November is National Diabetes Awareness Month and things are not looking good for the nation. People can become offended by the wording, but the facts don't change, fat is the new normal according to data from the Centers for Diesease Control and Prevention. However, beyond the obvious health issues, the cost of obesity threatens individuals and organizations as it weighs down the healthcare system. It's like a perfect storm of a population that gets sicker and sicker as it, literally, grows, and with that comes more expense and the need for more healthcare resources to be devoted to a problem that might be, arguably, self-inflicted.

This is probably the point where you might see a thousand personal trainers jump up and scream about comorbidity, health, and exercise. That's great, but there is no escaping the fact that as memberships in gyms and health clubs has increased over the last three decades, as more money has gone into the fitness industry, the increase in obesity rates has not seen a commensurate decline, in fact, the opposite.

Source: Axios

There are also some interesting factors at play in the level of obesity, For example, while West Virginia has the lowest percentage of overweight adults, it has the second highest percentage of obese adults meaning that there is no middle ground. The problem is, frankly, very, very big. But at the end of the day, the data shows that high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholestrol pretty much track with the worst states in the charts. You can check out the infographic on obesity factors among states here.

The Facts About the High Cost of Being Fat

• $294.6 Billion: Estimated medical cost of diabetes in the U.S. in 2019.
• $9,506: Average annual diabetes-related health care costs for patients.
• 2.3: Number of times by which a diabetes patient’s health care costs increase.
• 14 & 18 Years: Reduction in the average male and female type 1 diabetes patient’s life expectancy, respectively.
• 88 million: Number of American adults who have “prediabetes” (84% of them don’t know they have it).
• 70%: Chances of developing diabetes if both your parents have type 2 diabetes.

The following data breaks down the top 20 states by prevalence of obesity, courtesy of Wallethub. Where does your state rank? And do you know why? It's worth asking the question whether there is a culture of obesity that can be identified by state and what are the demographic, socio-economic, and cultural factors driving the statistics. Going to the gym or exercising more or eating better doesn't seem to resonate equally across state boundaries. Figuring out why is an important part of finding solutions that aren't just the usual fitness industry quick fixes and promises.

Our guest today is Chris Peil. Chris is a sports rehabilitation expert who specializes in helping people get back to performing at their best after the medical community has tried and failed. His no-nonsense, logical straight-talking approach is a breath of fresh air compared to much of the hot air and self-promotion you see from people far less skilled.

Chris flies under the radar for someone who works with Olympians, professional athletes, and World’s Strongest Man champion, Eddie Hall. His lack of self-promotion is refreshing but robs the world of his wealth of wisdom. Listen to this episode to learn from a genuine hidden gem of the fitness industry.

If you enjoyed this podcast and took value from it, please rate and review to help us spread the word to motivate and inspire others to take their performance to the next level.

For more podcasts like this, visit the Breaking Muscle Six Pack of Knowledge page. Find all out podcasts on most streaming services available including: iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, YouTube, Stitcher, PlayerFM, and PodBean.

I am the host, Tom MacCormick and I am a personal trainer and online coach whose goal is to be the curator of the greatest hypertrophy experts on the planet. If you are interested in working with me or finding out more about me then follow me on Instagram @tommaccormick.

Our guest today is Chris Peil. Chris is a sports rehabilitation expert who specializes in helping people get back to performing at their best after the medical community has tried and failed. His no-nonsense, logical straight-talking approach is a breath of fresh air compared to much of the hot air and self-promotion you see from people far less skilled.

Chris flies under the radar for someone who works with Olympians, professional athletes, and World’s Strongest Man champion, Eddie Hall. His lack of self-promotion is refreshing but robs the world of his wealth of wisdom. Listen to this episode to learn from a genuine hidden gem of the fitness industry.

If you enjoyed this podcast and took value from it, please rate and review to help us spread the word to motivate and inspire others to take their performance to the next level.

For more podcasts like this, visit the Breaking Muscle Six Pack of Knowledge page. Find all out podcasts on most streaming services available including: iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, YouTube, Stitcher, PlayerFM, and PodBean.

