Andy Talks Fitness with Friends

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack is schooling me on all things Pec Stick. While I use it for its most basic and obvious function, he is blowing my mind and opening up doors to its seemingly infinite uses. Here are some of his favorite tips and tricks for using the Pec Stick and be sure to check out his Pec Stick Course Launch happening this weekend! Get on it!

Good morning and welcome back! After a question from a client inspired a detailed talk about deadlifting and whether or not they are "athletic," Zack and I tore into what "athleticism" means, how we define it, and how certain exercises are appropriate for an athlete (or not). Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Recently, I've been fielding questions regarding nutrition in my gym, which made me realize how some of us struggle with some of the simple things we fitness professionals take for granted. Today, Zack and I tackle nutrition in an elementary way to try and help you get started down the path to making simple and easy choices! Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack is telling us how he's given up caffeine and how he's managing the change in his routine and lifestyle, which got us talking about vices and their hold on us. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! I'm a little late posting this episode, but so is the life of a new dad! Today Zack and I tackle the question of what, if any, is the "best" catch-all exercise: the one that builds the most muscle, does the most good, and is quickest and easiest to learn. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are discussing "good" and "bad" technique. When you're lifting weights, sometimes it looks and feels good. Sometimes it doesn't. Does this mean it's "bad" technique? How do we measure "good" technique? What does "good" mean and look like, and how should we go about assessing it? Grab a beer and take a listen!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, we talk about coasting and deloading - when life throws you lemons (or you become a first time dad while balancing a business owner) and how to manage workouts and nutrition when things aren't going great. Next, we talk about our "biases." What do we bias our coaching and training towards or away from? And do we have blind spots due to our own biases? Grab a beer and take a listen!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I talk training, and honestly, sometimes workouts need to be a little easy - when we're feeling a little worn down or under-recovered, we need to take it slow. But sometimes, oftentimes, training is hard - as it should be - so that we can change and be better. So don't be soft! Let's get after it. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Apologies for the delayed posting, but such is dad-life these days. Today, Zack and I review his first half marathon - how it went, his thoughts, and whether or not he'll do one again. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! This week, Zack is running the Music City half-marathon here in Nashville, so what better guest could we have than Dr. Killian Carlson, physical therapist, runner, and weightlifter. Today she joins the podcast to talk about running training, injuries, recovery, programming, and encouraging would-be-skeptical runners to include strength training in their workouts to be stronger, faster, and healthier runners. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back to the show! Today, Zack and I are discussing Principles: what drives us and influences as coaches working with real folks in our businesses. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are checking in from my back patio and talking about nutrition. With sunny patios, open-air seating, and springtime among us, we're outside enjoying the gorgeous weather and time with friends. Sometimes it's hard to stay on track with nutrition and lose those last few lbs before Summer sets in. Today we're talking about nutrition, staying on track, asking "why?" and what I call "the driver mod." Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack is fresh off his trip to the annual Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus and tells us all about the fitness, competitions, and demonstrations he saw and experienced while away. Next we turn to training and more specifically, maximizing your results on limited time and resources. How do you go about choosing the right exercises? How do you manage the stimulus in terms of reps, intensity, and volume? How do you keep things interesting when you're trying to keep things simple? Zack and I tackle these questions in a "good workout is a good meal" kind of metaphor. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today we host a friend and fellow coach, Jon Harris, who shares his story on how he got into fitness; how his fitness journey has evolved over the years; and how he has grown as a man, a father, a husband, and a coach through the years. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back to the show! Well, we finally did it - we went viral. A video on Instagram with yours truly and Dan John snowballed into an avalanche and suddenly we have more than 11 million views on the internet. It's a pretty cool thing to see, and we talk about what it means to us. Then we turn our attention to the pursuit of the ever-elusive "enough" in training. How strong is strong enough? How fit is fit enough? We all have our goals and how we define success in achieving them, but sometimes we need to scale our efforts into achieving "just enough" strength, mass, leanness, or whatever. Grab a beer and enjoy!

