Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to the Connecting Minds podcast, Christian Jourdanoff here. Today's guest is Sean Carton. He's an entrepreneur, fitness trainer, and podcaster, and he helps people over 40 to get in shape. Sean, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks, Christian. Thanks for having me back on. It's good to talk to you again. The conversation we had on my own podcast was phenomenal, so I'm good to talk to you again.
Speaker: Yeah, your show is Fitness Reborn. Folks, you can type in Fitness Reborn podcast. It will come up and I'll have the links to Sean's show down below. But Sean, tell just for the listeners and for myself, because I don't know you that well, tell us more about yourself, who you are. How did you get into what you do? Well, I always been pretty active.
Speaker: as a kid, you know, throughout my life. I wasn't like a huge sports enthusiast, per se. I did do sports. I mean, I did all the things that all boys virtually in America really do at some point. They play football, they play basketball, they play baseball, you know, they join various teams. And I had done all of that. I wasn't really a big, you know, again, I wasn't a big sports enthusiast and I didn't really go into teams very much. I was too much of an introvert and too much of an
Speaker: an individualist to really like get into as a lot of these guys around me were. Um, but I still like the whole thing about being active and being competitive. And, um, so I'd always been like that now in terms of like my adult years in terms of getting into the actual fitness and fitness spaces. So my beginnings with that as an adult, I think it was around 21, 22 years old. I'm 40 now.
Speaker: It was right on the heels of a breakup, which just kind of clobbered me completely, like came out of nowhere. It was like all of a sudden, I thought we were doing fine. All of a sudden, no, we're not doing so fine. And there went that relationship. And so as a way of kind of dealing with my mental thoughts and trying to gather my thoughts,
Speaker: And my well -being, I got back into really being active again. I started out really small. I went to a park and I started walking. Like really, just walking. We have a nice little park here in town where I live. It has a man -made lake.
Speaker: and I just walked around it several times. I don't know how many times. I was out there for a while. I didn't plan on it. I just decided I gotta get out of here. I can't be in this house. I gotta go somewhere and I did something and I did. I didn't dress for it at all. I didn't put on sneakers or compression shorts or workout clothes of any kind. I went there in my street clothes, normal clothes. I went there and I just started pacing around this park just trying to, I guess, physically release my
Speaker: pent up mental energy. And it was great. I felt, I don't remember exactly how I felt, but I probably did feel better at the end. And I just kind of went from there. I did more and more walks. The walks got longer. They got more fast paced. Walks became biking. I used to ride my bike a lot as a kid. And now I've gone back into liking riding my bike again. So I got big into that once I'm really big into it.
Speaker: I was out there six days a week for two hours at a time, just biking around. I dropped a ton of weight, a ton of weight.
Speaker: Because not only was I biking a lot, I was managing my portions a lot. I don't know what, I can't really remember what got me on that, but I was there and I was doing that a lot. So I was managing my portions like militantly and I was biking a lot. So my caloric deficit was like huge. So I slimmed down tremendously and
Speaker: From there, I was like, oh, biking got old, so I got into weight training. So I joined gyms. I started lifting weights. And that was kind of a new thing to me. I was never much of a gym person. I never did weight training really at all when I was a kid or in high school or anything like that. So that was a new area to me. So I jumped into that.
Speaker: fittingly like most people do, they just jump, they walk into a gym and they start, they find a weight of any kind. They start lifting it how they think they should. They don't really know what they're doing. They're doing bench press in the, in the Smith machine. Right. Well, no, not even the Smith machine, just going straight to the benches, like low loading a free bar and just like pumping it into the air. Nice. You know, and.
Speaker: Again, being a complete noob, not knowing what the hell I was really doing, no specificity at all, no counting of reps or sets or anything like that. I'm just going in there. I'm doing stuff. That's it. And we've all seen that person. We've all been that person. And then I was like, well, okay, I'm liking this. But then at some point I got serious about it and I started learning about it. It's like, okay, here's how your actual form should be.
Speaker: here's how to prevent possible injury and here's how to keep a log of your sets and your reps and how many days you should be there and yada yada yada and of course there's nutrition on top of that and so yeah I got big into that too. And so and there was also running and jogging and stuff and you know and it was just kind of carried on on and on. At some point when I actually began
Speaker: Entering the world of actually teaching fitness. I Joined a gym along with my ex -wife. I joined a gym Which was like a high intensity kickboxing and bands class called Ferrell's extreme body shaping It's pretty big here in the Midwest. They have several locations and They had kickboxing for cardio and strength training with bands on these strength training days. So I
Speaker: I got really into that. So I got really into the kickboxing stuff. And so combat sports was now on my radar. So I started researching, learning about boxers, you know, and learning about MMA fighters and stuff like that and different, you know, just kind of like very superficial knowledge of combat sports. And I got really into that. And I, at some point became an instructor. So I got even more, I got even more into it.
Speaker: Because now I had to teach this to other people. So I began inventing scenarios and teaching stuff that was kind of way off the charts of what they were normally teaching in terms of kick boss. And they were kind of just teaching you like very basic jab cross kick, that kind of stuff here. Well now I was starting incorporating feints and dodges and weaves.
Speaker: and stuff like that as in like an actual and Perry's action like an actual fight like I wanted them to think like this bag that they're hitting is actually gonna strike them back if they don't if they don't take proper evasive maneuvers in between strikes and stuff like that and the and the the classes loved it the people in the class loved it
Speaker: because I loved it and I was having fun and so my energy was radiating out and I got a lot of positive feedback for it and so I got the idea. It's like hey I like this and people respond to it. I seem to be pretty good at it. So I got certification to become a fitness trainer. How long ago was that?
Speaker: Um, that was 2015, 2016, something like that. So I was doing that for a while. And from there, I just got a certification as a personal trainer. You know, I just, uh, through the, uh, the American council and exercise.
Speaker: Because I thought, hey, I like this. This is really cool. And so I got actual certification to be a fitness trainer. And from that point on, it's just been kind of snowballing. That's awesome. It's funny, but in 2016, I did my first amateur Thai boxing fight.