I am the host, Tom MacCormick and I am a personal trainer and online coach whose goal is to be the curator of the greatest hypertrophy experts on the planet. If you are interested in working with me or finding out more about me then follow me on Instagram @tommaccormick.

Deadlifts with dumbbells or kettlebells are kind of pointless unless you’re doing single-leg variations. Wrong.

Do you ever try single-arm variation instead of single-leg? Two legs on the ground but just one bell, in one hand, held on the side of your body. This is the suitcase deadlift, and in many ways, it trains the same qualities as a single-leg RDL.

The difference is, you can load this exercise up much heavier and have much more fun with it. I have put a lot of the details of your approach in this article, if you need to dig deeper or have specific issues than you should check out my movement principles online course.

The Benefits of the Suitcase Deadlift

Why do we do single-leg exercises? It’s easy to build single-leg strength. Except that’s not all. They also help improve our stability, and it’s not just because they build unilateral strength. It’s from developing the skill of triggering the trunk muscles that keep our hips from rotating or shifting in a coordinated effort.

Our bodies find stability and strength for one side from the other. Our left side obliques turn on to help keep us from side-bending when we’re holding something heavy on the right side of our bodies.

We create a force against the ground from our right foot to flex our left lat.

These cross patterns should be automatic, and we should have control and strength on each side to stabilize the other, but that’s not always the case. 

The suitcase deadlift makes it intuitive to sharpen this quality.

It feels wrong to tilt or rotate to one side when you’re picking a heavy weight off the floor in just one hand. You instinctively and actively fight against it. 

Should You Do It?

This may seem like a remedial exercise, or something beginners should practice before training heavy barbell deadlifts. Still, it’s just as necessary for elite powerlifters to be far from the competition during general training blocks. 

We’ll always develop a tendency to use one side of our bodies in the movement more than the other.

And while some of that is part of being human, too much is part of a problem that can get you hurt. 

You may play a sport where you almost exclusively use just one side of your body. Or you could be a busy professional who does some repetitive tasks over and over.

It doesn’t matter what it is; repeat the same movements over and over on one side, and you’re going to struggle with some nagging injuries, aches, and pains. 

Exercises like the suitcase deadlift can keep you healthy or help rehab the damage that's already been done. 

What Muscles Are Involved?

The movement itself trains the hamstrings, quads, glutes, and even the back muscles as they help you grip and hold the bell.

But the true advantage in adding these to your workouts is that they build anti-rotational trunk control and strength. 

The deep muscles of the trunk that stabilize the spine, pelvis, and hips like the transverse abdominis, psoas major, and even the pelvic floor muscles, to name a few, can really be stressed with this exercise and trained harder than they would be with any exercise where you’d have the same sized weights in both hands.  

How to Do a Suitcase Deadlift 

Place a dumbbell or kettlebell to the side of one of your ankles.

Hinge over and squat down similarly to setting up for a barbell deadlift. You’ll have to squat down lower and be more upright than you would in a conventional deadlift with a loaded barbell because the bell isn’t as high off the floor, and it’s placed to the side. 

Inhale deeply, filling your entire abdominal cavity and expanding and pressurizing not only your belly but the sides of your torso and lower back with the air. 

Brace and think of driving your feet and ankles through the floor as you stand, making sure your hips don’t shoot up before your chest and shoulders do.

• As you stand, concentrate on letting your shoulders relax and hang but keep the side of your torso with the weight from dipping or slanting lower than the opposite side.
• You want your hips to stay square and even the whole time.
• Fight the urge to let your torso bend to the side of the weight as you stand.
• Concentrate on engaging your trunk to keep your hips square and not allowing yourself to twist or bend to the side at all. 
• Exhale hard at the top, rebrace and squat down the same way to touch the bell to the ground before standing back up 

Add Variation

One of the biggest ways to switch things up would be to use a barbell instead of a dumbbell or kettlebell. 

