You’ve probably seen powerlifters deadlifting or squatting with chains draped from their barbells.

It looks and sounds badass — but it’s not just for show.

Putting chains (as well as bands) on your barbell is called accommodating resistance, and it can be a useful tool to help you break through lifting plateaus and hit new PRs.

As you lift a barbell to which chains have been attached, the chains gradually rise off the floor, increasing the load as the barbell gets higher.

You can also get this variable resistance by using elastic bands. You attach one end of the band to the barbell and the other end to an anchor near the floor. At the bottom of the lift, the bands are slack, but as you raise the barbell, the band stretches and increases tension, making the barbell feel heavier as you get to the top of the lift.

Back in my powerlifting days, my barbell coach, Matt Reynolds, incorporated chains and banded lifts into my programming quite a bit. I really enjoyed them because they added variety to my training and helped me get past some sticking points in my lifts that had plagued me for months.

To help walk us through the benefits of accommodating resistance and how to incorporate it into your programming, I hopped on the horn with Matt to get his insights and advice.

A Brief History of Accommodating Resistance

The idea of varying resistance through a lift’s range of motion has been around since the early days of strength training. Early 20th-century strongmen would use chains in their exercises to vary the load during the lift. In the mid-20th century, Soviet powerlifting legend Vasily Alekseyev would do his lifts in waist-high water to add some accommodating resistance to his exercise.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that accommodating resistance became a popular tool among powerlifters. And the man who had the biggest impact in spreading its use was Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell.

Simmons began attaching heavy chains to barbells to accommodate the body’s changing leverage throughout the lift. He later started using elastic bands with his lifters as an alternative way to provide accommodating resistance.

Why Use Accommodating Resistance

Here’s what accommodating resistance offers:

Matches Your Strength Curve. The biggest reason you would use accommodating resistance is that it makes the lift match your strength curve: you’re stronger at the top of lifts like the squat and bench press than you are at the bottom.

As you lift a barbell outfitted with accommodating resistance, the chains gradually rise off the floor or the bands stretch, increasing the load as the barbell goes higher and higher and getting the heaviest at the top of the movement. Thus, the lift is lighter at the bottom, where you’re weakest, and heavier at the top, where you’re strongest. “By increasing the resistance as you move into the stronger parts of your lift, you recruit more muscle fibers, which helps with strength and hypertrophy,” Matt told me.

Increases Power and Bar Speed. “Accommodating resistance forces compensatory acceleration,” Matt says. “You’re kind of in a race to the top. The bar gets heavier as you lift it, so it teaches you to push harder all the way through.” This develops explosive strength by requiring a high rate of continuous force.

Overcomes Sticking Points. At some point in your training career, you’ll discover you have sticking points — places in the lift where you can’t seem to go any further. For example, I had a period where I was having trouble locking out my bench press. I started adding chains to the lift and because the barbell got heavier as it moved up, I was able to really train getting through lockout. Once I took the chains off, the barbell just felt super light throughout the lift.

As Matt explains, because accommodating resistance overloads the parts of a lift where you’re strong and keeps the weight light where you’re weak, you get “more velocity going into the sticking point; you often get higher up and in a better leverage position before the sticking point really catches up with you.”

Challenges your muscles in a different way. Accommodating resistance, especially in the form of bands, forces you to stabilize the bar. It also improves bar control and requires you to stay tight throughout the lift.

Chains vs. Bands: Pros, Cons, and Best Uses

There are two ways to add accommodating resistance: chains and elastic bands. Each one has its pros and cons:

Chains. Chains provide a resistance curve that deloads and loads in a more linear way compared to bands. As Matt explained, “They don’t actively pull down on the bar; standard gravity applies.” That makes them easier to control and more forgiving. Chains are easy to set up. Just hang some chains from the bar. (I’ll show you how below.) They’re ideal for beginners and excellent for matching the strength curve while still helping with sticking points.

Bands. Bands offer more extreme variable resistance. “Bands actually increase the speed of gravity,” Matt said. “What I mean by that is if you let go of the bar, it would fall faster than gravity alone because the band is actively pulling the bar down.” Bands also introduce horizontal forces, so if your form is off, you’ll know. They’ll yank the bar out of alignment, making them less forgiving but more effective for exposing weaknesses.

They’re also more intense, which makes them better for advanced lifters seeking explosiveness. The other upside of bands is they are cheaper and quieter than chains. You can use bands at a public gym without causing a clanging metallic ruckus.

One of the downsides of bands, I think, is that they’re kind of a pain to set up. You need a squat rack that will allow you to use band pegs. And you have to make sure you place the bands on the barbell evenly so that everything remains nice and smooth during the lift and you’re not getting pulled in different directions.  

When to Use Chains or Bands

Start with chains if you’re new to accommodating resistance. They’re more forgiving and help you build confidence in your lockout without compromising form. Bands are better for experienced lifters who want to train explosively and work on bar control and speed.

“When you’re really trying to get fast and explosive, bands are probably the better choice,” Matt noted. “But for hypertrophy and learning to get through sticking points, chains are awesome.”

How to Program With Accommodating Resistance

Here’s Matt’s guidance on programming:

• Use accommodating resistance no more than once per lift per week.
• Favor chains if longevity is the goal; bands for short bursts of explosive training.
• Use bands for 4–6 weeks before deloading and taking a break from them.
• Use chains for 6–8 weeks before deloading and taking a break from them.

The reason there’s a differential in the length of time you can train with chains versus bands is that bands are harder on the body while chains are easier.

Use Accommodating Resistance in Your Supplemental Lifts

Matt thinks one of the best ways to add accommodating resistance is to use it with your supplemental lifts. That’s how he programmed it for me when I was using it regularly.

A sample week of barbell training with accommodating resistance might look like this:

• Upper Day 1: Main Lift — bench press; Supplemental Lift — chain shoulder press
• Lower Day 1: Main Lift — squat; Supplemental Lift — chain deadlift
• Upper Day 2: Main Lift — shoulder press; Supplemental Lift — chain bench press
• Lower Day 2: Main Lift — deadlift; Supplemental Lift — chain squat

Setting Up Your Barbell for Chain and Band Work

To get the full benefit of accommodating resistance, setup matters. Here’s how to do it right:

Chains

I got my chains from Rogue Fitness. I got the 5/8″ chain kit, and it comes with:

• (2) 15LB lengths of 5/8″ chain with carabiners. I’d get two more 15LB lengths of the 5/8” chain, so you’ll have 30 pounds of total chains to work with.
• (2) 4′ lengths of 1/4″ chain with carabiners. This is your leader chain that you’ll hang from your barbell. Once you’ve got that leader chain hanging from the barbell, you’ll hang the heavier 15LB chain lengths on it.

In addition to a chain set, get yourself some EZ Straps. They make attaching chains for deadlifts a breeze. More on that in a second.

Secure the Chains to the Bar

For bench, squat, or press, you’re going to loop the small leader chain around the barbell sleeve, like so.

Then attach the big ol’ heavy chains to the leader chain with a carabiner. Attach the carabiner to the leader chain so that when you’re at the top of your lift, one or two chain links should still be on the floor.

Should look like the above when all is said and done.

For the deadlift, just place your EZ Straps on the deadlift bar and thread your chains through the rings.

Super easy!

Bands

In my opinion, bands are kind of a pain in the butt to set up. If you don’t set them up evenly on both sides, your lift is going to be screwy.

You can also use bands on weight machines if you’re a machine guy.

Deadlift

Anchor the bands to band pegs in your squat rack. You’ll need four pegs like above. If you don’t have band pegs, you can loop them around heavy dumbbells, but anchored bands are more secure.

Start with light or medium bands. When you set up your bands, the band should have slight tension, even at the bottom of the lift. This will typically require you to double up the bands.

Squat

You’ll also need band pegs for the squat. Place the band pegs in the middle of the rack where your midfoot would be when you unrack and walk back the weight.

Remember, bands pull down harder than gravity, so you gotta stay tight and controlled during the lowering phase.

By incorporating accommodating resistance, you can train more explosively, recruit more muscle fibers, and bust through your sticking points.

And when you’re using chains, you’ll look like a badass doing it.

Give it a try and soon you might be hitting a new PR.  

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Planet Fitness — and gyms like it — have long been the butt of jokes in the fitness world. Full of purple decor, “lunk alarms,” free pizza nights, and “judgment-free zones,” but lacking in barbells, squat racks, and deadlift platforms, it’s known as the kind of place in which serious athletes and dedicated lifters wouldn’t be caught dead. Planet Fitness has a rep for being the kind of gym fitness newbies join in January, aimlessly putz around in for a few weeks without changing their body, and then stop going to — while continuing to pay for a membership that is notoriously hard to cancel.

That was basically my take on Planet Fitness for a long time.

Though I had once been a member of one nearly twenty years ago — when Kate and I were first married and couldn’t afford anything else — I had subsequently become the kind of garage-gym-training barbell zealot who looked down my nose at so-called “globo-gyms.”

But, in middle age, I’ve been changing my mind about some things; for example, while I used to be a free-weights-only purist, I now think fitness machines can play a healthy role in building strength and muscle.

That got me wondering if I’d also misjudged Planet Fitness and similar gyms.

So recently, I decided to return to Planet Fitness for the first time in a couple decades to see what kind of training you can actually get done in a cheap globo-gym. I got a day pass to a nearby location to check it out and do a workout.

The experience surprised me.

Here’s my report.

Note: Because the internet has made us all so damned jaded and cynical, this is NOT a sponsored post for Planet Fitness. I have no relationship with them and have not received a dime from them. To get the day pass, I had to fork over my phone number and email, and I am now being bombarded with promotional texts and emails from Planet Fitness. Sacrifices must be made for journalism! I’m using Planet Fitness as a stand-in for all chain gyms (like 10Gym) that offer cheap monthly membership fees.

My Return to Planet Fitness: First Impressions

The Planet Fitness I visited sits in a strip mall and once housed a Walmart many years back.

Signing up was a breeze. I told the guy I just wanted to train for the day, and he said they had a free day pass for potential new members that I could use.

I said I wasn’t interested in joining, just training for the day.

“That’s cool. You can still use the free day pass. Have a great workout!” he replied. No upsell. No pushing me to join.

Nice.

Had I joined up, I could have bought a year’s membership for $15 a month, plus a $59 start-up fee and a $49 annual fee. Added altogether, that comes out to $24 a month for a year. It’s a good deal; many gyms are double and even quadruple that.

I walked around the facility to get a lay of the land.

My overall first impression of Planet Fitness after not visiting in nearly twenty years?

Surprisingly impressed.

This Planet Fitness was really clean and well-maintained — cleaner and better maintained than the $75-a-month gym I belonged to before building my garage gym.

Even the bathrooms/locker rooms were really clean.

I didn’t see anything about pizza night, but I wouldn’t be opposed to a slice of Papa John’s after a training session as long as it fits my macros. Pizza is a decent post-workout food — a nice balance of carbs, protein, and fat.

They still have the “lunk alarm.” It never went off while I was there. I imagine it rarely, if ever, does; it’s more branding symbol than disciplinary device.

And honestly, as a curmudgeonly 40-something, I’m glad Planet Fitness has a rule against people being loud while working out. While there’s evidence to suggest that grunting and yelling can slightly improve your athletic performance, you have to balance that modest boost against annoying and distracting other people. One of the tradeoffs of working out in a communal space is that you’re honor-bound to act as a considerate communal citizen.  

Lunks who make a bunch of noise while training are, in the words of Mark Rippetoe, disrespectful “ostentatious, histrionic pussies, that are trying to make noise to call attention to themselves.”

I’m not a fan of dropping weights, either, unless you’re doing Olympics lifts.

As far as that third potential lunk-alarm-triggering infraction, I’m not sure how you judge whether someone is judging and if/how that’s enforced.

So overall, I find the idea of creating an alarm to police what should be implicit etiquette silly, but tolerable.

Now, what about the equipment?

Better than I remembered.

While they are emblazoned in a garish purple primer, there were plenty of machines for every body part you’d want to train. Most of it was Precor, but they also had some Hammer Strength machines. All of the machines were in great condition. They looked new. Here are the machines you’ll find at most PF or 10Gyms:

• Chest press machine
• Shoulder press machine
• Pec deck/reverse fly machine
• Shoulder lateral raise machine
• Lat pull-down machine
• Seated row machine
• Leg press and extension machine
• Hamstring curl machine
• Hack squat machine
• Bicep curls and tricep extension machine
• Calf raise machine

You can create a program that works your entire body with all those machines.

Besides the machines, PF had several cable towers where you could do lat pull-downs and tricep pushdowns. There was a functional trainer (which we’ve written about before).

Planet Fitness’ dumbbell selection was impressive. Their dumbbells were from American Barbell and felt nice in my hands. You could create a full-body workout with just the dumbbells they have.

While they don’t have squat racks, they do have Smith machines. I’m not a huge fan of Smith machines (especially for bench press), but they’re a decent option for squats, RDLs, rows, and lunges.

And, of course, they had plenty of treadmills and elliptical machines where you could do Zone 2 cardio while watching Columbo.

In addition to the absence of squat racks, there are indeed no barbells or deadlift platforms.

But, you’ve still got everything you need to create a well-rounded fitness program and get jacked in the process.

The Science of Muscle Growth Doesn’t Care About Your Gym’s Branding

Here’s the thing about muscle growth: it doesn’t care if your gym looks like Barney the Dinosaur, whether you’re using barbells or machines, or whether you’re paying $15 or $100 a month for a gym membership.

Your muscles respond to mechanical tension and progressive overload. Period.

When you subject a muscle to sufficient mechanical tension and then allow it to recover with adequate nutrition and rest, it grows. This process is the same whether you’re using a 500-pound barbell or a leg press machine with the pin set at 300 pounds.

Research confirms this. Studies have found that free weights and machines are equally effective in increasing strength and muscle mass. As long as you’re getting adequate mechanical tension to stimulate muscle growth and are progressively overloading your muscles workout to workout, you’ll get bigger and stronger . . . even if you use bright purple weight machines.

A Sample Routine You Can Use at a Cheap Globo-Gym

So you’ve got everything you need to get jacked at Planet Fitness or 10Gym.

I had a great upper-body workout while I was there. Got a fantastic pump with that purple Barney the Dinosaur equipment.

Below is a four-day upper/lower split you could do at any Planet Fitness across the country:

Day 1: Upper (this is the exact workout I did on my visit to PF)

• Machine Chest Press: 3 sets of 8-12 reps
• Seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press: 3 sets of 10-15 reps
• Lat Pull-Downs: 3 sets of 8-12 reps
• Machine Shoulder Lateral Raise: 3 sets of 12-15 reps
• Pec Deck: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Machine Bicep Hammer Curl: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Cable Tricep Pushdown: 3 sets of 10-12 reps

Day 2: Lower (Quad focus)

• Smith Machine RDL: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Hack Squat: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Bulgarian Split Squat: 3 sets of 8-12 reps
• Seated Leg Extensions: 3 sets of 12-15 reps
• Smith Machine Calf Raises: 3 sets of 12-15 reps

Day 3: Upper

• Machine Shoulder Press: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Hammer Strength Machine Press: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Machine Seated Row: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Face Pulls: 3 sets of 12-15 reps
• Dumbbell Curls: 3 sets of 12-15 reps
• Dips: 3 sets of 10-12 reps

Day 4: Lower

• Smith Machine Squat: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Single Leg Dumbbell RDLs: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Leg Press: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Machine Leg Curls: 3 sets of 12-15 reps
• Glute Machine: 3 sets of 12-15 reps
• Machine Seated Calf Raises: 3 sets of 10-15 reps

I’d do this Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. I’d do cardio on Wednesday and Saturday.

