Way back in 2001, I landed my first contract writing job: a monthly column for MetroSports New York called “In the Gym.” One of those columns was titled “The Myth of the Fat-Burning Zone.” More than two decades later, many of the fitness myths I have written about just won’t seem to go away, but few have lasted longer, or been more successfully repackaged, than the proverbial “fat-burning zone.” What prompted me to write about it again was a recent GQ article on Japanese walking that included a quote from a Nike trainer:

“Fat burning is optimized in Zone 2 cardio, and Zone 2 cardio is like a decently fast walk. So I think that people are going to see really good results…”

“Optimized?” Sounds great, but it’s not. It never has been.

I really can’t believe the fitness industry is still pushing this false narrative. Or… maybe I can.

How accurate science became misleading marketing

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, scientists began using respiratory measurements to estimate whether the body was primarily oxidizing fat or carbohydrate. In a landmark 1920 paper, Danish physiologists August Krogh and Johannes Lindhard demonstrated that the mixture of fat and carbohydrate used during activity changes according to diet, exercise intensity and duration, and their work helped establish what we now measure through respiratory exchange ratio, or RER. Then, in 1994, George Brooks and Jacques Mercier formally described the “crossover concept”: as exercise intensity rises, the body shifts toward greater reliance on carbohydrates and proportionately less reliance on fat. The underlying science here is real. At lower intensities, your body generally derives a greater percentage of its energy from fat. But a greater percentage does not necessarily mean more total fat or calories burned, and that is precisely where the whole myth falls apart.

Here’s what I mean. An easier workout might burn 200 calories, 60 percent of it from fat - that’s 120 fat calories. A harder workout might burn 400 calories, with “only” 35 percent of it from fat, but that’s 140 fat calories. The percentage went down and the total went up. If percentages were all that mattered, sitting on the couch would be the ultimate fat-burning workout, because at rest your body derives a huge percentage of its energy from fat. It simply isn’t expending much energy while doing it. By the 1980s and early 1990s, fitness magazines, exercise videos, wall charts and cardio consoles were routinely dividing exercise into “fat-burning” and “cardio” zones, and complex physiology had been turned into a flawed yet universal weight-loss prescription.

Then science added another term. In 2001, Asker Jeukendrup and Juul Achten introduced “FATmax,” the intensity at which someone achieves their highest absolute rate of fat oxidation, and in 2002 researchers published a protocol for measuring it. FATmax is real, but it creates three significant problems for the commercial fat-burning-zone claim: it varies considerably between individuals, it cannot be accurately calculated from age alone, and maximizing fat oxidation during a workout is not synonymous with maximizing long-term body-fat loss.

The fat-burning zone began with accurate science and ended as misleading marketing. Scientists discovered that exercise intensity changes the fuel our muscles use, that part is indeed true. The fitness industry converted (perverted?) that observation into a universal heart-rate range and implied that exercising inside it was the key to losing body fat; yet that part does not follow from the science at all.

I have been saying this for decades - Here are a few examples

2002: As the monthly “In the Gym” columnist for MetroSports New York, I wrote “The Myth of the Fat-Burning Zone.”

2011: In “Demystifying Fat-Burning Zone Training,” I responded to trainers and media “experts” telling people they were exercising too hard to burn fat: “Have you ever seen a fat sprinter? Who is skinnier, the group of people at the front of a marathon or the group at the back?”

2011: I addressed the myth in my book Beat the Gym.

2012: In Woman’s Day, I called the fat-burning zone “fuzzy math” and used the 200-versus-400-calorie example.

2013: In Prevention, I explained that the myth “is based on the percentage of fat you burn, not the actual calories burned.”

2014: In “10 Exercise Cheats That Blow Your Calorie Burn” ABC News quoted me saying the low-intensity zone evolved from “fuzzy math.”

2017 In my Bowflex Insider article“The Best Cardio for Weight Loss,” published on Bowflex’s website, I refute the fat-burning zone.

2019: I discussed the myth with renowned muscle and body-composition researcher Brad Schoenfeld on my iHeart Radio podcast Fitness Disrupted.

2020: I addressed it again in The Micro-Workout Plan and devoted an entire podcast episode to “Why the Fat-Burning Zone Is BS.”

2021: On my podcast “3 of the Worst Pieces of Fitness Advice,” I mention it as one of the top fitness falsehoods yet again.

2023: I examined the myth’s newest incarnation in my podcast “What Are Zone 2 Workouts?”

2026: I explore it in much greater detail, and from inside the fitness industry, in my forthcoming book, UNFIT: How Modern Fitness Fails Us and What We Can Do About It.

You may think I was crazy for doing this, but while serving as Chief Fitness Advisor for Nautilus and Bowflex, I suggested to the company that we remove the fat-burning zone from our cardio machines. Yet the suggestion really shouldn’t have seemed crazy: I was already writing about the flawed concept for Bowflex itself.

As I illustrated in the timeline, In my 2017 article “The Best Cardio for Weight Loss,” published on Bowflex’s own website, I explained that the best cardio was not a special “fat-burning” program, but whatever someone performed consistently, correctly and at a significant intensity. If that was the information we were giving consumers in our articles, why were we still promoting the opposite message on our machines? I suggested to the company that we had an incredible opportunity to become the first fitness-equipment manufacturer to publicly reject the misleading science, and take credit for removing the zone.

Not surprisingly, my suggestion fell on deaf ears.

Was telling my employer that its own machines were promoting misinformation a brilliant career move? Of course not. But they were paying me to give them the best information possible, and I wasn’t going to contradict myself or promote something I knew wasn’t true.

The parent company later filed for Chapter 11 protection. Not my fault.

Zone 2 is good - Just not magical

Let me be clear about something: Zone 2 exercise is not a waste of time by any measure. Lower-intensity training produces mitochondrial adaptations, develops the aerobic system, builds endurance, aids recovery and allows people to accumulate significant training volume without breaking down. If you are a competitive endurance athlete, improving your ability to use fat as fuel while preserving limited carbohydrate reserves is an intergral part of your training. I’ve completed 28 Ironman triathlons and more than 80 marathons and ultramarathons, so I understand that value firsthand. But for almost everyone else, FATmax is largely irrelevant, and often counterproductive, for fat loss.

Zone 2 did not resurrect the fat-burning zone because the old theory was finally proven correct; it simply gave an old idea a more scientific-sounding name. It also gave people “permission” to do less while believing they would somehow get better results. But in fitness, as in life, you don’t get more by putting in less effort.

Today, as an adjunct professor, I have the opportunity to teach the next generation of exercise professionals how to separate legitimate physiology from misleading marketing, and I love both the opportunity and the responsibility.

We have more fitness technology, equipment and exercise data than ever before, yet, as a society, we are less healthy. Why? In large part, because this kind of misinformation refuses to die.

You cannot achieve your fitness goals with bad information. Enough is enough.

I have always spoken the truth about fitness, even when it was extremely inconvenient.

I always will.

For years I’ve made a habit of reading old books on health and medicine, both to learn and because I'm fascinated by how long we've actually had the real answers. They've just never been sexy, flashy, or complicated enough to hold anyone's attention, so we keep looking past them for something newer to sell us.

Cornaro was a Venetian nobleman born in the 1460s. By his own account, decades of overindulgence had wrecked his health, and by his late thirties his physicians told him he likely wouldn’t live much longer.

He didn’t go looking for a miracle cure. In fact, he specifically warned against chasing one. Physicians of his era were peddling exactly the kind of shortcut we still fall for today, and Cornaro saw right through it:

“Learned men have often asserted that similar effects could be obtained by means of drinkable gold or the ‘elixir of life’; yet, though they have thus been sought by many, who have found them?”

Four hundred years before “biohacking,” he’d already clocked that the miracle fix never shows up, no matter who’s selling it.

Instead, he became a student of his own body. Through trial and error, he cut down what he ate, simplified his meals, paid attention to how he felt, and kept adjusting until he found something he could actually sustain. He was explicit about why this had to be a personal, patient process, not something you could borrow from anyone else:

“Any man may, by dint of experimenting, acquire a perfect knowledge of his own constitution and of its most hidden qualities, and find out what food and what drink, and what quantities of each, will agree with his stomach. It is impossible to have equally accurate knowledge of these things in another person… To learn them in our own cases, great attention, considerable time, and much study are required.”

That’s the part the fitness industry has spent a fortune making us forget. Finding what actually works for your body takes time and attention. Every fad diet, every trending supplement, every “just do this” hack isn’t just wasting your money, it’s stealing the years of experimentation you actually need to figure out what works for you.

Cornaro never dismissed his doctors. He credited them with helping him understand how serious things were. But he also understood something we still haven’t fully absorbed five centuries later: doctors can diagnose disease and save your life, but they can’t hand you the exact combination of movement, food, sleep, and daily habit that lets you thrive. Eventually, you have to become a student of your own body.

Every time I make this argument, someone brings up their grandmother who smoked a pack a day and lived to 95. Cornaro heard the same objection in his own time, and he had an answer for it:

“I do not wish to be told here that among those who lead the most irregular lives there are men who, in spite of this fact, reach, healthy and robust, those furthest limits of life attained by the temperate, for this argument is grounded upon a position uncertain and dangerous… Nature was merely unwontedly liberal to those irregular livers, and very few of us can, or should, hope that she will be as bountiful to us.”

In other words: your outlier relative isn’t proof that the rules don’t apply. She’s proof that nature occasionally hands out an exception, and staking your health on being that exception is a gamble with odds most of us wouldn’t take anywhere else in life.