• Many people think of using a barbell when they do suitcase deadlifts, but it needs to be thought of as a progression to using a bell. 
• With a barbell, not only do you have to fire your trunk to stabilize and keep from turning and rotating, but you’ll also have to stabilize the bar to keep it from tipping forward or back in your hand. 
• This demands a lot of focus on engaging your shoulders, back, and forearms to stabilize the barbell itself and if you can’t first fix your hips and pelvis in place, using a barbell defeats the purpose of the exercise.

Find stability in your body first with bells. Then you can use barbells, also. 

Too Far Too Soon

To train trunk stability and get the legs working, you need to challenge yourself with a heavyweight.

But you have to ease into it.

Too heavy of a dumbbell on day one, and you’re stabilizing muscles are likely to tire out too quickly, making you twist or turn.

And once that happens, nothing is protecting your back from injury. 

For the Advanced 

Despite what you use for weight - dumbbell, kettlebell, barbell - you can make this exercise much more difficult by doing floating reps.

Start the exercise the same as usual, but when you squat back down after the first rep, instead of placing the weight on the floor or even tapping it to the ground, you lower it until it's just half an inch off the floor. Pause for just a moment and stand back up. 

Do your entire set floating the weight just above the ground but never touching, and you’ll feel fatigued, and soreness in a way you haven’t felt since your way over-zealous grade school gym teacher made you do a hundred rep sit-up challenge. 

Cody Haun is the epitome of a 21st century strength scientists. As he ventures out on his own, leaving academia for private practice, he is set up to track, analyze, and assess every aspect of your training and nutrition.

• In this episode, we geek out about:
• Inter-individual heterogeneity and response to training and nutrition
• Starting a research and training practice
• Case studies, database processes, and accountability to trainees
• Ultrasound units, portable metabolic analyzers, and the tools of the trade

If you enjoyed this podcast and took value from it, please rate and review to help us spread the word to motivate and inspire others to take their performance to the next level.

For more podcasts like this, visit the Breaking Muscle Six Pack of Knowledge page. Find all out podcasts on most streaming services available including: iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, YouTube, Stitcher, PlayerFM, and PodBean.

I am the host, Tom MacCormick and I am a personal trainer and online coach whose goal is to be the curator of the greatest hypertrophy experts on the planet. If you are interested in working with me or finding out more about me then follow me on Instagram @tommaccormick.

There’s strength in numbers. Never is this more true than when it comes to committing to working out.

It’s the reason people hire personal trainers or sign up for a bootcamp with a friend: Accountability. And what more convenient accountability partner than your intimate partner? If you live with the person, even better.

What if we’re at different fitness levels? How does that work?

Rest assured, it can still work, even if one person is much fitter, stronger, or faster than the other.

Here are 5 ways to workout with your partner, even in the comfort of your own own, if you so desire:

1. Choose Your Own Adventure Burpees

Burpee intervals, where you each work for a specific amount of time, tend to work well for people who move at different speeds, as you’ll both end up doing an appropriate amount of work for your level, as opposed to one person whooping the other person’s butt.

Try this:

1. One person works for 30 seconds doing as many burpees as they can, while the other person rests. Then reverse roles.
2. Repeat for a total of 8 to 10 rounds each. Can you hold the same number of burpees in your last interval as you did in your first?

Make sure your chest touches the ground at the bottom of the burpee and that you fully extend your hips and jump at the end with your hands overhead.

2. High Five Partner Planks

You have probably done a plank before, and maybe a shoulder tap, where you raise one arm and touch your hand to your opposite shoulder, all the while stabilizing through the core and keeping your hips from shifting.

This is the same concept, only instead of tapping your shoulder, you raise your hand and high five your partner’s hand.

To perform:

1. Face each other and assume the plank position.
2. At the same time, raise your right hands and gently high five. Then the left. Back and forth.
3. Focus on keeping your hips from shifting and your glutes and abs as tight as can be through the duration of this exercise.

After finishing the choose your own adventure burpees, finish with 3 rounds of 20 high five partner planks with one minute rest between sets.