You can also use this prompt for ChatGPT; it created a really solid upper/lower split for me:

You are an expert fitness trainer who specializes in hypertrophy. Create an upper/lower 4-day split using equipment that you can find at Planet Fitness gyms. Goal is to pack on as much muscle as possible.

If your budget or circumstances lead you to Planet Fitness or 10Gym, go for it. Train hard, be consistent, focus on progressive overload, and you’ll be surprised by what you can achieve in that purple and yellow judgment-free zone.

The iron doesn’t care where you lift it. And neither should you.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Note: This is a rebroadcast.

Do you have a goal to lose weight? If so, you’re probably thinking about how you need to exercise more. And that can certainly help. But what about the 23 hours a day you’re not at the gym? How much you move during those hours — from walking to the mailbox to fidgeting at your desk — can be just as important in winning the battle of the bulge.

Here to explain the importance of what’s called non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT, is Dr. James Levine, a professor, the co-director of the Mayo Clinic’s Obesity Solutions Initiative, the inventor of the treadmill desk, and the author of Get Up!: Why Your Chair Is Killing You and What You Can Do About It. James explains how much more sedentary we are than we used to be and what happens to your body when, as the average American does, you spend two-thirds of your day sitting. He shares how doing the lightest kinds of physical activity, even standing more, can help you lose a significant amount of weight and improve other aspects of health, from your sleep to your mood. And we talk about how to easily incorporate more NEAT into your day.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• Role of Nonexercise Activity Thermogenesis in Resistance to Fat Gain in Humans — James’ overfeeding study
• AoM Article: The Digestive Power of an After-Dinner Walk
• AoM Podcast #552: How to Optimize Your Metabolism
• AoM Article: The Importance of Building Your Daily Sleep Pressure

Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)

Listen to the episode on a separate page.

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Read the Transcript

Brett McKay: Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Do you have a goal to lose weight? If so, you’re probably thinking about how you need to exercise more, and that can certainly help. But what about the 23 hours a day you’re not at the gym? How much you move during those hours, from walking to the mailbox to fidgeting at your desk, can be just as important in winning the battle of the bulge.

Here to explain the importance of what’s called non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT, is Dr. James Levine, a professor, the co-director of the Mayo Clinic’s Obesity Solutions Initiative, the inventor of the treadmill desk, and the author of Get Up, Why Your Chair Is Killing You and What You Can Do About It. James explains how much more sedentary we are than we used to be, what happens to your body when you spend half of your day sitting.

He shares how doing the lightest kinds of physical activity, even standing more, can help you lose a significant amount of weight and improve other aspects of your health, from your sleep to your mood. And we talk about how you can easily incorporate more NEAT into your day. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/neat.

All right. James Levine, welcome to the show.

Dr. James Levine: Thank you so much for having me, Brett. So you have spent your career researching obesity, particularly how our physical activity levels can contribute to how trim we are or how fat we are. When it comes to the way our body burns or uses calories, you’ve broke it down in your work, and there’s basically three ways our bodies burn calories. What are those three ways our body uses calories?

Yeah, the three basic ways we burn calories are there is the basal metabolism. Basal metabolism accounts for about 60% of the total. The bigger you are, the bigger your basal metabolism, or more specifically, the greater your lean body mass, the greater your basal metabolism. Now what’s important is, yes, it’s actually the majority burn, but you can’t change it. So moving on, the next one is the thermic effect of food. It accounts for about 11% of the total. Now, those are the calories you expend when you convert your meal into intermediary metabolites like glycogen and glucose.

So, if you have three meals a day, you’re gonna have three thermic effects of food. It accounts for about 11% of the total. Guess what? You can’t really change it. Now, the remaining component, where we’ve done 60, we’ve done 10. So the remaining component is about 30% on average of the calorie burn is through activity. Activity is either non-exercise activity or putting on your lycra spandex shorts. I know, Brett, I think you adore those and going off for a run.

We all know what exercise is, but most people around the world actually don’t take purposeful exercise at all. So all of their calorie burn through activity is through non-exercise activity. And in terms of calories, we call that non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And Brett, as a micro sidebar, if I may, even if you do go and do pilates three times a week or whatever that may be, when you actually work out how many calories you burn doing those three classes, which are 30 minutes, and you’ve done the three times a week, you’ve driven there, and so on and so forth. That only averages out to about 100 calories a day, and that’s if you’re having a proper workout.

Dr. James Levine: And so really, for nearly everybody listening to the podcast, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis are the calories you burn through daily energy activity.

Brett McKay: So, okay, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, shorthand, it’s NEAT. It’s called NEAT.

Dr. James Levine: NEAT.

Brett McKay: So basically, it’s just anytime you move during the day, like I’m standing up while doing this interview, talking to you, I’m gesticulating. That is NEAT, correct?

Dr. James Levine: NEAT are the calories you burn throughout the day. That is exactly correct. And I’m also standing up, Brett. There we go. Twin standards. But yeah, it’s all those calories you burn throughout the day. And it’s the calories you burn sort of as you get out of bed and go make coffee and go and collect the mail from the mailbox. It’s the mooching around you do during your day. It’s even sort of the tapping on the table as you’re waiting for the website to upload. And it’s sort of chopping up vegetables in the evening as you’re making your dinner. It’s wandering around the supermarket. It’s all those things you do that aren’t sleeping and eating.

Brett McKay: And how many calories, you’ve figured this out… Like how many calories do we burn in a typical NEAT activity? So if we’re just walking from the couch to the kitchen or we’re doing laundry, like what do we, like how much does it actually burn?

Dr. James Levine: So let’s think about that. First of all, as you know, what’s your NEAT for the day, and then how do you actually get to that number? So as we sort of agreed, it’s about 30% of your calories throughout the day. So that’s gonna be about, for an average person, about 700 calories. Now, what’s really, really interesting about NEAT is if you sort of look at this, if you compare 100s of people, the data set is 576 people living in high-income countries.

What you can see is actually an astonishing variation. Some people will burn 2000 calories a day more NEAT than other people. Example, if you happen to be a mail person delivering mail on foot throughout your day, or you work in agriculture, you can actually be burning 2000 calories a day more through your NEAT than if you’re actually sitting behind your desk all day long and then sitting in the evening in your rather comfy armchair.

Now, how does that actually compute? Now, what’s most important about all of this is that the sort of the biggest way of burning calories through your NEAT is to get off your bottom and walk. And I don’t necessarily mean sort of striding around, I mean mooching around. So if you get up and just walk at one mile an hour, which we call shopping speed, that’s sort of the speed when you’re going through TJ Maxx looking for the best deal. You’re walking on average about one mile an hour. You double your energy expenditure. You’re burning an extra 100 calories an hour.

So, you can immediately appreciate if you spend two hours online doing your shopping, sitting on your bottom versus mooching around at the mall for a couple of hours, there’s 200 calories right there. Now, if you walk a little bit faster at two miles an hour, you’re at 150 calories an hour. So now, Brett, you and I are both upstanding as we’re doing this podcast. We could either sit down absolutely statically still and burn almost nothing above basal. Or we could sort of stroll at about two miles an hour, which is the speed of a walk and talk meeting, and burn 150 calories each.

And so, when you actually compare people with very high NEAT to people with very low NEAT, people with very low NEAT are sitting on their bottoms all day. People with the highest NEAT are up mooching around, doing stuff on their feet, whether that’s at work or at play.

Brett McKay: All right, today, what’s the typical amount of NEAT that most Americans get? I think you said 700 calories?

Dr. James Levine: Yeah, that would be a reasonable number right there. But again, as you’re listening to this, remember the key thing, Brett, is that this is highly variable. So as you’re listening to this podcast, and you’re somebody sort of a bit like my job, which is 100% behind a computer screen every single day of the week, then you know intuitively that that’s too much sitting. And I don’t know if you’re aware of this now, if you look at job postings, they will even put as a warning on the job posting, this job requires excessive sedentary time. It’s actually extraordinary.

On the other hand, if you happen to have a job, whether that’s working in a warehouse, whether that’s working in a bakery, whether that’s working in fields, whether that’s sort of something much more ambulatory, that could even sort of be a greeter at Walmart, if you like, where you’re also mooching around. You can imagine having a NEAT five, six, 700 calories a day more than the person confined to a sedentary job.

Brett McKay: So there’s been a lot of talk about rising obesity rates in the United States, and there’s been different arguments put forth about what the cause is. It’s people are eating more, people are eating more sugary foods, people are eating more fatty foods. And you highlight research, but oftentimes it gets overlooked is that people are just moving less. Do we know like how much less we are experiencing NEAT in America today?

Dr. James Levine: Yeah. If you go back sort of 200 years to the Industrial Revolution, people moved from agricultural environments into the cities. And then what happened, of course, is there were production lines in the big factories. And then what happened, what, in the 1950s or thereabouts, people started sitting down working behind desks. And in fact, office desks were actually designed including the chair with the wheels, to stop people getting up and moving because the ergonomists back then believed that if you could stop people getting up and walking, they would actually be more productive if they sat behind their desk all day long. They were wrong.

But, that is exactly sort of how things have evolved to push us down in our chairs. And are we sitting too long? Oh, my goodness. Yes, we are. How do I know that? Is it just because of the rising obesity rates that you talk of? And there are really good data to the effect that we have sat progressively more and more and more over the last 200 years. But in fact, our calorie intake has not increased substantially. The only data showing that it has are actually from Australia.

So yeah, our calorie intake has been constant, but it’s too much for the degree of inactivity we have. And it’s not Brett, just about obesity. There are 27 other chronic diseases and conditions associated with sitting too much. And that means things like diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, even some types of cancer, and of course, musculoskeletal problems. And so, yes, on the other hand, you may be listening to this podcast and smiling. It’s quite interesting, but it’s bigger than that. It’s really serious stuff. And it’s not just our bodies we’re hurting. We’ve set up a society whereby our kids are gonna ultimately receive the world we’ve created for them.

Brett McKay: Yeah, I think it’s interesting you point out this lack of activity, physical activity on a daily basis is probably driving the obesity, a big factor in driving the obesity. You talk about, if you even look at office work, you talk about this in one of your books. If you look at office work 50 years ago compared today, you did a lot more moving in the office than today. You had to move even if you were just doing a desk job.

Dr. James Levine: This is a 100% correct. I think back to sort of when I started in the day. I’ll give you a fantastic example. My very first job was working for a really famous professor called Professor Davies, who is an osteoporosis professor. And of course, as you may be aware, osteoporosis is growing quicker and quicker, partly due to the lack of activity. And she asked me to gather papers about a certain document she was writing for the World Health Organization. I said, I’d love to.

Now, those papers were scientific articles. And in order to gather them, I kid you not, I literally had to get on my bicycle and cycle across London to probably one of 15 different libraries to gather all the articles she needed. Yes, it took a lot of time. But my goodness, I’d come into her office, sweat pouring down my back. Today, click, click, click, click, click, it’s done. And just taking that simple example, all of us listening who are of a certain age, remember how difficult things used to be where we used to have to go and get resources.

We used to… We even have to sort of walk to the printer, which was actually in the printing room. Yeah. Now we barely… We can actually spend our entire day when you think about it in the office at work. And if I need my lunch, click, click, click, DoorDash right to my desk and get home, drive through, click, click, click, Pizza at my door, and on we go. And if you sort of step back and actually think about how much time I spend sitting every day, if you think about it, what’s really interesting is you can’t really imagine a world where you don’t spend it sitting because it’s sort of a subsidiary symptom of how we actually live.

And so you don’t sort of analyze, Oh, I’m sitting a lot at the moment. You just live your life, you see. And so this is what’s happened. It sort of crept up on us. And all of a sudden, we’ve all become these terribly sedentary and rather unwell and sort of slightly blue, sedentary office workers, both in the office and at home.

Brett McKay: When some people, or I think when most people notice that I’m gaining some weight, I notice that I don’t move around all that much ’cause I have an office job that doesn’t allow me to move around all that much. They think, well, I can take care of this with just diet and exercise. But you argue that diet and exercise will never be enough to compensate for the lack of NEAT. The problem with dieting, just reducing calories, is that you can’t do that forever.

So, let’s say you reduce your calories and you do lose weight. Because you’ve reduced the amount of calories you’re consuming. But in order to continue the weight loss with calorie reduction, you have to decrease the calories even more because you’ve likely decreased your metabolic, overall metabolic rate, resting metabolic rate ’cause you’re smaller. So your body requires fewer calories. And so, it gets to a point where it becomes unsustainable. And I think…

Dr. James Levine:Let me jump in there, if I may, please. ‘Cause you’ve touched on a really interesting point. Not only is everything you just said correct, but it’s even sort of more subtle than that, if I may please. When somebody loses weight through caloric restriction, through cutting their calories down, yeah, body fat is disseminated. Somebody can also lose some lean body mass and body weight declines on a lower calorie intake. The trouble with this is the body is not a static system. The body, brilliant in its design, adjusts and actually becomes more efficient.

So in fact, once you’re at that lower caloric intake, the body is working more efficiently, making it actually more difficult to lose more weight. So you’re not even dealing with a sort of a simple mathematic is I’ve decreased my calories in, I’m now going to be able to maintain a lower body weight easier. That actually isn’t true because the body will sort of counter-regulate to make it more difficult to maintain your body weight.

Brett McKay: And then also exercise just relying on focused exercise activities to offset the amount of being sedentary. As you said earlier, it’s not gonna do much in the long run ’cause you might just burn 100, 200, 300 calories and that can’t make up for being sedentary every other hour you’re awake.

Dr. James Levine: Purposeful exercise for the sake of improving your health, like going to the gym or something like that, is fantastic if you like to do it. Let’s be clear about that. If you like to go to the gym, keep doing it, please. It’s really good for you. It’s really good for your health. But very interestingly, again, for even people who go to the gym, the harm associated with sedentariness, as you say, all the other time that you’re not at the gym, which is basically 95% of your week, the harm of sedentariness is still not eliminated.

So, if you go to the gym, great. But if you’re sedentary, you’re sedentary. And if you’re sedentary, it’s causing you harm.

Brett McKay: I feel like in the last decade or so, people, whether… You’re talking about dedicated exercise or just physical activity in general, people have been kind of down on physical activity as a method of weight management. There’s this idea out there that you can’t exercise your way or burn your way to weight loss. Diet is what really matters. If you move more at some times, you’re just going to slow down. At other times, your body’s gonna find ways to just compensate for that extra activity somehow.

