Transcript:

Intro (00:01):

Do you struggle with what it means to be successful in your retirement? Trust us, you're not alone. Welcome to the Retirement Success in Maine podcast. Here you'll go in depth with Guidance Point Advisors, investment consultants, to hear stories about how retirees in Maine are navigating a successful retirement, get insight into the inevitable challenges of aging, and define what a successful retirement looks like.

Ben Smith (00:27):

Welcome everybody to the Retirement Success in Maine podcast. I'm Ben Smith, and let me introduce the John Cena to my Dave Batista. Curtis Worcester. How are you doing today, Curtis?

Curtis Worcester (00:36):

I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I think there's a joke in here somewhere of can you see me or not? But for those watching, I guess I'm here, but no, I'm doing well then. I'm doing well,

Ben Smith (00:47):

Curtis. It seems like one thing we hear more and more from our clients as they approach or settle into retirement is this, I just want to be able to keep doing the things I love, and a lot of times it's gardening, walking the dog, chasing the grandkids, or even just getting up and down stairs with confidence. There's this real desire to stay active and independent and especially we here as we are trying to stay active in our homes.

Curtis Worcester (01:12):

Yeah, you're exactly right, Ben. And behind that desire I think lives one of the biggest fears that we certainly hear, and that's falling right according to the CD, C, about one in four adults, over 65 falls each year and falls are actually the leading cause of both fatal and non-fatal injuries in older adults. So that fear of falling can really limit people from doing what they want sometimes even before something actually happens.

Ben Smith (01:41):

And I tell this story a bunch, but my grandfather was living independently until the age of 95 and had a limb over his car that he just had to take care of. So what did he do? Living by himself at 95, got up on a ladder, got the saw, and tried to saw off that limb that was over his car, and what did he do? He fell, broke his hip, and that was the end of living independently. So obviously one things that we are talking about, especially with falling, is obviously keeping our strength up. So strength training, not just cardio, but strength training is one of the best tools out there to prevent falls, maintain bone density, and keep our muscles strong as we age. But let's face it, when you say strength training to some folks in their sixties or seventies, the image that comes to mind might be lifting massive weights or grunting in a gym full of 20 somethings,

Curtis Worcester (02:33):

And that might actually be more terrifying than the actual fall in this situation, Ben.

Ben Smith (02:38):

That's right. So today we're tackling that fear head on. We want to unpack why strength training matters in retirement, how it can be done safely, and what kind of results are actually possible for people well into their sixties, seventies, and beyond.

Curtis Worcester (02:52):

That's right, and I think for anybody who knows us or anybody who's watched us I think knows that Ben and I are probably not experts in strength training. We're active people, but strength training is not something that I at least have on my resume. So all of our shows, we wanted to bring in a guest who can really be an expert here for us. So our guest today is the founder of Silver Back Strength Training. He started his journey into fitness at just 13 years old, overcoming childhood obesity through sports and training after playing division one football, battling injuries. He transitioned from athlete to coach with a mission to help others become unbreakable. I love that. With experience coaching collegiate athletes at the University of Maine across multiple sports like basketball, soccer, and swimming, he now applies that same knowledge to help adults, especially those later in life, build strength and regain confidence in their bodies. He's a husband, a father, and now an advocate for making strength accessible at any age. With that background, please join me in welcoming coach Andy Wary to the retirement success in Maine podcast. Andy, thank you so much for coming on our show today.

Andy Wary (04:08):

Thank you guys so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Ben Smith (04:10):

Yeah, we're going to have some fun today. I know this is, as Curtis said, strength training's not something that's in our background directly, but I think we've been athletic a little bit in our career. So you have a little bit of sense of that. But again, from our perspective, we want to obviously get into today's show, but first, Andy, we want to hear a little bit about you love to just have you share a little bit more about that transformative experience at the age 13 where you shaped your life and your coaching philosophy. Tell us a little bit about that.

Andy Wary (04:41):

So I was kind of always the really large kid. I was actually the same height I am now. I'm about sixth two and sixth grade. So I grew really early, really quick and I was pretty damn fat to be honest. I was about 20 to 30 pounds heavier than I am now without any muscle mass, but I really loved baseball. A bunch of my friends played. I had a couple cousins that played. I really got into it, played little league pickup, all that kind of thing, and got pretty decent. Eventually I made my middle school team, which is a rarity as a seventh grader, only me and my best friend. Al made the team as seventh graders, which was awesome.

(05:15):

Once practice started, my coach that time saw me and was like, Hey man, we got to do something about this. So he kept me after practice pretty much every day and made me run laps and next thing, it was the end of the season and I was down about 60 pounds and I had never been more confident. I actually started talking to girls. That's awesome. I had a little bit of swagger about myself and I realized that fitness and exercise was going to be a huge part of my life going forward, and now as a coach, there's nothing more rewarding than seeing that kind of transformative process go on in some of my clients.

