Exercising As You Age with Allan Misner

Michelle: Instead of becoming part of the Overhill set at the age of 45, Alan Meissner decided to pivot from an overweight, middle aged dad to a fit for everything and anything kind of a guy. He started eating right and exercising rigorously, and soon enough, he shed 66 pounds. Formerly a highly stressed corporate auditor, he left that career in the rearview mirror and eventually turned the lessons learned from his success into an online health and fitness coaching practice, especially for the needs of the 40, 50 and 60 year olds. Alan has a long list of professional certifications, including personal trainer, nutrition coach, functional aging specialist, with a focus on corrective exercise, performance enhancement, behavioral change, and fitness nutrition. He’s the author of the wellness roadmap, a straightforward guide to health and the host of the podcast 40 plus fitness. No,

Michelle: Did I get that right? Alan 40 plus fitness

Allan Misner: 40 plus fitness podcast. That’s us.

Michelle: There you go. One more interesting thing I wanted you to know about Alan is that he relocated in 2019 from the United States to Panama, where he and his wife own a bed and breakfast called, is it Lula’s?

Allan Misner: it’s

Michelle: I pronounce that correct?

Allan Misner: Yeah. Lula’s oldest, oldest running bed and breakfast on the island. And now the number one bed and breakfast on the island. So

Michelle: Good. So instead of talking just about, uh, in addition to talking about best exercise regimen for the over 55 plus crowd, maybe we’ll sneak in a question or two about living in another country as a housing option.

Michelle: as you age. So. Officially, let me welcome you, Alan. Thanks for being here so much, all the way from Panama. Let’s talk exercise regimens today. Okay. So

Allan Misner: Michelle, I’m on it.

Michelle: You’re on it. Uh, You’ve been on it. When you when you coach clients, Alan, what wisdom do you impart from your own experience? You lost all that weight.

Michelle: Everybody’s dream is to drop as much as you did, so how do we reset our exercise routine? What did you learn from your experience?

Allan Misner: Well, it’s not gonna happen tomorrow. It’s You know, you, you, you have to

Michelle: me that.

Allan Misner: Yeah, well, you’re going to slowly change your body. But really it has to start from the inside of changing your body on the inside, which you just don’t see.

Allan Misner: So it takes a little bit of time, takes a little bit of effort and perseverance. But if you keep at it and get a consistent process going, you will see progress. It’s unfortunate. Everybody’s in this me now right now kind of world. Where they want the results tomorrow. And unfortunately, when you’re talking about exercise, particularly when you’re over the age of 40, that’s just a recipe to hurt yourself.

Allan Misner: You go out and you push too hard too soon, and now you’re broke. So I’ll give you an example. I wanted to get in shape and I was traveling all the time. So, you know, one of these beach body commercials comes on and it’s, uh, intense, it’s insanity workout. And it looks really cool. It doesn’t require any equipment.

Allan Misner: These guys are all happy bouncing around, getting fit. I’m like, Oh, that’s awesome. I can do it in a hotel room. I can do it wherever. So I buy the DVDs. I ripped them to my computer. So I’m all ready to go. And then I do the, uh, just the benchmark workout. And I pushed myself through that benchmark workout, just trying to keep up with everybody on the video.

Allan Misner: And the next morning I felt like someone had beat me with baseball bats. I couldn’t even get out of bed. I had to call off sick and it hurt. It literally hurt to reach my, for my phone on the nightstand to make the phone call. And so what did I do after that? I didn’t do a single one of the workouts.

Allan Misner: Because I’d hurt myself. I just didn’t feel good. It is. It is. You’re like, well, I, you know, 10 years ago, I could have done that without even a thought. But here I am now not able to. And it was so discouraging. Whereas what I came to understand was if I go through this process with just gentle nudges, just little bits, just outside my comfort zone, I give my body enough to know it needs to grow and get better.

Allan Misner: And then if I feed it and I rest it and I go do it again, and I rest and feed it and I do it again, and I keep doing that, those little pushes just outside my comfort zone, well they add up, they add up a lot. And so you can get your fitness level back to just about anywhere it’s ever been if you take the time and have the patience to keep pushing.