More than forty years after turning his health around, at 83, Cornaro published Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life. "Sober" didn't mean what it means today, he still drank wine daily, just in the same modest, fixed amount as everything else. It found a wide readership, and he kept writing follow-ups at 86, 91, and 95, each one repeating the same message: moderation wasn't just keeping him alive, it was letting him flourish. He lived to somewhere between 98 and 102, depending on which historical account you trust, an almost unheard-of lifespan for the sixteenth century.

What strikes me now isn’t that he stumbled onto calorie restriction centuries before scientists studied it. It’s that he was preaching the exact philosophy I’ve spent my career calling Excessive Moderation: the sustainable, unglamorous version of a habit will always outlast the dramatic one. Cornaro didn’t recover through willpower or some heroic overhaul. He found the smallest sustainable version of a healthy habit that made him feel good, and he refused to stop doing it for nearly sixty years.

At 57, I’ve become my own case study, twenty-eight Ironmans and eighty-plus marathons and ultras deep, yet every one of them was built on far less training than people assume. For more than forty years, my training has stayed roughly the same: bodyweight work like pushups, lunges and planks; moderate weight with free weights and machines, nothing maxed out, no high-risk exercises. No injuries.

But consistent.

I don’t diet. I eat whole foods most of the time, adding to it over the years as I learned the science behind each piece, the benefits of nuts, berries, lean protein, healthy fats, and so on, until what started as instinct turned out to be the Mediterranean diet all along. I eat carbs. I drink alcohol. I listen to my body and adjust accordingly, some weeks pushing harder, some weeks pulling back, always playing the long game instead of the current one.

The fitness industry sells flashy, universal solutions because they’re easy to package. Cornaro is a five-hundred-year-old reminder that lasting health is both simple and personal. Science gives you principles. Doctors give you guidance. The rest is yours to work out.

Pun intended.

Health doesn’t belong to whoever finds the most extreme plan. It belongs to whoever finds their plan, and keeps doing it.

This is one of the ideas I explore in my upcoming book, UNFIT: How Modern Fitness Fails Us and What We Can Do About It, out 2027.

For more than 30 years, I’ve noticed a pattern that says a lot about how we’ve come to think about health. Whenever someone tells me they’re “getting healthy,” they almost always begin by telling me what they’re not doing.

“I’m not eating carbs.”

“I’m not eating sugar.”

“I’m not drinking.”

“I’m not eating after 7 p.m.”

After listening for a minute, I usually ask one simple question:

“That’s great...but what ARE you doing?”

The silence that often follows says everything.

Somewhere along the way, the fitness industry convinced us that health is created by subtraction. Every new diet removes something: Carbs. Sugar. Gluten. Seed oils. Alcohol. Eating before noon. Eating after dinner. The list keeps growing.

Biology, however, doesn’t work that way.

Your body adapts to what you repeatedly do.

That’s how human physiology works. Now, before anyone objects, let me be absolutely clear: Stopping unhealthy behaviors absolutely matters. Quitting smoking is one of the best things you can do for your health. Reducing excessive alcohol intake is beneficial. Reducing ultra-processed foods is a smart move for everyone. You will lose weight if you restrict your “feeding window.” But here’s the key:

Eliminating a bad habit isn’t the finish line. Building a good habit is.

Muscles don’t become stronger because you skipped dessert, they become stronger because you challenged them through strength training. Your heart doesn’t become healthier because you stopped eating bread, it becomes healthier because you walked, ran, cycled, swam, or did something that challenged your cardiovascular system. Your bones don’t become denser because you passed on the cookies, they become stronger because you loaded them through resistance exercise and consistently consumed adequate amounts of lean protein. Our bodies respond to positive stimuli.

Health isn’t a vacuum. It’s a collection of positive behaviors.

Interestingly, the science of behavior change tells the same story. One of the biggest misconceptions is that successful people simply “quit” bad habits. Research consistently shows that lasting change is much more likely when an unhealthy behavior is replaced with a healthier one. Why? Because the cue, the stress and the habit loop are all still there. Thus, the question becomes:

What fills the space?

Think about it: Someone quits smoking and starts snacking. Someone deletes Instagram and suddenly spends hours on TikTok. Someone gives up soda but replaces it with oversized sweetened coffee drinks. Someone quits drinking alcohol but begins relying on cannabis edibles or overeating to unwind. Those aren’t necessarily failures of willpower, they’re examples of the brain searching for a replacement behavior. The better question isn’t:

“How do I stop doing this?”

It’s:

“What healthy behavior can I replace it with?”

This is one of my biggest concerns with the growing use of GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic. While these drugs can be remarkably effective for weight loss and improving metabolic health, eating less isn’t the same as learning how to eat well. Nor does losing weight automatically lead to a healthier lifestyle. In fact, recent research suggests that some people reduce their everyday physical activity after significant weight loss. If healthier eating, regular exercise, and other positive habits aren’t developed along the way, what happens if the medication is stopped? Once again, lasting health isn’t created simply by what we stop doing. It’s created by the healthy behaviors we consistently practice.

And then ther’s this: One of the most misunderstood and undervalued aspects of eating a healthy diet is that healthy foods don’t simply replace unhealthy calories;

They actively do something.

Every serving of vegetables provides fiber, vitamins, minerals, and thousands of bioactive compounds that support health. Dietary patterns rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, olive oil, and whole grains have repeatedly been associated with lower rates of cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, and longer life. Food is indeed medicine.

The same principle applies to exercise. Every single workout improves your health, whether it’s a few minutes or a few hours, and especially whether or not the scale moves. Strength training builds muscle, strengthens bones, improves insulin sensitivity and much more. Cardiovascular exercise strengthens your heart, blood vessels, lungs, and brain, and, again, even more. Those benefits begin today, immediately, not twenty pounds from now.

That’s why the debate over whether cardio or strength training is “better” is flawed from the outset, it asks the wrong question. They’re both beneficial, physiologically and psychologically, in unique and myriad ways. Every single time you perform either one, your body adapts.

The same principle applies to nutrition. People often tell me they’re avoiding carbohydrates, when what they really mean is they’ve stopped eating bread, pasta, and dessert. Most people don’t realize that foods such as fruit, milk, yogurt, beans, lentils, chickpeas, potatoes, corn, peas, cashews, and even vegetables like carrots, beets, and Brussels sprouts all contain carbohydrates.

Others proudly announce they’ve eliminated sugar, then are surprised to learn that foods such as Greek yogurt, quinoa, onions, beets, milk, carrots, and bell peppers all naturally contain sugars.

The better question isn’t:

“What aren’t you eating?”

It’s:

“What healthy foods are you eating consistently?”

Even sunlight fits this philosophy. Some people proudly tell me they avoid the sun altogether. Should you avoid excessive ultraviolet exposure? Absolutely. Should you avoid sunlight completely? The current research says no. Moderate sun exposure contributes to important physiological processes, including vitamin D production and circadian rhythm. At the same time, diets rich in colorful fruits and vegetables provide antioxidants and other bioactive compounds that help the body defend against oxidative stress caused, in part, by ultraviolet radiation. In other words, health isn’t simply about avoiding excessive sun exposure. It’s also about actively supporting your body’s defenses through positive behaviors

Once again, the answer isn’t avoidance. It’s moderation. Do a little strength training. Do a little cardio. Stretch. Work on your balance. Eat colorful whole foods. Read. Learn. Spend time outside. Spend time with family and friends. Sleep. None of those behaviors requires perfection or obsession, they require consistency.

Nature rewards action, not abstinence. Real health isn’t built by what you remove, it’s built by what you repeatedly choose to add. And, if you consistently replace unhealthy habits with healthy ones, you’re already practicing what I believe is the most sustainable approach to lifelong health:

Excessive Moderation.

If you’ve ever lifted weights, chances are you’ve done it. Three sets. Ten reps. It’s probably the most famous prescription in the history of strength training. Yet almost nobody knows where it came from, or, more importantly, what it was actually meant to teach us.

My career in fitness began during the Reagan years when I was in college, managing a Nautilus training facility. Those early years shaped virtually everything I still believe about resistance training today. Back then, we didn’t spend our time arguing about barbells versus kettlebells, debating the latest influencer workout, or chasing one-repetition maximums. We focused on performing every repetition correctly.

One coaching cue from those days has stayed with me throughout my career: lift the weight in one to two seconds and lower it in three to four seconds. That slow lowering phase wasn’t simply about moving deliberately. It kept the muscle under tension, minimized momentum, and forced you to earn every repetition. Over the years I’ve simplified it even further. Today, I perform a four-second repetition; one second up and three seconds down. Do the math and fifteen repetitions take exactly one minute.

I love that.

Instead of rushing through a set, you’re spending an entire minute challenging the muscle. Moderate weights suddenly don’t feel so moderate anymore, and the emphasis shifts from simply moving weight to actually training the muscle. More than thirty-five years later, it’s still how I train and how I coach.

So where did three sets of ten come from?

The answer takes us back to the 1940s and a military physician named Dr. Thomas DeLorme. Working with soldiers recovering from World War II, DeLorme challenged the prevailing belief that injured muscles should be treated cautiously with very light resistance. Instead, he discovered that progressively increasing the resistance as patients became stronger restored both muscle and function far more effectively.

That’s the part of the story most people never hear.

The real breakthrough wasn’t three sets or ten repetitions. It was the principle of progressive overload, challenging a muscle enough that it adapts, allowing it to recover, and then challenging it again. Three sets of ten simply happened to be one effective way to apply that principle. Unfortunately, like so many ideas in fitness, the method eventually became more famous than the principle.