Curtis Worcester (05:49):

I love that. I love that, and I want to kind of keep going here with this buildup, and I know I read a little bit of it there when we were introducing you, but obviously you had a very promising football career and path here, and I just want to maybe talk about that decision to start choosing health and long-term wellness over maybe continuing to play football, kind of post-collegiate there.

Andy Wary (06:12):

Yeah, so football was a huge part of my life. My size was obviously a big benefit to that. So I was an offensive lineman and offensive lineman made contact on every single play. So mileage starts to add up, right?

(06:27):

High school alone, I had broke pretty much every single one of my fingers broke my wrist, had a metacarpal that got crushed to the point where I had to get a plate and screws put in it, a couple undocumented concussions, all that good stuff. And then the hits came on, kept coming. So once I got to the division one level, I had a couple more concussions separated shoulders. I kept rolling my one ankle really bad. The last concussion that I had was kind of the last straw. I actually got knocked out. I was not feeling great afterwards. I lost interest in a lot of things.

(07:02):

Turns out I was actually a little depressed, which was something that people didn't really talk about back then. I mean, this was only 2011, but people didn't really talk about the mental health aspect of concussions and after concussions back then, they just thought it was kind of a soft injury. It was a non-visual injury you couldn't see. So that kind of led me down a path to not really loving football anymore. That along with the ankle injuries that I had, it turned out that I had four torn ligaments, two torn tendons, and a bunch of bone fragments floating around in my ankle that I had to get out. Kind of led me to stop in my football career and just focusing on my health and be able to move at an older age, and that was more important to me than football was.

Ben Smith (07:44):

Sure.

Andy Wary (07:44):

Yeah.

Ben Smith (07:45):

So Andy, you're exiting a course than your college career. Your football career, and I'm sure as many athletes have is you have this sports thing and that's what it's all encompassing, or especially I'm sure at the college level where it's 24 7 and then you have a stopping moment where you're like, now what? So what was that process of, okay, now what I'm trying to decide what to do with my life, and you say, alright, strength and conditioning is really the thing that I want to do post collegiately. And then once you chose that, how has that evolved into founding your business with silverbacks strength training?

Andy Wary (08:25):

Yeah, so there was a few steps before strength and conditioning. Originally I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. I thought that would be my opportunity to help athletes. I really wanted to help athletes recover from injuries, especially after experiencing everything that I did. So I had a doctor that I was close with that actually did surgery on me and my dad and that kind of thing, and I went and shadowed him and saw what he did in the office and everything. I really loved the surgical part of it, but everything else, I was like, I can't do this every day. I would be happy doing it between insurance, paperwork and all that. I was like, Nope.

(09:01):

Then I was like, Hey, what about maybe physical therapy that would be a little bit more active and kind of the same deal? I realized that it's not just all treating patients and getting them better and back from injury. There's a lot of other kind of minutiae with paperwork and running business and all that other kind of stuff. So I kind of didn't know what I was doing at that point. I was leaning really heavy on strength training and just general workouts in general to kind of keep my mental health up. And one day after reading a bunch of articles, I got a little obsessive. I thought, Hey, what if I make this into a career?

(09:33):

So at that point I was in exercise science as a major anyway, and I talked to a couple of professors and they're like, yeah, you could definitely go into coaching and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. One thing led to another, I wound up doing a internship as part of my curriculum and I happened to find out that a guy named Zach Esh was doing an internship that summer. He was pretty close to me. I had read a couple of his books, read a bunch of his articles online. I was like, Hey, I got to work with this guy and see what this is all about. One of the best summers of my life, but also one of the most tiring summers of my life. I was working two other jobs as well as interning, but I learned so much and once I saw that transformative process, like I said before with a couple of kids that we coached, I was absolutely hooked.

(10:16):

After that, I went on to work for him and then eventually he opened up another place and I wound up kind of getting carte blanche. I was running the place. We had a lot of terrific people. We had tremendous results with a lot of people. Shout out to any of my OGs from Scotch Plains. Hope you guys listen to this, don't miss you guys. After that, my wife, then girlfriend at the time, we came up to vacation in Maine and really loved it and kind of needed a different pace of life from New Jersey, New York area. It's very different from here and we needed to chill out a little bit. So my wife got a job at the University of Maine and then I wound up getting a job there too, working as a sports performance coach. I was also working part-time at a gym in Bangor called Relentless Wound up working at the university for five years, worked with Division one men's basketball, baseball, softball, swim and dive, bunch of teams. Soccer. Had a great time doing it, but the kind of time constraints and clientele restraints started to get to me. I was traveling a lot, working from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM pretty much nonstop. It just got to be a lot to be honest, and I saw an opportunity to reach more people. So I opened up my own business, silver Rack Strain training, and I'm able to work with who I want when I want

(11:29):

Get to see my son more, that kind of thing. So a lot of different benefits.

