude. So that’s all fascinating to me.
And some of these bodybuilders that I mentioned earlier, a couple of these guys are former big deal pro bodybuilders. To this day, they won’t tell me what they take and they are undeniably doing it now because they were doing it then. So that’s all very interesting. And the whole… But I got to back up. But I do love the idea of see what you can do first and foremost because it’s probably more than what you imagine without injecting something.
Tony Bevilacqua:
You might like this story. So this might help some of the listeners who might be thinking about this, testosterone replacement therapies. So it’s my mission, myself personally, to not have to take any medications, any of those kinds of things, any of those replacement therapies. I am very interested and very committed in keeping myself as healthy as possible. And that means also maintaining a healthy level of testosterone. I want all of those things to be good as I go through my life here. And I’m a testicular cancer survivor.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, wow.
Tony Bevilacqua:
So back when I was 29, I got diagnosed with testicular cancer, had a testicle removed, did chemo, did all this stuff. And that’s kind of my transformation point, if you will, where I’m like, “Look, I’m going to eat good every day. I’m going to sleep good every night. I’m going to do all these things. I’m going to live this healthy life.” And it’s 17 years later and I’m still kind of following this path. And my testosterone levels are completely normal. They’re not on the high side, they’re not on the… They’re completely normal every time I get them tested, and I get them tested every year. So even though I’ve got one nut, I’m 47 years old, not taking anything. I’m just here to tell you it’s possible. It’s possible.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. That’s great. So is there anything else we want to talk about in terms of sleep and getting good sleep other than don’t drink, so maybe you don’t pee in the middle of the night?
Tony Bevilacqua:
Well, I was going to just go on that just a little bit more. Because again, that’s the number one thing at least that I see. But even looking at the amount of water that you’re drinking in a day, because I think, again, we’ve been taught that we have to drink so much water. There’s guys walking around with these massive things of water, where we’re like these big sponges that are… We’re almost too watered.
Steven Sashen:
Now, this is coming from a man whose name is water drinker.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yes. Right.
Steven Sashen:
He is bucking his genetic and cultural heritage by telling you, you may not need to drink so much. That’s a bold-
Tony Bevilacqua:
We drink beer. No, I’m kidding.
Steven Sashen:
Fermented water, but otherwise… There’s this whole thing about hard lemonade and hard whatever. It’s my new business. It’s going to be hard water. People are going to do, “Isn’t that just vodka?” I’m going to go, “Yeah.”
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, pretty much.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, pretty much. That’s embarrassing. Anything else other than paying attention to water consumption? Not just when you had it in relation to when you were going to bed, but just in general?
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah. And then I’m a foundations guy. Let’s pick on the easy stuff first before we get into medications and supplements and all those kinds of things. Light in the room, is there something going on there?
Steven Sashen:
I want to talk about that.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Sure.
Steven Sashen:
So there’s this whole thing about in the world that I live in particular where it’s like, “What did we used to do? What’s the ancestral version of this? What’s the paleo version? What’s the fill in the blank?” And everyone always says, “You need a totally dark room.” Except that we never lived anywhere where it was totally dark. You get a full moon every month and you can read by that thing. I’m not saying don’t get in a dark room. It definitely makes a difference when I do it, but it always cracks me up. It’s like, “Whoa, you have this mythologized version of what history was like and you’re now trying to say that we need this thing that life was never like that thing.” I’ve literally given it no more thought than just that. But I had to pass that in there.
Tony Bevilacqua:
I’m just wondering, did we always just sleep under the stars or were we in a some sort of a whatever?
Steven Sashen:
It depends on where you are. If you go to Papua New Guinea, while they did have a thatched roof over their head, it’s readable light as soon as you get outside the thatched roof. I have a vivid memory when I was a kid and I went to camp where there’s a couple of full moons where it was as if it was noon, for all practical purposes. And so it didn’t matter if you had something over your head, it was ambient light everywhere else. Now different flavor, different color. But nonetheless, I think there’s some naturalistic fallacy going on when people talk about light, again, if it works, if it’s helpful, regardless of what the story is.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah. At the end of the day, what do we got to do? We got to test it. We have to be scientists and we have to test some of these things, but it’s a really simple thing. And I think, like you said, there is certain lights that could potentially be more egregious to our sleep cycle than other lights. If it’s a moonlight, we could argue that’s very different than the light coming from your phone or the nasty street light that’s right outside your window. Depending on where you live, there are certain things that could potentially have that effect. And if you could try it… I know for me, if you’ve ever gone to a hotel and you’ve got those dark curtains and you pull the dark curtains and you go to sleep and you wake up and it’s morning, but you can’t see any light and you’re like, “Oh, my god.” It’s so hard to get up because it’s so dark.
Steven Sashen:
I’ve done the worst one where I do that same thing and we have those curtains in our house because my wife likes it totally dark. It’s so dark and she’ll do those with the curtains and wear a mask. But there have been times where I went to sleep, woke up feeling refreshed after a full night’s sleep, got up, started to move around and realized it was 2:00 in the morning.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, yeah.
Steven Sashen:
It’s like, “Oops.”
