Athlete Spotlight: Drew Backoff

Throughout the pandemic, people have been faced with unimaginable hardship and obstacles. It is so challenging to focus on what you can control, and let go of things that are out of your hands. Drew Backoff, has used his fitness as a tool to center himself and continue a growth mindset when it almost seems impossible. Drew has improved his deadlift technique, hit a personal record on his power clean + hang power clean, and hit another personal record last week on a 3 rep max front squat (FEATURED BELOW). All the while improving his technique and ensuring that he will be able to have fun in the box for years to come.

Not only is Drew a stud in gym, he is also a compassionate and generous man, set an amazing example for his three sons Reed, Trevor, and Shane. Drew took on the American Heart Association’s Executives with Heart Challenge, raising funds to fight against cardiovascular disease. Drew has raised over $1,600 with a goal to get to $3,000. If you’d like to donate, click the link below. Donations are tax deductible.

Drew, keep grinding and setting the example for what hard work and dedication are all about!

If Drew’s journey has inspired you to be the best version of yourself, I’d like to help. Click the link below to book a free assessment and let’s get started today!

How to Calculate Your Macros For Weightloss

When I work with clients on nutrition, I not only like to give them a clear idea of the number of calories they should be taken in based upon their body composition goals (fat loss or muscle gain) but also the macro nutrient content as well. Controlling your macro nutrients are important for a number of reasons including:

1. Lean Muscle Preservation

2. Stabilizing Blood Sugar

3. Increasing Energy

4. Decreasing Stress Hormones like Coritsol

5. Control Appetite

I think we can all agree that eating 1,000 of candy is substantially different than eating 1,000 calories of lean meats, complex carbs, and vegetables.

Here is the breakdown of how I calculate the macro nutrients for a 150lb. female client who is active (training 4-5x per week Crossfit) and looking to lose bodyfat.

Step 1-Calculate the number maintenance calories this athlete needs to maintain the same body weight with the given activity level. I like to use https://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html There are a bunch of different formulas available online, and they are all pretty similar. For this individual, maintenance is 2,200 cals per day.

Step 2-Determine the grams of protein necessary to support lean muscle mass by multiplying the athletes weight in pounds by 0.8-1.2. For this individual, the range would be 120g-180g of protein a day. As a general rule, the higher the activity level the lower on the range we would keep protein so it doesn't overtake carbs in importance. For this athlete, we go with 120g/day.

Step 3-Determine the grams of carbs necessary to support training, daily activities, and mental cognition multiplying the body weight in pounds by 0.5-2.0. Since the activity level is moderate, we'll go with 1.5x multiple giving the carbs/day at 225g/day.

Step 4-Determine fat consumption by subtracting the protein and carb calories from the total cal per day.

120g Pro x 4cals/g=480cals

225g Carb x 4cals/g=900cals

900cals+480cals=1,380cals

2,200cals-1,380cals=820cals

820cals/9cals/g=91g Fat

This is the maintenance calories and macros for this individual.

Step 5-Adjust grams of fat to create caloric deficit. We shoot for 300-500cals/day of a caloric deficit as this would lead to a 0.5-1lb loss in bodyfat each week (3,500cals=1lb.). 2,200cals goes to 1700cals/day.

Step 6-Calculate decrease in grams of fat

500cals / 9cals/g=55g

91g-55g=36g fat/day

Final Macros for Weight Loss:

1,700cals/day

120g Protein

225g Carbs

36g Fat

This is a general look at the macro nutrient breakdown for a client. I will dive deeper into specific variables that have to be addressed in other posts. The next step here would be implementing this plan for the client, which in my opinion is the most important and challenging aspect and where having a coach is critical.

In showing you the macro breakdown, I hope you learned a little more about what you are putting in your body and how to adjust your food intake to decrease body fat. If you would like help in creating a nutrition plan that works for you, I'm here to help! Click the link below to book an assessment today!

Is Squatting Bad For Your Knees?

After the 2011 Reebok Crossfit Games Regionals, I elected to have bilateral ankle surgery to remove bone spurs from both of my ankles? Why? The spurs were impeding my ankle range of motion, preventing me from a full depth squat…or so I thought. Fast forward nearly 10 years of daily practice and my squat is still a work in progress, but night and day from where it was before. Through this experience, I now have a deeper understanding of squatting mechanics that allows me to share my knowledge with others. One of these areas is knee pain in the squat.