But you did a study that proved, Yes, activity can keep the pounds off. It was this really complex study. You basically got a bunch of people, including yourself, and then you overfed them 1000 calories a day. And then you just watched what happened. Who gained weight and who lost weight. So walk us through that study. And what did you learn from this study?

Dr. James Levine: Yeah, Brett, it was extraordinary. It was called the Great Overfeeding Experiment. And that is exactly what we did. But I have to tell you, this wasn’t done using a computer watch or guessing. This was done meticulously in metabolic laboratories at Mayo Clinic. It was a big, big deal. Every single food item was weighed and measured chemically. Every single movement was captured. Every calorie burned was analyzed. And even how people change their body fat was measured using precise technology down to a few 100 grams.

It was extraordinary work. A huge team of people helped do it. And what we found were two things that I think are really important. You can take a group of people, none of whom have obesity, and you can expose all of them to 1000 calories a day of overfeeding for months on end. And the extraordinary thing, first of all, is this, one person can take nearly all of those extra thousand calories and deposit it in body fat. That person is super prone, almost like a sponge absorbing water, to developing excess body fat.

On the other hand, another person can receive the same amount of excess food and somehow magically through their brain get up and start spontaneously moving. Their NEAT can increase for extra 1000 calories they’ve received. Their NEAT can increase 700 extra calories a day through movement, not going to the gym, through movement. 700 calories extra a day. On one hand, you’ve got somebody who seems to absorb every extra gram of food and deposit it in their body fat.

On the other hand, you’ve got somebody who you can overfeed a 1000 calories a day and gains almost no body fat because they switch on their NEAT. They get up and they move. So what you realize is, first of all, some people are really predisposed to gaining obesity. Yeah, we all know that and I’m sure some of your people listening are nodding their heads right now. But other people have this capacity from inside of the brain to get up and move so much more that they don’t gain any weight with overfeeding. And they never went to a gym. So that’s the first thing. Now what’s the second thing? The second thing is probably even more important than that.

The second thing is, if you are one of those people nodding your head right now, if you’re one of those individuals who has a tremendous susceptibility to gaining excess body weight, as soon as you sniff extra food, what you realize is that the body is designed in such a way that you can not gain more body weight. You cannot gain excess body weight and develop obesity if you are up and you are moving and your body has the capacity to do this. And you can even burn up to, if you like, 700 calories a day extra based on those data. So it’s a beautiful idea. You can win. You don’t need to go to the gym.

You can get up and move 100s of extra calories a day, whether that’s converting a standard meeting at work to a walk and talk meeting, whether that’s converting shopping online to actually shopping by foot, whether that’s getting your groceries delivered to your door from the supermarket, or actually going to the supermarket and physically choosing it. You can integrate movement into your day, so much so to stave off excess body weight, and you can even burn up to an extra 700 calories a day doing it.

Brett McKay: We’re gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Did you all figure out what causes some people to have that natural tendency to, when they consume more calories, they just start moving more naturally and others don’t do that? Is there a gene?

Dr. James Levine: Yeah, we spent a lot of time on that. And again, what’s fascinating is this. Think about it for a second. So what we did in that experiment is we got completely healthy, normal volunteers and we overfed them. We checked that they took every single extra calorie that they were given. We measured that. We even measured their urine in their stool, I should tell you. We had freezers full of poop. And what we then measured was that people responded to that by increasing their NEAT, their movement throughout their day. If you think about it for a second, how did people know to do that? It had never been discovered before.

I mean, how did that happen? People, if you like, knew to do it subconsciously because there’s a mechanism in the brain that counter-regulates how our food relates to our activity. And we thought, well, we’ve got to go and try and find that area in the brain because then we can actually help people really achieve their goals. And so we had a whole neuroscience team led by Dr. Novak, a brilliant young neuroscientist, and she identified tiny parts of the brain right in the hypothalamus, which is an old part of the brain that switches on your NEAT and switches on NEAT more in some people than others. So in fact, right at the center of your brain right now as you’re listening to this podcast, your brain is analyzing your calories in, your calories out, and is propelling you to move more or move less. So yes, there’s a deep biology underpinning this.

Brett McKay: Okay, so in some people, there’s a part of the brain that’s more discerning or more activated so that whenever you take in excess calories, it sends a signal to move more. And then in some people, that part doesn’t switch on as strongly. But a big point you make in all of your books you’ve written is that even if you don’t have that natural tendency to want to move more whenever you consume excess calories, you’re not destined to be an inert lump. You can still take action. It doesn’t have to be big change. Just take small, tiny changes throughout the day to counteract that.

Dr. James Levine: Absolutely. And the trick, if you like, I actually, as somebody who looks after patients, I really don’t like tricks. But nonetheless, for you, Brett, the trick. The trick to all of this is to make a decision. Is to make a decision with your day? Today. Is today going to be the day I’m gonna get up and take control of my life and step forwards? Or is today gonna be the day I stay on my seat? If you decide to stay on your seat, my only prayer is that tomorrow you think the same question of yourself.

On the other hand, if today is the day right now that you are going to get up, take control, and take a step forward, the moment you do that, you will do it tomorrow and you’ll do it the next day. And the data suggests that if you can find those moments throughout your day to consistently be up and moving, and you do it for 21 days approximately, it will become a habit. Just like sitting down in the evening every evening and binge watching is a habit, you can actually have really cool and healthy motivational movement habits as well.

So, if you can find those moments to get up and move throughout your day and keep doing it, it will become a habit. It’ll become part of your life. And here’s what the data from… We’ve worked in over seventy US corporations, here’s what the data from corporations show, it’s really great stuff, is once you’ve taken on one good habit and done it for 21 days, we call it the NEAT ripple effect, is a good movement habit will beget, will make another movement habit. And so, one becomes two, and all of a sudden two becomes four. And what happens is people who are sitters become people who are movers.

And people who become movers also influence their families, their kids, husbands, and wives, and friends to become movers as well. And so, there’s a NEAT ripple. But the trick, the trick, the trick is to think right now, today is today. I’m gonna get up and take control of my life and take that first step forwards or not. And if the answer is yes, do it now. In other words, Brett, what I’m saying is, if you can get it into your mindset, into your thinking that I’m gonna fight the chair, I’m gonna win this battle, you can actually do it.

Brett McKay: And what’s great, you offer suggestions on how you can do that. I think the trick is understanding, Okay, our social environment is pushing us to be sedentary. Everything is like, you do everything sitting down. And I think one trick is just, can I do this typically sedentary activity? Can I do it while moving somehow? So, you offer suggestions like, if you like to watch TV, get yourself a really cheap treadmill. You can find them on Amazon for 300 bucks now. They’re so cheap. And then just stick that in your television room. And while you’re watching your favorite show, just walk at one point one miles per hour on that treadmill. Or if you like playing video games, do the same thing. You can play a video game while you’re walking. Or like you said, if you take phone calls during work, don’t do that sitting down. Do that while you’re walking.

Dr. James Levine: You are a 100% correct. And I’m telling you, what’s really cool about this is the other thing I mentioned is once you’ve… And I will tell you now, 300 bucks for a treadmill in your house, that’s expensive these days. I mean, they’re coming in at a $100 now, or you can get a secondhand one, or you can get… People are throwing away their exercise bicycles. I mean, take it, refurbish it, put it in your TV room. And you’d be surprised that you can binge watch, I’m actually starting to re-watch Seinfeld again, I hate to tell you this, but I can binge watch Seinfeld gently cycling on my stationary bicycle.

It makes almost no noise and I’m getting just as much TV. And there is so much we can do if we put our mind to it. And the other thing, Brett, you mentioned is we sort of, society has put us in our chair. But the other thing to think about for a second is how we can change the society. Now, I don’t mean changing the world, let’s be serious, but how can I change the society I live in? So, next time if I’m dating, next time I choose a date on, I can’t remember the name of the website, whatever, where you’re swiping left and swiping right, I’m actually going to choose a date for somebody who also likes to go walking.

I’m going to sort of say, next time we all sit to come for my birthday, and for those of you listening, my birthday is November the 20th. Next, for all of you who are going to come to my birthday party, yeah, we’re going to have cake, you bet we are. But also, once we’ve done our cake, we’re also all going to go out for a walk together, we’re going to do a family walk. So, we actually have the opportunity to influence the micro society we live in, but we need to choose to do that. And it’s all part of the same thing, make that decision, take your first step, and the rest is going to flow from there.

Brett McKay: And one thing you point out in your book is that you work with a lot of patients who have had extra weight, and just by simply increasing the amount of NEAT in their lives, they’ve been able to lose weight, a lot of weight. They don’t even become serious gym goers, they’re just moving more during the day.

Dr. James Levine: A 100%. And so, yes, and if you like, there is the world of what I call testimonies, and this is fine, and I’m a 100% respectful. But as somebody with a science background, I’m actually more interested in the hardcore data from the scientific studies. And the scientific studies conducted in normal US office workers show that even in people who don’t want to lose weight, they will tend to lose weight and become more active. But in people who want to lose weight, people will start, if they activate their lives, they take on NEAT, are going to be losing 10 to 20 pounds slowly and gently, if you like, without breaking a sweat. And they’re gonna do that over six months, and then over the six months, the same.

And so, what’s really powerful about this is, Yes, 60% of the population may be dieting in any given year, but what’s really cool about NEAT is NEAT is going to help you keep off that excess body weight, and it’s going to nudge you forwards and forwards and forwards. And what’s important about this is you’re not gonna get a sports injury from NEAT, you’re not gonna have to pay a gym membership for NEAT, everyone can get up and move throughout their day without paying a penny for doing it. And what it’s gonna help with, for those people who want to lose weight, you don’t have to lose weight, even if you have excess body weight, you’re not obliged to. If you want to, this will help.

Brett McKay: So we’ve been talking about the benefits of NEAT and weight loss, but you mentioned earlier, there’s other benefits to moving more throughout the day. How can NEAT improve metabolic health? We’re talking like how we regulate glucose.

Dr. James Levine: Oh, this is really, I hope we have enough time for this, Brett, but let me explain briefly. This is super cool. Experiments were done where healthy volunteers came onto a research centre, very, very carefully monitored, and their glucose from their blood was being monitored every 30 seconds. These individuals were given breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the metabolic unit in the research centre, and then were instructed to get on with their normal day. And that was, computer work for the morning, then lunch, computer work, and a bit of Facebook, and then dinner, and then evening time, Facebook, binge watching, and TV, okay?

And we measured their blood glucose every 30 seconds continuously throughout the day. And what actually happens is, when you have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, your blood glucose climbs to a mountain and then slowly descends over a total period of about an hour and a half. After each of the three meals, that’s what happens. Then we said to people, we want you to do exactly the same day again. We’ll measure your glucose again. We’ll give you the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner again, but we want you to do one single thing different. After every meal, we want you to take a 15-minute walk or stroll at one and a half miles an hour. That’s literally strolling.

15 minutes after every meal. Now, as I mentioned, without the stroll, normal day, you have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, your blood sugar, your blood glucose climbs to a mountain, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you add a 15-minute stroll, that’s it. The mountain becomes a hill. It literally halves the size of that blood glucose mountain. 15-minute stroll after each of your meals. The biggest predictor of Type 2 diabetes is the size of those mountains. So all of a sudden, for taking a 15-minute stroll after each of your meals, everyone listening can do this. You halve your blood glucose response to meals and potentially risk of Type 2 diabetes. What a win, win, win!

Brett McKay: Now, that is really powerful. Another thing you talk about is the benefit of NEAT to our mental health. I know a lot of people out there are struggling with their mental health. What effect can NEAT have on that?

Dr. James Levine: There has not been one clinical trial in depression prevention that includes a walking program. That hasn’t helped people. Many of us are susceptible to feeling blue. I am. Feeling low, feeling bad. Most people listening will know that when you’re feeling bad and you go for a walk, for a reason you quite can’t understand, you actually feel a little bit better. What’s really powerful are the data that show that if you actually sort of take on NEAT walking as part of your routine, that will actually help you feel brighter, smarter, and sort of more alive. All of us already sort of know this. We all know this. When you’re down, somebody says, let’s go for a walk, and you feel better.

This is actually a truth. And so for those of us who can take on a NEAT approach to life, not only is your sort of body going to be better, whether that’s with respect to obesity prevention or diabetes, blood pressure, whatever it may be, but actually you’re gonna feel brighter too. And what’s really cool is once you feel brighter and happier doing a little bit of walking, even after each of your meals, guess what? You’re gonna keep doing it and you’re gonna take on more stuff so you can feel even brighter and happier. And again, that’s what the data suggests.

Brett McKay: Another thing you’ve seen in your research and working with patients is that a lot of these patients that come to see you, they talk about, I’m just so tired all the time. And it seems weird because like, you’re just sitting around all day. Why would you be tired? But I think everyone has experienced how doing absolutely nothing can just be exhausting. And by incorporating some more light physical activity during your day, it’ll actually give you the physical energy you need to do the things you want to do in life.

Dr. James Levine: I think we all, again, know this to be a common truth, but Brett, that allows me to touch on one other thing, which is so important and this will not shock anybody. Sleep. Sleep is a critical component of this equation. It is absolutely critical. And the data on NEAT and sleep are fascinating. We brought people again onto our amazing research centers at Mayo Clinic. These are extraordinary places where people volunteer to do studies to help us understand what’s going on. And we brought them onto the research center. And we said, Have a good night’s sleep in your normal way.

Get used to our facilities. And people did. What we then did is we sleep restricted people. We said to people, you’re gonna sleep 30% less. We’re gonna wake you up. We’re gonna twiddle your toes. We’re gonna keep you awake. And my goodness, yes, you’re gonna get tired. And that’s exactly what happened. But here is what the data show. The data shows when you sleep restrict people, they eat more. We all know this. When you’re tired, this is me, by the way. Okay. This is me. When I’m tired, I eat more.

This is always the case. For some reason, you reach for the choc, you reach for the chips, whatever it may be, but you eat more. This is what happens when you sleep deprived. You’re feeling tired, you’re feeling pooped out, you’re noshing, you’re eating a few snacks here and there. But the one thing when you’re tired you don’t want to do, is to get up and go for a walk. When you’re fully rested and you’ve got good sleep, you get up and you feel, what’s the word we all use? Energized. That’s what we feel. And that energized means get up and go for a walk. Get up and do some cool stuff. Let’s do something fun today. And guess what? You think less about that food you’re going to lean on to deal with your tiredness.

So I fully understand that people may have two or sometimes three jobs. I totally get it. I totally do understand that there is tremendous stress at the moment and tremendous mental anguish. But if you can find a good method to get good sleep, whether that involves, for example, stopping your coffee at noon or starting to relax early in the evening so you’re ready for sleep, not stressing yourself out with text messages or arguments before you go to bed, whatever it may be, if you can find a method of getting good sleep, that is a critically important part of the NEAT equation.

Brett McKay: Well, I also think moving more can help you sleep better. I’ve noticed my own life. There’s this idea I’ve heard about sleep pressure. You have to build up some sleep pressure so your body wants to go to sleep. And one way you can do that is just moving more. I’ve had the best nights of sleep when I’ve had a really active day. I think the best night of sleep, I’ve been chasing this night of sleep for 20 years now is when my wife and I, we went to Rome. And you just walked. There’s, like, all day. You’re just walking hours on hours. And I remember we came back to our hotel and we just laid down and we just both fell asleep. We didn’t wake up until, like, 14 hours later, and we both felt that was the best night’s sleep.