3. Ab War

One two three four—I declare an ab war.

On a day you’re feeling competitive, go for a max effort hollow hold against each other. Who can hold a hollow hold longer?

Make sure your shoulder blades are off the ground, your lower back is glued to the ground, your hands are straight overhead and your heels are hovering four to six inches off the ground.

Then finish with 100 hollow rocks as a team. Break them up as needed and complete 100 together.

4. Interval Isometric Fun

Similar to the burpee workout, trade off movements of:

1. 30-second wall sit hold
2. 30-second dead bug hold

Or better yet, make it a bully dead bug, where your partner pushes your arms and legs around a bit to force you to resist their pushes and tighten up your core with everything you’ve got. This is also a great core activation drill.

5. Race a 10 to 1

I really like 10-1 workouts, because each round gets easier. You can do this with all sorts of movements, but basically select two movements and do 10 reps of each, then 9 reps of each, then 8, 7, 6 all the way to 1.

If you’re at a similar fitness level, then select one movement each that you’re good at and then race each other. Or, if one person is way more fit, then have them do 10-1 while the other person does 9-1, kind of like a handicap in golf.

Try it with air squats and sit ups, or burpees and lunges, or push-ups and hollow rocks. The sky is the limit.

Why?

Because as the saying goes, ‘Those who train together stay together.'

Jordan Shallow is a chiropractor, strength and conditioning coach, powerlifter and educator. He's the cofounder of Pre-Script, which operates on the three pillars of mobility, stability and strength.

In this episode:

• Jordan identifies the missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to enhancing performance, gaining strength, building muscle mass, managing injury risk, and developing more robust athletes
• He explains how developing a foundation of ability and stability can facilitate an increase in strength

This is an interview I've wanted to do for several months and I'm delighted to finally get it done. Listening to Jordan will shine a spotlight on what your limiting factor is when it comes to getting results, it will identify why you get those nagging injuries or why you keep hitting plateaus in the gym. I'm willing to bet you'll learn you've had a blind spot when it comes to your programming. What's crazier is that blind spot has been hiding in plain sight the whole time. 

If you enjoyed this podcast and took value from it, please rate and review to help us spread the word to motivate and inspire others to take their performance to the next level.

For more podcasts like this, visit the Breaking Muscle Six Pack of Knowledge page. Find all out podcasts on most streaming services available including: iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, YouTube, Stitcher, PlayerFM, and PodBean.

I am the host, Tom MacCormick and I am a personal trainer and online coach whose goal is to be the curator of the greatest hypertrophy experts on the planet. If you are interested in working with me or finding out more about me then follow him on Instagram @tommaccormick.

Now God didn’t etch these in stone and send them down through the clouds, nor did I perform any miracles like parting the Red Sea. So, in that respect, they’re up for debate. 

But after being in the fitness industry for a while, reading, studying, doing continuing education credit hours on top of training clients, and teaching group exercise classes, I’ve gotten a pretty decent handle on how to get fit.

However, there are many options for you to shed weight, build muscle, and be your best self. A quick Google search for health and fitness generates over 2,670,000,000 hits, so you’ve got plenty of choices. 

However, this is a classic case of information overload. Hence, the need to take the view from 10,000 feet and to not major in the minors. It's easy to do when you're supporting or improving your health and fitness.  

Think of these commandments as a guide to best navigate the world of health and fitness on the interwebs and mainstream media. 

Hopefully, you and the man upstairs approve. 

1. You Shall Engage In Resistance Training

It doesn’t matter what type of resistance training you engage in because the body can’t tell the difference between a dumbbell, a stone, or your own bodyweight. 

Having a decent amount of muscle mass and strength will act as armor for whatever the world throws at you, and you’ll look better naked.

It also helps to keep bones strong, increase your energy levels, support good posture, and increase your metabolism to help you lose weight.

2. You Shall Eat Fruit And Vegetables

Personally, I've never seen someone become overweight by eating too many fruits and vegetables. It’s hard to eat too much because of the amount of chewing they require and their water content. 