We’ve seen this happen over and over again: Ten thousand steps, the fat-burning zone, Tabata, cold plunges. Each began as a legitimate scientific concept before being simplified into a catchy rule that was easy to teach, easy to market, and easy to remember. The nuance disappeared, and with it much of the science.

What I believe DeLorme really taught us is something much more important than three sets of ten:

Muscles simply need to be challenged.

For the overwhelming majority of people, muscles don’t care whether you’re using Nautilus machines, dumbbells, barbells, resistance bands, kettlebells, or your own body weight. They don’t care whether you’re performing eight repetitions, twelve repetitions, or fifteen repetitions. Those variables matter far less than the fitness industry would have you believe. What matters is that you challenge the muscle, gradually increase that challenge over time, recover adequately, and repeat the process consistently without getting hurt.

Unfortunately, that message doesn’t sell.

The fitness industry thrives on convincing us there’s a secret workout, a revolutionary training system, a magical repetition range, or a piece of equipment we’ve been missing all these years. “Find a form of resistance training you enjoy, perform it with good technique, progressively challenge yourself, and keep doing it for the next twenty years” isn’t exactly a marketing campaign, but it happens to be remarkably close to the truth.

Throughout my career, I’ve also watched people make the same two mistakes. Some lift weights that are far too light because they’re afraid they’ll “get bulky.” Others lift weights that are far too heavy because ego gets involved. Both approaches limit results, albeit for different reasons. Too little resistance doesn’t provide enough stimulus to encourage adaptation. Too much resistance often leads to momentum, shortened range of motion, poor technique, and a significantly greater risk of injury.

I’ve never cared how much I (or my clients) can lift, I’m much more interested in how well I perform each repetition. Can I control the weight throughout the entire movement? Can I maintain proper alignment and a full range of motion? Can I keep continuous tension on the muscle instead of allowing gravity and momentum to do the work? Those are the questions that matter because they determine not only how much muscle and strength someone builds, but also whether they’ll still be training ten years from now.

One of the most fascinating things I’ve experienced over the course of my career is watching the science evolve. When I was studying exercise science, nearly every textbook divided repetition ranges into neat categories: low repetitions with heavy weights built strength, moderate repetitions built muscle, and fifteen or more repetitions primarily improved muscular endurance. Like much of science, those recommendations reflected the best evidence available at the time.

Today, we know the human body is far more adaptable than those tidy charts suggested.

I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Brad Schoenfeld several times on my Fitness Disrupted podcast. Brad and I share similar roots: we were both personal trainers in New York City during the 1990s, and today we’re both teaching the next generation of fitness professionals. Watching his research help reshape what we thought we knew about resistance training has been both gratifying and exciting.

A landmark meta-analysis by Brad Schoenfeld and colleagues, published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, found that muscle hypertrophy occurs across a broad range of loading schemes provided sets are performed with sufficient effort and close enough to muscular failure. Heavy loads remain the most specific way to maximize a one-repetition maximum, but they are not required to build muscle. More recently, Jozo Grgic and colleagues reached similar conclusions in a systematic review published in Sports Medicine, demonstrating that when effort and overall training volume are sufficient, moderate and relatively high repetitions can produce meaningful improvements in both muscle size and strength.

In other words, failure is failure.

Your muscles don’t know whether you stopped at repetition six or repetition sixteen. They know only whether they were challenged enough to adapt.

I’ve believed that for a long time, not because I was somehow ahead of the research, but because it’s exactly what I’ve observed coaching thousands of clients and experienced in my own training. I’ve been doing push-ups since I was sixteen years old, and most of my sets have always been well over fifteen repetitions. If high repetitions only improved muscular endurance, as I was originally taught, my chest, shoulders, triceps and core apparently never got the memo. Like every other muscle in the body, they responded to challenge.

That doesn’t mean every repetition range is identical or that heavier loads don’t have advantages for certain goals. Competitive powerlifters, Olympic weightlifters, and other strength athletes absolutely need to train with heavy loads because their sport requires them to display maximal strength. But that’s not how most people train, nor should it be. For the average person interested in improving health, building muscle, getting stronger, enhancing athletic performance, and staying injury-free, I still believe the sweet spot is moderate resistance, exceptional technique, and roughly ten to fifteen controlled repetitions for two or three sets. It’s effective, efficient, joint-friendly, and, perhaps most importantly, sustainable.

That philosophy lies at the heart of my upcoming book, UNFIT: How the Fitness Industry Fails Us and What We Can Do About It. Throughout the book I argue that the fitness industry has become remarkably good at taking sound exercise science and turning it into oversimplified marketing. My alternative is a philosophy I call Excessive Moderation, the belief that lasting health isn’t built through extremes but through consistently doing the fundamentals well. Challenge yourself, respect proper technique, progressively increase the demands placed on your body, protect your joints, recover intelligently, and leave your ego outside the gym.

Three sets of ten was never the secret.

Understanding why it worked always was.

For as long as I can remember, teaching has been one of those “someday” goals I refused to let go of. And I don’t mean casually. I mean dozens and dozens of applications spanning well over a decade: adjunct roles, lecturer roles, anything in my lane of exercise science and sport psychology. Most of them? No reply. Not even a “thanks but no thanks.” And the crazy part is, these were positions I was more than qualified for. About a year ago I finally landed an interview… and they chose someone else.

Then life did what it does. That person left. I got the call. I took the job. And now, here I am - Adjunct Professor teaching Biomechanics and Strength & Conditioning at the university level… and I absolutely love it. I love bringing my energy and passion into the classroom and seeing the students respond. I love the challenge of making science make sense. And I love being able to bring thirty years of real-world experience into the classroom, not just what’s written in the textbook. Endurance athlete. Author. Former personal trainer and group fitness instructor. DVD host. Fitness expert in legal cases. And all the lessons that only show up when you’ve lived this work for decades.

This week, while teaching the acute cardiovascular responses to altitude, I found myself weaving in my own experiences including running from sea level to the 10,000-foot summit of Mt. Haleakala on Maui… the hypoxic tent we had at Crunch Fitness in the late 90s with a treadmill and bike inside… and the conversations I’ve had on my podcast with climbers who’ve stood on top of Everest. That’s what makes this so rewarding - science + story + sweat equity. And it’s only week one. Next semester I’m already in discussions to add Kinesiology and Exercise Testing, and there’s even talk of stepping into a full-time faculty role

“Run to the Sun” 36-Mile Ultramarathon - Maui, Hawaii

If you’re in a season of “no’s,” (or, like me, a lifetime) hear me clearly: don’t quit. I applied to this school five or six times over the years alone. “No” to me doesn’t mean “never.” It means not now… or not with us. It’s analogous to an Ironman, marathon, or ultra - there’s always a moment where you want to stop. The difference is? You don’t. You keep moving forward. And, eventually, the thing you’ve been chasing quietly for years becomes the thing you’re living out loud.

The problem hasn’t changed: endless noise, almost no science. The iconoclasts scream “Crunches don’t work!” while influencers promise “This ONE move will melt belly fat!” - all designed to sell you something. Meanwhile, the actual science is quieter, more nuanced, and far more useful.

So let’s turn down the hype and look at a study I’ve referenced for years: an ACE-commissioned project conducted at the Biomechanics Lab at San Diego State University. It’s small, yes, but extremely well designed, and it aligns perfectly with what I’ve seen over three decades training thousands of bodies in the real world.

And the question it answers is the one everyone still asks:

What are the most effective abdominal exercises?

What the Researchers Actually Did

Dr. Peter Francis and his team recruited 30 healthy men and women, ranging from occasional exercisers to daily gym-goers. Each participant performed 13 of the most common abdominal exercises, everything from classic crunches to infomercial favorites like the Torso Track and Ab Rocker.

Every move was done slowly. Two seconds on the way up, two seconds on the way down. No flailing, no momentum.

Participants were hooked up to EMG equipment that measured activity in the:

• Upper rectus abdominis

• Lower rectus abdominis

• External obliques

• Rectus femoris (hip flexors)

That last one matters. If an exercise lights up your hip flexors more than your abs, it’s either poorly designed or performed incorrectly. (If you’ve ever done old-school sit-ups with your feet wedged under a bed, you know exactly what I mean.)

The researchers normalized everything against a traditional crunch, then ranked the exercises based on pure muscle activation.

The Top Three Ab Exercises

Here’s where science cuts through the nonsense.

1. Bicycle Crunch

No equipment. No gimmicks. Just incredibly effective.

The bicycle crunch came out on top because it combines three key motions:

• Flexion

• Rotation

• Lower-body involvement

It trains the abs as the integrated system they are, not as isolated “upper” and “lower” areas.

2. Hanging Knee Raise (a.k.a. “Captain’s Chair”)

You’ve seen this apparatus in every gym: forearms braced, body suspended, knees lifting toward your chest.

This version used bent knees, not straight-leg raises, which are far more difficult and often dominated by the hip flexors.

If you don’t have a captain’s chair at home, no problem: A reverse crunch on the floor is the closest cousin. Similar motion pattern. Similar ab engagement. Different relationship to gravity.

3. Crunch on a Stability Ball

The humble stability ball continues to be one of the most underrated pieces of exercise equipment. I’ve devoted entire podcast episodes to it and even designed full workouts around it because it’s that effective. It forces your body to stabilize just enough; not so much that you lose form, but enough to significantly increase abdominal activation.

And yes, it costs about the same as a couple of movie tickets.

Two Huge Takeaways Most People Miss

This is the part of the study I love most, because it reinforces what I’ve been preaching for decades.

1. People recruit muscles differently.

Not everyone activates their abs the same way. Athleticism, familiarity with the exercise, injury history, and countless other factors affect how effective a movement will be for you.

