Andy Talks Fitness with Friends

Good morning and welcome back! You might have noticed that we were gone for a few weeks and that's because my wife and I had a baby! Our baby girl was born on October 24th, and we are over the moon. So I've been learning how to be a first-time dad and Zack was gracious to give me a few weeks to recover. Today, we're back at East Nashville Brew Works and talking about training. As coaches we often...

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are hosting bodybuilder, Bostonian, and comedian, Tony Capobianco. Tony is new to Nashville but not that new to the comedy scene. He joins the podcast to talk about his passion for comedy, what brought him here to Nashville, and his enthusiasm and energy for bodybuilding. Next, the three of us talk about our "banned exercises" and why we hate them....

Good morning and welcome back! Zack and I are reconvening after each having eventful weekends, and we're drinking beer and talking shop. When it comes to lifting heavy weights, what's the best approach? How do we define heavy? How do we train our bodies to lift ever-increasing weight? These questions and more on the podcast today, so grab a beer and enjoy!

Good morning and welcome back! Zack and I are checking into East Nashville Beer works drinking a six pack and talking about six packs (abs). Today we're discussing the ab exercises we like to do both as coaches and trainees, as well as our evolution of ab training over the years - from doing a thousand crunches every workout, to doing no abs at all, to bringing some ab training back again. Grab a...

Good morning and welcome back! Zack and I are checking into East Nashville Beer works and Zack is freshly back from a seminar in Minneapolis. Zack shares his experience and what he learned and all the fun he enjoyed while away for the weekend. Next, we turn our attention to "groundhogs' day," or the feeling that training is getting a little stale, maybe feeling a little unenthusiastic, and what we...

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are checking back in at East Nashville Beer works and talking shop. Our fans ask: what do you think of ankle mobility drills, and how and when do you use them? Zack and I share our thoughts on mobility drills, squatting, and how we approach these with our gen pop clients. Next, we take a moment to look over our own training over the years and consid...

Good morning and welcome back to the show! Today, Zack and I are chatting ergs: with a gym that's 99% complete with all the toys I could ever want (or can fit in a tight space) I'm looking to add a piece of cardio/conditioning equipment, so Zack helps me figure that out. Now, with summer behind us, Zack and I find ourselves barreling towards two different fitness goals: one of us gaining, and one...

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are pondering the "what ifs" when it comes to the business of fitness: what could we do, where could we go, and how could our businesses and our skillsets set us apart professionally in the future? After all these years of coaching and training, what could the later years of our lives look like in the world of fitness? Next, we sometimes deal with l...

Good morning and welcome back to the show! This week Zack and I welcome another kettlebell nerd and stellar fitness coach, Vanessa Edwards, to the podcast to chat about fitness and gym ownership. Vanessa got her start when she was dealing with perpetual back pain. She sought treatment through chiropractors and Physical Therapists but eventually started working with a personal trainer to try and ge...

Good morning and welcome back to the A2Z Podcast! This week Zack and I are doing an audit: when it comes to coaching and running a business, how do we improve? What does that look like? How do we fit in the fitness market on a local scale (for me and my brick-and-mortar) or a global scale (for Zack who pumps out online content)? We discuss how we navigate our respective businesses and look to make...

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are trying out some new hardware with our podcast in an effort to continue improving the user experience! When it comes to choosing the right exercise, training program, or diet, we're always looking for that "magic bullet" or "best" this or that in an effort to get results fast. Unfortunately, what's "best" for some might not be best for others. In...

Good morning and welcome back! Today Zack and I are welcoming a special guest and close friend of mine, Brian Murray of Motive Training. Brian has worked in many facets of the fitness industry and is a helluva trainer and business owner. He owns Motive Training in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and currently lives in Austin, Texas, where he hopes to open a second location. Brian joins us on the show to t...