One of the most common questions I receive as a performance coach who works with aging athletes, “Is squatting bad for my knees?” Answer, “It depends.” What are the demands of the squat? How many squats are you doing? What is your technique? What is the anatomy of the individual? What is the load of the squat? All of these questions and more factor into my answer. When someone tells me their knees hurt when they squat, it takes about 10 seconds of watching them move for me to find the reasons why and it usually falls into one of two categories: 1. poor posture and/or 2. lack of technique.

When assessing an athletes posture, I look at the ribcage relative to the pelvis. In most athletes I work with, their ribcage is hyperinflated causing the back to overextend and the pelvis to tip forward. This leads to the athlete sitting into the squat and letting the bodyweight translate forward causing the tendons and soft tissue of the knee to receive the load. With enough reps or enough load, the knees get cranky.

The other common fault I see is in the technique of the athlete. Many are worried about letting there chest drop so they arch their back and they reach their butt back. Again, this leads to a negative outcome as the knee (and lower back) end up taking the burden of the load. Instead, when teaching a client the squat, I start have them feel their heels first. I also want them to be able to get their pelvis to neutral and to feel abs. Setting the athlete up in this position leads them to the next step: letting the knees flex forward. I know heresy! For an athlete to stay upright in a squat while using hamstrings and quads, the knees must flex forward. The difference in this squat however, the weight must stay back on the heels. This ensures the load stays dispersed through the muscles of the glutes, hamstrings, and quads. Not the knees and lower back.

Personally, I use the squat as a tool to teach clients simultaneous hip and knee flexion along with stabilizing the core, something that is essential for long term health of the knee, hip, and lower back. There aren’t many movements that can accomplish all of these things, and it’s time efficient as well. I wouldn’t consider the squat critical to activities of daily living, however the farther away we get from a full functional squat (sitting on heels, ass to grass and stable with knees over toes), we can assume the individual is starting to or has lost range of motion and control of the ankle, knee, hip, and lower back, all important in the long term health of the athlete. Especially if the individual is still active in recreational sports or lives an overall active lifestyle.

In general, if you are trying to squat on your own without much experience, I would stick to front loaded squats (goblet and zercher) or bias single leg movements like the split squat, step-up, or lunge. Single leg movements put much less technical demands on the core and legs and can in fact teach some basic control and understanding of how everything works together.

In the future, I will be breaking down the squat much more in depth and giving you my progression from taking the squat from an F to an A+ so stay tuned!

Ready to get rid of that nagging knee pain and overhaul your squat? Let’s get started! Click the link below to set up a free assessment and we will get you on the path to pain free squatting!

The World's Greatest 4 Minute Warm-Up

Let's face it. Warming up is not on the top of anyone's list as the favorite part of their workout. But this overlooked aspect of training has been my secret to success over my 20+ year career for the success of myself and my athletes. A good warm-up should increase your body temperature, raise your heart rate, mobilize joints, and prepare the brain for training. If you strip down your warm-up to only exactly what you need for a general, you'll get this warm-up. It’s 4 minutes, just do it!

Are you an aging athletes who has mobility restrictions like tight shoulders or hips? I'd love to help, click the link below and let’s talk about how a dedicated mobility program is right for you!

How Sore Should I Be?

When I was 16 years old, my good friend and training partner Max and I went to the gym and jumped into a brand new training block called German Volume Training (popularized by Charles Poliquin). We didn’t really know what it was called, all we knew is that we would put about 50% of our max bench press on the bar, perform 10 repetitions, rest a minute, and then do it again...for 10 total sets. Failure wasn’t an option as we performed forced reps to achieve the 100 total prescribed reps. That was just the start of the workout and we had an additional 6-10 sets of various other exercises to perform as well. For the next week, I couldn’t lift my arms up past my belly button. I was so proud. This is only a hilarious story since we both survived to lift another day, but it brings up the question, “How sore should I be from my workouts?” There are many factors that will affect the amount of soreness an individual experiences (diet, sleep, age, etc.) but today I will focus only on the athletes training and exercise. Like many answers, that depends. Is your goal to be sore, or is the goal to improve something else, like body composition, strength, or performance. If the goal is to be sore, there are very simple ways to cripple athletes and have them rolling out of bed the next morning unable to sit down on the toilet (see 100 bench press workout). Sometimes soreness is inevitable, like if you are exercising for the first time, or if you are coming back to training after a layoff. But if your goal is to make strength/performance or body composition improvements, you must be able to train with frequency (2-3x per week). If you are too sore from your previous workout, and you are unable to to train or your training is compromised, then you can’t make progress. If you are not sore at all and aren’t challenged by your workouts, then you won’t make progress. This is why I rely on the minimum effective dose. In exercise, you want to push beyond the threshold of your current abilities, and then recover. This forces the body to adapt. Any more stimulus, is wasting your time at best and detrimental at worst.

