Brad’s 5-year Health & Fitness Reflections, Part 1 (Breather show with Brad)

Feb 5, 2021

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Inspired by a lengthy email exchange with my childhood friend, former podcast guest and ageless wonder athlete, Dave Kobrine (age 59 with a recent biological age result of 47!), I offer a two-part show discussing major health and fitness insights and reflections over the past five years.

You’ll enjoy hearing about our best practices, especially Dave’s legendary morning routine, and you’ll hear tips and tricks you can easily implement covering eating, exercise, mindset, and lifestyle topics. In part one, I detail some of the concessions I’ve made to chronological aging, like making sure that both my diet and my workouts are evolving in alignment with my body’s own natural evolution, as well as committing to a routine that focuses on flexibility and mobility for injury prevention, and much more!

Overall, looking at my pattern from 2017-2021, I have to say that I feel much much better loosening the purse strings and eating healthy nutritious food and recently focusing on animal food-emphasis. In 2017, as I was working on the Keto for Life book, I went pretty hard core, eating 50g of carbs a day or less, and trying to do sprint workouts and weight workouts. Truthfully, I felt like crap frequently, for 3 days here, 4 days there….Plus, maybe the fact that I was also going through a divorce and my daughter was struggling did not help matters as these personal events were also pretty fatigue-provoking.

But reflecting on how I felt back in 2017, I truly feel even better now than I did then, regardless of the fact that I am obviously older. My perspective on a few things, like the intensity of my workout sessions, fasting frequency, and my amount of carb intake, has shifted and evolved. I’ve dialed back on the explosive, intense workouts sessions, as they can be very strenuous and can take too long to recover from. When you add a super-strict keto diet on top of it all, that’s quite a bit of stress on your system, and can lead to a pattern of crashing and burning and feeling generally lousy that I personally experienced.

As 5 years have passed from age 51-56, some aging observations are taking hold. The main one is margin of error for injury, soreness or fatigue and extended recovery from overdoing it. Like I said, in your 20s, you overdo it for a few days or miss some sleep or jet lag travel and bounce back quickly - or not as quickly as some people boast. I was able to get trashed in my 20s and took weeks to recover from extreme triathlon training.

But, even in my 30s and 40s, I could still bust out to soccer practice or high jump pits and take a few leaps. Check out an older YouTube video, Brad Kearns Barefoot High Jump 5’0, which captures a day when I found some pits while driving by and decided to do a high jump (even though I had forgotten my shoes!). The difference between the ages of 50 and 56 is serious. At 51, I cleared 5’5, which is hard to imagine today. The same with running a 60 second 400m at age 50. Now, I get bouts of panic breathing after doing a 200m or 400m too quickly at practice or at altitude. 3 years ago, I did a couple 6 minute miles, and now, I doubt I could come close.

In many ways, I am fitter and have better injury prevention in place thanks to my morning routine. I guess it is true that with age, you lose explosiveness and some adaptability. One good thing though, is that my aging coincides with my reduction of effort in endurance activities, because I think it can be unhealthy for the 50+ crowd. At least, not very often. So maybe the best approach to aging is to reduce your frequency of big efforts and work hard at being more consistent with your basic fitness efforts.

I also never did anything resembling a morning routine until after age 50 and now it’s a godsend, keeping me out of both trouble and pain. Maybe I needed it far less in my younger years, but, at the time of recording this, I’m also at the six-month mark of dealing with a minor knee injury that just keeps on lingering. And while I am happy to report it’s finally going away, it’s interesting to look back on being in my 20s and how running into a slight issue with my back or shoulder would take merely a few weeks to go away, the most severe taking six weeks to completely heal. It really just reinforces the importance of maintaining and strengthening your flexibility and mobility (check out my morning routine video for flexibility and mobility here!) to minimize injury risk, and also just elevate the platform from which you perform all workouts.

I also touch on an interesting article from Dr. Shawn Baker, who says that having greater androgen receptor density can allow you to actually thrive on lower levels of testosterone. But how do you get greater androgen receptivity? By performing strength-training exercises and fasting. Androgen receptors are also particularly dense in your lower extremities, so doing full-body, functional lower-body exercises, like squats, leg presses, and deadlifts, will help increase androgen receptor density in those areas.

I wrap up by giving an update on how my thoughts have changed when it comes to fasting frequency, and share where I’m currently at with the carnivore diet, which has been truthfully, fantastic. It’s been amazing seeing just how much my digestion and overall health have vastly improved, all from putting less to zero emphasis on plants and focusing entirely on nutrient dense animal organs and protein. Even my workouts have been positively affected by the change I’ve made to my diet. And, I’ll add that Mark Sisson, king of his infamous Big Ass Salad, has lately admitted to gravitating towards a steak or other protein-based dishes instead of his staple salad for lunch these days. As Robb Wolf says, if you want to live a long life, lift more weights and eat more protein!

TIMESTAMPS:

Brad talks about how blood testing is estimating your age. He was thrown for a loop when his results came to him. [01:30]

There is much you can do to optimize testosterone without using drugs. [03:02]

You can develop androgen receptor density by doing strength training and also fasting. [06:04]

The ancestral health movement has grown like crazy. [08:42]

As Brad is aging, he feels his margin of error for injury, lingering fatigue etc. is taking much longer to recover. [12:32]

Brad insists that his early morning routine will help him minimize injury for the rest of his life. [14:03]

Maybe check physical therapy first before you go under the knife. [15:34]

As you age, you need to tone down some of the efforts and be aware of injury prevention. [19:06]

If you get an injury, it is important to rest it and then rest it some more. Be patient. [24:51]

Carnivore diet has been very popular lately. There are still many ways to include carbs that are needed. [26:38]

You want to eat the most nutrient dense food. Vegetables might not be the best for you! [29:49]

If you want to live a long life, lift more weights and eat more protein. [35:42]

LINKS:

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