This is one of the reasons why blanket statements like “crunches don’t work” are nonsense.

2. The upper vs. lower abs debate? Mostly myth.

According to the EMG data, the average exerciser simply cannot selectively contract the upper or lower portions of the rectus abdominis in isolation. The muscle behaves more like a sheath - one integrated system.

Translation: Stop trying to “target” upper or lower abs. Do exercises that hit everything.

And that brings us back to the bicycle crunch.

Where This All Leads

Five minutes a day. That was Dr. Francis’s recommendation.

Five minutes.

Where have I heard that before?

Oh right - The Micro Workout Plan. Small, consistent bouts of exercise woven throughout your day are infinitely more effective than chasing the perfect 45-minute workout you never actually do.

So here’s your evidence-based, time-efficient ab routine:

1. Bicycle Crunches

2. Reverse Crunches or Hanging Knee Raises

3. Crunches on a Stability Ball

Five minutes. Slow, controlled reps. Consistency over perfection.

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Now, let me be clear: I am not the guy who bans food in the car. I’m not meticulously detailing the dashboard at stoplights. I have two labs who are in that truck almost every day, wet from swimming, dirty from the woods. I carpool kids constantly. I’m hauling snacks, drinks, crumbs, mud, dog hair - the works. And on top of that, I’m regularly packing the truck with drum equipment, bikes, and anything else life throws at me.

And yet… the truck stays clean. Pretty immaculate, actually.

It’s not because I’m obsessive. It’s because I believe in something I talk about all the time on my podcast, in my books, during my lectures and in my coaching: Excessive Moderation - doing a little bit a lot, rather than a lot a little.

This isn’t just about car interiors. It’s about fitness, nutrition, and life. And yes, it all connects to a car wash.

A Car Wash Isn’t Deep—But What It Shows About Your Habits Absolutely Is

A while back, a new car wash opened up less than a mile from my house. That detail matters. It’s right there on my normal route - no special trip, no detour. I drive by it constantly.

The first time I pulled into the car wash, I was fully expecting to just pay for a single wash. But when I went to pay, the woman at the counter pitched me their all-inclusive monthly package - which, unbelievably, was less than two car washes. I actually stopped and asked, “Wait… you mean I can come as much as I want, whenever I want?” She smiled and said yes. Without a second of hesitation, I said, “Done,” and handed over my credit card.

I don’t go three times a month.

I go a minimum of eight.

Every Friday, I run the truck through so it’s clean for the weekend—sports, travel, life. Every Monday, I go again so it’s reset for the week. In the winter, if there’s snow and salt on the roads, I might add another midweek wash.

Why? Because two things are working in my favor:

1. It’s convenient. It’s right on my path, close to home, and I go at times when there’s less likely to be a long wait. I’m usually in and out in under ten minutes. I don’t have to think about it.

   I’ve invested enough that it matters. I’m paying every month, and I refuse to waste that money. If I’m paying for “unlimited,” you better believe I’m using it.

Sound familiar?

It should, because this is exactly how gyms (and ultimately your health) work.

What Your Gym Membership Has in Common with My Car Wash

When people ask, “Tom, which gym should I join?” my first question is always: Which one is closest to your house or your job?

Not which one has the newest machines. Not which one has eucalyptus towels and fancy lighting.

The gym you’ll use is the one that’s on your way: from home, from work, from wherever you actually live your life.

If it’s even a mile too far out of the way, the odds plummet. You start with good intentions, but over time, the “I’ll go tomorrow” excuses creep in. A little extra distance becomes a big barrier.

The second piece? The price has to matter enough.

Many big-box gyms charge ten bucks a month by design. It’s not generosity, it’s strategy. At that price, you’ll shrug and say, “Whatever” if you don’t go for a while. You’ll keep paying because it’s not painful enough to cancel. They make money by hoping you don’t show up. If 25% of the membership turned up regularly, the place would be pure chaos.

When I owned a gym, I did the opposite. I charged a higher monthly rate, and I told people immediately: “You can come every day. Twice a day. More if you want. Take yoga in the morning, spin at night, lift weights in between. The more you use it, the cheaper it becomes per visit.”

Same with the car wash. The more I go, the more value I get, and the cleaner my truck remains.

Maintenance vs. Overhaul (in Your Car and Your Body)

Here’s the real lesson:

I never let the truck’s cleanliness get out-of-control. I don’t wait until there’s sticky candy melted into the seats, salt caked all over the exterior, and months of dog hair woven into the fabric.

Because if you let it get that bad, two things happen:

1. You need a massive overhaul: time-consuming, expensive, annoying.

2. Some of the damage is permanent. The stain doesn’t come out. The scratch doesn’t buff away. The smell doesn’t disappear.

Your body is no different.

Most people let their “maintenance” slide until it’s crisis time: Right before summer. Right after a scary doctor’s visit. Right at New Year’s when they look back and realize how far off track they’ve drifted.

Then they try to overhaul everything at once - extreme workouts, extreme diets, extreme expectations. It’s hard, it hurts, and it almost never lasts.

Small, consistent steps will always beat giant, unsustainable ones.

• Ten minutes of movement, every day.

• A short strength session, a few times a week.

• Slightly better food choices, more often than not.

That’s Excessive Moderation. That’s the “car wash” approach to your body.

Put This Into Your Life Today

Think of your fitness and nutrition like that car wash membership:

• Make it convenient. Choose activities and locations that fit your real life, not your fantasy life. Home workouts, a gym close by, a walking route from your office - whatever makes it easy to show up.

• Invest enough that you care. That might be money, time, or accountability: a coach, a friend, a race on your calendar. You need some serious skin in the game.

• Focus on maintenance, not rescue missions. Don’t wait for the “I can’t believe I let it get this bad” moment. Do a little now, and tomorrow is easier. Do a little tomorrow, and next month is easier.

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Wash the “car” (your body) regularly. Don’t let the mess build up so long that you need a full restoration - or worse, you can’t fully fix the damage at all.

There are no hacks, no magic powders, no secret programs that beat consistency with the basics.

Do a little. Do it often.

That’s how you keep your car clean. That’s how you stay healthy. And that’s how you truly live your best life.

We all control three things: How much we move, what we put into our mouths, and our attitudes. And THAT is awesome.

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If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know my philosophy: we have control. Not absolute control - life throws punches, food companies engineer cravings, stress drains our willpower - but real, meaningful control nonetheless. And when you give that up, you lose the foundation of everything: your health, your confidence and your freedom.

For years, a parade of “experts” told you otherwise. They said weight gain wasn’t about control - not about what or how much you eat, not about calories in versus calories out. It was your genetics, your metabolism, your set-point. You were told your body had decided on a number and you were powerless to change it. Convenient, right? Because if it’s out of your hands, you don’t have to take responsibility - or take action.

But here’s the truth: it’s always been about behavior and choice - about what and how much we put into our mouths. And now, ironically, the very same people who said “it’s not about calories” are celebrating drugs that work precisely by reducing appetite and intake. In other words: they help you eat less. That’s control, pharmaceuticalized.

This isn’t about blame; it’s about truth. If you’ve struggled, you haven’t failed because you’re weak. You’ve been misled by an industry that profits when you feel powerless.

The Science of Control

Back in the 1960s, psychologist Walter Mischel ran what became one of the most famous studies in behavioral science: the Marshmallow Test. Children were offered one marshmallow now or two if they could wait. The ones who delayed gratification? They went on, statistically, to do better in life. They had higher grades, better health and stronger relationships. Correlation, not destiny for sure, but directionally clear.

The lesson wasn’t about dessert, it was about self-control. It was about our ability to change how we think, how we feel, or how we behave in the pursuit of our long-term goals. That’s what separates humans from every other species, and it’s what separates success from frustration in almost every area of health.

The Brain Behind It

Mischel described two systems in the brain:

• The Hot System – fast, emotional, impulsive. It reacts. It’s why we grab the cookie or skip the workout when stress hits.

• The Cool System – slow, reflective, strategic. It plans. It’s the part that remembers your goals and your future self.

Self-control is the practice of moving from hot to cool, from impulse to intention. And that shift can be trained.

Mischel himself proved it. He was smoking three packs a day while studying willpower. One day, after seeing a cancer patient marked for radiation therapy, he imagined himself on that table, and he quit cold turkey. He reframed the stimulus. He changed the story. His story.

What the Marshmallow Test Still Teaches Us

Mischel’s research revealed two simple, practical, powerful skills that help anyone strengthen self-control:

1. Reappraise the reward.
   How you think about temptation changes its pull. When kids were told to imagine the marshmallow as a cloud or a pillow, they waited longer to eat it. The same applies to food, alcohol, or any habit. Change the frame, change the impulse.

2. Connect with your future self.
   People who see continuity between their present and future selves are better at delaying gratification. They make choices that serve tomorrow, not just today. Visualization works because it makes the future feel real.

Control Is a Skill, Not a Sentence

Here’s the good news: control is a skill you build like muscle, through consistent repetition. Each small victory strengthens the next one.

• Start small. Five minutes of movement. One smart meal. One better choice.

• Lower friction. Keep healthy food visible, junk food hidden.

• Pre-decide. “When I’m stressed, I’ll walk five minutes and have yogurt.”

• Visualize the payoff. Picture your future self living the results of the decision you make today.

And yes, this is why I close my podcast the same way - it’s not a slogan; it’s the blueprint for taking control of your life.

“We all control three things: How much we move, what we put into our mouths, and our attitudes. And that is awesome.”