And I think it’s because we just walk so much. And I noticed in the times where I don’t move a lot during the day, I have a hard time falling asleep.

Dr. James Levine: This is 100% correct, your body… If you remember earlier, Brett, we were talking about the parts of your brain that are sort of monitoring all of this, one question you’ve got to ask yourself is, Okay, I’ve now got my movement going, just as you say. You walked around Rome all day, you sort of met your NEAT goal set by your brain. What happens if you don’t? And I think a lot of people actually understand this, but haven’t necessarily thought about it the way you put it. So if I am sort of forced to sit in meetings all day long, and I assure you that’s often many of my days, you get home sort of feeling this sort of anxiety. This sort of tightness inside of you. And I don’t know about you, but I get this thing sort of like my thoughts, and I get frustrated and irritated much more than if I’d actually had an active day where I dissipated all of my energy. And I think the other thing that, again, many people relate to, when you’ve come back from work and it’s been a day that you’ve been in your chair, you haven’t been up, moving and so on and so forth, what’s one thing you do? You reach for a beer. Really, what that’s saying is I need an anesthetic. There’s too much pressure in my head. I need to anesthetize myself.

And so therefore, the complexity of getting a good night’s sleep absolutely relates to the need to burn off the energy that our body needs us to burn off. We’re designed to get up and move. If you suppress the human, the human doesn’t do well. We get really internally upset by that, and we need to move. So part of our argument is that by forcing people to be seated all day, it’s fundamentally unnatural to people, and they need to move just to function normally. And your day in Rome is illustrative of that.

Brett McKay: So we talked about some ways people can incorporate more NEAT into their lives. There’s an activity that you do sitting down. See if you can do that standing up or even walking. For people who want to incorporate more NEAT in their life, is there a goal they should shoot for? Like, what’s the minimum dose of NEAT that we need to get before we start seeing that benefit? Is it an hour of extra NEAT two hours? Is there steps? What have you found in your research?

Dr. James Levine: Yeah, I mean, this is a terrific question. There has been a huge vogue, as many people know, to buy various gadgets, to look at various watches and sort of monitor stuff. Now, if you’re somebody who loves monitoring stuff, go for it, enjoy it. That’s great. But what is actually the truth and again, when you study this in sort of normal folk, what you find is if you give people a monitoring device, they’ll use it for a short period of time, and it can be literally, I kid you not, days. And their use of that monitoring device will fall off almost exponentially, almost sort of like over a cliff face, and they’ll sort of put it into a drawer. And how many people listening today have exercise monitoring devices, wearable little things that are in their drawer that’s powered down, that’s unused? So my advice to people is to actually look at it completely differently.

If you love monitoring stuff, get the equipment. It’s great. If you’re going to take on for yourself a goal, I suggest you take on one goal, not 100 goals. One thing. What’s the one thing you’re going to do for the next few weeks, and let’s say for the sake of argument, is every Thursday, and this is as simple as it gets, every Thursday I have to do a conference call with central corporate where they talk about health and wellness, whatever it is. It’s a 40 minutes call every single week. I only have to listen to fulfill my obligations. So I’m going to do that walk and talk. That’s one thing I’m going to do every Thursday. Super simple. Actually, what I’m going to do is I’m going to have a little chart on my fridge, and every time I do it, I’m going to put a check mark against it until I’ve done it 21 times. Monitoring, as simple as it gets.

On the other hand, I’m going to be a different person. I’m going to say, you know what? My daughter loves the art stuff, and I live in Washington DC, where all the galleries are free at Smithsonian. So once a week, I’m going to go with my daughter and we’re going to stroll through the art gallery, and we’re going to do that together for two months. Now, honestly, do you need to put that on your fridge to remind yourself to go for a walk with your daughter in the art gallery?

No. What you want to do is to do it for three weeks and it becomes a habit between you and your daughter. And so what I suggest again, is be smart, what works for you. But pick something, find a way of monitoring it, and do it. And the last concept I’d like to share with you in this regard is the idea of rewards. Now, rewards are great, okay? They’re really, really cool. But again, you have to be smart. So giving yourself a reward to go to the mailbox and collecting your mail on foot every day, to me, honestly, sounds a bit silly. I’m not going to reward myself for collecting the mail. However, if my goal is to walk a half marathon, and I had this amazing patient who did this, she came into clinic in her wheelchair, and she sent me a photograph of her and the grandchildren when they walked a half marathon.

I kid you not, it was like, it blew my mind. Her reward was if she could walk a half marathon, she’d saved up enough money to go to South Dakota for a week. That was her reward and that was her goal. And she actually said to me, Actually, the reward was to do it. So I think if you can think of the idea of finding things that you want to do, finding a method to record it, and then finding a method to recognize yourself, pat yourself on the back, or have some sort of achievement recognition that you’re off to the races.

Brett McKay: I love it. So just find ways to move more. That’s it. Again, it’s not hard. It doesn’t have to be that hard. It could be as simple as standing up at work occasionally. It could be doing the walk and talk, something that I’ve done after reading your book, or we’ve done this for a long time as a family. When we park somewhere, we park the furthest away so we can walk there, take the stairs. Kind of becomes a game. Finding ways you can move more in an environment that is fighting for you to sit more. It’s kind of fun to be a rebel. I’m going to move more instead.

Dr. James Levine: Yeah, be a rebel for yourself. Do it. Get up and move.

Brett McKay: Well, James, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work?

Dr. James Levine: Well, I mean, it’s fantastic. If people wish to go to the library and get the book, Get Up. It really summarizes the work we did in the lab. It’s, of course, available on our favorite online website as well. And that’s great. But also places like mayoclinic.com have really high quality information on the Internet. And so please please make a decision to get up and move today and learn more from these various resources and make it happen for yourself.

Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, James Levine, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Dr. James Levine: It’s my pleasure as well. Thank you so much, Brett. I really enjoyed it.

Brett McKay: My guest today was Dr. James Levine. He’s the author of the book Get Up!: Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can do About It. Check out our show notes at aom.is/neat, where you find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com and while you’re there, sign up for our newsletter. We got a weekly edition and a daily edition. They’re both free. It’s the best way to stay on top of what we’re doing at The Art of Manliness.

And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple podcast or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it’s Brett McKay reminding you how to listen to ao podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Many evenings during the week, you’ll find our family playing basketball in the driveway — parents vs. kids.

Something I started to notice earlier this year, as I went head-to-head against my 14-year-old son Gus, was that while he was becoming more explosive with his athletic moves, I had gotten significantly less springy.

While he could turn on a dime to make a quick cut to the basket and effortlessly jump for a rebound, I found myself relying on my larger body to slowly muscle into position for a shot.

I was definitely still a lot stronger than Gus — I just couldn’t turn that strength into force as quickly as he could. It felt like I had lost the gear for it.

We talk a lot about strength and muscle gain here on AoM. If you’re looking to get bigger and stronger, you’ll find plenty of articles on those topics.

But an area of fitness that we’ve overlooked, but I’m now starting to appreciate more and more as I move into middle age, is muscle power.

What I was experiencing in my basketball match-ups against Gus was a diminishment in this capacity.

Researchers have given the age-related loss of muscle power a name: powerpenia. And growing research shows that it’s a key predictor of whether you’ll be able to pick up your grandkid, climb a flight of stairs, or hoist your keister off the toilet when you’re 70.

Here’s what you need to know about powerpenia — and how to resist it.

The Muscle Decline Trifecta: Sarcopenia, Dynapenia, and Powerpenia

You’ve likely heard of sarcopenia — the loss of muscle mass with age. It typically begins around age 40 and accelerates after age 60. Muscle mass typically declines by .5-1% per year after 40. Sarcopenia leads to frailty in old age, which makes it hard for old people to get out of chairs, let alone get up from the floor if they fall down.

Then there’s dynapenia — the loss of muscle strength. Sarcopenia contributes to dynapenia, but there are also other things going on that lead to age-related declines in muscle strength. Mostly it comes down to our neuro-muscular system becoming less efficient at activating our muscles. Muscle strength declines along a similar trajectory as muscle mass, with a loss of 0.5–1% per year after age 40.

Both sarcopenia and dynapenia can be mitigated and even reversed with regular strength training, which is why we’re big fans of weightlifting.

In 2024, researchers introduced a third area of concern: powerpenia — the loss of muscle power.

Muscle power is the ability to display strength quickly; it’s explosiveness. Examples of muscle power in action include jumping for a rebound, sprinting, and punching. But muscle power doesn’t just come in handy in sports. Muscle power is also what lets you:

• Sprint to catch your kid running into the street
• Jump out of the way of an object about to hit you
• Lift something quickly
• Bound up stairs two at a time
• Catch yourself during a fall

Powerpenia may be the new age-related muscle concern on the block, but it seems to be the most influential factor in the maintenance of our physical vitality. In fact, a recent study found that power — not strength — is the best predictor of whether older people are able to successfully navigate the activities of daily living.

The interesting thing about muscle power is that it actually drops faster than muscle size and strength — as much as 2–4% per year after 40. That means by your 60s or 70s, you might still look pretty solid and even test decently on a strength test, but you’ve lost the explosiveness needed to stay agile and independent.

Why the rapid decline? Three big reasons:

First, there’s the loss of fast-twitch muscle fibers. Fast-twitch fibers are responsible for generating quick bursts of strength and speed, and they naturally atrophy faster than slow-twitch fibers as we age and don’t call upon them.

Second, there are the changes in our tendons due to inactivity. If you don’t regularly do activities that require you to display strength quickly, your tendons become stiff and less efficient at storing and releasing energy, making explosive movements harder to perform. The degradation of tendon health from disuse explains why a lot of middle-aged guys injure themselves when they decide to play pick-up basketball for the first time in a decade. It’s why I got a bad case of hamstring tendonitis a few years ago when I decided to do a sprint workout after years of not sprinting.

Finally, as we age and don’t call upon our fast-twitch muscles for explosive activity, our brain and nervous system become less efficient at telling our muscles to contract quickly.

How to Fight Back Against Powerpenia

After my lackluster performance in basketball games against Gus and after reading the research on powerpenia, I decided I needed to do something to counteract the decline of muscle power that comes with middle age.

Fortunately, it’s not that hard to do.

Here are some things I’ve started to incorporate into my physical training to fend off powerpenia:

Plyometrics

Plyometric exercises develop explosive power by training your muscles and nervous system to react quickly.

You don’t have to devote an entire workout to plyos. You can add one or two plyometric exercises to your regular strength-training routines. Here’s what I’m doing:

Before my first lower-body workout of the week, I do the following plyometric exercises:

• Power Skipping. Perform a regular skip, but jump and lift your knee as high as you can. I do this for 15 yards, three times.
• Box Jumps. Stand in front of a box or other suitable platform. Try to find a box that’s at least 18″ off the ground. Jump onto the box. To avoid injury, step rather than jump down from the box. Do three sets of five jumps.

Before my second lower-body workout of the week, I do the following plyos:

• Broad Jumps. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, swing your arms back, bend your knees, and then explosively jump forward as far as possible, using your arms to help propel you. Land softly with your knees slightly bent to absorb the impact and maintain balance. Do three sets of five jumps.
• Pogo Hops. Stand with your feet together and begin jumping straight up as high as you can. When you land, begin the next jump as quickly as possible. Do three sets of ten hops.

Before my first upper-body workout of the week, I do the following plyometric exercise:

• Plyometric Push-up. Assume a normal push-up position. Lower yourself to the floor. With explosive force, push off the floor with enough force that your hands leave the ground. Do three sets of five push-ups.

Before my second upper-body workout of the week, I do the following plyometric exercise:

• Overhead Medicine Ball Slam. Raise the medicine ball overhead and slam it down as hard as you can. Do three sets of ten slams.

As I continue with these plyos, I’ll probably rotate some of them out and substitute some of the plyometric exercises we’ve written about here into my routine.  

Hill Sprints

Hill sprints are one of the most potent weapons against power loss. They engage fast-twitch fibers better than flat-surface sprints while also reducing impact on your muscles and tendons, thus reducing the likelihood of injuries. Besides training for power, hill sprints are a great HIIT exercise.

Find a 20–30-yard hill. After a warm-up, do 4–6 sprints up the hill at 80–90% effort. Walk down slowly to recover. Rest 1–2 minutes between sprints. You just need to do this once a week.

For more tips on doing safe and effective sprints in general, read our Grown-Up’s Guide to Sprinting.

If you’re looking for another powerpenia-fighting cardio/HIIT exercise, jump roping is a great one. We’ve got a whole guide to that, too.

If it’s been a long time since you did the kind of explosive exercises outlined above, you may be concerned that trying them will get you injured. Start slowly and gently, to be sure. Doing things like stepping down from the box after your box jumps and sprinting uphill will help lessen the risk of injuries. And you can do things like broad jumps and hill sprints on softer surfaces like grass.

But you do need to steadily ease into these movements to avoid a kind of catch-22: avoid plyometric exercises out of fear of injury, and you actually increase the risk of injury when life suddenly demands an explosive movement.

The only way to safely rebuild this capacity is to train it — gradually and consistently. And once you have it back, don’t stop. Keep training these movements into old age, until the day you’re truly no longer capable of doing them.

Here’s to Powerful Aging

I’ve been doing these power exercises for about a month now, and I’m already noticing a difference.

I’m still not as explosive as my teenage son, but I can better shift myself into that gear when we face off on the driveway court.

And knowing that training for power will keep me strong and capable as I age — not just in the game, but in life — is the real win.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

An important part of manhood has always been about having the competence to be effective in the world — having the breadth of skills, the savoir-faire, to handle any situation you find yourself in. With that in mind, each Sunday we’ll be republishing one of the illustrated guides from our archives, so you can hone your manly know-how week by week.

The bench press can kill you. It’s the one lift where the barbell is directly above your throat and the vital organs in your upper body, and there’s pretty much no way to bail out if you fail the lift. 

Because the bench press can potentially kill you, you want to take extra precautions to ensure your safety during the lift. One of those precautions is using a spotter. 

The problem with using a spotter on the bench press is that pretty much everyone does it wrong. Amateur and well-meaning spotters are so focused on making sure the barbell doesn’t kill the lifter, that they get in the way of the lifter performing the lift correctly. The typical gym-bro bench spotter will distractingly hover over the lifter’s head and place their hands close to the bar so that they’re ready to assist the moment they see the lifter seem to struggle. Worse, they’ll touch the bar while the lifter is struggling to push it upwards. That just messes up the bar path, and in assuming some of the effort of the exercise, deprives the lifter of the benefit of completing what could have been a successful, albeit grindy lift.

You’re spotting well on the bench press if you’re mostly out of sight. You should only touch the barbell to assist the lifter if you see the barbell going down (when it should be going up) or if the lifter asks for help. 

