This week we're checking in from Andy's backyard. 

I just released Kettlebell Foundations, a beginner’s guide to training with kettlebells. If you’re getting into fitness for the first time and you’re looking for a comprehensive guide and instruction manual for kettlebells, head on over to zackhenderson.com/kettlebell-foundations. 

Andy put me on the spot to dish the details on my top 3 kettlebell exercises before chatting about creating autonomy and ownership between us as coaches, the programs we write, and the clients we serve. 

We have a lot of tools and exercises to choose from, but what does it mean for the client when they get to choose the exercises, the sets, reps, and so on? Does creating autonomy and shifting responsibility help our clients? We chat about that and more on this week’s episode. Grab a beer and enjoy!

What does it mean to be coached or be coachable? 

Andy and I are both coaches, and even though we have the tools, resources, and knowledge to write our own workout programs, we have each hired coaches in the past. 

There are a number of benefits to outsourcing our own coaching, and we each describe the things we learned from our respective experiences.

Next, there are a handful of popular programs by famous coaches out there. Andy and I talk about our experiences running ourselves through these programs and what we learned along the way, while picking out some commonalities that many successful workout programs share. 

Let’s call them “training secrets” that aren’t so secret, and attention ought to be paid to the devil in the details. Grab a beer and enjoy!

Social media loves soundbites, tweets, and memes... and they’re almost always unhelpful and possibly damaging. Nothing in fitness or nutrition is black and white: it is grey, nuanced… "it depends” as we say. 

It depends on who we’re talking about, what we’re talking about, and the application of the subject matter, and Andy and I chat about it. 

Next, for every Mr. Olympia; for every Olympic gold medalist; for every powerlifting champion competing at the highest level of physical achievement possible, there are thousands of us “mere mortals” who pursue our own upper limits of physical potential. 

What does it look like to chase down bigger weights, more miles, or more muscle? For every goal line we cross, whether it’s greater strength or more muscle, there’s a new goal post just yonder to strive for. What will it take to reach it? How far away is it? How long will we have to work for it? And is this never-ending pursuit for more juice worth the squeeze? Zack and I dive in and chat about reaching one’s ultimate, optimal best.

When you think of the gym and the equipment you use there, you often think of barbells, dumbbells, benches, machines, and plates. 

But there are many other tools at our disposal to help drive a training effect, like kettlebells, sandbags, farmer’s bars, tires, ropes, sleds, and yokes. 

These “unconventional tools” are less often found in your typical gym, which is a shame because they offer so many different benefits to your training. Andy and I talk about these tools, why we like them and how we use them with our clients and our own workouts, and some of the unforeseen benefits of adding these tools to your weekly rotation. 

Plus, a chance encounter with Dana Linn Bailey at Gym 5. Enjoy!

Andy and I chat about supplements today on the podcast, specifically those we like and encourage our clients to explore if it might benefit them, but more importantly, we discuss those supplements on the market whose marketing claims or ingredients might be suspect, unhelpful, or possibly dangerous. 

Not only that, but supplements *should* play only a small role in one’s diet, and we explore how and when you might add a supplement to your lifestyle and what to be on the lookout for along the way.

Coffee shops and steak houses exist despite anyone being able to make these things in their own home. Why?

The experience.

In this episode, Andy and I discuss what this means for future fitness and the fallout from the pandemic.  

The definition of Motivation: “the reason one has for acting or behaving in a particular way.” 

As coaches and trainees, Andy and I are often asked what motivates us to keep training – to keep showing up almost every day and hit the weights. 

In our teenage years, we might have been motivated by the allure of the ladies (spoiler alert – it didn’t work). Putting on some muscle and size back then was a means to puff our chests both physically and metaphorically (and maybe it’s that sometimes nowadays, too). 

Over the years our motivations for continuing to show up and sling weights has evolved – we are both strength nerds, reading, watching, and practicing everything strength training as an exploration of new frontiers of movement and as a way to improve our craft as coaches. 

Today, we are both largely motivated by the absolute upper limits of our physical (with a sprinkle of emotional and spiritual) bodies – achieving new levels of strength and movement we might have never thought possible. We often hear that people “lack the motivation” to strength train, and Andy and I talk about what that might mean. 

I’m of the opinion that motivation largely has an expiration date – that to achieve high levels of strength or low levels of body fat require consistent practice that long proceeds after motivation wanes or expires. Instead, we talk about creating an environment of routine, so that when you’re not “feeling it” you show up anyway. Grab a beer and join us on our favorite podcast to date.

Travis Pollen is a PhD in Health in Rehabilitation Sciences, coach, author, professor, and record holder in Paralympic swimming. 

This week, the three of us talk about bridging the gap between rehabilitation and performance, something that Andy and I are experiencing firsthand as we recover from our respective injuries. 

As coaches, we sometimes encounter speed bumps with our clients when it comes to acute or chronic injuries, and we often need to modify our programming to help keep our clients happy, healthy, and pain-free, so we each discuss how that might look in our respective environments.

We discuss the many benefits of regular training both before and after injury or surgery, and the positive outcomes of doing so. Injuries happen, and often we can work around them, but sometimes we have to refer out. We discuss the how’s, when’s, and why’s of doing so. 

Lastly, we invite Travis to discuss his views on core training, what he likes to do, and how that might have evolved over the years, and we compare our respective views as coaches on how we approach core training with our clients. Enjoy!

As you know by now, I had a skiing accident last month, breaking my right leg. 

Andy just couldn’t let an opportunity to trash-talk go to waste, so he constantly teased my chicken leg and how he was going to take this time to get stronger and more jacked than me. 

Karma struck back with vengeance. 

Andy tore his right bicep while deadlifting and faces many months of rehab. 

We make a fully functional, strong man... between the two of us.

In today’s episode, we talk about the injuries, how we’re dealing with them, and what our modified workouts will look like for the coming months.

Today, Andy and I discuss our approach to effective communication with our clients to ensure their wants, needs, and goals don’t go unattended. 

Andy even shares a trainwreck of a communication breakdown that he once had with a client. 

And finally, we both discuss how we communicate with the outside world: whether that’s with articles, Instagram, or YouTube... and what we hope to accomplish by putting our work out there for everyone to see. 

Enjoy!