That’s not diet culture; that’s human agency. The same control the marshmallow kids showed decades ago still lives in you. You’ve been told you don’t have it, but you do.

Believe it. Practice it. Strengthen it.

Because the moment you reclaim control over what you eat, how you move, and how you think, you take back ownership of your body, your goals, and your life.

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That usually surprises people. The deadlift is one of the most popular movements in gyms worldwide. Thanks to CrossFit, social media influencers, and a new wave of women rightfully embracing strength training - particularly to build stronger glutes - the deadlift has become a cultural icon. Scroll Instagram for five minutes and you’ll see someone pulling big weight from the floor, hailed as proof of strength and toughness.

But here’s the truth: I don’t do them. I don’t program them for my clients. And I never have.

Do No Harm

One of the first principles doctors are taught is: do no harm. As a strength and conditioning coach, I live by the same rule. Exercise should make us stronger, healthier, and more resilient - not set us up for injury down the road.

That’s why I constantly run every movement through a simple filter: What’s the cost/benefit ratio? Does the potential benefit outweigh the risk? If not, there are always safer and equally effective options.

When it comes to deadlifts, that calculation doesn’t add up for me.

Why the Deadlift Is So Risky

Think about what a conventional deadlift requires: you hinge forward, grip the bar, and then attempt to stand up while lifting a heavy load from the floor. Biomechanically, it’s one of the most challenging things we can ask the human body to do - loading the spine while it’s in flexion.

Specifically, when you load the spine in flexion, you’re ramping up anterior shear forces and posterior tensile stress on spinal ligaments, facet joints, and the annulus fibrosus of the intervertebral discs. Over time, repetitive flexion—even without heavy weight—can produce microtrauma that accelerates disc herniation and structural breakdown. Cadaver studies have shown that modest repetitive flexion can lead to herniations in as few as 5,000–9,500 cycles, especially when compressive forces are involved.

The spine isn’t like a muscle that adapts and strengthens with stress. It’s more like a paper clip or a credit card. Bend it incorrectly - subtly, repeatedly - and eventually it fails. That’s one of the biggest problems with the deadlift: you rarely feel the damage at the time. The breakdown is gradual. Then, months later, you throw out your back while reaching for a toothbrush and have no idea that it traces back to those heavy pulls in the gym.

And almost no one blames the deadlift.

Research backs this up. Studies have shown that lumbar spine injuries are among the most common in weight training, and improper technique during deadlifts is a frequent culprit. A 2018 paper in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research highlighted that spinal loading during the deadlift, even with “good” form, is extremely high and requires years of technical refinement. Beginners simply aren’t equipped to manage that risk.

An Advanced Movement That’s Treated Like a Warm-Up

Here’s the irony: the deadlift is an advanced exercise that rarely gets the respect it deserves. I’ve watched countless trainers stand by while their clients butcher rep after rep with rounded backs, jerky pulls, and way too much weight. It makes me cringe every time.

And why? When you’re a personal trainer who might see a client once or twice a week - someone who’s new to exercise and maybe can’t even touch their toes - why would you pick one of the most technically demanding lifts in existence?

It makes no sense.

For the record, I did learn how to deadlift properly decades ago when I earned my NSCA-CSCS certification. I studied the mechanics, practiced them, respected the challenge - and then I shelved them. For me, the risk never justified the reward.

Strong Legs, Smart Choices

When most people walk into a gym, one of their main goals is simple: they want to strengthen and/or sculpt their lower body - especially the glutes. It’s become one of the most sought-after outcomes in fitness. Stronger glutes mean better athletic performance, fewer injuries, and yes, the kind of aesthetic change that gets people excited to stick with exercise.

The good news? You don’t need complicated, risky, or overly hyped movements to get there. The basics - squats, lunges, and their many variations - are more than adequate. In fact, they’re not only enough, they’re often the smartest choice.

Science Over Hype

Study after study confirms the effectiveness of these staples. Squats and lunges recruit multiple muscle groups at once, challenge balance and coordination, and drive both strength and hypertrophy. Glute activation in split squats and Bulgarian split squats rivals or surpasses many more complicated movements. And perhaps most importantly, these exercises can be taught safely and scaled to anyone - from a beginner just starting out to an elite athlete chasing performance.

That’s why, for me, there’s no debate.

A Strongman’s Perspective

It’s always interesting when someone outside the traditional fitness industry says the same thing I’ve been saying for years. Strongman Robert Oberst put it perfectly on Joe Rogan’s podcast, much to Rogan’s surprise:

“Just a quick little tip. If you’re deadlifting to be a better deadlifter, fine. If you’re not doing that for deadlift’s sake, then don’t f***ing do it. The risk-to-reward ratio is a joke. And a lot of people aren’t going to like that I’m saying that.

But if you go into any NFL gym, any Division 1 college football gym, any athletics where people are actually getting paid, and it matters what they’re doing?

They’re not deadlifting.”

Exactly. If you’re competing in powerlifting, then of course you should deadlift. But if your goal is general strength, health, or sculpting your lower body, there are countless safer, smarter paths.

My Bottom Line

Many people don’t like it when I talk about the dangers of deadlifts. Just like in my Ozempic article, it’s always easier to tell you what you want to hear - “it’s all genetics,” “you should just work out in the fat-burning zone” (another myth), “there’s a secret move that changes everything.” But I’ll never do that. I’ll always tell you the truth, backed by science.

If you love to barbell deadlift, then do your thing. I’m not here to ‘Yuck Your Yum.’

But if a toothbrush takes you out one day, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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For decades, you’ve been told a lie, what I call The Big Lie: that weight loss isn’t about calories in and calories out. Supposedly, it was your “slow metabolism,” your “genetics,” or some mysterious “set point” theory that doomed you to gain weight no matter what. The fitness and medical establishment, the media, and even government health agencies lined up behind this narrative. And if you dared to say otherwise? You were called a zealot, a body-shamer, or worse.

But then came Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and the rest of the GLP-1 drugs. And in one stroke, they exposed the truth.

How GLP-1 Drugs Work

Let’s be clear: these drugs don’t speed up your metabolism. They don’t rewrite your genetics. They don’t “reset your set point.” They simply slow down digestion, keep food in your stomach longer, and reduce appetite. The net effect? People eat less.

That’s it. That’s the entire “miracle.”

So after decades of excuses, what did these drugs prove? That weight loss is, exactly as I’ve been saying my entire career, about calories in and calories out.

The New Marketing Machine

What’s both fascinating - and infuriating - is how fast the narrative flipped the moment Big Pharma had a pill to sell. For years, the media and so-called “experts” insisted obesity’s health effects were overstated. They said weight and health weren’t directly connected. They told you the real danger was “body-shaming.”

But now? GLP-1 drug commercials are packed with lines like:

“I’m reducing my risk.”

Risk of what, exactly? The very conditions tied to excess weight that were brushed off for decades - heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke and more?

So which is it? For years you were told weight didn’t matter. Now, suddenly, being overweight is a deadly risk factor - conveniently, just in time to sell a drug. The hypocrisy is staggering.

Energy, Science, and the Lie

Here’s a simple truth: energy is neither created nor destroyed. It only changes form. The energy from the sun drives photosynthesis in plants. We eat the plants. Animals eat the plants. We eat the animals. That energy doesn’t vanish - it’s stored, burned, or carried on.

When you eat more energy (calories) than you use, your body stores it. That storage is fat. Period. The human genome hasn’t changed, but our environment has. Since the late 1970s, processed food has exploded, exercise has declined, and the media has been complicit in pushing garbage science. The result? We keep getting fatter.

The Cost of Excess Weight

Let’s not sugarcoat it. Excess weight drives up rates of cancer, joint destruction, cardiovascular disease, and more. The incidence of obesity-related cancers has nearly tripled in the past two decades (look up the research - it’s shocking). Obesity is linked to the majority of preventable deaths. These aren’t my opinions. These are facts.

And remember COVID? The vast majority of deaths came from people with multiple comorbidities - obesity being a major one. We were told to “follow the science” in every area - except here. There has been no push to make people healthier, to exercise more, or to eat real food. Instead, the solution was more drugs.

Publishing, Perverted Science, and “Fat but Fit”

I’ve written six books on health and fitness. And for the first time in my career, a few years ago, I couldn’t get a new one published. You know what one editor asked me instead? Could I write a book called Fat but Fit?

No - and suggesting otherwise is dangerous.

Yet this was the narrative the industry loved. Don’t worry about weight. It’s not your fault. It’s not about lifestyle. It’s a “brain disease,” as a doctor and “one of the most highly cited scientists in the field of obesity” said on 60 Minutes on January 1, 2023, arguing that the number one cause of obesity is genetics. She claimed that if individuals are born to parents with obesity, they face a 50–85% likelihood of developing the disease themselves—even with optimal diet, exercise, sleep, and stress management.

But here’s the problem: the very fact that GLP-1 drugs work by simply reducing appetite proves this isn’t destiny. People lose weight on them because they eat less - period. Set point theory? Shattered. “Slow metabolism”? Debunked. The science didn’t change. The profit motive did.

The AMA, Pharma Timing, and Billions on the Line

Consider the timing: In 2013, the American Medical Association classified obesity as a chronic disease. The very next year, in 2014, the FDA approved Saxenda, the first GLP-1 medication for weight loss. Suddenly, obesity was a “disease” - not because of new science, but because of new business. A market was born.