Ben Smith (11:34):

Yeah, that's great. Andy, I just want to ask a question too, just based on your business today. I know in the intro we talked about just again, you just said opening up the realm of clients that you can work with. Who are the typical people that are coming to you and want to work out? What's the things in common that they're coming to you with and saying, I need help with this?

Andy Wary (11:56):

What the biggest thing that they have in common is just wanting to get better. Because I work with everybody, honestly, I've started to coin the phrase strength for all here. I'm actually getting a printed on a t-shirt because I will work with anyone as long as they want to get better and they're invested in it. So that's the really commonality, the people that just want to get it better in their life, whether it's just physically or mentally.

Curtis Worcester (12:17):

Gotcha. That's fantastic and I appreciate you giving us quite a good background there on just your story. And again, as Ben mentioned at the top, just like to have our listeners get to know you a little bit. So I want to dive into our topic today, really working on building strength into being able to age into retirement. I want to kind of start with the big picture for you here. Okay. So Ben and I recently at one of our clients, they say to us, I don't care about looking good in that bathing suit. I just want to be able to live independently as long as I can. So with that kind of context, why is strength training such a critical tool for maintaining independence as we age?

Andy Wary (13:00):

Yeah, so for sure the biggest thing to focus on first is just the loss of strength and mobility as we age, unless we're training for it. So generally speaking, people after 30, if you're not training it, you're going to lose it. So strength and mobility both after 60, that decrease is drastically increased. So that drop off is a lot bigger. So if we have some targeted strength training in our life, we can actually decrease that decrease so that we stay at the same level that we're at or even maybe even get better. So how does this really affect everyday life? The biggest things are just thinking about activities that we do daily. So something that's very common with people that come in here, they have a hard time with stairs, so you need both strength to get up the stairs and strength to get down the stairs.

(13:47):

So working what's called concentric strength or basically pushing through a movement is going to help you get up the stairs. Eccentric strength or controlling load in a downward phase will actually help you get down stairs easier and lower your risk of falling. Other things such as getting up off the ground, same kind of deal. We work on hip and arm strength so that you can push up off the ground and get up. Another thing would be picking things up off the ground. So that's a pretty daily activity, at least for me. I wind up dropping something almost every day, even if it's just a couple pounds. If you're back and your core ist strong enough and you go to pick up something, next thing you know your back is flared up and you can't move around for a few days. We work on things that help with all that. Yeah,

Ben Smith (14:28):

That's great. Awesome. Well, Andy, I think that's really helpful and from just kind of talking about a few things, and I want to talk a little bit about this research and sarcopenia with it's age related loss of muscle mass, right? But still new term I think for a lot of people, and I'd love for you to explain what that is and how it impacts things like balance, mobility and daily function. If left unaddressed, I just heard you say, here's the things we're going to do and try to help build, but talk about obviously just this kind of, as you said, there's this decline. What does it look like? I think from just normal aging decline, if just left unaddressed, what does that look like?

Andy Wary (15:07):

Yeah, for sure. So sarcopenia, like you said, it's just age related muscle loss and can be pretty drastic, right? Thing that doesn't get talked about too much with it though is the effect that it actually has on different hormones. A big hormone, as bad as it may sound, is testosterone. People think of steroids immediately or TRT, but it has a lot of important functions within the body. Another one is insulin. Everybody knows that has effect on your blood sugar and function growth hormone, which has an effect on muscle mass and basically energy levels cortisol, which is your stress hormone and estrogen too, which can have a huge effect on bone density. So that can throw a lot of things out of whack just by losing that muscle mass. The number one factor to go on after that is just the loss of functional strength. So being able to do everyday activities effectively, like I talked about before, being able to get upstairs, being able to go downstairs, if you lose that muscle mass, it's going to be a lot harder.

(16:00):

Next would be just the inner muscle coordination, muscular coordination. So basically the coordination that your muscles have together to be able to balance and that kind of thing. By losing that coordination, your risk for falling goes through the roof. The other factor is a lower metabolic resting metabolic rate. So basically the amount of calories that your body is burning at rest. So when you're burning less calories at rest your body to burn less calories overall and your weight can get out of control and that has a huge factor on the rest of your life. Not only is that going to make it harder to move, but it also has effects on non-visual diseases. We'll say it increases your insulin resistance when you lose muscle mass as well, because muscles are basically the big intaker of glucose or blood sugar. So when you don't have that, that sugar has nowhere else that can go and kind of screws with everything. And then the biggest thing honestly, that scares people from this is the fact that it has on those silent kind of diseases, so type two diabetes, obesity, and then heart disease as well. Your blood pressure can get thrown out of whack. You can start having cholesterol problems, some blockages in the cardiovascular system, all things that we all want to avoid. Right?