Even when using a spotter, I’d recommend taking some of the same precautions that you would when safely bench pressing without a spotter. Specifically, NOT putting collars on the barbell. If for some reason you as the spotter aren’t able to help the lifter get the barbell back up into the J-hooks, you’ll be able to help him tip the barbell to one side or the other to let the weights slide off.

Like this illustrated guide? Then you’re going to love our book The Illustrated Art of Manliness! Pick up a copy on Amazon.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

You know that feeling.

You hit a bunch of reps on some bicep curls and then crank out some tricep extensions.

You can feel your arms swell and your veins pop. Your skin feels tight over your bulging muscles. Your t-shirt sleeves look like they might burst at the seams.

For a brief, glorious moment, you kinda look like Steve Rogers after he got the Super Soldier Serum.

You’ve just experienced a solid “pump.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger famously described the pump as “the greatest feeling you can get in a gym” and said the sensation was just as satisfying as sexual ecstasy.

I might not go that far in describing the pleasure of a good pump, but there’s no denying the psychological boost that comes from seeing instant visual evidence of your hard work.

A lot of gym bros love the look and feel of a pump so much that they’ll judge the success of a workout based solely on the pump it produced. They’ll then begin to “chase the pump” from workout to workout so they can feel like Steve Rogers several times a week.

But does chasing the pump actually build muscle, or is it just a fleeting moment of vanity that contributes nothing to long-term gains?

Let’s take a look at the research.

What Actually Happens During the Pump

The pump is a temporary swelling of the muscles that comes from lifting moderately heavy weight at high reps. The scientific name for the pump is “transient hypertrophy.”

While the pump is often associated with the biceps, you can get a pump in other muscles as well, including the chest, delts, and quads.

When performing multiple reps of an exercise like the dumbbell curl, the repeated muscle contractions compress your veins — the blood vessels responsible for carrying blood away from your muscles. At the same time, your arteries, which deliver oxygen-rich blood to your muscles, continue pumping in an increasing supply. Blood keeps flowing in while the outflow is restricted.

This imbalance creates a traffic jam within the muscle, leading to a buildup of blood. As pressure rises, plasma is forced out of the blood vessels and into the spaces between muscle fibers, creating the tight, swollen, glorious experience known as the pump.

The Fleeting Glory of Pumped Muscles

Remember the scientific name of the pump? Transient hypertrophy.

The pump might make you look jacked in the gym mirror, but its glory is temporary.

When you experience a pump, your actual muscle fibers aren’t growing bigger at that moment. Muscle growth comes while you’re recovering from your workout. It’s more like your muscles are water balloons that are being filled with extra fluid. Eventually, those fluid-filled muscle balloons shrink back to their normal size. Blood flow returns to normal, plasma gets reabsorbed, and your muscles revert to their regular size.

While you can have a degree of muscle swelling 48-72 hours after a workout (usually caused by inflammation in the muscles), the dramatic pump you see immediately after training fades within hours.

You’ve probably experienced this yourself. You crush an arm workout, get an amazing pump, and flex your biceps for your wife to show her your bicep vein. But by the time you’ve showered and gotten dressed again, the pump has disappeared.

The superhero has returned to his civilian identity. Bummer.

Does the Pump Help With Long-Term Muscle Growth?

While the pump is temporary, some bodybuilder bros argue that it does indeed contribute to actual long-term muscle growth.

A few studies have found a correlation between getting a pump and muscle growth.

A study that put previously untrained men through a six-week program involving leg extension exercises showed that those who experienced greater initial muscle swelling (pump) after their first session showed better hypertrophy gains by the end of the program.

Another study found a positive correlation between immediate post-workout pump in the lower leg muscles and long-term hypertrophy in those same muscles.

However, these studies don’t definitively prove that the pump directly causes muscle growth. The relationship could be correlational, or other factors might be at play.

It’s Mechanical Tension, Not the Pump

While we don’t know if the pump plays a role in long-term muscle building, we do know for sure what dynamic does: mechanical tension.

Mechanical tension refers to the stress placed on muscle fibers during resistance training. You achieve mechanical tension when you train a muscle close to failure. This adaptation process is what leads to real, lasting muscle growth.

While chasing the pump might feel good, the key to long-term muscle- and strength-building is choosing and consistently executing a training program that progressively overloads your muscles and causes mechanical tension in the muscle.

A Quick Upper-Body Pump Workout

That being said, there are times when training just to get a pump makes sense. Maybe you want to look jacked before a date or before a photoshoot.

If that’s the case, here’s a quick pump workout that’s aimed at maximizing blood flow and will get your upper body looking (temporarily) swole. You use light weight at high reps with minimal rest between sets for this; there’s no need to push yourself to failure.

• Push-ups: 3×15
• Chin-ups: 3×5
• Dumbbell bicep curls: 3×20
• Cable-rope tricep press-downs: 3×20

Again, keep the weight light. You shouldn’t feel sore and destroyed after this. You should just have a nice, solid pump.

Finding Balance in the Iron Game

The iron teaches us many lessons if we’re willing to learn; one is about balancing immediate gratification with long-term vision.

The pump feels great. It provides instant visual feedback and can be motivating when progress seems slow. There’s nothing wrong with appreciating those moments when your muscles are temporarily full and defined.

But true progress in the iron game comes from consistency, progressive overload, and smart training principles. It’s all about long obedience in the same direction. Let the pump be a byproduct of your training, not its purpose. But enjoy that pump when you get it!

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

If you’re looking to lose some weight this year, you’ve likely made plans to reduce your calories and hit the gym hard. While calorie reduction and physical exercise are essential components of weight loss, there’s another crucial factor that often gets overlooked: non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT.

NEAT is all the calories you burn daily from everyday movement outside of purposeful exercise. For example, a trip to Walmart for groceries contributes to your daily NEAT through actions like walking from your car to the store, pushing a cart, and unloading groceries.

Some NEAT is done unintentionally, like fidgeting. Calories burned from fidgeting can vary from 100-800 calories a day between individuals. Why the variance? Some people fidget more than others.

You also expend NEAT in other subtle ways. When you sit instead of lying down, you burn 4% more calories. If you adjust your posture while sitting, more calories are burned. And if you stand instead of sitting, NEAT increases even more.

While it may seem like all these small daily movements wouldn’t affect our weight loss goals very much, as we’ll delve into below, the research suggests otherwise. NEAT can play a huge role in getting and staying lean. And once you understand that, you can leverage the NEAT effect to your advantage.

Breaking Down Our Daily Caloric Burn

There are several ways our bodies burn calories each day, which break down as follows for the average person. While the contribution each category contributes is expressed in percentages, since it varies from person to person, these numbers give us a good general idea of what each process/activity contributes to our overall caloric burn:

• Basal metabolism (60-70% of calories). The energy needed simply to keep your organs running and you alive.
• Thermic effect of food (10%). Calories burned digesting what we eat.
• Exercise-related activity thermogenesis (5-10%). EAT represents the calories burned from purposeful exercise.
• Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (15-30%): NEAT includes all non-structured activities like walking, fidgeting, household chores, and occupational movement.

Notice that for most people, NEAT burns more calories than dedicated physical exercise. All those small movements throughout the day really add up!

Modern Life Kills NEAT

Our ancestors had NEAT built into their day-to-day lives. Simply preparing a single meal required a lot of NEAT. You’d have to hunt and haul game to camp and then create and tend the fire to cook it. As we moved to industrial economies, machines reduced how much we had to move for food and survival.

Both work and home life require less movement than 50 years ago. Work tasks that once required getting up from a desk and walking to another part of the office can now all be done with a click of the mouse, while modern appliances have made household chores less physically demanding.

Our leisure time has become more sedentary as well, and often only involves moving from sitting behind a screen at work to sitting in front of a television at home.

Add an increased consumption of calorically-dense, highly-processed foods to this reduction in NEAT, and it’s little mystery why humans have been getting fatter and sicker in the past few decades.

NEAT: The Not-So-Magical Talisman That Wards Off Weight Gain

Have you ever wondered how some people can eat pretty much whatever they want and never gain weight, while you seem to put on the pounds just by eating an occasional extra slice of pizza?

It may be because they do a lot more NEAT than you.

Research shows that daily NEAT can vary by up to 2,000 calories a day between similarly-sized individuals. That’s huge!

Factors like occupation and age influence how much NEAT you get each day; a guy in construction will do more NEAT than an office worker, and younger people tend to move more than older people.

Hardwired differences in the brain may play a role as well.

In a fascinating study conducted at the Mayo Clinic called “The Great Overfeeding Experiment,” Dr. James Levine discovered something remarkable about how people respond to excess calories. When study participants consumed an extra 1,000 calories a day over their maintenance calories for eight weeks, some people stored nearly all the excess calories as fat. Others spontaneously increased their NEAT by up to 700 calories per day and didn’t gain any weight.

What accounts for the variance in these responses?

It may come down to genetics. Levine hypothesizes that in some people, the hypothalamus triggers increased movement to burn excess calories; some people naturally respond to an uptick in calories by subtly and unconsciously increasing their physical activity, enabling them to keep the pounds off without much thinking about it. In other people, this response doesn’t occur, leading them to gain weight.

But, as Levine emphasized when he came on the AoM podcast, even if you’re in the latter category, that doesn’t mean you’re doomed to packing on the pounds. It just means you need to be more intentional about overcoming your propensity towards passivity and doing more NEAT.

No matter your situation in life — whether you’re young or old, a desk jockey or a lumberjack, prone to being fidgety or sitting still — you can choose to move more than you currently do.

How to Increase Your NEAT

It takes an extra 3,500 calories to gain a pound of body weight. So if you burn 500 additional calories a day through doing extra NEAT, that could allow you to lose or keep off over 50 pounds in a year!

According to Dr. Levine’s research, even someone whose brain/life isn’t naturally conducive to generating NEAT can shed pounds by proactively making changes in their daily routine, such as:

• Parking far away from the entrances to offices and shops
• Taking walk-and-talk meetings
• Taking the stairs instead of the elevator
• Using a standing or walking desk at work
• Using the restroom at the far end of the office rather than the nearest one
• Shopping in person instead of ordering things online and having them delivered
• Standing while watching TV
• Doing more of your household cleaning/yard/DIY projects yourself
• Taking a 15-minute walk after meals
• Walking everywhere more briskly than your default pace
• Taking a 15-minute morning walk
• Taking movement breaks from work (doing some squats and/or push-ups) every 45 minutes

What’s great about NEAT is that, unlike many aspects of fitness that require huge lifestyle overhauls, increasing your NEAT is pretty dang doable. It doesn’t necessitate special equipment, gym memberships, getting sweaty, or blocking out hours of your day. It just requires a willingness to move a little more in ways that naturally fit into your day-to-day life.

As Dr. Levine said on the podcast, it all just comes down to looking for ways to make typically sedentary activities more active.

“The trick to all of this,” he told me, “is to make a decision. Is today going to be the day I’m gonna get up and take control of my life and step forwards? Or is today gonna be the day I stay on my seat?”

Combine more NEAT with regular dedicated workouts and a caloric deficit, and you’ll be on your way to getting leaner and meaner in the new year.

For more insights on the power of NEAT, listen to our podcast with Dr. James Levine:

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

An important part of manhood has always been about having the competence to be effective in the world — having the breadth of skills, the savoir-faire, to handle any situation you find yourself in. With that in mind, each Sunday we’ll be republishing one of the illustrated guides from our archives, so you can hone your manly know-how week by week.

It’s hard to beat the burn of an old-school push-up. The push-up works multiple muscles in a single movement: chest, shoulders, triceps, and core. It requires no special equipment and can be done anywhere, anytime. But while most people have been doing push-ups since their first P.E. class, mastering the subtleties of correct technique can help you get the most out of this exercise. In this illustrated guide, we walk you through those subtleties from beginning to end. Pay attention to the details and push your way through to a stronger upper body.

Once you’ve mastered the standard push-up, here’s what to do when the muscle-gaining results you get from them plateau, as well as 35+ variations to work into your routine.

Like this illustrated guide? Then you’re going to love our book The Illustrated Art of Manliness! Pick up a copy on Amazon.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

A boxer’s hands endure tremendous force with every punch. Without protection, that force can shatter the small bones of the hands and tear ligaments. That’s why boxers meticulously wrap their hands before training or stepping into the ring. These long strips of cloth compress the bones and tissues, align the joints, and transform vulnerable hands into proper striking weapons. Every boxer has their preferred way to wrap their hands. Here’s one method I learned when I took boxing lessons. Let’s get ready to rummmbbbblllle!

Illustration by Ted Slampyak

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

What if there was one piece of fitness equipment that was affordable, didn’t take up much space, could get you both strong and flexible, and was fun to use?

While that might sound too good to be true, my guest, Pat Flynn, would say you can find all those benefits in the old-school kettlebell. Pat, who’s the author of Strong ON!: 101 Minimalist Kettlebell Workouts to Blast Fat, Build Muscle, and Boost Flexibility―in 20 Minutes or Less, calls kettlebells the Swiss Army knife  of workout tools and the minimalist’s ultimate secret fitness weapon.

Today on the show, we unpack why Pat’s such an advocate for bells, but before we get there, we first take a dive into his background in philosophy and why beginning a workout program takes faith. We then talk about how to use kettlebells to get an all-around fit physique, including the three kettlebell weights that make for an ideal starter set, the two best exercises for building muscle, the pyramid-shaped program that can facilitate body recomposition, how to incorporate progressive overload into kettlebell training, which kettlebell exercise Coach Dan John considers “the fat-burning athlete builder,” the “300 Swings Challenge” that will help you take a Bruce Lee approach to fitness, and much more.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• AoM Article: Become Strong Like Bull — The Kettlebell Workout
• AoM Article: How to Perform 4 Kettlebell Exercises — An Illustrated Guide
• AoM Podcast #295 — Kettlebells and the Psychology of Training
• AoM Article: Strength, Power, Conditioning — How to Master the Kettlebell Swing

Connect With Pat Flynn

• Strong ON! website
• Kettlebell Quickies YouTube Channel
• Pat on IG

Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)

Listen to the episode on a separate page.

Download this episode.

Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice.

Read the Transcript

Brett McKay: Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness Podcast. What if there’s one piece of fitness equipment that was affordable, didn’t take up much space, could get you both strong and flexible, and was fun to use? While that might sound too good to be true, my guest Pat Flynn would say, you can find all those benefits in the old school kettlebell. Pat, who’s the author of ‘Strong ON!: 101 Minimalist Kettlebell Workouts to Blast Fat, Build Muscle, and Boost Flexibility In 20 Minutes or Less’, calls kettlebells the Swiss Army Knife of workout tools and the minimalist ultimate secret fitness weapon. Today in the show, we unpack why Pat’s such an advocate for bells. But before we get there, we first take a dive into his background in philosophy and why beginning a workout program takes faith. We then talk about how to use kettlebells to get an all around fit physique, including the three kettlebell weights that make for an ideal starter set, the two best exercises for building muscle, the pyramid shape program that can facilitate body recomposition. How to incorporate progressive overloading kettlebell training, which kettlebell exercise coach Dan John considers the fat burning athlete builder. The 300 swings challenge that will help you take a Bruce Lee approach to fitness and much more. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/kettlebell. All right. Pat Flynn, welcome to the show.