The Real Damage

Here’s what worries me most: the constant push to make people feel better about their weight gain, telling them it’s out of their control, is killing people - literally. The vast majority of deaths in America are lifestyle-related. Research has shown that more than 60 percent of all deaths are tied to avoidable habits like poor diet, inactivity, smoking, and excessive alcohol use. Over 70 percent of cardiovascular deaths could be prevented with basic lifestyle changes. Even cancer, a disease many fear as random and unavoidable, is often driven by the same factors—at least 30 percent of cancer deaths are linked to obesity, poor nutrition, and lack of exercise.

And yet, instead of empowering people with this truth - that they can reclaim their health through simple, consistent choices - they’re medicating them into complacency. The real solution isn’t another injection or prescription. It’s rediscovering the power we already have over our own bodies.

The Takeaway

The GLP-1 drugs have done one important thing: they’ve exposed The Big Lie. Weight loss is, and always has been, about energy balance - calories in versus calories out.

But the real lesson isn’t that we need more drugs. It’s that we already hold the power to change. When people eat less, move more, and choose real food over processed junk, the body responds. Always has. Always will.

Yes, Big Pharma and the media shifted the narrative to sell a quick fix - but don’t mistake that for the only path forward. The truth is, most of the diseases killing us today are preventable. And the solution doesn’t come in a syringe or a prescription bottle - it comes from reclaiming control over our own health.

The Big Lie has been exposed. The question now is: will you take back that power?

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It’s a perfect example of what I call a “second level” concept, the kind of detail the vast majority of people need not obsess over. Sure, there are healthier options, and yes, I’ve written before about how protein is one of my top supplements. But the big picture is simple: you should get the vast majority of your protein from real food first.

For me, that’s salmon, tuna, eggs, chicken, even sardines. I also eat lean beef, nuts, and seeds. Just like with exercise, the type isn’t the big deal, it’s whether you’re hitting your daily targets consistently.

It’s like cardio and strength training: the mode doesn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that you’re getting your heart rate up and lifting heavier things regularly.

How Much Protein Should You Aim For?

Here, I side with Dr. Brad Schoenfeld, whom I’ve interviewed for my podcast Fitness Disrupted (now Fitness Disrupted 2.0). The RDA of 0.8 g per kilogram of body weight, that’s only about 0.36 g per pound, is far too low for active individuals.

Schoenfeld recommends about 0.7–0.8 g per pound to effectively support muscle gain and maintenance. For bodybuilders or those chasing maximal hypertrophy, ~0.9 g per pound is reasonable and safe, with little evidence of harm in healthy individuals. Many pros consume more, but for most of us, this range is plenty.

A simple rule of thumb: start by aiming for half your bodyweight in grams of protein per day (so if you weigh 180 lbs, that’s 90 g). Then, slowly add more over time until you’re in the optimal range for your activity level.

The Protein Gap

Many doctors claim people get enough protein, but the science says otherwise. Higher intakes can benefit muscle maintenance, metabolic health, and aging, especially for active adults. Unfortunately, most doctors receive very little nutrition training in medical school, which is why outdated advice persists.

A 2023 paper in Nutrients (“Is It Time to Reconsider the U.S. Recommendations for Dietary Protein and Amino Acid Intake?”) backs this up, suggesting the RDA should be increased for optimal health, not just for bodybuilders, but for the general population.

All the Protein Options (And Where Do Some Come From?)

Walk into any supplement store today and you’ll see whey, casein, soy, pea, hemp, rice, egg white, and blends. Some are flavored like chocolate cake, cinnamon cereal and strawberry shortcake. And honestly, where the heck does almond milk protein even come from?

These options aren’t bad; they’re just supplements, tools to help you meet your daily target, not replace real food as your main source.

Second Level Stuff & Excessive Moderation

People love to debate:

• The “best” type of cardio.

• Whether you should do cardio or strength training first.

• Which protein powder reigns supreme.

My take? Nike got it half right. It’s not just “Just do it.” It’s “Just do it—consistently.” That’s my concept of Excessive Moderation: find a sustainable, repeatable approach you can do for life. Find the cardio you like, the strength training you enjoy, and the protein source you’ll actually consume regularly.

Wait a Minute… What About Whey?

Yes - whey protein is considered one of the highest-quality proteins. It’s fast-digesting, rich in leucine, complete, and proven to support muscle growth and recovery. But here’s the key: if your daily protein intake is adequate, you don’t need whey. Whole foods or other protein sources will work just as well. Whey is just an efficient, convenient option.

If I told you mocha-flavored pea protein from Brand X was the “healthiest,” but you hated the taste, how much good would that do? Personally, I rotate protein powders and drinks constantly based on taste, price, and whether I can buy it in bulk.

No “Best” Diet, Either

If you ask me what diet I follow, I’d say the Mediterranean, though not because I set out to. Over years of research, I naturally gravitated toward the foods it emphasizes. I don’t care what diet you follow as long as it works for you and keeps you healthy. There is no universal “best.”

It’s the same with exercise and protein; you have to find what works for you. That takes time. That’s why I’m not a fan of fad diets or exercise programs you’ll only do for a month or two. The goal isn’t to see how little exercise you can survive on, or how little protein you can stomach for a few weeks, but to find the approach you enjoy enough to stick with for life.

Spread It Out

One last thing: spread your protein throughout the day. If you weigh 150 lbs and aim for 90g of protein, don’t dump it all into one giant shake. Your body will use it more effectively if you split it into multiple meals. My intake is usually around 140g/day, spread over 5–6 meals, roughly 20–30g per meal.

I am pretty sure that if you are not achieving your goals, whether weight loss, muscle building, overall health, or any combination thereof, it is not due to the type of protein you are consuming.

It’s like obsessing over the “perfect” protein powder while ignoring the fact that you’re only hitting your target twice a week; Excessive Moderation means doing the right things often enough to matter, not chasing perfection you can’t sustain.

I was a PowerBar-sponsored athlete for years and worked with some of the biggest brands in the industry, including Gatorade’s Sports Science Institute. I also served as a contract writer on sports nutrition for both Vega and Men’s Journal, covering everything from performance supplements to real-food fueling strategies.

Companies have been sending me their latest pills, powders, and potions for as long as I can remember, everything from CBD concoctions and pickle juice shots to testosterone-loaded bovine extract pills (yes, really). I’ve tried most of them. I buy almost none.

Why? Because despite the hype, most supplements are unnecessary when you eat a well-balanced diet. Real food always comes first.

But there are a few exceptions, four, to be exact, that have earned a permanent spot in my routine.

Let’s start at the beginning.

What Is a Supplement, Really?

By definition, a supplement is exactly what it sounds like: something that supplements your diet. It is not a replacement. It is not a shortcut. It is not a substitute for eating vegetables, getting fiber, or drinking enough water.

Unfortunately, many people treat supplements like magic pills that will make up for a lifestyle lacking in sleep, movement, or nutrition. That’s not how this works. Nature is amazing, and no lab on Earth can replicate the full spectrum of benefits you get from a plate of colorful vegetables or a piece of wild-caught salmon.

Still, a handful of supplements can offer meaningful support, especially if they’re backed by decades of science. These are the four I trust and use regularly:

1. Protein Powder / Shakes

Why I Use It: Because even with a dialed-in diet, I don’t always hit my protein target through food alone, especially when I’m on the go or training hard. That’s when I reach for high-quality powders or ready-made shakes.

A Quick Flashback: Anyone remember Myoplex? It was one of the hottest protein powders of the late ’90s, part of Bill Phillips’ wildly popular Body-for-LIFE transformation program. I was all in. I bought Myoplex, followed the program, and was even a national finalist in the transformation contest. Somewhere in my files, I still have the “before” and “after” photos. I’ll share them in a future column.

Physiological Benefits: Protein is the building block of muscle. We begin to lose muscle mass as early as our 30s (sarcopenia), and strength training plus adequate protein is the best defense. It also supports tissue repair, immune health, and helps manage appetite.

Science Check: A 2020 meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that protein supplementation significantly boosts muscle mass and strength when paired with resistance training.

2. Caffeine

Why I Use It: Because it works. Caffeine powers my early-morning workouts, sharpens my focus during writing sessions, and gives me an edge during long endurance efforts.

Physiological & Cognitive Benefits: Caffeine is one of the most effective and reliable ergogenic aids. It can reduce perceived effort, mobilize fat stores, and boost endurance and strength. It also enhances reaction time, alertness, and cognitive performance, especially when you’re sleep-deprived.

Caffeine’s benefits go beyond energy and performance; it’s also been linked to long-term brain health. Research suggests that regular caffeine consumption may reduce the risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, thanks to its protective effects on the central nervous system.

Science Check: According to the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN), caffeine consistently improves both endurance and high-intensity performance, with cognitive benefits that extend to better decision-making under stress. Beyond the gym, caffeine may also offer long-term neurological protection. One large prospective study found that individuals with the highest caffeine intake had a 37% lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease compared to non-drinkers (CND Life Sciences, 2023).

3. Creatine

Why I Use It: Because it works for both body and brain. I started using creatine when it first came to market in the U.S. in the early ’90s. Anyone remember Phosphagen from EAS? That tiny bottle cost almost $60 at the time, a small fortune for a young personal trainer just starting his career, but I bought it anyway. That, and the Myoplex, were staples during my Body-for-LIFE transformation days.

Physiological & Cognitive Benefits: Creatine helps you generate ATP, your body’s quick energy source, so you can perform better during short bursts of high-intensity effort, whether you're lifting, sprinting, or powering through a tough workout. It increases muscle volume, strength, and recovery. On the cognitive side, it’s been shown to support brain energy metabolism and may protect against neurological decline.

Science Check: A 2022 review in Nutrients highlighted creatine’s emerging role in improving working memory, cognitive processing, and reducing mental fatigue, especially in older adults or sleep-deprived individuals.