Curtis Worcester (17:12):

Yeah, of course. Of course. This is great. I can already tell this is for myself anyway, going to be a motivating conversation here to get up and start doing some things. So I want to keep going here Andy, and you're going to learn quickly that Ben and I like to bring up real life stories we have with people. So another kind of example we hear from a retiree that we work with is they love gardening, she's loving it, she spends all day in the garden. I think the quote was something along the lines of just starting to dread kneeling down all the time or having to carry those pesky bags of just want to kind of throw at you here, what are maybe just some practical benefits of that type of resistance training that she may be encountering in everyday life, but not specifically in a gym setting?

Andy Wary (18:05):

So general strength training alone is going to have a lot of benefits, building strength through various movement patterns and different movements overall. But the real start of the show is specificity and progressive overload and progressions, right? So looking at something like kneeling down, it's basically looks like a lunge, right? You take a step, you kneel down. Sure. Knowing that I can reverse engineer that movement. So basically you can work with somebody and have them do an assisted lunge holding onto something for balance and they'll be able to pull with their arm a little bit. Eventually you work them to just a body weight lunge and then eventually a weighted lunge and next thing you know that kneeling is no longer a second thought in their head at all, right? It's kind of just easy.

Curtis Worcester (18:49):

We're going to be kneeling with mulch bags on each shoulder.

Andy Wary (18:51):

Exactly. And that same kind of thing can be applied with any kind of other movement, including the carrying the mulch bags. I mean, I'm a huge fan of just even carrying loaded things. So whether it's a sandbag or dumbbells, that kind of thing, that has a huge effects on people's mobility and effectiveness to do everyday activities. Yeah, that's great.

Ben Smith (19:11):

Yeah, this is a 10 degree tangent on that too, Chris. Of course we've had clients that have been saying to us a lot that they want to be active grandparents is, Hey, I'm now at this age and now I got the four-year-old, five-year-old that's running around. They're saying, Hey, grampy. Hey Graham, I want to play tag with you, or I want to throw the ball with you, or I want to ski with you. Or all those things like this is the time of my life or now have all this abundance of time to do things and spend time with grandkids, but I'm a little bit worried about the strength and stability needed for these kinds of activities. So if somebody came to you with, Hey, I'm trying to keep up with these grandkids and I'm trying to do these things, how would you start in terms of training to maintain or build those activities?

Andy Wary (19:59):

Yeah, so one of the biggest things I like to say is I consider all my clients lifelong athletes. They need to learn how to move. So I like to introduce new and different motor patterns. Quite often with them, the more diverse their kind of library of movement is, the better they're going to be able to react to everything that happens during life. So that's kind of the general purview. And then like I said before, we can reverse engineer certain movements like playing tag or what was the other one? Skiing, right?

Ben Smith (20:28):

Correct. Yeah.

Andy Wary (20:29):

Yeah. So a few examples of that. So one of the things that I like to do is actually have older individuals either hop or jump or skip. That's something that they probably haven't done in years. As long as they're cleared by their doctor, I do it with them. It really helps them mentally and physically be able to absorb force and redirect force in different angles. So something like tag becomes a lot easier. And then something like a frontal plane movement, so a lateral side-to-side movement, so maybe a lateral lunge that would help tremendously with skiing, be able to absorb force if you get too much air under you and you have to land and not hurt yourself. Different aspects of movement are just huge and learning and building that repertoire. And a lot of the movements that I like to introduce with older people are kind of the same ones that I used with division one basketball players. They're just slightly watered down versions that are appropriately scaled for 'em and they have such a great effect.

Curtis Worcester (21:20):

I love that and I love the athletes for life. That's awesome. I want to shift gears a little bit in terms of just kind of general, I think something that Ben and I see a lot and the theme, the underlying theme here is confidence. I know you talked about that in the beginning. I think for a lot of people of any age, but again, we're on the kind of retiree lens here, you maybe feel discouraged by bodily aches that are just consistent or maybe have past injuries. You hear the, oh, my knees are shot or I've just got a bad back. It's these things and I'm sure they feel that way and don't want to discredit any pain or anything. But I think for somebody who maybe feels broken or fragile and is just relying on those types of statements, how can you maybe get them safely moving again and really building that confidence in their body from a mobility perspective?

Andy Wary (22:15):

So I know this is super cliche to say, but movement is medicine. So getting people to move, it's like a highly studied fact that it actually decreases joint pain. So especially with strain training, it decreases joint pain across the board in order to gain their trust and confidence. When I start with a client that has joint pain, I usually take my time to explain some of the benefits like physiologically speaking of the actual exercise. So a few key things happen when we do some strain training, taking the body through larger gradually larger ranges of motion, especially under load, it actually increases the body's lubrication system called synovial fluid, which makes your joints feel a hell of a lot better. The next would be that same factor of moving joints through a bigger range of motion and under load especially it makes muscle more pliable so it's easier to move through those ranges of motion.