Pat Flynn: Brett, it is a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Brett McKay: So you are an entrepreneur, you’re a philosopher. You got your master’s in philosophy. Hopefully we can talk about that. But you’re also probably most well known for your work in fitness. You’re a fitness coach expert. You’ve written a lot about kettlebells in particular. We’re gonna talk about that today and promoting sort of a general all around approach to fitness. But let’s start with your story a little bit. In your books that you’ve written, you talk about how your interest in fitness began with an embarrassing wet t-shirt contest in middle school. How did a wet t-shirt contest in middle school get you down the path to where you’re coaching people how to do kettlebells?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Thanks for helping me to relive this wonderful moment, Brett. I appreciate it. And [laughter] Yeah. So I had some typical middle school type of friends, right? We were in a little rock band. Nobody has heard of us. Trust me on that. And I was an overweight kid growing up. I was not athletic. I was your typical ’90s kid, right? So just a whole bunch of microwavable food and video games and all…

Brett McKay: Dunkaroos.

Pat Flynn: Stuff. Dunkaroo. Oh, man.

Brett McKay: Dunkaroos.

Pat Flynn: You do miss it though. You know, it’s like, it’s hard not to be nostalgic about that poison. But yeah, so I grew up on all that, had something of a weight problem. I was always kind of the chunky guy among our friends, and I never really liked it. It always bothered me. I had friends, so this isn’t like a super traumatic story or anything like that, but it was a problem. And it all sort of came to, yeah, a climax when we decided in the middle of band practice to just have a wet t-shirt contest among the guys, right? [laughter] And I scored a solid victory on that and it was super depressing. I was like, I have to do something about this. You know, I have a long line of obesity in my family, especially on mom’s side.

And it was pretty clear to me that if I didn’t stage an intervention, probably now, I was going to go down a path I particularly did not want to go on. And like most people who set out on a fitness journey, I was super confused. You know, my mom had all sorts of books on diet and exercise and they all said different things. So I spun in circles for probably about a year or two just trying to figure things out, having a little bit of success, but mostly frustration. Until eventually I stumbled into a martial arts studio, a Taekwondo studio. I didn’t wanna go to the weight room in my high school because that’s where a lot of my friends were. And I just didn’t feel like hearing the things that they would say [laughter] if they saw me walk in. So I tried martial arts out, fell absolutely in love with it, had a phenomenal coach who was really into physical culture.

And the value of a good coach can not be… It’s the most valuable thing in the world, right? Because if you get set on a good path early on by somebody who knows what they’re talking about and can hold you accountable, I mean, that changed my life. So that’s the story in a nutshell. Kettlebells came in a little bit later, more in college, but they were related to martial arts. In fact, my Taekwondo coach as I was competing in college, introduced me to kettlebells just as a way to increase my training efficiency. And yeah, it was love at first kettlebell swing.

Brett McKay: Did you do anything like experiment with CrossFit or bodybuilding or power lifting in between when you started with the Taekwondo and then moving to kettlebells?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I was doing your traditional bodybuilding sort of bro split for a while. I amazingly missed a lot of the CrossFit scene. ‘Cause when CrossFit was becoming very popular, that was when I was really getting into kettlebells. So there were elements and certain aspects of my training that certainly were influenced by what was going on in the CrossFit scene. But no, I never got fully wrapped up into that. I sort of went just from your traditional, let’s do a bro split with lots of traditional cardio and a treadmill, which is fine. I really don’t have anything like seriously against that. And it was pretty effective for me. But I was looking to increase efficiency and try to find something that as a busy college kid would be a bit more directly applicable to what I was interested in, which was competing in Taekwondo.

Brett McKay: So you’re not only a fitness coach, I mentioned this earlier, you have your master’s degree in philosophy. Is there a particular branch of philosophy that you’re interested in and have been studying?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. So I’m actually, I’m doing the PhD right now. And where I focus is in philosophy of religion, which is a weird name for a branch of philosophy, ’cause it’s not a bunch of religious people doing philosophy. It’s really a form of systematic philosophy or what’s sometimes called worldview construction. So it’s philosophers who try to establish like big picture theories of everything. Like how do we make sense of the broad scale phenomena of the world? Things like causation and change and time and all that fun stuff. And is there a fundamental aspect to the world? So totally unrelated to fitness, at least initially. But one of the things that goes into my area of study is the question of the good life of ethics and meta ethics. And there are definitely some links to fitness there. So I occasionally have my worlds collide, but most of the time I’m kind of just, yeah, doing two separate things.

Brett McKay: Yeah. In your work, in the books you’ve written, you talk about Aristotle a lot. And then consequently Aquinas, ’cause Aquinas picked up on Aristotle and tried to make a connection between Greek philosophy and the religious life. Talk about it. Let’s talk about Aristotelianism ’cause I’m a big fan of a Aristotle. How has Aristotelianism ethics, you can even say maybe metaphysics, how has it influenced your approach to fitness?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, good. Great question. It’s a big one. We could spend a whole episode on it. You mentioned Aquinas. He’s actually a guy I specialize in. I focus on a lot of his metaphysical thought. And he, of course, as you said, Brett, is building on and developing an Aristotelian account of the world. Sort of a blend of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. But Aristotle specifically thinks about ethics along the following lines: He’s often called a virtue ethicist or a natural law theorist. So Aristotle thinks that there is such a thing as a human nature. And so you have a human nature, I have a human nature. And this nature is determined to a particular end. And we can either reach that particular end, and if we do, we are like a flourishing instance of human nature. Like we’re most excellent to use Bill and Ted language, or we can fail to reach that particular end.

And so what is human nature? Well, it’s something like rational animality. So we’re supposed to use our rationality to discern all the sorts of things that are really good for us. ‘Cause there’s lots of things that are really good for us that cause us to flourish as the kinds of things that we are. And of course, part of how this is done, is through the development or attainment of certain virtues. And virtues are really just perfections of our powers. And you have some kind of big virtues. They’re sometimes called cardinal virtues. Things like temperance, fortitude, justice. These are like the hinge virtues. Prudence is the other big one. And the way this relates to fitness is along… I think actually pretty obvious lines, right? I think it’s empirically obvious that it is good for us to pursue certain activities that cause us to be healthy to try and achieve that sort of ideal interplay of the organs and bodily systems.

So that’s just important for just general physical health. And Aristotle is big on that. He thinks that we’re matter, soul composite. So he thinks that we have an immaterial soul, but he’s still very much committed to us being material beings as well. So how he thinks about the good life very much concerns our physical embodiment, if you will. But exercise and diet can also be good ways just to practice certain virtues, right? And we can think of the two cardinal virtues of temperance and fortitude. So I mean, like, fortitude is the gym and temperance is diet. [laughter] It’s kind of as simple as that, right? Fortitude is doing the things that are tough because we know that they’re good for us. And having that sort of practical grit, that’s what fortitude is about, doing the hard things that are important and temperance is being able to resist certain things that we know we should resist at certain times because they’re not particularly good for us. They do not cause us to flourish. And of course, various forms of dietary control and fasting fall right into that very neatly. I mean, there’s a good reason that fasting has always been used as a sort of moral and spiritual discipline. It’s because it very much is a way to help to develop yourself along these sort of Aristotelian lines. If that makes sense.

Brett McKay: That makes perfect sense. So part of living a good life is as Aristotle said you have to have a physically healthy body. He talks about it explicitly in his Nicomachean ethics. And I like the idea that fitness can be a way to develop these virtues like you mentioned, in my experience, the most visceral thing that has taught me virtue, these excellence in like temperance, prudence, practical wisdom has been my weight trainings. You just… You experience it in your body. And I’ve noticed that whenever I try to convey this stuff to young people that I mentor, I’m always going to like weightlifting or sports analogies. ‘Cause for some reason, I just think it lands more when you make that body connection.

Pat Flynn: They click, it clicks especially for a lot of young men, I found, and I’ve certainly had a similar experience, Brett, like certain perennial truths just kind of like became obvious for me in the weight room, but also with respect to certain vices too. So you gotta be careful, for Aristotle, the virtue is the golden mean between two extremes of an excess and deficiency. And you can see people who get into fitness, but they sort of obsess over it and they develop certain vices because they don’t have it properly ordered in relation to the other goods of their life. And again, that’s sort of a failure of prudence. So while fitness can be a fantastic opportunity to acquire certain virtues, you have to be intentional about it. Of course, what kind of goes into the mix of a lot of moral decision making for Aristotle is not just outcomes, but intentions. What is the intention you bring behind it? So I always encourage people focus on that, make sure you’re going into this with the right sort of intention. Because if you go in with just various sort of narcissistic and ego comparative sorts of intentions, yeah, you might get stronger and more muscular, but you could be giving yourself some sort of greater mental and and spiritual problems down the line, if that makes sense.

Brett McKay: Yeah. For Aristotle and the virtue ethic tradition, the results or consequences are not only important, but the intentions behind the action that resulted in that consequence are also just as important.

Pat Flynn: Yep. 100%.

Brett McKay: Yeah. So you’re someone who was baptized Catholic. You became atheist, then found your way back into the church, and now you’re getting your PhD in the philosophy of religion. So have you seen a connection between pursuing excellence and fitness, not only with philosophy, but also with faith?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. So I’m sort of the cliche story of the guy that first got into philosophy and it brought me very far away from faith and religion. And then the further I went philosophically, especially asking questions about like, fundamentality, these questions that I’m interested in and are relevant to philosophy of religion, it brought me back and at least it brought me back to a philosophical understanding of God. And once you have that, it sort of opens you up to the possibility of greater religious and spiritual ideas, which I eventually investigated and it came to hold rather firmly. So yeah, I think faith is a form of trust. It’s a virtue. It’s actually a theological virtue. In the tradition, Aquinas talks about faith as a theological virtue, which is, for him a true virtue even higher than the cardinal virtues. What’s the connection to fitness?

Well, in most forms of Christianity anyways, they sort of baptize Aristotelianism. So they kind of like take Aristotle and they just move him a little bit further along and they’re essentially like Aristotle, you got a lot, right? But there’s just a few things that you’re missing. The ultimate end of the human being is not a natural end. It’s a supernatural end. And it is to know what is most true, truth itself, and to love what is most good, goodness itself. And ultimately they maintain that to be God, the God of classical theism specifically. Right? But God is, as Aquinas would talk about it, he has this kind of like very philosophical, somewhat spooky, but I think ultimately correct view of God, that God just is subsistent existence or pure being and pure goodness itself. That when we acquire certain virtues and we move along in the spiritual life, we’re actually participating in God.

We’re sort of increasing ourselves along these relevant dimensions where we become more perfect and we participate in the good. He’s got this sort of Neoplatonic aspect in his otherwise Aristotelian philosophy. And of course this is ultimately meant to orient us, orient our will to our supernatural end, which is the beatific vision. So traditional Christianity is Aristotelianism plus is the way I like to talk about it. So you can just… The faith can take everything that we already said about Aristotle and then integrate it into a larger perspective where our ultimate good is fundamentally relational. It’s relating to our creator in a particular way. But to have that right sort of relation, you need faith. It is a theological virtue that makes that possible. And also eventually you need to have perfection and moral perfection. So it integrates or links up in a much higher, I think more extravagant and I think ultimately more beautiful way too. But it’s certainly not contrary in any sense, if that makes sense.

Brett McKay: So, okay. It sounds like where Aristotelianism says be fit, be healthy to achieve human flourishing or excellence, your faith says to take that, to keep that, but then also point it to the divine, which is that big metaphysical perspective. But do we see faith in fitness on a more day-to-day basis? Like in the gym?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Well, I mean, for me, just speaking personally, Brett, I mean, when I converted, when I became Christian, it totally changed my intentions of what am I working out for? I mean, look, I think I had all the wrong sorts of intentions starting out. I mean, originally, my fitness motivation was very negative. I just wanted to get away from being teased and made fun of. But then it became, like once I started getting results and I thought I started looking good, it became very narcissistic, right? It kinda became obsessive, ego comparative. So I don’t think I was doing it for particularly good reasons. A lot of the actions could stay the same. So this relates to what we were talking about before, but the reasons I am doing those actions, those started to fundamentally change.

So I started thinking about, okay, well how can fitness be used to strengthen the relationships I have with other people, to help other people, to be an inspiration to my kids, to make sure that I’m around for my kids, that I can teach them the virtues, that I can help them practice the faith in certain unique and important ways. So I’m not sure if this is totally answering your question, but the answer is, it changed everything, right? At least for me, it completely reoriented. Not all the things I do, I still did a lot of the same things, but the reasons for which I did them.

Brett McKay: Something I’ve seen, if we use like Paul’s definition of faith from the Hebrews, right? It’s like a substance of things hoped for, but not seen. Right?

Pat Flynn: But not seen, yeah.

Brett McKay: I think kind of playing it back to fitness, starting a fitness journey requires some faith, right? You might cognitively know like, oh, if I do these things, I will get in shape. But for a lot of people, they don’t believe it. I’ve seen people when they first start their fitness journey…

Pat Flynn: Yeah, great point.

Brett McKay: They’re just like, I don’t think this is gonna work. Like, I’m doing the thing and it’s not working the way I wanted. But for the people that it ends up working for, they have to like kind of have faith. They have to have faith in the process. Like faith is trust, right? They have to trust their coach. Like if you just keep doing the stuff, it’ll work out. Then you kinda have to use faith as sort of an animating force in your action until you see the fruits of it and then you just know.

Pat Flynn: And then you don’t need faith anymore. Right? That’s the idea in heaven. Like that virtue drops away ’cause you don’t need it. That’s a great example, Brett, I think it’s totally true, is that faith at the end of the day is an act of the will, right? Like, you’re not gonna have this certainty in many areas of life, but what do you have? Well, you have the grounds for reasonable affirmation, oftentimes just testimony. But look, we have to take a lot of testimony on faith and reasonably affirm it all the time. There’s so many things that we know or we think we know, only because other people have told us. Right? And presumably reliable people. So you mentioned the coach. That’s right. You might not believe it in a sense that you have complete certainty that this is gonna turn out the way that you want, but you make in a particular act of the will to commit yourself to this way of living. And you commit yourself to the process. And then over time, eventually, right. Hopefully, you don’t even need that faith anymore because you’ve seen the fruits, you’ve been through it.