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, totally. Yeah. But I mean, just playing with some of these things, but I would always start with some of these simpler things. Even noise. If you’re living by a road, a busy road, that could be something. And they’ve even done… Have you read the book, Mark Walker, Why We Sleep?
Steven Sashen:
No.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah. Amazing book. And he’s one of the top research guys on sleep right now. It’s called Why We Sleep. It’s either Mike or Mark. I always get mixed up. Mike or Mark Walker, I think it’s Mark Walker. Fascinating guy. And he talks about all these things. But these are the foundational things that I think we need to start working on first, before… A lot of people just go to the store, they start taking melatonin or they’ll go to their doctor and they’ll get a script for whatever the medication is.
And those medications, they’ll sedate you, but you won’t hit your phases of sleep. So there’s quite a bit of interesting research too, even on the different phases. Like, if you play a certain sound during the night in a sleep study, it will keep you out of a certain phase of sleep. And this is all from Mark Walker, so go check that out. But it’s super interesting. So even though you sleep continuously through the night, if you didn’t get enough “REM sleep,” that’s going to affect your health in the long run. And there’s these cool technologies, I’m sure you’ve seen these before, but the Oura Ring and WHOOP is another one. And I think even the watches and stuff all do this stuff, but it’s interesting to kind of see some of that stuff.
Steven Sashen:
My joke over the Oura Ring, my wife wears one and she said, “Do you want to get one?” I said, “What’s it going to tell me other than what I know? I don’t sleep well.”
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah. It’s like a talisman, it reminds me to go to bed.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Thanks for letting me know something I already knew. And we’ve mentioned nutrition a couple of times. And boy, if you want to get people fighting mad, other than talking about politics, I think nutrition actually might trump, pun intended, politics when it comes to getting people ready to put up their dukes and scream and yell and bitch and moan, et cetera, et cetera. There’s nothing more entertaining than watching vegans argue with diehard mediators. And I say entertaining only because they’re each doing the same thing, which is assuming that what works for them can’t work for someone else or vice versa. So when you talk about… First of all, what I love in this conversation is that you keep coming back to, let’s just get the fundamentals down and then work from there. So from your perspective, and get ready for people to freak out, what do you think the fundamentals are when it comes to nutrition?
Tony Bevilacqua:
The quality of your food. 100%.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Quality is everything.
Steven Sashen:
So the organic cheese puffs instead of the non-organic cheese puffs?
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah, if you can get the organic Cheetos, just eat those.
Steven Sashen:
This is the whole thing. Look, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but my wife and I don’t have kids, so we’re very aware of our friends who go to Whole Foods to buy snacks for their kids. They’re just buying the “righteous versions” of the same crap we ate as kids. It is. It’s all natural cheese puffs. It’s all natural Fruit Loops. It’s hysterical to me.
Tony Bevilacqua:
It is.
Steven Sashen:
So when you think of quality of your food, again, I’m going to have you dive underneath that. Say more, please.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah. We’ve got an actual prescription that we give people and it’s a framework and here it is. It’s so simple. Meat, veggies, nuts, seeds and fruits.
Steven Sashen:
Ooh, you’re a no grain guy.
Tony Bevilacqua:
Meats, veggies, nuts, seeds and fruit. Let me elaborate on this a little bit more, to your grain comment. So I’ve come up with a way to measure this. I’m a little bit of a nerd. I like numbers. I’m kind of objective and I want to see data, if we’re working with someone and we want to help them with their nutrition. I call it the RFP, the real food percentage. And I’ll just give you an example. If I had a 100% day today, it would just mean that everything that I consumed came from those categories. Does that make sense?
Steven Sashen:
Yes.
Tony Bevilacqua:
And where I find, and I’ve been collecting data on this for many years, where I find the magic happens… And when I say magic, I mean we can get body fat to start to disappear, we can get people in a better place health-wise, we can see energy levels improve, we can see performance improve. All these things get better somewhere around 80%.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Tony Bevilacqua:
So that means you don’t have to be perfect to the prescription, but of course, you have to make more good decisions than bad decisions. And I’m always interested in trying to figure out, “Well, how bad can you be?”
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Tony Bevilacqua:
And that’s what a lot of people want to know is, “How bad can I be?” Because if I told you, “The only thing you can eat from here on out is meat, veggie, nuts, seeds and fruit,” you’re going to be like, “Yeah, it’s probably not going to work.” So we want to try to make this sustainable. So at what point can this be sustainable? And I find that it’s somewhere around that 80%. So we’ll actually measure that and we’ll track that over time and we’ll correlate that to different things that we want as far as results go for our clients.
Steven Sashen:
So when someone does say, “Look, for whatever reason I prefer being vegetarian,” how do you respond to them?
Tony Bevilacqua:
Yeah. And it certainly can be done in that it still fits in the prescription. We’re just omitting the meat, but then it narrows things down a little bit more, but we can still fall in that prescription. And really, what is this prescription? It’s basically, let’s eat some real food. At the end of the day, I believe that Mother Nature has our back. And if we eat the foods that have been provided by Mother Nature, i
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