A good way of determining if the training stimulus is enough (popularized by RP Strength) is using a pump and soreness scale.  After the workout ask, “Did I get a good pump and was I challenged?” Judge on a score of -2 to +2 (+2 being I didn’t get much pump and -2 being I was so challenged that I couldn’t even finish the workout, 0 being I am pretty sore, but I could train tomorrow).  The question you ask the next day, “How sore am I?” Same scale -2 to +2 (+2 I could train right now and I am not even sore, -2 I am crippled and need to take a day or two off).  Most training sessions should have a some of 0.  If you are doing a lighter week or deloading you may have more +2s, and once in a while you may have some -2s when you are really challenging yourself or maxing out/testing.  If you 80%+ of your training sessions are 0, then you are sure to make great progress over time.  I leave you with this quote, “You only need to suffer enough, any more is just showing off.”

Looking to get the best workout of your life and stop wasting time in the gym? Floch Fitness will write you a custom exercise plan that fits your exact needs. Click the link below to set up a free assessment and let’s workout together to create the best version of you!

Athlete Spotlight: Hessam Khatami

This week’s athlete spotlight is Dr. Hessam Khatami. Hessam has been part of the Floch for the last 8 years and was one of my very first clients. Hessam has a unique story, and I hope to show that in aging athletes, knowing your PRIORITIES should be the focus of any coach athlete relationship.

When Hessam and I first started working together, the goal was to improve body composition. There were two things we had to change:

1. Decrease Training Load-He was doing high intensity exercise 5 days a week (Crossfit Classes) and it was too stressful on his body with the amount of clinical work he was also doing

2. Improve Diet- Hessam didn’t have any direction and was flying blind

I wrote Hessam his own training program and prescribed a stepwise change in diet, starting off with changes in quality of food, and finishing off with some intermittent fasting to control caloric intake. With a new training program, and changes in his diet, Hessam shed over 20 pounds of fat and got down to a weight he hadn’t seen since high school. Hessam was a different man. Not afraid to take his shirt off, and beaming with confidence.

Once Hessam got down to the leanness he desired, we changed his training priority to match his new goal: absolute strength. Specifically, Hessam wanted to deadlift over 400lbs. and improve his upper body pushing and pulling strength. We changed his diet again to accommodate the increase in muscle mass, adding quality calories to his diet. After years of training, Hessam finally pulled 400lbs., and he has the video to prove it! Through that chapter of his journey, there was some ups and downs with his training consistency as his lifestyle had changed drastically. He was now a dad (to two awesome boys) and he expanded his medical practice and became the owner of FTX Wellness in Boca Raton,FL.

With these new chapters came changes in training priority, and instead of fitness for a good time, his goal was fitness for a long time. For me, this meant making sure Hessam was moving to the best of his abilities and had general preparedness (ready for what life has to throw at him). Can he squat fully? Can he touch his toes? Does he have good cardiac capacity? All of these questions and more were rolled into his new training program supported by lifestyle changes and a quality diet. In this video, Hessam is squatting some of the heaviest weight he has ever put on the bar, with the best quality and depth he has ever had.

Congrats Hessam, you are a shining example of what hard work, dedication, and a clear goal can do for an individual. It is an honor to share in your fitness journey along side you.

Has Hessam’s story inspired you to make a change in your own fitness? I’d love to help. Click the link below to set up a free assessment and let’s get started on your own fitness journey together.

3 Carb Myths That Are Preventing Weightloss

With ketogenic and low carb diets in vogue, carbohydrates have gotten the worst rap out of the three macros (proteins, fats, and carbs).  It’s not uncommon for someone’s first step in weight loss is to cut their carbs.  Sure enough, that person loses some weight and concludes that carbs were the problem all along.  Not so fast my friend (In my best Lee Corso voice). 

The weight loss is most likely due to calorie restriction (reducing carbs without adding in extra fat or protein leads to a decrease in caloric intake leading to weight loss) and dropping of water weight (decreasing carbs causes the body to lose fluids, in the short term at least, due to osmolarity).  Reducing carb consumption in the short term will lead to some weight loss, but because of natural biological processes, the weight loss will not continue at the same rate, and the weight you have shed will most likely come back. Why? If we debunk some common carbohydrate myths, you’ll see.