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are talking about autoregulation. We've all had stellar gym days where we lifted big ass weights and set PRs and everyone hoisted us on their shoulders and cheered us on. And we've also had those days where we feel like we've been hit by a truck before opening the gym door. Many workout programs use percentages and hard numbers (sets, reps, weight)...

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are talking about Recovery. It's all fine and good to "send it" in the weight room, but it might surprise you to know that the gym is not where the Gainz Magic happens. In fact, without proper nutrition and rest, all your efforts in the gym are mostly useless. Going to sleep and eating your veggies might be boring, but they're the building blocks of...

Good morning and welcome back! After 26 episodes on the year, Zack and I took a well-deserved week off to rest and recover. We come back from the break with a special guest: Willis Graves. Willis is a local physical therapist and Highland Games athlete, and he joins us today to talk shop. There are ball sports: football, baseball, soccer, lacrosse, and others. There are barbell sports like Olympic...

Good morning and welcome back! When it comes to working out, everyone wants to look and feel tough. It's "war" and we're "going into battle," two of many lines of thinking that Zack and I both believe to be hilariously silly. Instead, most fitness as we know it is fairly "softcore" if we were to characterize it correctly. But what about those workouts that just punch you in the jaw? The ones that...

Good morning and welcome back! Zack and I are a little worse for the wear after a weekend with the boys in Austin, Texas but the show goes on! Today we're talking about decision fatigue: that overwhelming feeling you get when it comes to all the choices you have at your disposal. Part of what makes a good coach a good coach is that they can help you pare down those decisions - cut to the chase - a...

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are welcoming Mindi Martinez to the gym to be a very special guest on the podcast. Mindi hails originally from the Midwest and through work in the movie industry found her way to LA, Atlanta, and finally to Nashville. Over the years, Mindi was introduced to CrossFit and, over time, got more serious into Olympic lifting. Here in Nashville, she's the...

Good morning and welcome back! Zack and I are checking in from his apartment drinking some gas station Yuengling (because we're not above some store-bought plain stuff) and talking about training. Last week, after some busted sleep and back to back training sessions I found myself with a little back soreness. And what did I do? Well, as anyone with any ache or pain, I went exploring it. And what I...

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are talking about training the "skinny-fat" or "dad bod" type of client. In our line of work, this is usually someone in their 20s to 30s, has probably been active before but isn't slinging weights or doing cardio regularly, and wants to get in shape. What do we do next? Do we diet down and try to get lean first? Or do we attack the body with as muc...

Good morning and welcome back to the show! This week Zack and I are diving right into some talk about marketing - whether writing, filming, or social media - and how we each approach the subject in our respective businesses. Next, we're talking about our "lesser strengths" as coaches and business owners, where we get hung up on this idea of motivation and how we try to motivate our clients, especi...

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I invite a special guest and Nashville's go-to Calisthenics guru and Acro-mutant Dustin Del Rio to the show! Dustin and I met a few years back when he had just opened his first gym, and ever since, he's taken his expertise in strength and conditioning and honed it in the acrobatics world. When he's not helping regular folks learn to do their first han...

Good morning and welcome back! When things get tough - when work, life, or stress gets in the way - how do we go about navigating those stressors with regular training? How do we "bring it" when we'd rather do anything else? How could we change some variables to make sure we're staying in the game without driving ourselves into the ground? Today we talk about training when life gets tough, and lik...

Good morning and welcome back! Today, Zack and I are hanging out at his place slinging some local beers and chatting training. This week, we're talking about some of the ways we agree and disagree in our approaches to training. While the meat and potatoes of training remain largely the same, there are several ways in which we both coach and train that are distinctly different, and we talk about th...

Good afternoon and welcome back to the A2Z Podcast! This week Zack and I meet at an old favorite watering hole in East Nashville and we're talking training. Recently, we spent a Saturday morning in a new training environment - Cornelia Airpark - where we slung kettlebells and did some bodyweight work to catch a killer pump. We didn't have a plan, we didn't have a goal, we just made do with our env...