(23:07):

And then lastly, the other thing is just building up that muscular strength around a joint actually helps stabilize it and take any sort of lop there is in that joint. So if a muscle is super weak around a joint, that joint, say it's a knee, it can slide around and cause a lot of inflammation. Once those muscles are built up and keep it kind of stable, a lot of that inflammation is going to disappear on its own. All that being said, I kind of just like to meet people where they're at. So one of the biggest things that I see is people having a hard time getting up and down from chairs. So somebody that has trouble getting down to a chair comfortably unsupported, I might have them start squatting to a higher box and then eventually moving that box down and down and down eventually until they're doing it weighted and next thing it's kind of like we were talking about before, that thought in their head is completely gone. I know it sounds super simple, but it's really just about consistency and doing something and having a plan of attack to progressively kind of plan everything out.

Curtis Worcester (24:04):

Yeah, no, that's fantastic. I think even though it may sound simple, I think that's what we need to get over, that kind of overwhelming feeling of getting back in a gym or working out again. So I love that

Ben Smith (24:17):

And I'm going to maybe just kind of take a tangent on that question because I could see where if I have a bad back and I go, okay, what's going to be in my mind if I go to talk to Andy is, Hey, I got a bad back. And Andy's just going to say, well, it's time to lift weights. And I go, geez. Well isn't that going to make it worse that because hear what you just said and when I start working with you and this is what we're building is muscle around it and stabilizing and all that. But when someone comes to you and they go, geez, these are my limitations and these are the things that are preventing me from even starting with you, how do you have that initial conversation to work through the challenges so that they feel like I'm starting with a good place with Andy and he knows what my limitations are and he's going to help me start at the level that is comfortable for me instead of pushing me too far and I'm going to burn out.

Andy Wary (25:11):

So that's kind of multi-step process. So initially when I start talking to people, if they're kind of nervous about coming in, I just reassure them and honestly, being as credentialed as I am and having the experience that I do, that generally helps because people realize my knowledge, that kind of thing. And then talking about some of the things that we can do to help and some of the kind of proof is in the pudding studies that are out there about certain things, especially back pain, that kind of thing. Then eventually when they come in, I do a thorough evaluation process with everybody including their medical and injury history. And then once they come in the actual door, we'll go over a joint mobility screen and I just watch them move through a host of simple movements to see how they move, what's comfortable, what's not comfortable, and that's kind of how I build my plan. No plan is really the same, especially when it comes to older individuals. Everybody's to have a different starting point and I think people seeing that really helps them gain a lot of confidence and realize that I have their best interest at heart and we're actually going to make some progress. Awesome.

Ben Smith (26:15):

I appreciate that, Andy, because I just want to make that clear. I think there's maybe a misconception that they think I'm going to walk in the door, Andy's got his plan and I'm just going to be put into this boiler plate thing

(26:28):

And

(26:29):

All of a sudden I'm going to start lifting 150 pound dumbbells and I'm going to fail. I'm going to look stupid. And

(26:35):

I

(26:35):

Think those sorts of things of, again, you helping to address where people are at build that plan custom for each individual is really important to

Andy Wary (26:44):

Highlight. And to be honest with that, Ben, sometimes people don't even start with weights with me. Sometimes there's just body weight movement. So I think that instills a lot of confidence in people too when I tell 'em, Hey, you might not even touch a weight for a couple of weeks.

Curtis Worcester (26:56):

Again, I think you're just doing a great job making it not overwhelming for people. I know you don't need me to tell you that you're doing a good job, but what I hear is you just do such a great job stripping it down and letting people feel comfortable and able to approach.

Ben Smith (27:13):

I want to, again, we are poking holes and straight training all over the place here, so we want to just have you defend things and go through it. And I know there's just a common belief, and you hear this with some people, they go, look, walking is just good enough, it's resistance training and you just walk seven or eight miles and you're going to be fine. You're building enough, you're burning enough calories and all that. And can you just compare and contrast walking versus what you're doing, especially around strength training and obviously body resistance and things like that. Just talk about where you are going past walking and what that benefit is.

Andy Wary (27:51):

Yeah, for sure. So let me start by saying I'm a huge of walking, especially for everybody, honestly, there's so many easy health benefits that you can get from it. You'd be dumb not to walk every single day, to be honest. It is so easy to do and it's great for your health, so keep on walking if you're walking. But that being said, it's kind of investments with you guys. You want to diverse be a diversified portfolio, right? Sure. So one thing might cover one thing but might not cover another. So strength training kind of fills in the gaps with all the other stuff, some of the things that walking doesn't do, but strength training does. We talked about that muscle loss before. Sarcopenia all the associated risk with it, right? Fall risk increasing, that kind of thing. Walking isn't going to do much for that strength training is right.