4. Multivitamin

Why I Use It: Because even a great diet isn’t perfect. A multivitamin acts as a simple insurance policy, filling in the nutritional gaps that inevitably pop up, especially during heavy training or travel.

Physiological Benefits: A quality multivitamin can support immune health, energy production, and muscle function. While it won’t make you superhuman, it ensures you're not deficient in key micronutrients like magnesium, vitamin D, and zinc.

Science Check: According to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, multivitamins are useful for covering common nutrient shortfalls, particularly in people with dietary restrictions, high stress levels, or elevated activity demands.

Final Thoughts

After 30+ years in this industry, racing, coaching, researching, consulting, I’ve seen more supplement fads than I can count. But these four have stood the test of time. Not because they’re trendy, but because they’re backed by science, proven in practice, and useful for real-world results.

No powder or pill can replace whole foods, movement or recovery. But the right supplement can give you that extra edge, safely, affordably, and effectively.

More stories (and those Body-for-LIFE photos) coming soon.

If you liked this post, hit the subscribe button or share with a friend who still thinks creatine is just for bodybuilders.

And let me know in the comments—what’s in your supplement cabinet?

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Harvard’s Dr. Daniel Lieberman, who I’ve interviewed several times, explains this better than anyone. As persistence hunters, our ancestors survived by chasing prey over long distances, not in sprints, but through an alternating rhythm of running and walking. We didn’t need to be faster than the animals we hunted. We just had to be more efficient. Thanks to our upright posture, long legs, Achilles tendons, head stabilization, and most importantly, our ability to sweat and cool ourselves, humans are unmatched in endurance locomotion.
👉 A 2004 study by Bramble and Lieberman in Nature argued that humans evolved for endurance running, citing anatomical adaptations that support long-distance efficiency and cooling.
👉 Lieberman’s 2009 follow-up in Journal of Human Evolution reinforced that our ancestors' run/walk method enabled them to thrive as hunters in the heat of the African savanna.

That strategy still works today, especially if your “prey” is a finish line, a personal best, or just better health.

Christopher McDougall’s bestselling book Born to Run helped spark a movement (pun intended), tracing the story of the Tarahumara, a tribe that runs vast distances barefoot across rugged terrain, and reintroducing us to the idea that humans evolved as endurance machines. I had the chance to interview Eric Orton, the coach featured in Born to Run, on my podcast. He spoke about the biomechanics and mental resilience behind distance running, reinforcing the evolutionary and physiological truths I’ve discussed with Dr. Daniel Lieberman: that we were quite literally born to run… and walk.

I first came across the structured version of run/walk in the early 2000s when I interviewed Olympian Jeff Galloway. Jeff pioneered the run/walk method and even wrote the foreword to my book The Marathon Method. At the time, I was skeptical. Like many endurance athletes, I thought stopping to walk was only for beginners or those hitting the wall. But I started testing it, first during Ironman triathlons, walking through aid stations to take in fluids, cool down, and regroup. Then I brought it into my marathons. And everything changed.

Eventually, I began walking for just 10 seconds every mile. Not at mile 20, when most runners start to break down, but starting at mile one, or even before I got tired. That’s the key: you have to walk early and consistently, before fatigue sets in, to get the full benefit.

There’s even research to support this approach. A 2014 study in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport found that marathoners using the run/walk strategy finished with nearly the same times as continuous runners, but experienced significantly less fatigue and muscle soreness. (I believe many of these runners could have gone even faster using the run/walk method - I’ll explain exactly why in a future column.)
👉 Cejka et al. (2014) showed that strategic walk breaks reduced muscle damage and preserved performance—particularly when started early in the race.

At another marathon just three weeks after an Ironman, I ran my personal best, 2:54:44, and won the race. Yes, won. I took 10-second walk breaks every mile until mile 24, when a volunteer told me I was in second place and the leader was fading fast. I made the decision to push harder than ever before, hammered the final two miles, and passed him just before the final turn. After the finish, the third-place runner came up to me and said, “I can’t believe I couldn’t catch you, I saw you walking and still couldn’t close the gap.” He wasn’t happy. There’s no asterisk next to my finishing time that says “he walked.” Just the time. Just the win.

Run/walk comes in many forms. It can be five minutes running, one minute walking. Two and one. One and one. You can set intervals based on distance, heart rate, perceived exertion, or simply how you feel. There’s no one-size-fits-all, and that’s the beauty of it. I’ll break down some of the most effective interval formats in future columns, but here’s the simplest, most natural method, used by both our ancestors and me today:

Run until you're tired. Walk until you're recovered. Repeat.

And if you think run/walk is only for elites or Ironman athletes, let me share one of my favorite success stories, featured in my most recent book The Micro Workout Plan. A 50-year-old man was “gifted” a training package with me by his wife. When we met, he couldn’t run more than a minute without stopping, gasping for air. We trained together using the run/walk method, building gradually. That same man went on to run over a hundred races, including New York, Paris, and London. He became a Boston Marathon qualifier and ran it three years in a row, starting at age sixty. His marathon PR at sixty? A blistering 3:43. He’s since added biking tours around the world with his wife to his routine, most of them hundreds of miles long. proving that endurance and adventure can grow stronger with age. Not bad for someone who once couldn’t jog down the block.

Whether you’re chasing a personal record or just trying to lose weight, improve your cardiovascular health, or enjoy your workouts again, the run/walk method can help. Walkers can add short running (or jogging—yes, let’s bring back the “soft J”) intervals. Runners can use walk breaks to go longer, faster, and recover better. Everyone can benefit.

When it comes to health and performance, I always look at three things:

1. What evolution says

2. What empirical evidence shows

3. What people will actually do consistently in their everyday lives

And run/walk checks all three boxes. It’s not only science-backed and time-tested, it’s sustainable. It's human. It’s how we were built to move.

So if you’re out there chasing your own version of “prey” - whether it’s a marathon medal, lower blood pressure, or simply some peace and quiet, don’t be afraid to walk. It doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you’re doing what humans have done for millennia: moving forward, smartly and steadily, toward your goal.

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It seems like everywhere you scroll these days, there’s another ripped guy or glistening influencer in a bathing suit slowly lowering themselves into an expensive metal tub full of ice. Their abs are flexed, their jaw is clenched, and the caption is something like “Recover. Reset. Recharge.” #ColdPlungeLife

Let me be clear: I’m not anti-ice. I’m just pro-science. And the science, especially when it comes to cold water immersion (CWI) after strength training or other hard workouts, says… stop chilling out.

Been There, Dunked That

Fourteen years ago, when I was deep in Ironman training, I too jumped on the cold plunge train. Except back then, we didn’t have $10,000 designer tubs with Bluetooth temperature control and artisanal ice cube dispensers. We used metal garbage cans. I filled mine with water, dumped in bags of ice, and climbed in.

Like many endurance athletes, I believed it helped speed recovery after long, grueling workouts. It was part science, part ritual, part masochism.

Then I read the research.

The Cold, Hard Science

For the last decade, study after study has challenged the idea that icing—especially after resistance training—is beneficial. In fact, it may do the opposite. Here are a few highlights:

• Roberts et al. (2015) published a study in the Journal of Physiology showing that post-workout cold water immersion blunted muscle growth over a 12-week period. Participants who used CWI gained less muscle and strength compared to those who didn’t.

• Fyfe et al. (2019) found that cold exposure interfered with anabolic signaling in muscles, reducing the activation of mTOR—a key pathway for muscle protein synthesis.

• Yamane et al. (2006) showed that repeated CWI reduced long-term muscle adaptation, despite improving short-term soreness relief.

• Peake et al. (2017) concluded that while cold water may reduce inflammation temporarily, it delays muscle repair and regeneration in the long run.

• Maastricht University Trial (2025), covered in The Washington Post, showed that cold plunges immediately after lifting reduced blood flow and protein uptake in muscles—literally cutting off the supply chain for recovery and growth. You’re not boosting your recovery. You’re bottlenecking it.

• A Daily Telegraph report from earlier this year echoed this, with experts warning that regular cold immersion may blunt muscle and strength gains, even if cardio recovery isn’t as affected. Translation: if you’re trying to get jacked, icing is a fast track to staying average.

Even the RICE Guy Took It Back

You’ve probably heard of the RICE protocol, Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation, first introduced by Dr. Gabe Mirkin in 1978. It became gospel in sports medicine for decades.

Here’s the kicker: Dr. Mirkin now says he was wrong.

I repeat: the man who gave us the RICE acronym now advises against rest and icing, saying they may slow healing by preventing the body’s natural inflammatory response, a critical part of recovery.

I interviewed journalist Lindsay Berra (granddaughter of Yogi Berra and a force in her own right) on my podcast Fitness Disrupted, and we dove into this very topic. Her piece in Men’s Fitness, “The Cold, Hard Truth About Icing,” pulled no punches: icing may actually delay recovery, not promote it.

When I Tore My Hamstring…

About a year ago, I took a bad fall while running and tore my hamstring. The entire back of my leg turned black.

Did I ice it? Nope. Did I pop Advil? Not once. I let nature do what it was designed to do. I walked as much as I could tolerate. It hurt like hell for a few days, but within a week, I was back running. No ice, no inflammation-killing meds, no expensive compression sleeves. Just movement, patience, and a little faith in the body’s natural healing process.

From California Surf to Instagram Thirst Traps

Back in the day, California triathletes would sprint straight from their workouts into the Pacific Ocean. Did they have studies? No. Did it feel good? Absolutely. And that’s the point. Cold water can feel amazing - numbing sore legs, offering a mental reset, maybe even giving you a little post-workout buzz.