Brett McKay: Yeah. Okay. So let’s get into kettlebells specifically, in your new book, Strong ON! You make the case for how kettlebells can help you get strong, get lean, can even help you increase mobility all in just 20 minutes a day. So that’s some great copy there. But I think it’s true though, ’cause you yourself, you’ve seen the fruit spear out in your own physique. And something you’ve talked about for a long time, is that you argue for being a fitness generalist over a fitness specialist. And you know, when you’re a fitness generalist, you’re not trying to be the strongest in the world. You’re not trying to have a professional bodybuilder physique. You just wanna be physically skilled in a variety of areas. So you’re lean, you’re mobile, you’re strong, you’re flexible. So you’re prioritizing general all around health. So why are you such a big advocate for kettlebells and how do kettlebells fit into your generalist fitness philosophy?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I think the kettlebell is something like the Swiss Army Knife of functional fitness. And again, trying to set the right expectations. It’s not the best tool for every particular job, but it’s good to great at pretty much all the jobs, right? Like if you wanna build strength, awesome, kettlebells can do that. You wanna put on muscle, great, no problem. You can definitely do that with kettlebells. You wanna improve your mobility, flexibility, check. You want to improve your endurance and metabolic conditioning. I think they actually are probably a killer app for that. They’re definitely one of the best tools for that. So it’s really the sort of family man’s or family woman’s solution. I sometimes call them the minimalist ultimate secret fitness weapon. So for the generalist, I think they’re an easy and obvious choice, especially if you’re, I guess like me a little bit and you know, you kind of like just workout efficiency. You’ve got lots of things going on. I know you do too, Brett, so you might be a little bit time crunched. Can’t spend hours a day in the gym like you could back in college. I think they’re worth giving a solid look at for sure.

Brett McKay: And what’s nice too, they’re affordable, they don’t take up much space. Another nice benefit. They’re portable. You could take them with you on a road trip and keep continuing your training. You mentioned the limitations. They’re not great for everything. What do you think are the limitations of kettlebells?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, good. Like anything, every tool has certain limits. Some of these limits just concern exercise selection, right? So if we’re looking at the fundamental movements, they’re kind of limited with overhead pulling, no big deal, you know, throw in pull-ups, that’s a good way to kind of balance that out. You also don’t get a whole lot of work for the, you know, feet, ankles and calves. No big deal. Throw in some jump rope and running, you can fill that gap pretty easy. So like anything else, you know, they’re not absolutely perfect. I don’t think the kettlebell is the end all be all. I just think they’re really darn good, right? Especially if you’re into this whole generalist thing.

Brett McKay: And maybe we should… Like, for those who aren’t familiar with the kettlebell, I mean we’re assuming people know what a kettlebell is, but a kettlebell, it just looks like a cannonball with a handle on it.

Pat Flynn: Yes. Right. Yeah. It’s a cannonball with a handle. They became like really popular. I don’t know, Brett, like what, 15 years ago? Something like that. And Pavel, Tsatsouline, Dan John, who’s a great friend of mine who’s been on your show before, started bringing them into the mainstream. And you know, a lot of people thought, “Hey, this is probably just gonna be a fad. It’ll go away in a few years.” But it really hasn’t been. Now you walk into most gyms and they have pretty decent kettlebell collections. They are a very traditional form of weightlifting. The style and method of how they’re used of course has varied over time. But I think that they are just a tremendous tool for just putting good basic principles of strength and conditioning into practice for busy people.

Brett McKay: So for those who wanna give kettlebell training a try, what size kettlebells do you recommend people get to start off with?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, good question. I get this one a lot. So let’s assume that you maybe have some sort of general fitness background. You know, you don’t have to be a professional athlete or anything like that, but you’ve lifted weights before. Then for men, I generally recommend getting a set, if you can, of three different kettlebells. Something like a 16 kilogram, a 24 kilogram and a 32 kilogram, kettlebell people are weird. We still go by kilograms, right?

Brett McKay: Well, sometimes they use poods. Isn’t that one of the…

Pat Flynn: Yeah, poods, the old pood, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McKay: The Russian, yeah.

Pat Flynn: So yeah, it’s just this weird traditional thing. But that’s a good set. If that seems a little bit too heavy, then just shift down, you know, to I would say like a 12 kilogram, a 16 kilogram and a 24 kilogram. And between those different weights, you’ll have sufficient intensity for upper body exercises, lower body exercises, like goblet squats and stuff like that. The explosive movements like swings, the grinds like military presses. So you’ll be able to sufficiently challenge yourself if you have that range. For women, same idea, just shifting again a little bit down, I find that something like a 6 or an 8 kilogram, you know, a 12 kilogram and a 16 or 20 kilogram is a good solid starting set.

Brett McKay: And you want sets of these different three sizes. Is that the idea?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. So you could just have just those three. You could double up if you want. Because double kettlebell exercises are sort of that next step and they’re really effective, especially if you wanna get more serious with the kind of limit strength and hypertrophy training. I don’t demand it or require it starting out. And the cool thing with kettlebells is you can use… I mean, you can do this with any piece of equipment, right? But with kettlebells you can use two kettlebells of different sizes. You can have one size heavier kettlebell in your right arm for presses a bit lighter in your left, just switch sides every set. It works great.

Brett McKay: Oh, another one of the benefit of kettlebells that you were talking about as we were talking about it that came to my mind was kettlebell training’s fun. It’s different like because you’re swinging, it’s not like a barbell where you’re just going up and down. Kettlebells, you can kind of move in different planes.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Part of the reason I fell in love with it, it just felt like punk rock exercise, it’s very unconventional. I was into that sort of thing, you know, I was a teenager when I first found them, you know, it’s grungy. I started training with them in a real grungy martial arts gym. It just felt different. It was more dynamic. With kettlebells, I’m sure we’ll talk about this at some point. You can do complexes very seamlessly of just transitioning between different exercises. You know, taxing multiple muscle groups and energy systems simultaneously. Just felt like a cool way to train as a want-to-be martial artist. It felt like, yeah, this is the way I should be training. It was fun. It was engaging in a way that other forms of lifting, which I was perfectly happy to do, they just didn’t grip me in the same way.

Brett McKay: Yeah. I’ve had those moments with my training where I get kind… I do the bro split. I’m doing like hypertrophy stuff…

Pat Flynn: Rock on.

Brett McKay: Curls, whatever. For the most part I enjoy it. But just periods I’m like, ah, geez, I don’t wanna do this today. And I’ll do a little kettlebell stuff ’cause it just feels nice. It feels fun. It freshens things up.

Pat Flynn: And they’re certainly compatible, right? Like you could do the bro split bodybuilding, you know, three, four days a week. And then if you just wanna keep up on your conditioning or add a little bit of MetCon, which certainly can serve a purpose, you could just throw in a few kettlebell complexes one to two days per week. So kettlebells don’t have to replace your current program for people who are interested. You could find a way that they could supplement or compliment what you’re already doing.

Brett McKay: For sure. We’re gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. All right, so we got our kettlebells, these little cannonballs with handles on them. What do we do with them? What are the basic kettlebell movements?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, good. So I cover six or seven in my book, something along those lines. And for the single kettlebell exercises, there are a few that I always recommend that people focus on first. Obviously, there’s the kettlebell swing. Many of your gentle listeners have probably seen this before. Dan John calls it the fat burning athlete builder. It’s an aggressive hip hinge. It’s a power movement. If people are unfamiliar with these exercises, just type my name and kettlebell into YouTube and you’ll find many tutorials on all of these. So the kettlebell swing is great. That’s your foundational kettlebell exercise. A good compliment to that is the goblet squat, also goes back to our friend Dan John. He actually invented the goblet squat as legend has it? Yeah. Awesome thing just to remind your hips how they’re supposed to work. Just good way to even just kind of teach people the fundamental mechanics of a squat.

We have for the upper body, military press, again, classic exercise, super effective. Then getting a little bit more advanced we have kettlebell cleans, which helps to get the kettlebell in what’s called the rack position, where you initiate and finish lots of other exercises like the military press. And the clean is cool because it helps teach you not just force production and reduction like the swing, but also force redirection. It’s an important athletic quality. And then we had the kettlebell snatch, which is similar to a clean except for the kettlebell now winds up overhead. So really a big stroke of an exercise, phenomenal for just total body conditioning and endurance and grip strength. And then the kinda weird exercise that people either really love or really hate when it comes to kettlebell training is the Turkish Get-Up and this essentially has seven steps to it, depending on how you analyze it. And it really is just getting up and off the ground while holding weight overhead. Really great for strength obviously, but stability and mobility as well, especially for the hips, knees, and shoulders.

Brett McKay: Yeah. I like the Turkish Get-Up. It works your brain. ‘Cause you have to think about it a lot. If you haven’t done it in a while, you think, okay, how do I have to move myself so this weight doesn’t crash down on my face and I can get up into a standing position. So I think it’s a good one for like fighting aging.

Pat Flynn: It is, and I think it’s a great conditioning tool too. A lot of people use it just to lift a bunch of weight because you’re using, you know, the stanchion of your skeleton. So it is a good strength move. But two things about the get-up. One is when people are learning it, I teach it in the book actually from reverse. Start standing, go to the ground and get back up. That’s a bit more intuitive way to learn the steps. You still gotta pay attention to the steps, but it’s a little less clumsy than starting from the ground. So that’s called the reverse get-up. I think that’s a good teaching tool. And then the cool thing about the get-up is, it’s also just a great warmup and mobility exercise. So as you’re learning the move, just do like five to 10 minutes of get-ups, you know, in the morning or before your workout with either zero weight or very lightweight just to get those steps down and feel really confident with them, it’ll serve as a great functional warmup for your workout and teach you the pattern that you know, pretty quickly, you can start to throw some serious weight around if you want to.

Brett McKay: So in the book you get very specific with programming, but just kind of high level, how do you program kettlebells to hit different goals? So maybe you wanna get stronger, say you wanna get bigger muscles hypertrophy or like you just wanna get better conditioning. How do you program with the kettlebell?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Awesome. Let’s take a few examples. So, I always like to tell people, I say this in the book, like, kettlebells aren’t like some magic tool that work fundamentally different than anything else. Like, the principles of strength or the principles of muscle or the principles of fat loss just are what those principles are. I just wanna show you how to implement those principles with kettlebells. So for example, if we wanna build muscle, this is a good one to start with. You know, there are certain principles that go into that equation, and one is a principle related to volume. So how much you sort of lift throughout the week. And generally if you wanna build muscle, you kind of need at least around 10 big sets per major muscle group or movement pattern per week. You know, and you can kind of divide that up how you want.

You might have, you know, one day it sets a three another day sets a three and another day sets a four, right? Something like that. So that’s one of the principles for building muscle, muscle takes for those who are trying to be minimalists, it’s important to understand that muscle takes the most amount of work. It’s just the most demanding in terms of time. And there’s no way around it. You can just be more or less efficient with your efforts. The other key for muscle is intensity. So it’s not just enough to lift a lot with respect to volume. You also need to be lifting pretty hard and heavy. So you want to be working, you know, close to technical failure for many if not all of those sets. And technical failure is not absolute failure. Absolute failure is where the weight doesn’t move anymore at all.

Technical failure is where you notice some sort of serious, obvious, qualitative decrease in your reps. So, you know, say you’re doing pushups and your shoulders start really flaring out or you lose the neutral spine and it just looks like things are falling apart. That’s the idea of technical failure. And it usually comes right before or is even simultaneous with absolute failure depending on the exercise. So you really wanna push that. And those are kind of the two principles for building muscle that aren’t nutrition. There’s nutrition principles as well. So with kettlebells, what does that look like? Well, there’s two exercises that are really great for hypertrophy training with kettlebells: One is the double kettlebell clean and press. So you’ll get a lower body hinge there, but for the upper body traps, shoulders and upper packs and triceps, this is a really good muscle builder.

Easy to get a good amount of… Not easy ’cause it’s a hard lift, right? But it’s well suited for a higher volume type of training. And the other one is a kettlebell front squat. Again, another very large compound exercise, high degree of neuromuscular facilitation, classic muscle builder. So you could be pretty minimalist in your approach with kettlebells where you could just kind of take just a few exercises. Those two maybe add some pull-ups or rows and some sort of hinge, whether it’s a single leg deadlift or even if you just wanted to throw in a barbell for fun, just a barbell deadlift. And then just try and hit the sorts of volume and intensity that we just talked about, Brett. And that would be one way that you can put the kettlebell to use for a particular goal. And I have a program, you know, like that, not just in my book, but also online. If people look up, it’s called the Prometheus Protocol. It uses double clean, impressive front squat to build muscle with kettlebells if people are interested in that.

Brett McKay: How about kettlebells for let’s say metabolic conditioning?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, good. So a lot of people use metabolic conditioning ’cause they’re interested in body recomposition. So they hear that metabolic conditioning or metabolic resistance training is really good for that. And that’s true, right? Because this tends to burn a lot of calories, it increases that metabolic afterburn or epoch exercise, post oxygen consumption. Helps you to kind of burn more calories automatically rather than just manually. The thing I advise with this is that, you know, treat metabolic conditioning like the bourbon to the sauce of a good training program, a little bit goes a long way. People can tend to really overdo this is, and I think that’s one of the lessons we’ve learned from CrossFit. Is that you can really push metabolic conditioning to an extent that it can become, it’s just horrible overkill, right? So if people are interested in body recomposition, I actually recommend a pyramid style program.

And by pyramid, I’m asking people to imagine like the old food pyramid, which has been, I guess resigned in disgrace. But it’s a good illustration for exercise where at the bottom of the pyramid you have a form of exercise that you do every day. And that’s something like brisk walking. So that obviously doesn’t require kettlebells at all, but it can also be a lot of mobility work, which you can do with kettlebells, you know, light Turkish Get-Ups, windmills. This is the form of exercise that should not be that demanding. You should be able to hold a conversation, you’re just moving at a relatively low level. It’s healthy, it’s good for your heart, burns calories, right? Try and do that every day, 30 to 60 minutes. In the middle of the pyramid, you have your basic strength and hypertrophy training, two to four days per week.

Nothing fancy here. Use Dan John’s formula. You know, pick five big lifts, do three sets of six to 12 reps and, you know, push the intensity. And for kettlebells you can use military presses, front squats, goblet squats, kettlebell swings, double cleans, single arm rows, tons to pick from there, which all are super useful. And then the metabolic conditioning, Brett, comes in at the top, it’s the top of the pyramid, the kind of dessert area. I like bourbon to the sauce of the program. And really, I think here, honestly just like one to two, maybe three days per week of 10 to 20-ish minute sessions because we’re doing just really high intensity kettlebell complexes.

And this is where we string together different exercises, you know, things like swings, cleans, snatches, push presses, lunges, perform them back to back with little to no rest in between. To again, keep the system working as a whole, you know, the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, but switching through various muscle groups. So not anyone is reaching failure. And that’s what gives you that kind of awesome afterburn effect and improves your metabolic efficiency. So that’s a long answer, but I always like to situate metabolic conditioning within a wider program. I don’t usually have a program that it’s like, it’s just MetCon. I actually don’t think that’s the most efficient or effective way to go for most goals.

Brett McKay: Okay. So yeah, MetCon is, you’re gonna use the kettlebell to get really out of breath and sweaty.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. It’s the love to hate type of exercise. Yeah, right. For sure.

Brett McKay: Yeah. So, you know, a key driver in getting stronger, increasing muscle mass is progressive overload, which is you increase reps or you increase intensity. You know, with barbell training it’s pretty easy to add intensity or add weight. So you can add five pounds to the bar, 10 pounds, 15.

Pat Flynn: Yep.

Brett McKay: Kettlebell, you just have the kettlebell. How do you make things harder with kettlebells when you don’t have that sort of incremental increase ability?