Michelle: Well that’s, that’s encouraging. So there’s hope for everybody. Even people who have never

Michelle: exercised before, Can you start from wherever you’re at and go from

Allan Misner: there?

Allan Misner: That’s absolutely where you should start. You can’t start from anywhere else, but where you are,

Michelle: ha. but, if you think, oh I never did it, how am I ever going to start

Allan Misner: right? And the whole point is just, it’s the start. So if I had one client, okay, here’s an example. She realized she was getting winded just walking to her car in the morning to get into her car to drive to work.

Allan Misner: So what I told her was, I said, okay, well here’s what we’re going to do tomorrow when you drive to work, when you’re going to go drive to work, you walk out to your car. I want you to do one lap. Around your car before you get in it and she was thinking, Oh, that won’t do anything that won’t do anything.

Allan Misner: But I’m like, do it. She did that for a few days. We were in touch and I said, okay, you’re doing the one lap. How’s it feel? She said, it’s getting easier. I’m like, okay, tomorrow do two laps. And so we went through this process for a few weeks. And within that time now she’s walking around the neighborhood and she’s not getting winded.

Allan Misner: Doing a gradual walk, the same pace that she would walk to her car. And so the cool thing, and this is what I love about the human body is it’s magic. It will improve if you take the time to do the right things for your body. It will respond for you and it will get better.

Michelle: So how do you know the right things to do for your body? How do you get, you know, what I was thinking is, you know, when I was younger, I would just do anything I felt like if they were given a class at the gym on this, I would take that if they were, you know, into a group running, I would run, you know, is, should your exercise regimen be more deliberate?

Michelle: And how do you, um, make a plan that is right for you at your age? Okay. so much.

Allan Misner: The answer is actually, the answer is actually both. Um, you know, exercise can be fun. Like you said, riding a bike, hanging out with doing a class, water aerobics, this or that. So there’s no reason that exercise can’t be somewhat fun. But that said, I like to approach exercise and all this, and really, instead of calling it workouts and calling it exercise, let’s call it training.

Allan Misner: And what I mean by that is you’re training to be fit for task. So, if you’re over a certain age and you can’t open a jar of pickles, you’re no longer depend you’re no longer independent. You’re dependent on somebody or something to open that jar of pickles for you. So, we gotta work on that, because no one wants to be dependent.

Allan Misner: And so I look at it from the perspective of fitness for task. What are the things that are important to you? So if you’re going to take your grandchildren to the zoo, are you the one that’s going to be sitting at the bench at the front gate waiting for them to finish running around all the animals?

Allan Misner: And yet get home and tell you about it. Or you can be the one walking around the zoo, keeping up with your grandchildren. So at that point, the most important thing for you is stamina. So you work to maintain your stamina. In some cases it’s strength. So there’s this wonderful, wonderful commercial. I don’t even know what it was really for, to tell you the truth, but it’s this old man, he gets this thing.

Allan Misner: this kettlebell out and he just starts doing this exercising with this kettlebell. His neighbors think he’s crazy. His daughter thinks he’s crazy and he goes through this, this workout. He gets to a point where he’s consistently doing it every single morning and he can do this kettlebell and you’re like, well, okay, that’s great.

Allan Misner: Then he shows up at his daughter’s house for Christmas. And there’s his granddaughter coming down the steps. And he gives her a gift, and it’s the star for the top of the tree. And he’s able to bend down, grab her, and lift her up to put the star on the tree. Okay.

Michelle: kettlebell!

Allan Misner: She’s the kettlebell, right? And so it was that whole point of he had done all that training to be able to have that, that life experience.

Allan Misner: That’s fit for task. You know, that’s being who you are supposed to be. So the best way to look at it is look at it backwards. What’s the end goal that you want to have? I want to be stronger. I want better bone density. I want to be able to have the stamina to keep up with this and that. I want to be able to open my own jar of pickles and I’ll tell you this.

Allan Misner: I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I’m 105 and all of those, all of those require me to do some training today. So I’ll be able to do those things tomorrow.