And let’s be honest: people say they feel great after a cold plunge… but I also think many feel great because they’re no longer in freezing cold water. Of course you feel better when you get out - you're no longer being mildly tortured by ice cubes.

Today, it’s less about jumping in the ocean and more about staging the perfect plunge pic. Half the cold tubs on Instagram look like Bond villain lairs. I’m convinced many people aren’t doing it for the recovery, they just want an excuse to pose shirtless (or in a sports bra) while pretending to meditate in a $7,000 stainless steel sarcophagus.

There May Be Brain Gains

Now, to be fair, there is growing research on the cognitive benefits of cold exposure. Studies suggest it may boost serotonin, decrease symptoms of depression, and trigger a dopamine surge. Wim Hof, the ice guru himself, has helped shine a light on this.

So if you’re doing it for the mental health perks? Totally reasonable. If it helps you feel more alive, shake off the fog, or smile through winter, go for it. Just don’t do it right after lifting if you care about maximizing gains or recovery.

Final Thoughts (Before You Plunge)

Cold plunges aren’t evil. I’m not here to take away your morning rituals or your TikTok content. But we have to separate what feels cool from what’s scientifically smart. If your goal is hypertrophy, strength, or athletic performance, the data is pretty clear: skip the ice bath right after your workout.

Save it for later. Or better yet, keep the tub, skip the plunge, and just use it to store protein shakes and sparkling water. Now that’s recovery I can get behind.

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A few months ago, during my daily bike rides and runs, I started noticing something different. Women everywhere were wearing what looked like… tactical gear? No, not prepping for battle - just walking. In weighted vests.

My first thought: Did I miss the memo about a neighborhood Spartan race? But then I saw more of them. And more. And I got curious.

A quick Google search pulled up headlines like:

• “The Best Fitness Hack You’re Not Doing”

• “Boost Bone Density While You Walk!”

• “Why Weighted Vests Are the Secret Weapon for Women Over 50”

The hook is always the same: strap on a weighted vest, take your usual walk, and reap the benefits of strength training, weight loss, bone building, and (why not) maybe even spiritual enlightenment. Sounds amazing, right?

Until you actually look at the science and the studies they cite.

I’ve Got Some Skin in the (Weighted) Game

For my podcast Fitness Disrupted 2.0 (originally Fitness Disrupted) I’ve interviewed the people behind some of these trends. I talked with Stephan Olander, founder of Omorpho, about their micro-loaded gear and the science behind it. I interviewed Jason McCarthy, co-founder of Go Ruck, and own not one but two Go Ruck backpacks along with 20 and 30 pound plates that I throw on for the occasional hike or walk with my two labs. I’ve also had a great conversation for the podcast with Michael Easter, author of The Comfort Crisis, who’s a huge advocate of rucking - and I am too. One of the reasons is evolutionary: we evolved and are built to carry heavy loads over long distances. It’s functional, natural movement.

So, I’m not anti-weighted gear. I’m anti-bad science.

Old Studies, New Clickbait

One of the most popular references in these glowing articles is Snow et al., a study from 2000, yes, pre-iPod, that followed postmenopausal women who jumped wearing weighted vests three times a week for five years. Five. Years. Of jumping. With a vest.

The articles imply this means you’ll build stronger bones just by strolling around the block with 10 extra pounds strapped to your torso. But that’s not what the study tested. At all.

Then there’s a 1998 study often mentioned (Weighted vest exercise improves indices of fall risk in older women). Sounds great - until you look closer. These women were doing lower-body strength exercises while wearing the vests. So yes, they got stronger. But don’t give the vest all the credit, they were still strength training.

Another favorite is a 2013 study that had postmenopausal women with osteoporosis walk on a treadmill for 30 minutes, three times a week, for six weeks. One group wore vests, the other didn’t. Both groups showed improved markers of bone metabolism. The only real difference? The vest group had better balance. That’s nice, but it’s not exactly the bone-building miracle being advertised.

Real-World Math: The 150-Pound Test Case

What about added calorie burn?

Let’s do some math. A 150-pound woman walking for an hour at 3.5 mph will burn around 292 calories. Studies show adding a 15-pound weighted vest (10% of her body weight) increases energy expenditure by about 8.5%, which equals ~25 extra calories per hour. That’s about half a banana. Maybe one bite of a protein bar.

So yes, you burn more. But let’s not pretend this is the metabolic equivalent of a hard run.

The Most Recent Study? Still Not Sold.

Want something more up-to-date? A June 2025 study published in JAMA Network Open tested whether wearing a weighted vest while losing weight could help older adults maintain bone density. This was the INVEST in Bone Health trial, and it compared three groups: weight loss alone, weight loss plus resistance training, and weight loss plus weighted vest use (7 hours/day!).

The result? No significant difference in hip bone density loss. In fact, all three groups lost about 1–2% of bone at the hip. The vest didn’t make it worse, but it didn’t stop the loss either. At best, it showed some potential in maintaining bone turnover markers, but again, not the kind of result these viral articles would have you believe.

The Upside… and the Trap

Now, if the vest gets you walking more, fantastic. That’s a huge win. Movement is medicine. Walking with a vest may also slightly increase core activation - especially if you’re going uphill or across uneven surfaces. There may be modest benefits to posture and balance, especially in older adults. Another big win.

But my big concern is this: women may believe that walking with a weighted vest replaces strength training. It doesn’t. Not even close.

Walking, vest or no vest, simply isn’t high-impact enough to stimulate real bone remodeling. And a few extra pounds on your upper body isn’t going to generate the mechanical loading your body needs to maintain or build muscle mass. There’s a reason squats and lunges still reign supreme in the bone-health and longevity world.

Follow the Money

One last thing: many of these articles include affiliate links. That means they make money if you click and buy the vest they’re recommending. That doesn’t make the info wrong, but it sure explains some of the enthusiasm.

Final Weigh-In

Wear a weighted vest if it makes your walks feel more purposeful. Throw on a Go Ruck backpack and go for a long hike - your body will thank you. Just don’t fall for the shortcut mentality.

There are no hacks when it comes to strength. No biohacks, no gear gimmicks. Just the basics, done consistently, over time. My “Excessive Moderation” mantra once again.

Weighted vests? They’re a tool. But they’re not the workout.

After decades of training CEOs, celebrities, professional athletes and everyday people, I had largely stepped away from hands-on coaching to focus on consulting for fitness companies, developing products and writing books. But when my son made his high school varsity hockey team, several parents approached me to run the team’s strength and conditioning program. I agreed, not just because I missed coaching, but because I saw an opportunity to do something different, and potentially very effective.

I hold a master’s degree in both Exercise Science and Sports Psychology. While most strength and conditioning programs focus exclusively on the physical: namely strength, speed and endurance, I’ve always believed that the psychological component is equally critical, especially when training adolescents. Motivation, confidence, focus, and team cohesion aren’t peripheral; they’re central to performance.

One of the most impactful aspects of our program had little to do with lifting weights. The facility we trained in happened to have a basketball hoop and half-court. I started each session by letting the boys play a few minutes of pickup. What began as a five-minute warm-up quickly revealed itself to be a powerful training tool. From a biomechanical perspective, basketball is an ideal pre-hockey activity: explosive lateral movement, plyometric jumping, sudden changes of direction, cardiovascular stimulation: all key performance attributes for hockey. But even more importantly, it was fun. The boys looked forward to it. They bonded over it. And that sense of joy and competition carried into every part of our workouts.

As sessions progressed, I lengthened the basketball warm-ups and began structuring workouts around group dynamics. Partner drills, small group circuits, then full-team challenges - all deliberately designed to build not just fitness, but trust, communication, and team identity. The goal wasn’t just to develop stronger players, it was to develop a stronger unit.

I used a periodized program grounded in sports science: foundational strength and aerobic capacity in the off-season, progressing to anaerobic intervals, explosive movement, and hockey-specific conditioning during the season. Every phase had a purpose. But just as important as the physical periodization was the psychological one: building mental resilience, emotional connection, and confidence over time.

For our final workout before the state championship, one of the team captains came in and asked, “Mr. Holland, can we just play basketball today?” I had already planned on it, and that’s exactly what we did. The physical work was done. What they needed wasn’t another hard session, it was to move, bond, and believe. At that point, we weren’t chasing gains - we were maintaining sharpness, managing fatigue, and strengthening the bonds that matter most under pressure.

They went on to win the State Championship, defeating an undefeated rival that hadn’t won a title since 1972.

Over the years, my methods have often been questioned. I’ve been told I’m not “hard enough” on clients and athletes. That my programs don’t push people far enough. That they’re too soft, too fun, too easy. When my son was in grade school, I ran an after-school program called Fit Kids, which I shut down after a few parents complained it wasn’t “bootcamp-style” enough.

For first graders.

The same criticism has followed me into endurance sports. I’ve written several books on marathon and triathlon training, and the feedback is often the same:

Not enough volume. Not hard enough. Too easy.

But here’s the thing—I’ve followed those very plans myself. And the results speak for themselves: 26 Ironman triathlon finishes all over the world, over 80 marathons and ultramarathons, including one overall marathon win. And I’ve done it all injury-free, and with a smile on my face at the finish line.

Real performance training is not just about sets and reps. It’s about mindset, motivation, and culture.

I’ve always trained the whole person, body and mind. Because the strongest athletes aren’t always the biggest or fastest: they’re the ones who enjoy the process, trust their teammates, and believe in themselves.

Sometimes, the smartest path to a hockey championship starts with a basketball… and a smile.

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