Speaker: Did you really? Yeah, I turned 30 in 2016 because it was on my bucket list. So I said, keeping in mind all through my 20s, just really poor lifestyle choices and drinking, smoking, and not sleeping well, eating horribly. So I said to myself,
Speaker: I'm going to go vegan because I thought that's the healthiest diet at the time. So I'm going to, because I was influenced by some friends and I said, I'll go vegan and I'm going to go back to the Thai boxing training and I'm going to do a fight this year. So I went into the closest gym I could find, which was literally a walk, like maybe a 10, 15 minute walk from where I was living. I went in, it was a Saturday. I remember it was, I think it was the 10th of
Speaker: January and I went in and I said to the coach, I want to do a fight. He just looked at me real weird. The sessions were two hours long and we went in and he introduced me, Christians New, to all the guys there.
Speaker: he wants to do a fight and he looked at one guy, it was a big guy from Lithuania and we were doing a circuit where I was just holding pads for the dude and he was just training right kicks, left kicks and so that was like three minutes of
Speaker: of him kicking me and you know when you're not tough yet, you haven't toughened up your forearms and everything, I was purple the next day over here. But dude, I survived that session, including hard sparring because some of the guys were training for fights, they were just coming up like two, three weeks out.
Speaker: And it was a hard sparring season at the time. And I absolutely got battered, but that was a Saturday. I went in on Monday and then on Wednesday and I kept going three times a week and then up to six to eight times a week coming up to the fight. But I think after he saw me come back two days after, he was like, wow, okay, this guy is not a complete retard. You know what I mean?
Speaker: But yes, I love combat sports, love Thai boxing, and it's such an awesome way to get fitter because it's so much fun just kicking and doing some light sparring and learning technique. It's hard in the beginning, but once you actually get a bit more proficient, it's so much fun just messing around with your buddies in the gym and
Speaker: who can outsmart who because you know your sparring style so you're trying to constantly throw in new techniques and you love it when someone new comes in so you can be taken out of your comfort zone a little bit. Are you still practicing that or are you using more traditional resistance training? No, I don't do the combat stuff.
Speaker: really anymore I mean every now and again because I just don't have normal access to it anymore so I mean every now and again I might kind of do what would be like cardio kickboxing on my own like there's no bag there's no gloves it's just kind of like you just as acting as if you are sparring or fighting so I'll just be doing some punches or kicks and stuff like that and just doing like
Speaker: um parries and maneuvers and and whatever else you know just kind of shuttle book right shadow box and you just really randomly stuff like that just to kind of because i just kind of feel like doing it but
Speaker: Yeah. The, the, the beauty of what I was working at with Farrell's is like, I didn't have to, I could just play it all up for fun. You know, when you're training for a fight, it's gotta be all business because you know, you're going to face an actual, an actual opponent who will actually hurt you if you're not really all that trained. Oh yeah. But, but this, this was just purely fun, you know, and I could,
Speaker: I didn't have to worry about anyone actually really getting hurt, say for like maybe a jammed wrist or something like that. But no, I don't do it as much as I used to. Like most other things in my life, it kind of just gave way to other interests. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, dude. I mean, it's unbelievable in a few months how tough you can actually get. I remember this one dude.
Speaker: he was very tall, ripped, he was ripped off, you know, out of a fight and just coming up to a fight, he would just get ridiculous. But he was like extremely limber and his high kicks were, I think he'd done like 24 or five pro fights, you know, including most of them A class with elbows and knees and everything.
Speaker: So he would just, coming up to the fight, I could take two minutes of him just kite -kicking me with my guard up. He'd just kick me and I would, you know, be fine, would move on to the next part. Because obviously sparring against a guy like that, if you try to punch him,
Speaker: It's a bad idea because he's so much faster than you like some of these guys they're so fast you can't even believe but I really I kind of miss it but I also it makes me think how much ego.
Speaker: and bravado we have in our younger years that is just, you can even call it plain stupidity because having been through that and then learning about the trauma that any sort of damage, any sort of hit to the head does,
Speaker: So for your long -term health of your brain and your nervous system, I will never do that again, bro. Even though I do one, I wish I could do another fight and prepare even better for it. I won't do it, and I would never let my kids actually go and do fighting sports. They can do combat training, but getting hit in the head, bro, I don't think I would allow that. Right. You know, the funny thing about it is you mentioned cognitive health and what combat sports can do to you.
Speaker: They have found like when they're working with Parkinson's patients, like doing boxing workouts, not actual boxing, like they're not going to fight anybody, but doing boxing workouts helps a lot with their coordination and their motor skills as they're working with Parkinson's disease and other cognitive maladies, which is, you know, you think about Muhammad Ali, you know, towards the
Speaker: Well, really, like the middle and end of towards the middle and end of his life. And he got afflicted with Parkinson's at what, 38? Well, he started he started showing symptoms like in the early 80s and things like that. He wasn't even not even yet 40 years old. He started showing symptoms like he started having a slight hand tremor and stuff like that. And he just got worse as time went on. But the ironic thing about this is like he gave up.
Speaker: fighting and training eventually because of that. Honestly, if you look at some of those fights in his career, like in 80, 81 and stuff like that, when he's fighting these younger guys, they're just terrible because he's basically just a big punching bag at that point because he's so deteriorated. There was a fight with Larry Holmes, he did,
Speaker: That fight was completely one -sided. It should never have happened. Holmes just wasted him because he was in no condition to actually fight. I guess sometimes for financial reasons, fighters will put themselves back into fights to make some money even if they're well past their prime. Sugar Ray Robinson had to do that because he was broke.
Speaker: But yeah, it was just – if you look at some of those fights, it's just terrible. It's a slaughter. But ironically, if he had kept training, his Parkinson's maybe would not have been so bad or wouldn't have progressed as quickly as it did to the point where he was just debilitating. He couldn't even speak anymore.
Speaker: Uh, you know, the thing is athletes. So we have a kind of a big problem in our society right now. We really revere athletes, but, and they are amazing what they accomplish, but many athletes, really the way they accomplish these things is through doing a lot of damage to their body. And often many athletes, I'm not talking about guys like, you know, Cristiano Ronaldo or whatever.
Speaker: or Conor McGregor. Those guys have everything down pat, including nutrition, supplementation, recovery. But, you know, just kind of more middle range, you know, soccer players, whatever else. A lot of these guys, you know, they don't have everything dialed in. So they might have a horrendous diet and they're kind of coasting on youth, on, you know, maybe genetic, really amazing genetics.
