I was listening to an episode of Peter Attia’s podcast which had a panel of 3 fitness experts on to discuss fitness, health, nutrition, injuries, training, aging and other related topics.
I was particularly interested because one of the panel members is Mike Boyle, a trainer with 45+years of experience who is a renowned expert in Functional Fitness. The other panelists were Gabrielle Lyon and Jeff Cavaliere.
I recognized Jeff as a trainer/influencer because YouTube pushed his videos at me incessantly for years. I was not a fan of his for the most part. Gabrielle I heard on other podcasts before. She is focused mainly on women’s fitness. I am not a fan of hers. She comes across to me as a huckster and click-bait driven influencer who promotes exercise and nutrition without ever mentioning (what appear to be obvious to me) cosmetic surgery and likely steroid use she uses to enhance her appearance.
Still, I wanted to hear what Mike had to say.
And he said a lot.
So did Jeff which surprised me. His depth of knowledge, his background as an MLB Team PT and his experience training people via his online business all made for a thoughtful and intellectually deep discussion.
I came away from this episode with many ideas to noodle on.
One of the biggest was that everything you do for fitness should be evaluated in terms of Risk vs. Reward. All four participants are middle aged, highly-active lifetime fitness people. All have suffered training injuries and setbacks. All have worked with numerous clients who experience similar issues. They discussed everything from motivation to aesthetics to longevity to strength to cardio and more.
If you’re a fitness nut like me, I highly recommend listening to this episode.
If you’re not, but want to get in better shape, it might give you some ideas of how to move forward.
As for me, I’ve already removed a number of exercises from my program based on Mike Boyle’s risk/reward continuum. The benefit of the exercises don’t justify the risk of injury for an aging athlete like me. Sometimes I need to look at what I’m doing through another (wiser) person’s eyes. If I had done this a few years, I might have avoided my recent series of injuries and setbacks.
I’m 57. Apparently there is still time for me to learn some new tricks.