1. Carbs make you gain weight. Weight gain is not due to carbs themselves, but from over consumption of large portions of any type of food, especially those that are high in calories.  Usually, when someone overeats on carbs it’s not even the carbs alone, but the combination with carbs and FAT.  I can’t tell you the last time I have seen someone sitting around eating entire white potatoes dry.  But slap on some butter/sour cream or deep fry those bad boys, and you can eat them all day. 

The type of carbs someone takes in is also very important.  Sugar is a carb (think gummy bears) but so is a sweet potato.  The difference is one is made up of starch and fiber, and the other is a refined sugar.  Refined sugars are much easier to consume, which allows a person to over consume them more easily without getting full.  Complex carbohydrates (like whole grains, potatoes, and some legumes) are much more dense and have fiber (which makes you feel full) along with vitamins and minerals.  So no, carbs won’t make you gain weight magically.

2. Don’t Eat Fruit, It’s Got Too Much Sugar: Most of the time, I don’t have a problem eating most fruits, as long as there's some kind of portion control.  That being said, most fruits are almost impossible to over consume like apples, oranges, berries, and other high fiber fruits (tropical fruits are another story).  People run into trouble when they cut out the whole chewing and digesting steps and go right to juicing.  Juicing strips the fruit of the fiber and condenses the sugar from multiple portions.  For instance, it takes 36 oranges to make a gallon of orange juice.  That’s three oranges for an 8 oz. glass.  Imagine sitting down and eating three oranges, it would make you pretty full, right? Not only is an 8 oz. glass of orange juice not satiating, it spikes your insulin and causes you to crave more sugar.  Portions of fruit are fine, stay away from juicing.

3. You Shouldn’t Eat Carbs At Night: All carbohydrates are processed by your body the same way, no matter what time of day it is. There is no evidence to support that eating carbohydrates at night will promote unwanted weight gain. In fact, if you have issues with sleep, consuming complex carbohydrates with dinner two hours prior to bed can improve sleep for individuals.

I hope that clearing up some of the confusion allows you to utilize carbohydrates for what they are, a nutritional tool for better health.

Looking to lose some weight and don’t know where to start?  I’m here to help.  Click the link below to set up a free assessment and let’s move toward a healthier diet and lifestyle together.

Party For A Long Time, Not Just A Good Time

When working with aging athletes, I always come back to the phrase, “Party for a long time, not just a good time.” The saying refers to the idea that if you party really hard, the party doesn’t last very long. Most weekend warriors that I end up working with have chronic back, shoulder, and neck issues that stem from either playing sports when they were younger, or from injuries they have accumulated in recent years from things like pick-up basketball or marathon training. I rarely haven’t to push these individuals harder during their workouts, rather I have to slow them down and working on foundational concepts like mobility and consistency.

Mobility, which is the combination of flexibility and stability, is a buzz word used these days but people mostly lean on the flexibility aspect. Why? For one it’s fairly easy to do and secondly, stretching doesn’t require much thought. Think sitting on the ground trying to touch your toes to “lengthen” your hamstrings.  Personally, I don’t do a ton of stretching anymore with myself or the clients that I work with. Instead, I rely mostly on activation exercises and postural breathing work (holding a position and learning how to fully exhale and inhale).

Consistency rules when it comes to success in aging athletes. When I ask potential clients during assessment if they currently have a training program and how long they have been doing it, I get met with a lot of “ums”, “ahs”, and excuses. “My kids take up my time,” “My job is too stressful,” and “I can’t make it to the gym” are some of the most common responses I hear.  All of those things are fine, but unless we accept that we are in control of our fitness, we can’t change anything. Doing 20 minutes of exercise daily is better than hitting the gym for 2 hours every other week. In fact, there are clients that I work with who do just that, 20 minutes a day, and they are in phenomenal shape (they eat well too). If fitness is your goal, outside of clean eating, consistently moving every day should be your goal.

There are so many aspects to health and wellness as you age, and a lot of the time the answer is right under your nose, but you just need a little help finding your own sweet spot. That’s where a knowledgeable coach can help. I have been a performance coach for 10+ years, and I have guided hundreds of clients to amazing results. I’d love to help you too! Click the link below to set up a free assessment, and let’s get moving toward the best version of you!