Speaker: and they're actually doing a lot of damage to their body. So we really kind of are teaching the layperson that, you know, you have to do these grueling workouts in order to get in shape and stuff like that. But what, at least what I found with my clients, and now maybe I'm a bit biased because many, you know, great proportion of the people coming to me have genuine, serious health problems.
Speaker: So I am always advising them, go for a walk, do some calisthenics, and that's all you need right now. And as you get stronger and healthier, then you can start incorporating more the occasional jog or bike riding, rowing, et cetera, whatever else. So I guess where I'm going at, or maybe you could kind of give us your point of view, is how
Speaker: How much exercise does a person in the 40s actually really need? Well, first I'll address what you first said. You're right. We do tend to take
Speaker: what we see like professional athletes like Ronaldo and Conor McGregor or Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. We try to take these very elite individuals and we try to transplant what they do onto the actual everyday lay person.
Speaker: And thanks to social media, especially Instagram, stuff like that, there is no shortage of people out there who are trying to tell us exactly that. Like Michael Jordan does this, Conor McGregor does that. And so this is what a winner does. And so you want to be a winner? You want to be a winner? Right. This is what this is what you need to do. And really, like that is completely inappropriate for 95 percent of people who are walking around.
Speaker: Like you said, Ronaldo and Conor McGregor and really any elite professional athlete, Tom Brady, they have everything dialed in. They have teams of people around them to keep them in tip top shape because their livelihoods depend on it. So they have nutrition down. Why? Because they have a chef.
Speaker: They have people working for, they have a chef, they have a personal trainer, they have massage therapists, a physiotherapist, they have a spiritual guide. A shaman. A shaman. They have everything, every resource they could possibly need to keep them on.
Speaker: on the very cutting edge of everything that you can possibly imagine. Now, I want to make this clear. These are not luxuries to them. These are requirements. Their bodies are literally worth millions, potentially billions of dollars. And their very life depends on them being in this condition. But yours does not.
Speaker: So training like Conor McGregor, probably not the way you should probably go. So if you're like, and it's hard to really generalize because everyone is a little bit different, but if you're 40 and plus, yeah, you want some intensity to your workouts and I do bring intensity to my clients and to myself, but
Speaker: You can apply intensity in sporadic doses throughout the course of a week and every workout doesn't have to be a beat down or a survival session. And you can intersperse it with some lighter intensity workouts, like say just going for a walk. Like I do that myself. I mean, I go for, and I just started this recently, I just go for easy walks in the morning. You know, it's nothing intense.
Speaker: But it's not meant to be and over time it'll build up. But if you just kind of apply the standard like do something intense maybe twice or three times a week for a moderate amount of time or even a short period of time. What's a moderate amount of time? Moderate amount of time is maybe like 30 minutes.
Speaker: Yeah. So keep it short, keep it intense, keep it sweet. And just kind of balance that with a very low impact workout, like maybe calisthenics or yoga or walk out or walks outside. You know, if the temperature and the climate is appropriate and you can really over time, you won't see dramatic results from this immediately, but over time you will see
Speaker: the end product of your efforts. And it's just about consistency over anything that's really intense. So I guess at the end of the day here, consistency and doing something on a regular basis will take you exactly where you need to go. You don't have to apply a professional athlete's workout regimen to your life. And I should also say you probably can't because they have
Speaker: Again, it's their life, and you probably have a job you have a go to. You've got kids you've got to raise. You've got, you know, other every day responsibilities. It's not feasible to tell an average person to spend two hours a day in a gym. Not feasible and not desirable. And I guess I'm also talking to all the people who might be listening who train people themselves here.
Speaker: You know, taking a 40 -year -old mom with three kids and saying, you know, being in the gym, lifting weights an hour a day, it's not going to work for her. And she's probably going to laugh you out the door as she should because you are just not being realistic with her in terms of the kind of life that she lives.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's very easy when you're young, when you say 25, 30 and you've been jamming it hard for like 10 years, you were always fit, maybe you're a miso morph and now you're a hammer and everybody coming to you is a nail. But some people are not a nail, some people are
Speaker: you know, a toothpick that will snap under pressure very quickly. So you really have to, I think it comes with experience, making mistakes along the way is kind of inevitable, but it comes with experience. It's like me, like some people
Speaker: I just don't give them too much too fast. But if someone type A comes, I'll tell them over here, here's all the supplements. Here's 10 supplements. We're going to tweak the diet this way. So you have to really know the person. Do they need a little bit? And for someone that's
Speaker: Fairly sedentary and detrained i think for example my chiropractor he just he tells his more you know. Clients with a lot of say pain or you know whatever health issues he tells them you can do two hundred push ups today and.
Speaker: They're like, what? You crazy? No. You just do it against the wall. You can do push -ups against the wall. And then once you're happy that you can do a bunch of those, then you can just change the angle slightly. And then you can do push -ups on your knees. And I think you can, with most people that are either detrained or sedentary, you can have a very
Speaker: You need very little stimulus in order to initiate, be it strength, increase muscle growth, or some type of shift in the metabolism that will be beneficial for the person. And anything, let's say we're talking about strength. You need a few sets a week to maybe, if someone is detrained, if you get them to do two pull -ups today,
Speaker: if they can even do one whole pull -up. If you do two pull -ups today and then two pull -ups five days later and you keep repeating that, you will gain strength. But if you do, you can probably do 10 today or 20, but you're going to be in a lot of pain. There's a lot of damage, neuromuscular damage and just plain old muscular damage.
Speaker: So you're kind of, there's a lot of diminishing returns there. So I think if we can get to the stage where figure out how much the person needs, let them have that much, maybe a little bit more, but not much more.
Speaker: they're much more likely to stay with it because there's no doms, no pain, no desire to skip workouts because it was grueling or painful the last time and stuff like that. And I think the more experience you get with working with people, the easier it is to gauge where somebody is and where to meet them at, I think. Right. And on that,
Speaker: on that point you made about muscle damage and recovery, like what we don't stress enough either, you know, at all is recovery is the amount of recovery that you do actually need and to actually be more kind of in tuned and more kind of in tuned and have a firmer understanding of your own body and how it actually does recover. So, you know, going back to the point that you made about intensity,
Speaker: Intensity, like I said, it's needed. You should incorporate some intensity to your workout, especially if you want to get stronger. If you want to get stronger, you got to make things harder. That's just how you get stronger. You know, it's just you have to apply an impossible amount of force on yourself.