Both fruits and vegetables provide the body with the energy to perform in and out of the gym.

Fruits and veggies are rich in vitamins and minerals because they draw the nutrients to grow from mother earth. 

If that wasn’t enough to convince you, both offer fiber to help you feel fuller longer and more regular in the bathroom. But I’ll stop there. 

3. You Shall Eat Enough Protein

To build and support muscles, you must eat protein. Protein contains amino acids that repair and rebuild muscles, and protein helps you stay fuller longer, which helps you lose fat.

Protein is also an important building block for your bones, cartilage, skin, and blood.

There are all kinds of protein, and some are better than others, but that’s not the most important thing. Whether you’re a vegan, meat-eater, or vegetarian, you should strive to eat enough protein to repair and rebuild muscle.  

4. You Shall Engage In Cardiovascular Activity

Heart disease is one of the human race’s biggest killers. This has probably touched you or someone you know. I have friends and clients who have suffered heart attacks, and coming back from them is no joke. 

Having good aerobic fitness doesn’t totally cut the chances of having heart disease, but it surely helps. Having good aerobic fitness helps cut the risk factors associated with this terrible disease, such as:

All you have to do is find a movement you enjoy, do it consistently, and raise a sweat every once in a while.

It’s that easy.  

5. You Shall Drink Water

Our bodies are 60% water. And if you lose more than 2% of this through sweat, bad things start to happen like:

Your body needs water to function, and drinking (or eating fruit and vegetables that contain water) enough for your body weight and activity levels is a no-brainer. 

6. You Shall Take Time For Yourself

Between work, life, family, and friends, a lot is going on. Maybe you’re rushing around, trying to get stuff done, and you’re getting pulled in a million different directions.

However, making time for yourself should be a priority because your sanity depends on it. 

Whether it’s lying in bed for a few minutes thinking about all the blessings in your life, doing meditation, or engaging in a moving-meditation-like exercise, you need to focus on you and drown out the noise of the world before you run yourself ragged. 

Because you're not useful to anyone else if you’ve lost your mind. 

7. You Shall Be Consistent

This is the most important commandment because none of this works if you don’t do this.

It’s about finding what works best for you, your schedule, and your lifestyle.

Does it mean doing it every day? No.

It means most days. And if you fall off the horse for a few days, dust yourself off and jump back in the saddle.

The only way you can fail at this health and fitness thing is to quit.

And you’re no quitter. 

8. You Shall Make Sleep A Priority

Sleep plays a huge role in your health and well-being. Getting enough sleep can help protect your mental health, physical health, quality of life, and safety. 

The way you feel when you're awake depends on (in part) the quality of your sleep. And if you don’t sleep great, there is always coffee, but caffeine only lasts for so long.

During sleep, the body is hard at work to support healthy brain function and repair and recuperate your body. And if sleep quality is an issue, it will catch up with you eventually. 

Because you’ll be too tired to run.  

9. You Shall Eat Like An Adult 

It’s great when you’re a kid. You can eat McDonald’s Happy Meals, all you can eat candy, a variety of fried yellow food, and barely put on a pound because you have a metabolism that runs like a Ferrari. 

However, when you're an adult (some in age only) with a slower metabolism and more stress and responsibilities, eating like a kid will have you staring down at your waistline in disbelief.

You shall follow commandments 2, 3, and 5 and eat like an adult and leave your childhood behind you. 

10. You Shall Not Shame Others  

There’s a reason The Biggest Loser isn’t popular anymore. The yelling, the screaming, and the boot camp mentality that tore these overweight people down to build them back up again are now out of step with today’s society.  

Obesity is a crisis that won’t be solved by shaming them into eating less and moving more. 

People like this need encouragement and not stares, ridicule, judgment, and finger-pointing. That’s the easy way out. 

Are these good enough to be etched in stone? Maybe not, but if you follow these ten commandments, they will lead you to a better quality of life and a longer life.

And that’s what we all want.