We made it! Zack and I have officially crossed the 100-episode mark, and we're pumped to share it with you. It's been a long and fun journey, and today we talk about what it took to get us here. In this podcast, as in fitness, and in life, often the simplest, most fundamental things are what make us successful. Today we draw parallels between what we do as coaches, trainees, and podcasters to create success. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good afternoon and welcome back! Today, Zack, Summer and I are talking about some of our favorite fitness misconceptions. Is downing a protein shake post-workout necessary? How much protein do you really need? What is sorness and is it a good indicator of a hard workout? And lastly - and my favorite - is stretching a good use of your time (spoiler alert: not at all for this coach). Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are chatting Dips. Specifically, how we approach the exercise in terms of programming and progressions with our own workouts as well as our clients workouts. If Dips have been on your radar and you've been wanting to try them, give this one a listen as we've got you covered. Grab a beer and get to dipping!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I (and Summer!) chat about how we've evolved about junk volume; making mistakes; and how we've evolved as coaches over the years in how we approach our clients workouts, as well as our own. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back to the podcast! Today, Zack and I have a very special guest joining us to talk about training and nutrition. Today is our first session of the 2023 season, and we're here to help you navigate your goals and training into the new year. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are reflecting on a productive and unbelievable year. We chat about what we accomplished; the places we traveled; the significant things we experienced over the course of the year; and of course, the goals we set and the goals we achieved. Looking forward to 2023, we chat about what we hope to accomplish in the coming year, both personally and professionally. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are checking in at East Nashville Beer Works and chatting about fitness, goals, and the new year. Some of us dream about squatting 500 lbs. Others want to look like the cover model on the fitness magazine. While these are admirable goals, they come with an immense amount of "investment" to achieve it. Worthwhile for some, but as coaches we often need to manage expectations on how one goes about achieving that goal and whether or not the juice is worth the squeeze. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! As you might have heard, the "Insta-famous" "Liver King" was exposed recently for being a fraud. Unfortunately, Liver King and people like him abound in all industries, fitness included. Today, Zack and I talk about Liver King and our beef with him and people like him, and talk about ethics in fitness, marketing, and more. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back to the A2Z Podcast! Today, Zack and I are reflecting on the year of 2022 and talking about some things we accomplished, as well as looking forward to 2023 and chatting about goals we have for the new year. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! You might have noticed that we were gone for a few weeks and that's because my wife and I had a baby! Our baby girl was born on October 24th, and we are over the moon. So I've been learning how to be a first-time dad and Zack was gracious to give me a few weeks to recover. Today, we're back at East Nashville Brew Works and talking about training. As coaches we often talk about training, workouts, and programs sort of in a vacuum: where real world conditions don't apply. Obviously, lots of factors play into our day-to-day success in and out of the gym. Family, work, stress, weather, lack of sleep, bad nutrition...you name it. These things play a role in how well we perform and recover. So how do you organize and optimize your training and nutrition when life isn't optimal? Grab a beer, tune in, and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are hosting bodybuilder, Bostonian, and comedian, Tony Capobianco. Tony is new to Nashville but not that new to the comedy scene. He joins the podcast to talk about his passion for comedy, what brought him here to Nashville, and his enthusiasm and energy for bodybuilding. Next, the three of us talk about our "banned exercises" and why we hate them. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Zack and I are reconvening after each having eventful weekends, and we're drinking beer and talking shop. When it comes to lifting heavy weights, what's the best approach? How do we define heavy? How do we train our bodies to lift ever-increasing weight? These questions and more on the podcast today, so grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Zack and I are checking into East Nashville Beer works drinking a six pack and talking about six packs (abs). Today we're discussing the ab exercises we like to do both as coaches and trainees, as well as our evolution of ab training over the years - from doing a thousand crunches every workout, to doing no abs at all, to bringing some ab training back again. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Zack and I are checking into East Nashville Beer works and Zack is freshly back from a seminar in Minneapolis. Zack shares his experience and what he learned and all the fun he enjoyed while away for the weekend. Next, we turn our attention to "groundhogs' day," or the feeling that training is getting a little stale, maybe feeling a little unenthusiastic, and what we can do to break through that barrier. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are checking back in at East Nashville Beer works and talking shop. Our fans ask: what do you think of ankle mobility drills, and how and when do you use them? Zack and I share our thoughts on mobility drills, squatting, and how we approach these with our gen pop clients. Next, we take a moment to look over our own training over the years and consider what we most appreciate about all the work - the reps, the sets, the time punching the clock - and look fondly over what we enjoy most about where we are today. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back to the show! Today, Zack and I are chatting ergs: with a gym that's 99% complete with all the toys I could ever want (or can fit in a tight space) I'm looking to add a piece of cardio/conditioning equipment, so Zack helps me figure that out. Now, with summer behind us, Zack and I find ourselves barreling towards two different fitness goals: one of us gaining, and one of us losing. We chat about what our nutrition, training, and progress looks like for each endeavor. Lastly, pull-up progressions! Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are pondering the "what ifs" when it comes to the business of fitness: what could we do, where could we go, and how could our businesses and our skillsets set us apart professionally in the future? After all these years of coaching and training, what could the later years of our lives look like in the world of fitness? Next, we sometimes deal with low back pain after hard training. Whether that's with deadlifts, squats, or otherwise, you're probably going to experience a little low back soreness from time to time if you're training hard like us. We talk about our own experience and how we've dealt with it, worked around it, and some of the other changes we've made in our training. And lastly, we discuss our pushup progression for those who have difficulty with pushups from the floor, how we work on them, and how we could help you get your first floor pushup. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back to the show! This week Zack and I welcome another kettlebell nerd and stellar fitness coach, Vanessa Edwards, to the podcast to chat about fitness and gym ownership. Vanessa got her start when she was dealing with perpetual back pain. She sought treatment through chiropractors and Physical Therapists but eventually started working with a personal trainer to try and get stronger and build muscle. In time, she found ways she could leverage weight and move her body to help manage her own pain and was hooked. Today, she owns her own fitness business and helps others find ways to move, lift, and train their body to get stronger, build muscle, and manage or eliminate pain. Vanessa was a joy to have on the show so grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back to the A2Z Podcast! This week Zack and I are doing an audit: when it comes to coaching and running a business, how do we improve? What does that look like? How do we fit in the fitness market on a local scale (for me and my brick-and-mortar) or a global scale (for Zack who pumps out online content)? We discuss how we navigate our respective businesses and look to make improvements. Next, we talk content creation and how, what, and why we approach content creation in our own, unique ways. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are trying out some new hardware with our podcast in an effort to continue improving the user experience! When it comes to choosing the right exercise, training program, or diet, we're always looking for that "magic bullet" or "best" this or that in an effort to get results fast. Unfortunately, what's "best" for some might not be best for others. Instead, we're focusing on "optimal." When it comes to improving your fitness and nutrition, we like to think of ways to optimize what we're already doing. By choosing the "optimal" approach, we can choose the right tools and strategies for the individual, as opposed to choosing a one-size-fits-all "best" approach. By optimizing at the individual level, we can take into account unique goals and needs, schedule conflicts, personalities and personal preferences, experience, injury history, and whole slew of other important factor. By choosing "optimal" we can choose the right approach for you and yield positive results and user experience. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today Zack and I are welcoming a special guest and close friend of mine, Brian Murray of Motive Training. Brian has worked in many facets of the fitness industry and is a helluva trainer and business owner. He owns Motive Training in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and currently lives in Austin, Texas, where he hopes to open a second location. Brian joins us on the show to talk about his own life-changing fitness journey and chats motivation and creating an amazing fitness business. We had a blast with Brian and I know you'll love this one. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are talking about autoregulation. We've all had stellar gym days where we lifted big ass weights and set PRs and everyone hoisted us on their shoulders and cheered us on. And we've also had those days where we feel like we've been hit by a truck before opening the gym door. Many workout programs use percentages and hard numbers (sets, reps, weight) to push us to the next level. But since we're not robots, sometimes those hard numbers backfire when we're not feeling our best. Instead, we talk about using Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) and Reps in Reserve (RIR) as a means to gauge intensity level with a lift and make sure we're not getting buried under the bar. It's a useful tool if you know how to use it correctly. Next, we change gears and talk about both a lower body and upper body exercise that we feel are overstated, overused, and generally bad exercises for most people, most of the time. Grab a beer and get your stamps ready for that hate mail. Enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are talking about Recovery. It's all fine and good to "send it" in the weight room, but it might surprise you to know that the gym is not where the Gainz Magic happens. In fact, without proper nutrition and rest, all your efforts in the gym are mostly useless. Going to sleep and eating your veggies might be boring, but they're the building blocks of a great, results-driven program. Today we're talking our favorite strategies for recovery. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! After 26 episodes on the year, Zack and I took a well-deserved week off to rest and recover. We come back from the break with a special guest: Willis Graves. Willis is a local physical therapist and Highland Games athlete, and he joins us today to talk shop. There are ball sports: football, baseball, soccer, lacrosse, and others. There are barbell sports like Olympic Lifting and Powerlifting. Zack and I have had our share of experience in both, but we've never tried a lifting sport like the Highland Games, and this is where Willis comes in to school us. The Highland Games as a sport can be traced back centuries, well before our modern version of weightlifting was even an idea. Originally from Ireland and crossing the pond to Scotland, it's a sport steeped in tradition. Willis joins us today to talk about the sport, the major lifts involved, how he incorporates and traditional strength training to improve his performance. Of course, Zack and I jump at the opportunity to talk shop with a seasoned veteran of a lifting sport we know nothing about, and Willis delivers. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! When it comes to working out, everyone wants to look and feel tough. It's "war" and we're "going into battle," two of many lines of thinking that Zack and I both believe to be hilariously silly. Instead, most fitness as we know it is fairly "softcore" if we were to characterize it correctly. But what about those workouts that just punch you in the jaw? The ones that hit you so hard you smile through figuratively bloody teeth? Sometimes, the hardest workouts we've ever done or coached were in fact, the simplest. Today we talk about some of those workouts and what we've observed and learned after years of taking one on the chin. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Zack and I are a little worse for the wear after a weekend with the boys in Austin, Texas but the show goes on! Today we're talking about decision fatigue: that overwhelming feeling you get when it comes to all the choices you have at your disposal. Part of what makes a good coach a good coach is that they can help you pare down those decisions - cut to the chase - and get you on track towards your goals fast. This isn't a plug for our services, either - human beings naturally and subconsciously look for the path of least resistance when it comes to just about everything: we eat, sleep, and go about our days in very predictable ways. So, let's cut this nonsense about "motivation" or "discipline." Maybe those of us who engage in fitness have just created our daily habits to include training and nutrition, and now we're just going with the flow. We're not better than the average person, we're just streamlined our lifestyle around fitness in a different way. We discuss what decision fatigue looks like and how it can be managed or changed. Lastly, we're talking game changers: things that have been big "bang for your buck" changes in our training or philosophy that's made a big difference in our results. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are welcoming Mindi Martinez to the gym to be a very special guest on the podcast. Mindi hails originally from the Midwest and through work in the movie industry found her way to LA, Atlanta, and finally to Nashville. Over the years, Mindi was introduced to CrossFit and, over time, got more serious into Olympic lifting. Here in Nashville, she's the head coach of the Barbell Club at East Nashville CrossFit where she teaches others how to master the Snatch and Clean & Jerk. Zack and I both agree that Oly lifts are very much a "lesser strength" of ours as both coaches and trainees, and today Mindi lends her experience and expertise to talk us through her coaching, techniques, and assessments. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Zack and I are checking in from his apartment drinking some gas station Yuengling (because we're not above some store-bought plain stuff) and talking about training. Last week, after some busted sleep and back to back training sessions I found myself with a little back soreness. And what did I do? Well, as anyone with any ache or pain, I went exploring it. And what I found was a snap, crackle, pop of my low back that caught me off guard and took the breath from my lungs. Not to worry - I'm all good now. Tune in to find out what I did, what I could've done differently, and how Zack and I navigate these waters as coaches and trainees. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are talking about training the "skinny-fat" or "dad bod" type of client. In our line of work, this is usually someone in their 20s to 30s, has probably been active before but isn't slinging weights or doing cardio regularly, and wants to get in shape. What do we do next? Do we diet down and try to get lean first? Or do we attack the body with as much weight training as possible to add some lean mass, maybe "recomp" a little, then diet down later? The answer is always "it depends," but Zack and I attack the issue from two ends of the spectrum. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back to the show! This week Zack and I are diving right into some talk about marketing - whether writing, filming, or social media - and how we each approach the subject in our respective businesses. Next, we're talking about our "lesser strengths" as coaches and business owners, where we get hung up on this idea of motivation and how we try to motivate our clients, especially over the long haul. This leads us down a rabbit hole of what motivation might look like and how we talk about it or approach it with our clients. This and other bits are some things we both struggle with occasionally, and today we're working through it. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I invite a special guest and Nashville's go-to Calisthenics guru and Acro-mutant Dustin Del Rio to the show! Dustin and I met a few years back when he had just opened his first gym, and ever since, he's taken his expertise in strength and conditioning and honed it in the acrobatics world. When he's not helping regular folks learn to do their first handstand, Dustin is practicing feats of strength that don't include a barbell or kettlebell, but rather another human being. As a base, he can hold, flip, and balance a partner in a matter of all kinds of cool acrobatic tricks. Today, we learn about Dustin's training history, how he got into acrobatics, what he's learned and how he's applied his background in kinesiology to improve his athleticism and skillset. We had a blast with him on the show, so grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! When things get tough - when work, life, or stress gets in the way - how do we go about navigating those stressors with regular training? How do we "bring it" when we'd rather do anything else? How could we change some variables to make sure we're staying in the game without driving ourselves into the ground? Today we talk about training when life gets tough, and like most things, we hope that training sticks around, even when we'd rather do anything else. When we're exhausted and rather hit the bed, we still brush our teeth, knowing we'll feel better about it than if we skipped it. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are hanging out at his place slinging some local beers and chatting training. This week, we're talking about some of the ways we agree and disagree in our approaches to training. While the meat and potatoes of training remain largely the same, there are several ways in which we both coach and train that are distinctly different, and we talk about the hows and whys behind it. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Good afternoon and welcome back to the A2Z Podcast! This week Zack and I meet at an old favorite watering hole in East Nashville and we're talking training. Recently, we spent a Saturday morning in a new training environment - Cornelia Airpark - where we slung kettlebells and did some bodyweight work to catch a killer pump. We didn't have a plan, we didn't have a goal, we just made do with our environment and got a killer workout in. How did we do it? How did we reach this sort of flow state of training where everything just sorta clicks? Grab a beer, tune in, and find out! Cheers!