Speaker: that is or I should say you should apply a force on yourself that is impossible but only momentarily impossible. So it's worthwhile if you want to get stronger if you actually do want to see muscle development you want some bigger muscles you want some more definition and things like that which you know definition really comes down to diet more than anything.
Speaker: But that's worthwhile as well because it's worth it to get stronger because the older you get, the more things are going to atrophy. We learn that all things in universe tend towards atrophy. Well, that also includes your body. So if you are not strengthening, especially as you get older and
Speaker: we're finding out people as little or as early as in their 30s are getting frailer or getting diagnosed osteoporosis and osteopenia and also sarcopenia and that, you know, your muscle will, you will lose lean muscle mass dramatically starting at age 40, you know, something like, what was it like? It's like,
Speaker: 1 % a year starting at 40. So by every decade it goes by, you've lost 10 % of your lean muscle mass. And your androgenic hormones are going to be decreasing steadily. Right. So I mean, that sounds like a doomsday scenario, but it doesn't have to be.
Speaker: So it's really worth it to do things with the intention of actually getting stronger, but you also have to prioritize your rate of recovery, especially as you get older, but even in general. Here's a perfect example. Two weeks ago, I did some killer lower body workout, and I meant it to be that way. I meant to do damage. I had minimal rest time. I was lifting heavy.
Speaker: I was just going, I had minimal sets, lots of reps, or at least reps to failure going from one to the other. I meant to do some damage, and I did. I did this on a Thursday, and it took me to the next Friday before I felt normal again in terms of my lower body. My legs did not feel tense at all, but that was a long week, and I didn't do lower body at all.
Speaker: until I got to that point, okay, things are starting to feel good again. I don't feel stiff as a board every time I sit in a chair. Every time I get back up to walk, I feel like my legs are two solid logs or something like that. So I gave myself the time I need to recover. And that is just being aware of your body. And that is something that really, it comes with time, at least in my case.
Speaker: And maybe it's something you don't really appreciate until you're actually there because you can, you know, about recovery. I think a lot of people get recovery wrong. Like they go into it too early. It's like, Oh, I started to feel somewhat normal again. I can hit it again. And then it's, you know, one, it doesn't work out either at all, or it feels like a crap workout. It's like, Oh, well God, I didn't get anything out of that because you don't prioritize recovery and recovery is not being lazy.
Speaker: And I think a lot of people get that impression, especially again, thanks to social media.
Speaker: You know, people yelling at your face telling you what a lazy bitch you are because you're taking, because you're, you know, you're not at it six days a week. It's this hustle culture, dude. And I'm so glad I got out of it. I think it took me getting out of the bigger city and coming to the south of Portugal and live to live in a village that really kind of made me appreciate the value of taking life more slowly.
Speaker: It's just this hustle culture. It's like that in work, business, at home. You always have to be productive. You always have to be doing stuff. Otherwise, you're unproductive. You're a burden on society. If you're just at home, foam rolling. I think the hustle is a good thing for the most part.
Speaker: But being hustling does not mean you're always constantly moving. People mistakenly associate constant movement with production. Not really true at all. I mean, you could jump up and down in place, you're moving, but you ain't going nowhere. So hustling, if you're gonna hustle, it means you're constantly, you got the next move in front of your mind, right? So it's like, okay, you're doing this today,
Speaker: But then tomorrow or next week, you're doing this. You got me, you got a plan in mind here. So I like the way you frame it. Yeah. Yeah. So you mean you're still moving. You're still moving in that sense. It means you're moving towards a progression, a progressive goal here. You've got a, you've got a place in mind that you work, you want to go. And then just cause you're not constantly racing towards an aimless sort of way. It doesn't mean that you are being lazy.
Speaker: Okay, but you're taking calculated moves towards that end goal here. So like I said with recovery here, like I knew that I couldn't do another leg workout because I still just don't feel 100%. You know, you know,
Speaker: just kind of plowing through the pain and the discomfort is going to backfire, you know. And as I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate that more. So that doesn't mean I'm not doing anything. I still, you know, did other things at home like stretches or calisthenics or I did walks or stuff like that. I kept going. I just didn't keep going hard. And that's the thing about intensity. People get intensity wrong. You know, intensity is just that. It's an intense,
Speaker: It's an intense application of energy here. And you can't keep that up for a long time. So when you do do it, make sure that you are ready to do it at 100%. And then when it's over, let the energy reserves come back. Let them restock. And then do it again. But only when it's ready to.
Speaker: I don't know, your phone's at 30%. You say, oh, okay, that's good enough. Okay, I'm going to use it to, I don't know, play games, call a bunch of people. Right? I'm going to use it to just take it off the charger and just use it, you know, for an hour, which people do. But, you know, so at 30%, your battery is going to go right back down to zero and really no time at all, because you didn't give it the time it needs to actually be back at full capacity.
Speaker: It's the same with your body. You only have so much bandwidth to work with. So you need to be conscious and aware of how you're applying it and how much you are applying it. You know, if you ever read anything by Mike Metzer, the bodybuilder, you know, he was very firm on this, you know, because he was all about short and tense workouts sporadically done, not the six days a week stuff that Arnold was doing.
Speaker: He was very clear on that. He said that you can either go hard or you can go for long periods of time, but you can't do both.
Speaker: Yeah, totally agree. So what I actually I found myself doing more is if I'm out with my kid and the dog and she's just like doing her thing, exploring. Sometimes I do like jumping squats or I'll do box jumps on kind of.
Speaker: areas where it's conducive to that or if there's some stairs kind of near an apartment complex here, I'll run up the stairs, do some like sprint up the stairs maybe four or five times and just kind of or just somewhere I'll stop and I'll do like 30 squats and then do another 30 squats just bodyweight squats. So this is kind of what I find and like yourself I go for walks in the morning with my dog
Speaker: And depending on how I feel that day, it's kind of a hilly up and down walk. So sometimes the hill, just a slight incline really allows you to manipulate the intensity very easily. So you can actually
Speaker: walk very slowly up, up a kind of like, let's say 30 % incline, 30 degree incline. And it will not feel like your heart rate or your body are working very hard. So your heart rate is kind of stable. But even, and I kind of monitor my pulse by, you know, touching my carotid artery on the neck. So just walking faster, just deciding I'm going to walk as fast as I can, but not run or jog, just walking up a hill,
Speaker: can it's a very easy way to increase the intensity and you can actually do it on a on a flat surface you can walk do your walks once you feel comfortable walking for an hour or half an hour or more you can just walk faster but the hill like walking up a hill is such a low intensity way to increase your heart rate without having to jog without necessarily putting pressure on your joints especially if you have some extra weight hanging around or you're
Speaker: You may have had a poor diet and lifestyle that is taking you towards the direction of osteoporosis or osteoarthritis, and you want to avoid those things. But some days, I think it was today, this morning, I just sprinted up the hill, like a 30 -degree incline. I did maybe three sprints over the course of a 50 -minute walk, and it just felt right today.