Pat Flynn: Smart. It’s tougher with kettlebells. You have to get more creative. But I think it’s a good exercise ’cause it forces you to think more about other variables and how to be creative. So you’re right, to get stronger, you need to use progressive overload. You need to push the intensity, you need to put certain demands on your body that essentially says, “Hey, you better get stronger or you’re gonna like snap in half.” And your body eventually responds to that. So there’s a couple like kind of tricks, right? So let’s just take the military press. This is a good example and a commonplace where people get stuck. So military press is where you just press one or two kettlebells overhead and say you’re like at a 24 kilogram, but the next size kettlebell is a 28 kilogram. That’s actually a pretty significant leap.

Especially if you feel like the 24 is already pretty heavy. So what can you do here? There’s a couple different strategies. One of course is just to find kettlebell sizes in between. And fortunately kettlebells are so popular these days, you can find smaller increments, but that requires a bit more financial investment. Some people might wanna make that or not, but that option is available. I don’t typically use it, but it’s there now, whereas it wasn’t there like 15 years ago. So that’s nice. What you can do of course, is throughout your programming is you can just wave the other variables, right? So, okay, maybe you’re pressing the 24 for eight reps, but you can’t press the 28 for eight reps, but maybe you can press it for three to five. Okay. Well, then you have one day in your programming where you’re just working with that 28 at the lower rep range to begin getting the type of stimulus that you need to eventually move it to the higher rep ranges.

So just working within other variables is a smart way to do that as well. In fact, for pressing, just to give people a more concrete plan, if you wanna get your pressing up, I recommend having three days per week. One day where you just go really, really heavy, like one to three reps, maybe five reps, the heaviest bell you can handle, you’re fighting for every one of those reps. It’s intense. Then you have another day of moderate intensity of volume. So you know, you’ll go one or two bell sizes down, maybe working between eight to 12 reps, many, many sets, right? And then you have a third day of speed and power. So this is where you might do push presses and jerks to work the other end of the force velocity spectrum. ‘Cause you can get stronger not just by lifting more weight, but by lifting the same weight with more speed.

And with that approach, I think you’ll find that you’ll be able to make some pretty impressive leaps in your overall strength without needing those small increments, the micro loading. And you can really apply that to virtually any other lift as well. One more trick for the press is there’s exercise variations, right? So maybe you can’t strict press a certain bell, but what you could do if you wanna get to that next size heavier kettlebell is you could long push press it. And a long push press is where you take a deep squat with the kettlebell in the rack and then you slowly come out of the squat using just the least amount of momentum that you need to get the kettlebell overhead. So it serves as a sort of functional overload press. And then you slowly through the eccentric, the downward portion of the movement, lower the kettlebell down. And that stimulus, that overload stimulus will help you to get stronger to the point where you’ll eventually be able to strict press it. So those are a couple different strategies that I explore in my book and elsewhere of how you can get around this. Yeah. A little bit of an annoying issue of not being able to microload with kettlebells.

Brett McKay: Something you’re famous for is your 300 Swings Challenge. So it’s 300 swings… It’s every day for 30 days, right?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, that’s right. It sounds kind of crazy, but it’s not quite as crazy as it sounds.

Brett McKay: Yeah. What led you to develop this protocol?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, boy. So like 11 or 12 years ago, I used to write for a fitness site that has since gone somewhat, I think, out of business. And we were kind of brainstorming an idea for a fitness challenge. And I don’t know about you, Brett, but like way back when, when that movie 300 came out, I was like one of those kind of younger-ish dudes who was like, “Oh man, this guy’s looks so awesome.” And like anything 300 was like the thing. I mean, there’s like all sorts of 300 workouts that were going on and stuff like that. And most of them were just almost complete nonsense. So as I kind of like got older, I always thought there was something cool. It’s about like, yeah, a 300 challenge, right? People would like that sort of thing. So…

But how can we make it like useful and reasonable and difficult but also purposeful and to ensure that people aren’t gonna like get totally burnt out or injured. And that’s where he came up with the 300 swings per day kettlebell challenge. And the kettlebell swing as Dan John calls it the fat burning athlete builder. It’s such a bang for buck exercise. You know it builds your conditioning, it builds your power, it builds what people call kettle booty, your glutes, strengthens the low back, strengthens the hamstrings, burns a mountain of calories. There’s a reason people love the kettlebell swing. It’s just such an awesome exercise.

And it generally lends itself well to a higher frequency approach as long as you’re smarter about it. So I put together the 300 Swings Kettlebell Challenge to accomplish two things: One to help improve people’s general conditioning and power with kettlebell swings and also give them an opportunity to take a Bruce Lee approach to exercise. You know Bruce Lee is like, “Hey don’t throw a thousand kicks, throw one kick a thousand times.” And the idea there is you focus really with a ton of intention, there’s that word again, on all the nuances of a particular technique with every repetition in order to master it. And I think people would do well to approach exercise with that mindset where we’re not just trying to lift heavy load, but we’re trying to move with beauty, with elegance, with precision to have real bodily control. And I think the kettlebell swing is an awesome athletic movement that is worth just trying to make it look good and elegant. And when you have 300 reps a day to practice it, you can do that. All right. It’s a good amount of practice.

Brett McKay: Yeah. Pavel says strength is a skill. You have to practice the skill of strength.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, it’s so true. It’s like anything else. It’s technique and how you organize your practice. But I always tell people, you know, look, if you’re starting out, you don’t necessarily wanna start with 300 swings every single day, you can stagger it, you know, build up the volume gradually. And also when I run these challenges and in the book, we’re not doing the swings exactly the same way every day. Sometimes we’re going very light. Sometimes we’re spreading the swings out throughout the day. We use ladders, we use EMOMs, we use different swing variations. So there’s some intentional variety. So it’s pretty intentional and I think pretty well thought out that it serves a useful purpose without just being like some crazy over the top fitness challenge.

Brett McKay: When you do the 300 swings challenge, is this like what you’re doing for your training that day? Or are you doing that in addition to your regular training?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, it could be either. So I think it does function as a nice standalone and I have some options for people to just fill some gaps, you know, to put in some goblet squats and presses to make sure they’re not just training hinges. But I think it also is manageable enough that you can staple it to an already existing program. Of course, it always depends, like what is that program? How demanding is it? 300 swings a day isn’t particularly easy, but it’s reasonable enough that it can definitely be conjoined to an existing program.

Brett McKay: So we talked about how you can use kettlebells to get stronger, build muscle, increase your metabolic conditioning. You’ve mentioned you can use kettlebells to improve mobility like the Turkish Get-Up. Any other ways you can use a kettlebell to improve your mobility?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. The kettlebell windmill is great. That’s something I recommend people incorporate into their routine as soon as possible. And the windmill is nice ’cause with kettlebells, it’s not really a side bend, which you sometimes see in yoga. Really, what the windmill is, is a combination of hip hinging and thoracic rotation. And this is just a phenomenal exercise to sort of cure what ails modern America, right? So I mean we have the vulture posture and we’re constantly over a computer and we’re just in this slumped position all the time. So the windmill is just a really, really great way to open the hips, to loosen the posterior chain, the tight hamstrings, the shoulders and the upper back. So in terms of bang for buck mobility exercises, that’s way up there. People might also wanna check out kettlebell halos. And in fact, I think the goblet squat itself.

Brett McKay: Oh yeah.

Pat Flynn: It’s just such a good exercise for loosening the hips, knees, and ankles. And what you can do is you can just sit in the bottom of the goblet squat with a light kettlebell and use your elbows to pry your knees out side to side, find space in your hips and just spend time there. It’s super simple. You could just do it throughout the day just to break up those sticky hip joints, you know, from all those hours of sitting. So a few exercises really go a long way with kettlebells on that front.

Brett McKay: Another way I’ve used kettlebells for mobility is I’ll do this stretch. It’s for the hamstrings, where I’ll prop a foot up on a bench. And then I’ll have the kettlebell in my hands. And I’ll just kind of lower it down as far as I can go. Does that make sense? I’m I making sense here.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. You’re teaching me something new. This sounds really great. Continue, I wanna hear the rest of it.

Brett McKay: Yeah. And then you’re kind of doing this deep… You feel it a lot in your hamstring and in your butt, your glute, of that leg that’s propped up. And I’ll just hold it down there. ‘Cause the weight kind of helps you go down a little bit further and further. And then you can pull it back up. And then… So that’s another one that I would use for it.

Pat Flynn: What you point out there, Brett, is something that I think is seriously under appreciated is that you can and should use weights for your mobility and flexibility training. Weighted exercises are really effective for improving mobility and flexibility, assuming that you’re judicious in how much weight you apply and you’re not going too crazy right out of the gate.

Brett McKay: Yeah. Another thing I like about the kettlebell is that you can use it for specific training, but then you can also use it for movement snacks throughout the day. I have a kettlebell in one of the rooms in my house. And sometimes I’ll just walk by it and do a couple swings, nothing intense, but it’s kind of a movement snack, get the blood going, kind of invigorate myself. I’ll also do carries with it. So the other day I was… I did a… What’s it’s… A waiter carry. So I lifted up the kettlebell with one arm, fully extended like I’m a waiter carrying a tray. And I just kind of walked around my house like a weirdo.

Pat Flynn: But it’s your house. That’s what you’re allowed to do. Right, yeah.

Brett McKay: Yeah, it felt good. So yeah, carry exercises I think are another benefit of kettlebells.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, totally agree. And the idea of movement snacks is something that I’ve talked about for a while. I certainly didn’t invent them I’m just a fan of them like you are. And the idea is hey kettlebells are kind of cool insofar as you can just leave them, you know throughout your house and the challenge is like anytime you go by that kettlebell, do something with it. Maybe you pick it up and move it to the other room where you’re going, maybe the kettlebell follows you around your house all day long. In fact, that’s what they used to torture us with in the old school kettlebell sets. Throughout the whole weekend, you had to bring your kettlebell everywhere, to the bathroom if you went to the bathroom, you had to do it. So you could do that in the house. It’s a little weird, but let me tell you, it adds up, and whenever you get to a new room, you could do a set of swings or squats or mobility exercise. And the idea here is that, look, exercise and movement is cumulative. We can totally break free of the mindset that we have to do all of our exercise in this condensed period of time at a gym. No. It adds up, it’s all valuable. So little bits here and there go a long way for sure.

Brett McKay: The other benefit of kettlebells, we mentioned it earlier, you can take them on the road if you do a road trip. My wife and I have done that. But I’ve also seen, have you seen these on the market, sort of like bags that you can fill up with water if you’re at a hotel room, have you seen these?

Pat Flynn: No, I have not.

Brett McKay: Okay. So that’s something else. They are on the market now, you can buy these bags. They have handles on them, and somehow you fill them up with water, and if you fill them up all the way, it gives you a certain amount of weight.

Pat Flynn: And it functions as a kettlebell without having to…

Brett McKay: It functions as a kettlebell, yeah.

Pat Flynn: That’s really cool. I have to check that out.

Brett McKay: So you could fly with it.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. So, yeah. It’s better than trying to convince them to let you take it as a carry-on, which I have tried before, unsuccessfully, so.

Brett McKay: Made you check that. One thing you talk about too, in all your work, is, oh, let’s say someone gets started, and it’s always easy to start something, but you always reach this point where you’re gonna hit a plateau and progress slows down or maybe it stalls. And that’s when people start losing faith, like we talked about earlier.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, that’s right.

Brett McKay: Do you have any advice for people for where you stay motivated when that progress slows and they feel like, oh, this is not working anymore?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, yeah, really good. So I actually have a few things to say about this. And I think this is really important, doesn’t get talked about enough. So first thing is, right expectations, always. And I always tell people that plateaus are part of the process, right? There is no process of self-improvement without plateaus. And success, especially if you’ve been at something for a while, it never just kind of slopes up in this beautiful ascent like you want, right? It’s more like a very uneven, weird looking flight of stairs, right? You just kind of make these kind of weird leaps at almost random times where it’s like you jump up and you have this huge leap of progress and then you kind of plateau for a while. Then you have a small leap and you plateau for a while. Then you have another medium leap and you plateau. And then it’s just this jagged thing. That’s just what it looks like in lifting. I can certainly tell people that’s what it’s like when it comes to being a musician. That’s certainly my life of playing guitar, right? Huge plateaus where I don’t think I’ll get past it. And then suddenly I wake up one day and I got the lick or something like that.

So one is expectations. Getting people to understand that plateaus are not setbacks, they are just part of the process. And it’s okay, you can chill. In terms for maintaining motivation, I think there’s two important things to talk about with respect to motivation, starting out and ongoing. You know, people say, how do I get motivated for something? And I think that’s not the best way to think about it because motivation, at least starting out for a lot of people, isn’t intrinsic enough. And so we can make a distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. What people want is intrinsic motivation. This is the idea of self-reliance, where you’re just able to do the hard things day in and day out because you just have the grit, you have the fortitude, you have the habit, right? You’ve developed the habit. But very, very few people are intrinsically motivated starting out going into a discipline. So what do you do? What do you need there?

Well, you need extrinsic motivation. And this maps my own fitness journey. I was not super intrinsically motivated starting out. I would frequently give up when I started working out, I would quit the diets, I started like three days in until I went to that martial arts studio and found external structures to support me. I had coaches that held me accountable. I got skin in the game. I publicly pronounced my goals, right? I had people guiding me, encouraging me. And then what happens is with these external structures of support, coaches being the big one or just wider communities of people that will encourage you and hold you accountable, what happens is you then, after trusting in the process and seeing the results, and there’s good studies on this, Brett, it’s once people see the results after having already trusted that they then begin to develop intrinsic motivation. So the motivation comes after the discipline. It’s kind of this paradox, this chicken and the egg thing. And the way you solve it, is you just stop focusing on intrinsic motivation and look wherever you need for extrinsic motivation, having those structures in place to get started and to keep you going when things get tough until you’ve seen enough of the results that you then do develop that sort of self-reliance or inner drive that those external structures can eventually drop away.

Brett McKay: That’s awesome, I love it. Well, Pat, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, thank you so much. Well, the primary website is strongon.com, so just the name of the book. You can find me on YouTube. I have a YouTube channel called Kettlebell Quickies, a new YouTube channel of mine. I have a couple, but that’s the newest, and Kettlebell Quickies, is where I share just time crunched kettlebell workouts and training ideas for busy people who wanna be fitness generalists. And I’m on the usual social media places as well if you just kind of search around for, well, I don’t wanna just say Pat Flynn because there’s a couple other Pat Flynns out there and I’m only one of them. So if you type my name in with kettlebells, you’ll be able to find me.

Brett McKay: Awesome. Well, Pat Flynn, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Pat Flynn: Thank you, Brett. It’s been a joy.

Brett McKay: My guest today is Pat Flynn. He’s the author of the book Strong ON. It’s available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about the book at the website strongon.com. That’s S-T-R-O-N-G-O-N.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is/kettlebells, where you can find links to resources where we delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of The AoM Podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that we’ve written over the years about pretty much anything you’d think of. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify, it helps out a lot. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it’s Brett McKay, reminding you to not only listen to AoM Podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.