(28:37):

So after that, I mean bone density is a huge common issue, especially with older women. They're at risk of osteoporosis. Walking is not going to do anything for that. Strength training will actually, when you load bones with weight, it actually signals the body to make the bone stronger and suck in the calcium and restructure the bone basically. The other thing is sleep and mood strain training has been proven to increase, well increased quality of sleep and increase people's quality of mood as well. That study a little bit with walking, but not nearly as profound as strain training.

Curtis Worcester (29:09):

Gotcha. That's great. I want to rotate a little bit to something that I think we all hear a lot or see a lot is just the idea of weight loss. And I maybe want to approach maybe the dark side of weight loss, if you will, for lack of a better term. And we've seen it firsthand with clients or just family members even that go through this weight loss kind of journey and it's a good journey, it's successful, you're losing weight, but maybe you're unintentionally losing strength along the way. Can we talk why it's important to really continue strength training and why it's really essential during these weight loss times, certainly in later life, and just how it helps maintain that functional health along the way?

Andy Wary (29:55):

Yeah, for sure. So the biggest thing with muscle loss and strength loss during dieting, there's a few factors attributing to it. So people's diets may not be exactly dialed in. They might be in a caloric deficit, so they're not having enough calories to keep on everything, but they're also not intaking enough protein, which can lead to a lack of amino acids, which are what repair muscle to be able to keep it right. So if you're lacking, that muscle's going to wind up going away. The other thing is you're not going to get any signal to your body to keep the muscle. So strain training is kind of what helps keep that muscle on. It's a signal to your body that is needed for everyday activity. Your body adapts to what's thrown at it. So if a constant stimulus is having to lift some weight or lift your body, your body's being like, oh, we need this.

(30:42):

We're not getting rid of it, we'll get rid of fat instead. So strain training during those periods is really, really a good thing. This has actually become a huge issue lately that I've talked to a few clients about because with the rise of weight loss drugs, there's actually been a couple studies that have been done that for every 10 pounds lost normally with the weight loss drug, three pounds of it's muscle. So that can be really eyeopening to people. So the combination of getting enough protein and strength training can really keep on the muscle mass and strength and avoid some of those risks that you get with muscle loss, especially at an older age. Yeah.

Ben Smith (31:18):

Well, I want to talk about maybe a different situation too, and I know that there's, and maybe it's a little bit less so today, but I think over the last maybe 20, 30 years of retirees is you see that just we've all just really binged on our careers is hey, we want to do a good job and we want to be appreciated at work. And we put a lot into and pride, I think, into our careers. So we're very sedentary during that time of life is hey, we're kind of sitting at a desk, we're pounding away at a keyboard and we're doing it for 40, 50, 60, 70 hours a week. And then you get to this point of now I am closer to retirement or I'm going to be retired and I'm now in my sixties or seventies and I was high pressure before a lot of stress, not taking care of myself. As you said, maybe there's some hidden underlying health issues that are coming up because of maybe not taking care of myself and now is this great time where I can reinvent and I can really put some time in. So someone comes to you with that situation, talk about just what that initial conversation looks like from your end. Again, I heard you say your initial assessment where you go through and help see where they're at and understand it, but how are you coaching them as they are building this kind of a strength plan with you?

Andy Wary (32:43):

So other than the evaluation, the other big piece is just talking and getting to know everybody. So seeing what their goals are going forward, whether they need to lose some weight for their health, if they just want to keep muscle mass on so that they can do everyday activities or if they have certain physical activities that they want to do, they might be a golfer, they want to be able to keep golfing and drive the ball a little bit farther. So going off of that I think builds a lot of confidence and gets people bought in knowing that we're working towards a goal. And I think that's kind of the good piece of the mental health aspect, especially with training. The retired people you were talking about, people are working 40, 50, 60 hours a week and they have goals at work and they're always kind of driving for those goals. Most people are goal-driven, right? So they kind of lose that as they retire. And training provides an opportunity to have a goal in something else to work towards losing 10 pounds, to being able to do a full pushup on the floor to be able to squat down to a 12 inch box, whatever it may be. People like having goals and seeing that kind of confidence that it brings about after accomplishing them. So I really think that building a goal lists for people out really gets them bought into the process, if that makes sense.

Ben Smith (34:00):

And I think what I want to just kind say to that too is I think it's really important from, again, kind of in this stage, and as you said, kind of seeing tangible wins is what you said is, Hey, I'm goal oriented and I was doing all these things and all of a sudden, Hey, I'm with you Andy, and I'm a golfer, and all of a sudden we do strength training. I was like, Hey, a month later now I'm more flexible and I am not getting tired by the 15th hole. Or geez, I was able to add a few yards maybe to that drive and all of a sudden I'm by my buddies a little bit, I'm feeling good, I'm building confidence. And I think kind of tying what the physical process is to a result that builds confidence and it just cycles. So I applaud that for you. That sounds like a really awesome thing. Yeah, for sure.