Speaker: But then tomorrow it might just feel like I want to walk for 30 minutes and then go home. It really, like you said, dude, when we're 25, 30, especially guys, maybe women are different, we don't feel these things. You're not tuning into your body. At least I wasn't tuning into my body. I was like, dude, sometimes we would wake up hungover or still drunk from the night before and you'd go training for two hours and then you'd go drinking again. That's how
Speaker: dumb we were when we were younger. But now you're like, oh, dude, if I push myself today, I can do it. But then that's going to wreck me tomorrow. I won't get a workout in tomorrow. And then the day after that, it will still not be optimal. So why don't I be an adult and pace myself today? And then I can always up it again tomorrow if needs be.
Speaker: Right. I think, you know, as guys as we get older, like a lot of us still are, you know, kind of filled with a piss and vinegar and still want to do a lot of like really crazy shit like you were saying. But I think the advantage that we get when we get older was that we learn how to balance testosterone with good common sense. And you don't really have that so much when you're 21 years old, because you're just filled to the brim with a lot of energy.
Speaker: and a lot of your youth, and you just don't consider things as much as you maybe should. And at that age, you can get away with it, but once you cross over into 40, you can't really get away with it so much.
Speaker: So it's a journey. I can't speak for women because I don't know what it's like to be a woman and be an avid fitness enthusiast. I think I have noticed through my own observations, particularly working with women, they are probably naturally more cautious and are more readily
Speaker: eager to actually just follow advice when it's given. Yeah, a big time, dude, big time. As opposed to, you know, a young man. I don't know how to do it. Right. I don't know how to do it. Right. It becomes an alpha contest. So, and that's a very general
Speaker: That's a very general statement there and I realize that I've met some very gung -ho women too. So, you know, but I think on the whole, I think that statement does actually apply. But yeah, yeah, it's one thing I can definitely say for getting older is like, I've definitely learned how to actually balance my natural urges.
Speaker: to just be an absolute, you know, go out there and be an absolute dickhead about things and, you know, come back next day saying, you know what? No. Today is gonna be just a very even keel kind of day. So it goes in waves, you know? I have those days like you feel like you just conquered the world and then the next day is like, oof, that was rough. It's time to actually pump the brakes a little bit and let things reset, you know?
Speaker: Absolutely, bro. It's a part of growing up, man. I really honestly believe the reason, honestly, this is getting more into esoteric stuff, but I honestly believe the reason, especially men, the reason we only become quote unquote adults, maybe around the age of 30, 35 is because
Speaker: we were meant to live longer we're not meant to die when we're sixty seventy or even now eighteen the last hundred years or so i honestly believe with the right diet in a clean environment with
Speaker: daily nutrition that meets all of our needs with minimizing stress. I honestly believe humans can live with our current genetics and coming from a healthy mom and a healthy pregnancy. I honestly think humans can live a couple hundred years, man. Easy, easy. Well, that's interesting that you say that because I've had several guests on my own podcast and we've talked a lot about longevity.
Speaker: I don't know about a couple hundred years, but definitely a hundred years and then some is for sure doable. I think in this day and age, and who knows as the life expectancy of people continues to increase, as time goes on, by the time that we're 70 something years, 70, 80 years old, who knows how long people will actually be expected to live. 70 years old might be considered pretty low at that point.
Speaker: But yeah, there's a lot of talk about longevity and how longevity actually works here. And one of the things that I do appreciate, especially from people like Peter Atita and things like that, when he talks about longevity, and I really liked how he framed this too, is like, you know, people think that when we talk about longevity, we're talking about living forever. That's not the idea at all. Living forever is not a realistic proposition.
Speaker: I don't think it's even a desirable proposition, honestly, from my point of view. What we're talking about here is that when we study people who are centurions and super centurions, like people who are 110 plus, it's not that they're not getting older, or they're not becoming frailer, or they're the same as they were when they were 19. That's not the case at all.
Speaker: Unlike most of us that start to really start going downhill, 70s and 80s, and then we eventually expire around early 80s, early to mid 80s and things like that, these folks are not meeting that end until much later, until like late 90s, 100s and stuff like that. They're not showing any real appreciable signs of deterioration until they are way up there in years.
Speaker: And when their demise does come, it doesn't come slowly. It comes pretty rapidly. Like they just, they kind of hit a wall and then boom, they're gone. You know, unlike most of us, like.
Speaker: Like a lot of people, when they start, they start showing signs of significant decline in their sixties, sometimes early, sometimes early, many times earlier. And so by the time they hit 70, 75, like they are on their last leg and the, the end is just around the corner. But these folks somehow managed to sail right past that, that point and getting way up there in years before that even becomes an issue at all.
Speaker: So the actual science of longevity is not studying how to live forever. We're not talking about a fountain of constant youth here. We're talking about understanding what it takes to actually get to a point where you're not actually showing signs of any real physical or cognitive decline until you are at a very advanced stage of life.
Speaker: You know, it's not talking about being the same as you always were, like you never change. Oh, you will always grow older. And if you're the same, it's like they say, if you're the same, let's say in your 40s, when you were 18, then what the hell were you even doing with your time?
Speaker: You haven't exactly developed yourself much. If you have the same ideas, if you believe the same things, I remember someone in my family was like, oh, now what's the latest thing you're into now? Because at one point I was plant -based and I thought that was the holy grail. And then I was keto. I thought low carb, that was the holy grail. So they're like, oh, you're constantly changing your diet and stuff. You don't know what's going on. I'm like, no, it's called learning new things and developing.