Curtis Worcester (34:49):

So Andy, something, I think we read it off in the very beginning of the conversation, but you talk a lot about making people unbreakable, and that's not just physically, but emotionally and mentally too. Just kind of from a top down look, what does that transformation look like in the clients that you coach And maybe what's something that you think most retirees might be surprised to learn about their own strength if they were to start working on it?

Andy Wary (35:17):

Yeah, awesome. That's a great question. I love it, honestly. So designing the programs for people and building resilient bodies and everything is one thing, and it's awesome, don't get me wrong, but the mental piece to it is even more rewarding to me. I really, really think, especially as people get older, they need to do appropriately hard things physically in their life to keep their mind tough and kind of keep going. Interestingly enough, it actually has a huge impact on your brain, specifically your hippocampus. By challenging yourself, your hippocampus can actually grow, create new neurons and have effects on increases in memory, better emotional regulation, and even make more challenging things easier going forward. So I think that that's a huge piece of it. One transformation that really sticks out in my mind is a longtime client of mine, she's a retired surgeon. During her time as a surgeon, she kind of had a jacked up body.

(36:08):

She was kind of forward operating on people all the time. Posture was bothering her, all that kind of stuff. After she retired, she really prioritized her physical fitness and wanted to be able to do a lot of different outdoor activities where her grown kids and all that kind of thing. Her body feels great, all that. But one story that sticks out to me, and it's like one of my proudest coach moments honestly, is recently I got a text from a random number pretty late at night. It was like 10 o'clock at night. It was from a number that I didn't recognize. So I was like, okay, who's this? And I was like, oh, it's Michelle. And I was like, oh, Michelle's on a whitewater rafting trip right now. Is this a satellite phone or something? And it happened to be. But anyway, she went on a text message and told me afterwards about this whole story, but she was thinking that this whitewater rafting trip she went on in the Grand Canyon, was going to be a pretty easy laid back whitewater rafting trip, and it turned out to be crazy hard trip, super hard and a wooden boat and all that.

(37:07):

And one of the boats that she was with actually flipped.

Ben Smith (37:11):

Oh wow.

Andy Wary (37:12):

And a couple of people wound up in the water and she was actually able to pull out two full grown men back into the boat.

Curtis Worcester (37:19):

Wow.

Andy Wary (37:20):

Separately, of course, not at the same time, but in that test message she said, Hey, if it wasn't for all the training that we've done, I never would've been able to do this. And that kind of thing to me just sticks in my head all the time. And it really reinforces my love for everything that I do. And it's remarkable the kind of confidence that I built in her to be able to even think about doing that because she's not a large woman. She's pretty tiny to be honest. But I really think that that physical push that people lack, especially as they get older, is something that's going to have a huge benefit in their life. And I really think that people don't realize the ceiling that they have for their physical capabilities because they're not pushing it very often. But when you do push it appropriately, that being said appropriately, I really think it opens people's eyes to what their body's capable of. Well,

Ben Smith (38:12):

I think we applaud that too. I know from obviously what we try to do on the financial lens on the coach is like we're trying to look ahead for 'em and say, Hey, as you're aging and these are the things you need to be mindful of, and this is what we've seen people go through based on when this happens or when that happens. So I think we are just a big fan of coaching in general. So we applaud everything you're doing from a, Hey, if I see people that maybe don't take care of themselves and here's what they struggle with, but the people that do these things and here's how they're able to improve. But I want to ask a question about you personally, Andy, because I know from just obviously from just following your page on Facebook and such, so you've been doing your own kind of improvement is working on a strong man competition, right? Is something you just did. I want to hear a little bit about that real quick. I think it's one thing to talk about others and that's easy of what you do and help you coach them, but talk about your own goals a little bit here on why are you kind pushing yourself on the strong man side and what are you trying to accomplish? I think maybe even just by example to others that you're helping to train,

Andy Wary (39:20):

You hit the nail on the head there. A huge piece of it is just leading by example. I think as a coach, I need to be doing the things that I preach. I need to be pushing myself and getting myself better. And honestly, I talked about before, it's a huge piece to just keeping my good mental health and keeping myself happy. I know I get a little cranky when I don't train. My wife will tell me, my mom used to tell me when I was younger. So doing that just keeps me even keeled, but mostly just for leading by example and showing that there's proof in the pudding of what I do, showing my strength, it helps the clients see that what they're doing is going to work too. And honestly, the response that I got from some of my clients from seeing some of the stuff that I recently posted about the competition that I was doing and the training that I was doing is tremendous. And it keeps me motivated to train. So I love it. That's awesome.

Ben Smith (40:13):

And I would just want to apply one thing too is I think in this day and age where it's social media and we only show the glossy polish of everything, right? It is like, oh, well look at Andy. He just nailed the competition and look at his keg lifts and all these things that you did. But it's like, okay, was it the ship pole or the boat pole where you were doing

(40:32):

It?

(40:33):

And you're like, okay, so it was muddy and I couldn't get a grip and I couldn't really move this thing as far as I really wanted to. I didn't do what I wanted. I felt like I could have done better and this is what didn't work, but you showed the picture of you struggling with it and maybe the video of it, you're like, this is what happened is I did my best. That part didn't work, but here's the other pieces. And it wasn't just, oh, I nailed these three things and don't talk about the two. You didn't do as well on,

(41:03):

But

(41:03):

It was like, here's the entirety of it and here's where I do need to get better and hold myself accountable to it too. So I applaud that too. That's really pretty awesome to see just all that effort.

Andy Wary (41:13):

Yeah, I appreciate it. Just like everybody else, I'm not perfect, so I don't want to lead that. I don't want people to think that I'm perfect by any means.

Curtis Worcester (41:20):

No, that's amazing. It really is. I have one last question for you, Andy. So being a retirement focused podcast, I'm going to ask you to look ahead a little bit. So I have to ask all of guests this question again, the name of our show, retirement Success in Maine. I got to ask you, when you get to that point in life, what does a successful retirement look like for you? What do you think that

Andy Wary (41:45):

Encompasses? I think by retirement is going to be a little bit different than most people's, to be honest. I really want to build a legacy business, so I want to build my business to the point where I can have somebody else run it eventually. I don't want to be full-time by the time I'm like 70 years old by any, I want to build it up enough that it has a reputation and it runs pretty much on its own with somebody kind of at the helm. And I honestly don't think I'm going to stop coaching until I'm dead, to be honest. I love it too much to give it up. And I always think of my one uncle, my great uncle. He was basically a surrogate grandfather because my grandfather's passed before I was born. He worked as an electrical inspector until the age of 91 or 92 was in great shape, very mobile, that kind of thing. And pretty much a year after he retired, he passed away. I think keeping active in some sort of capacity, even if it's part-time, is going to help me live as long as I can and kind of spend time with my son and hopefully future children and eventually maybe their children, and be able to go on vacations with them and see them as much as I can. I love that. Awesome. That's a great answer.

Ben Smith (42:53):

Well, Andy, we really appreciate you coming on the show today, taking the time and just sharing your knowledge, talking about this topic today. And we'd love to have you back at some point just to maybe there's, I'm sure there's a myriad of different topics we could touch on with you, but thank you so much. We'll be in touch I'm sure very soon.

Andy Wary (43:12):

Thank you guys for having me. I really appreciate it. And go get stronger, guys. I love it.

Ben Smith (43:18):

Thanks Andy.

Andy Wary (43:19):

Yep.

Ben Smith (43:19):

So really great to have Andy on the show today. Again, strength training. So I know we talked about, we've done nutrition, we've done fitness, we've just done just personal training, but obviously strength training is a very focused part here and we thought was really great to have some of

Curtis Worcester (43:37):

Eighties. It's very personal, like personalized too. I know we went through it in the conversation, but it's very much a dedicated approach to you, the individual and not this cookie cutter. You jump in at step two and go to step eight, right? He's super personable

Ben Smith (43:51):

And it's awesome. And I think the goal is that you're not walking in there and my goal is I have to be Arnold Schwarzenegger at Mr. Universe level.

Curtis Worcester (43:59):

Exactly.

Ben Smith (43:59):

I can just be my own personal best and have that goal. So yeah, I think he really nailed that. The special thank you personal connection that connected both Andy and us Barbie Prentice. She's been a listener of ours and we appreciate her thinking about us and going, you should talk to Andy because I think you'd be really awesome. And of course he was,

Curtis Worcester (44:20):

Was indeed.

Ben Smith (44:22):

So if you want to check out a little bit more about the show, look at the show notes. We got links to Andy's Business Silverback Strength Training, so we'll have the websites there. You can find 'em on Instagram at Silverback Strength Training. You can go on Facebook as well. You can find Silverback strength training there too. As I said, he does some really great content and just kind of highlights some of the things that he's doing. And you can go to our website at blog dot guidance point llc.com/ 1 1 2 for episode 112. And again, you find all that there. We really appreciate you tuning in today and listening to our show, and we'll catch you next time.

Outro (45:10):

Ladies and gentlemen, you've just listened to an information filled episode of the Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. While this show is about finding more ways to improve your retirement happiness guidance point, advisor's mission is to help our clients create a fulfilling retirement. We do financial planning so that people can enjoy retirement and align their monetary resources to their goals. If you are wondering about your own personal success, we invite you to reach out to us to schedule a 45 minute listening session. Our advisors will have a conversation with you about your goals, your frustrations, and your problems. Make sure you check out Guidance point advisors on our blog, Facebook and LinkedIn, and you can always check out more episodes of this podcast on iTunes and Spotify, and of course, keep on finding your retirement success.