Speaker: It's as if you figured out the perfect diet when you were like 20 and that's the diet you could be until the day you die. I think that's a little bit narrow -minded and I'm definitely not like that. Right. And I'm the same way too. Like I explained to you earlier, I have gone from one thing to another in my life. I've gone from, you know, as a kid playing sports, all kinds of sports and, you know, being kind of
Speaker: and about all of them. They were fun, but I didn't get hugely into them. As an adult, I went from intense walks, to runs, to biking, to kickboxing, to martial arts, to weight training, to now exploring more and more in depth the science of longevity and how I can actually apply that to my own life and various ways of eating too. I was a vegan for a very long time.
Speaker: for five years. Wow. And I was diligent about it. Like, and, you know, seriously, I was like, I have one day I'd say, you know what, I'm gonna do this. And I did. And I didn't stray from it. I was, I was on code with it. One day do another, you know. So you were never really vegan.
Speaker: That's the running joke. You know, if you quit, you're never really vegan. Well, okay. Well, if that's the, if that's the position you want to take on it, whatever, man. But, um, but then I learned more, more and more about needing to retain sarco muscle mass as you get older. I learned more about sarcopenia. I learned about, you know, how it can affect you and how it will affect you.
Speaker: if you don't stay on top of your strength as you're getting older. And just this year, I crossed over to 40 years old. So that's a reality to me now. It's not theoretical. I'm there. And we just spoke about earlier, most people expire around their 80s. So when you're 40 years old, you're at midlife. That's serious stuff, yeah. We used to think when we were kids and we were 20 years old, midlife is being 50 years old. No, it's actually being 40.
Speaker: And yeah, and so the game is real. And it's right in front of you. And you need to take this seriously. So I decided, and it's not like it's impossible to keep up on your muscle when you're a vegan. It's not impossible. Some people can do it. So that's the simple answer to it. Do you actually need meat to build muscle and to stay strong?
Speaker: The most simplistic answer, absent any real context or nuance, is no, you can do it on plants. But here's the caveat, it's twice as hard to do on plants as it is to do on animal products. And I see a lot of people kind of, you know, they're taking, even if we're just talking about, you know, veganism and we're talking other ways of eating like carnivore and keto and things like that, like they're taking
Speaker: If they're moving away from veganism, if they're not going towards veganism, they're going towards another extreme, which is carnivore. And again, being fully carnivore, it sounds appealing in some ways, especially if you like meat. But again, it doesn't really make a lot of sense if you understand how
Speaker: early humans, it's always been based on what early humans did, you know, paleo diets or stuff like that. It's like, well, this is where our human ancestors ate. So this is the optimal way to eat. And so they take these very superficial understandings and they go in extreme directions, whether veganism or carnivore. I highly doubt our ancestors had access to daily ribeyes and butter. Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. A lot of carnivores are eating
Speaker: muscle meat, which was the least valued food. So if you're going to be carnivore, you should be eating a very balanced thing, you know, like heart, organs, skin, just really the, the gristle, the joints. Yeah. And, you know, you should, coupled with that, if you're actually doing it like our ancestors, you should be eating very seasonally and probably fasting a lot, but fasting just because they had to do it does not mean it's an optimal process to engage in.
Speaker: Right and you know I kind of I do a little bit of fasting myself and I've done it more so when I was younger. I've done three day long fast and when I say that's desirable or appropriately applicable to most people probably not. There's a lot of things you should consider before you're doing something especially if you're hypoglycemic. I would never recommend that but you know I did it.
Speaker: because I wanted to, and I was curious to see if I could actually do it. I did actually do it. It was hard at some point. There were times when my hunger pains were really starting to make me question if I want to keep doing this, but I fought through it. And at the end of it, I felt pretty proud of myself, and I didn't feel as bad as I would thought. I mean, I didn't require it, so I felt kind of nauseous and sick. But then,
Speaker: You know, it wasn't a dry fast. I drank water. I had black coffee, which has next to no calories in it at all. Not enough to really rev your metabolism. But I did it. And it was a curious experiment. And I was pretty happy with myself here. Now, you can, there's all kinds of fasting you can do that you could incorporate to your everyday life, like just pushing back your breakfast or not having a breakfast.
Speaker: So you start eating at maybe noon and not nine or eight o 'clock in the morning and stuff like that. And that would work pretty well for you. And it's very easy to follow because fasting is very binary. You either are doing it or you're not doing it. You're either metabolizing calories or you're not.
Speaker: It's very simple and it's very straightforward. There's not much wiggle room. So you can do that. And I do do that in my own way. I do kind of drag out my eating until much later into the day. And that works out just fine for me. Is that going to work for you? I don't know. You need to try it out for yourself. But having this constant sense of curiosity
Speaker: and wanting to experiment with different things here, like you've done, like I've done. That is what keeps us driving forward here too.
Speaker: And then sometimes it's gonna require you to find what actually works for you and what does not work for you. And you're gonna have to blow up the beakers quite a few times before you hit something that actually does work. But always be in that curious frame of mind and saying, well, you know, this could actually, this could actually work. Try it out. If it doesn't work, well, now you know it didn't work. So, and going back to the earlier point about eating and veganism versus carnivore,
Speaker: We have a lot of evidence to say that early humans, if we're talking about early humans as a context for our conversation here about eating, early humans were opportunistic eaters. Like - Scavengers. Yeah. Did they eat animal proteins? Of course they did, but they also ate berries. Carion. Carion, roots, vegetables.
Speaker: All these things, a lot of things that don't run away from you very easily. Things you don't have to spend a lot of energy hunting. And sometimes, the games weren't very convenient. And if you could find it, and you could kill it, great. You got yourselves a harvest there. But it wasn't always like that, too. And so I think, just to keep things simple here, if we're talking about,
Speaker: an optimal quote -unquote optimal diet in terms of eating, you wanna have it as varied as you possibly can. Now, you obviously wanna limit things like processed sugar and, you know, and things that come out that are overly processed. Anything like that. Obviously, you wanna put real limits on that.
Speaker: But if it's things like fruits versus vegetables versus meats and stuff like that, having healthy doses of that, as long as it's within whatever caloric requirements that you want to keep within, that's probably the best way to go, just as a matter of keeping things very simple. So what you're saying is eat real food and don't eat too much.
Speaker: Right, you know, eat real food, learn to know when your body has said, okay, I'm done. Don't eat anymore. Learn to recognize like, you know, cravings as they come around. And it's okay to engage a craving every now and again. I mean, I do eat a cookie. I do eat some pastries and things like that. I have the occasional cigarettes.
Speaker: That might be one indulgence too far. I quit over three weeks ago. I'm kidding. I will also offer this too. I did also smoke when I was younger. No, I smoked for like 15 years.
Speaker: Well, I didn't even go that far. I picked it up at 15 and I pretty much kicked it when I was 20. But yeah, so again, a foolish childhood decision, you know, because you're hanging around people, you know, they're smoking, it's like, oh, that looks pretty cool. You know, it's not cool. You know, in the long run, it's a bad choice.
Speaker: Do you think about the future very much when you're 15? Probably not. So you say, what the hell? Yeah, let's throw in some smokes. The girls, I think, were cool. Yeah, right. I never really found that to be the case, but whatever.
Speaker: Yeah, man. Let me ask you, Sean. So I'm actually, I just started writing my next book, I guess a couple of weeks ago. I started getting really into the research and I've actually
Speaker: Over the last this year, I've changed my stance on a lot of things that I used to think were good for health, including actually fasting, prolonged water fasting, even intermittent fasting. But most especially about low carb and keto diet. Were you ever on the bandwagon? Did you try the low carb keto thing? What's your take on that?
Speaker: No, I never really got into the low carb keto thing. I know others have and it's worked out pretty well for them. But I think really where the reason why I never did is because carbs appeal to me. You know, I've always liked carbs. So, you know, fruit and grains and stuff like that, even though I don't eat as many grains as I used to, but I still eat rice. I don't dig in bread as much as I used to.
Speaker: And I don't drink beer, and I don't drink alcohol at all, so I have shed a lot of carbs in that regard. But no, I never really got onto the anti -carb bandwagon just because I think
Speaker: it doesn't really make a ton of sense. I mean, it makes some sense in some way, especially if you're looking for some sort of quick fix hack that your body's gonna react to really in a kind of a very pronounced way immediately. But in the long run, like people talk about car limiting cars because
Speaker: eliminating the amount of excess sugars that your body produces from carbs, right? And like in blood glucose levels and things like that. That is okay. But your body also does need sugar in order to... You have a glucose level. Yeah, you have a glucose level. Your body needs to convert
Speaker: which is why I think a lot of times when people are on keto diets where they have so dramatically or eliminated carbs, they feel a lot brain fog. I was just going to say that how many, I cannot tell you how many people I've spoken to this year that are like, I have brain fog. I'm also doing keto. Can you help me optimize my diet and my life and my health?
Speaker: certain things into sugars for you to operate.
Speaker: You're not at optimal, you're nowhere near even decent health if you have brain fog. So we're not optimizing here, we're getting you back to restoring your health, you know? Right, exactly. And that comes back to, you know, again, being aware of your body and how it normally feels versus how it is feeling now. And if you have, you know, permanent brain fog, if you feel like you're in a daze all the time, you can't concentrate.
Speaker: Then something's off, so you need to, and this is where it comes down, this is where it becomes important for you to keep records of what you're doing, because you can trace this back to, well, when did I start feeling this way? Right around this time, I started to really reduce carbohydrates, like dramatically, and just go strictly on proteins and fats.
Speaker: That's when I started feeling off. So maybe this is not making a whole lot of sense to me. Like, again, this comes with maturity. This comes with recognizing how your body works. And I'll say this also too, this is a slower process for men.
Speaker: Because we are not very entombed with our bodies a lot of times here. Women have to be. They have their monthly cycles, their menstrual periods. Their bodies operate very differently from men. And even, especially in post -menopausal years, still it does. So right from the time they enter puberty, they have to be aware of their body. And so they're kind of hyper -entombed with it.
Speaker: Guys not so much. Mainly because we just don't have to be. We're not forced to be. And so it becomes a slower process. So around this time when guys are our age and older, they start to actually get this. They know when things are starting to feel off. Because things are off.
Speaker: Again, like it's a, it's a, it's a learning curve. Yeah, bro. Just when you said that, it reminds me, I remember I'd wake up in my twenties. I'd wake up hungover.
Speaker: I'd go to the store. This was in Ireland. I'd get some rolls of bread, like white bread and mayonnaise and sausages, Irish sausages, bro, pork sausages, cook up like a literal pound of sausage and eat with two, two like raw Italian rolls. And I'd eat that and I wouldn't even feel my
Speaker: My stomach is being full or expanded. I wouldn't feel any of this stuff, bro. And I think maybe many men are like that. You don't feel what things are doing to your body. Even skipping meals, let's say you're working. And it's not always in a poor health context.
Speaker: You might be working at, like yesterday, I'll tell you, I had to do end of year company accounts. And I literally sat in this chair for three hours reconciling accounts. And I think many men can do this. You can put your, and I was in pain, like my hip flexors were sore, my back was tight, my eyes were sore, but I was like, I need to get this done because it must be done. It's a horrible job, but it needs to be done.
Speaker: So a lot of men, you know, working or whatever, you will do things where you're doing damage to your body, but you're not realizing, like skipping a meal, you skip a meal, your blood sugar falls, stress hormones go up, you're now running on gluconeogenesis and cortisol and other stress hormones, and you are actually now in stress hormone mode.
Speaker: You don't realize that you need to refuel so you continue like that. It could be like that for a few more hours and then you wonder why you're hangry, you're short with people, you're in a sour mood, you're craving stuff, you're overeating or you binge eating on some really crappy food because you took it too far. You didn't feel maybe three hours ago when
Speaker: My blood sugar is falling. I need to have a snack maybe a piece of fruit or a whole meal I need to stop what I'm doing and go and do that. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's just about it's just about you knowing how your body your own again how your own body feels and Recognizing when things are recognizing when things are off because the body will send signals to you and
Speaker: A lot of us, men and women, we ignore those signals because it's just not convenient at the time that we're receiving it. If you're sitting at a desk for three hours, pour over something that's causing you a lot of stress, maybe it's a good idea to take 30 minutes or so and just get up and walk away and maybe have a snack.
Speaker: if your blood glucose levels are tanking, especially if you're hypoglycemic and maybe fuel up with something like an apple or something like that or just go for a walk, you know. Just learn how to better modulate your own systems here.
Speaker: I've also been looking into the longevity stuff and it just seems like unless we change habits, the sooner we change habits, the higher our chances of increasing our longevity and not just our lifespan, but our health span.
Speaker: as men and i mean as anybody that's you know it is kind of a rage and i should start doing it now it's a very slippery slope down here i remember my grandparents in there kind of early to mid -fifties they were already getting on on hooked on the medications by the doctor so it will start with
Speaker: the blood pressure maybe or maybe the high cholesterol or the high blood sugar and then once you get on that merry -go -round of drug or the game of whack -a -mole of symptoms with the conventional system out there it's it's just steady decline that is absolutely guaranteed and it's gonna rob a lot of the joy out of one's life you know so I think the sooner we kind of get the memo that we have to
Speaker: We have to do stuff proactively as opposed to reactively as we've been taught, the better off we'll be. I just want to say modern meds are great. They are part of why human health span and lifespan have increased.
Speaker: And there's some things that you just have to be medicated for. Like there's some things I just don't really aren't mitigated very much through diet and exercise. Like we're all commanded by our genetics and, or I should say not commanded, but our genetics play a role in everything we do and everything we are. So you can only do in some cases, you can only do so much to really kind of.
Speaker: alter that under your own powers. And when it's really needed, modern meds are great, and they should be incorporated if it's needed. But much of what is going on with you in your life, you can control. So what you can control, do so. And what turns out that you don't have so much power over, then if it comes down to medication, then so do it. Do what you have to.
Speaker: And yeah, that's just my one piece on modern meds. I agree like the over medicating and choosing, you know, pharmacological solutions over, uh, just a healthy life, a lifestyle. Um, and it should be said that that's not going to replace it. You know, you can take all these pills you want. It's not going to, it's not going to keep you alive and well on its own.
Speaker: You have to have some skin in the game and do some things on your own. So if you're doing what you know you can, you're being honest with it and you still need the medications, that's fine. There's no shame in that.
Speaker: You can't just rely on the meds themselves. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Hell no. Hell no. We do have some good drugs that is for sure. It's just the problem is a lot of the commonly used ones can be very harmful. Sean, last couple of questions for you, bro. Do you take any supplements? I always love asking people what supplements they take, if any. No, I don't take any supplements. Well, I guess I do have some
Speaker: protein drinks and stuff like that. So if that's a supplement then I guess I do. It's a very over the counter like protein drinks I use to kind of like fill in the gaps here a little between the meals just so I can keep again with the idea of skeletal lean muscle in mind here and staying strong. Not just you know staying alive but staying able you know.
Speaker: I do do that, but no, I don't go heavy on supplements really at all. Right. I just, I cannot, I don't know what, why, but I cannot imagine my life without taking quite a number of different supplements. I don't know. And the thing is like, I eat liver pretty much every second day. And like we get organic goat's milk, full fat, and we eat very nutrient dense.
Speaker: But for some reason, I don't know. I can't imagine my life without supplements. Have you ever tried to go off the supplements and live off of what you normally eat? Oh, I can. Yeah, sometimes I won't take them for a few days or whatever just to prove to my wife that I'm not addicted to them.
Speaker: But yeah, I guess I'm one of those kind of people. I'm more of a very, it has to be, there has to be processes, protocols. I'm constantly experimenting on new hacks, new biohacks, new interventions. So I guess I'm experimenting a lot. I love to do that. My body is like this giant science experiment. So maybe that's probably the reason why.
Speaker: I mean, I have done supplements in the past. I've taken, you know, creatine. I've taken, you know, protein powders and like B12, especially I was a vegan. I took a lot of B12 supplements because you don't get that because you're not or you don't get that because you're not eating meats.
Speaker: Omega -6 fatty oils, again, that you're not getting as a vegan because you're not eating fish and salmon, stuff like that. So I guess, especially now in the days that I've gone off of veganism, I don't find there's a need for that much anymore because I'm now eating fish, so I can get that organically.
Speaker: So again, it all comes down to the individual in question here. So if the supplements are needed and they are actually proven through blood tests clinically that they are doing you some good, and I would say have at it here. Use your body as an experiment.
Speaker: and just see what works. That's, again, if there's a central message to all this, it's like be an adventurer in terms of your health and your abilities here. And you might surprise yourself here. Now you could really go broke pretty easily trying to follow all the supplement advice that you hear everywhere. And a lot of these magazines you read about, you know, these muscle magazines are touting supplements big time.
Speaker: And a lot of the research behind it is fairly questionable because you have to look into who is actually saying it and who's taking the money. Who sponsored it, yeah. Right, who sponsored it too. But I would say in general, in general to anyone who's listening, don't blow your last buck trying to buy supplements.
Speaker: It's much more worthwhile and cost -effective for you to actually buy some real food and live off of that. Food is the number one. Right. Food is the number one. And if you're still finding deficits, try a supplement, see if that actually recovers it, but know where you're actually, know where you are and where you're actually going, which means that you have to have like clinical tests just to show what's actually happening.
Speaker: Yeah. And remember, if you need help with the testing and advice of supplements and diet, your uncle Chris here offers health consultations. So, so book, book Chris's got, uncle Chris has got your back. I got you back. I know all the supplements. I've tried hundreds of them probably at this stage and I'll help you out. Sean, where can folks connect with you on the internet, bro?
Speaker: They can connect on the internet mainly through Instagram. That's my go -to place these days. So Instagram is Sean the movement specialist. That's the handle there. So if you really want to have some dialogue with me, that's where I post stuff and that's where I repost stuff. That's the best place you can possibly find. You can also email me too. Email Sean.
Speaker: It's 1n and Sean, Sean1n .Carlton00gmail .com. So the Instagram handle and the email is the best way you really want to talk to me. So you, you, you, you do brick and mortar fitness stuff. You don't do like online consultations, coaching stuff like that. I do a little bit of both. So I do, uh, I will meet people online and also meet them in person if that's accessible.
Speaker: But at least initially starting out with, probably virtually, is the best way to get a hold of me too. Awesome. Well, Sean, this was fun. Brother, thank you so much for joining us today, man.
Speaker: Not a problem. Thanks for inviting me on here. It's a nice change of pace to actually be the one giving the answers rather than the one who's constantly asking the answer. This was actually a nice break. I actually got those labels just break free a little bit. Exactly. It's nice to do both because there's a different release you get from either. I think it's really awesome to do both, bro. Yeah, for sure. Again, thank you for having me. Yeah, thank you.