Michelle: Yeah, your book is called The Wellness Roadmap, A Straightforward Guide to Health. And I love the idea of a roadmap. So if you, so the first thing you do first, first thing you do maybe is get rid of that attitude that you can’t and you won’t, and you, you’re over the hill. Is that

Michelle: correct? Get rid of the bad attitude and get on a new attitude.

Michelle: And then

Allan Misner: it is, but it’s, it’s deeper than that. It’s, it’s a very emotional thing. The first part, the start is the most important part. And so what, what, what you wanna focus on is, again, we talked about fit for task and, and where do you start?

Allan Misner: You start with the end in mind. You start with what you really, really need. In your life. And why do you need it? And so if I’m thinking about my granddaughter and what I want to be capable of doing with a granddaughter, well, that’s a pretty deep, compelling why that’s pretty emotional. And I can tell you the guy in the commercial, he actually had a, probably had a, he had a picture in front of him while he was working out and they didn’t show that picture, but I am 100 percent sure the picture was a picture of his granddaughter while he was doing that workout.

Allan Misner: So she was his. Everything. She was this commitment, his why. And so if we start with a very solid commitment to change, commitment to being someone we’re supposed to be, not who we are today, then the mindset work and all the rest of it becomes a lot easier because we get out of our own way and we start getting into our into our own way and saying, let’s do this because this is important.

Allan Misner: And then it’s really hard to fall off when you’re like, okay, no, my granddaughter isn’t really all that important to me doing those things with her isn’t really, well, that’s not true. And you know, it’s not true. So, uh, it’s really about getting your brain straight before you try to get your body straight.

Allan Misner: And

Michelle: how would he know, how, Alan, how would he know, oh kettlebells, like how do you know, well, okay, I want, uh, to be able to sit on the floor and play jacks with my kids and be able to get up off the floor. How would I know, how do I know what exercises to do for the goals that I have?

Allan Misner: well, first off, do the thing. So yeah, sit on the floor. You may need, you may need a rail or, or something to assist you in getting to the floor and then sit down on the floor for a little while just to get the feel of it. It’s very hard to sit still on a, on a hard floor. I can, I can tell you that from experience, I sit on the floor practically every morning to pet my dog.

Allan Misner: Uh, it’s kind of our morning ritual. I get on the floor, I sit down and I start petting him, and he loves it. You know, uh, it gets a little playful sometimes. So I have to stand back up because he’s nipping and jumping and all of that. But the whole point being is I get on, if I want to, if I want to be able to get down on the floor and spend time with someone, then I get down on the floor and I get back up and that can be a workout in and of itself, just getting down and getting up.

Allan Misner: I’ll tell you a story. When my, uh, when I first started dating my wife, Tammy, her son had a daughter Through marriage and that little girl was afraid of me, just terrified. I don’t know why I didn’t do anything to her, but she saw this big bald headed guy I guess and she’s like, Oh, I’m scared. So she didn’t want to have anything to do with me.

Allan Misner: So what I did was I got my computer and I walked over and I sat down on the floor and I pulled up her favorite characters, SpongeBob, and I started watching a video of SpongeBob on my computer sitting on the floor. So she comes over again, very scared of me, but she just sits down and we watch an episode of SpongeBob.

Allan Misner: SpongeBob finishes and I say, okay, you want to watch another one? She’s like, sure. So we watch another one. I think SpongeBob episodes are maybe 20, 25 minutes. I don’t know. So yeah, I literally sat on the floor for about an hour. It was a tile floor because we live near the beach and on the beach. So it’s tile floor.

Allan Misner: I sat there for about an hour. I was a little bit of moving squirming as we go, which is fine. But And that moment of being down in her world, instead of standing up in mine and looking down. change that girl’s relationship with me and my relationship with her. So if you

Michelle: your, your incentive to,

Michelle: get your incentive to get up and down off that floor.

Allan Misner: yes, yes, exactly. So if you want to be a part of someone’s life, you have to meet them where they are sometimes. And that’s one of the struggles we have. I don’t want to be a spectator in my children’s and grandchildren’s life. I want to be a participant. So that drives me to make sure that I’m healthy and fit.

Allan Misner: So that I’m not only just here, I’m here and I’m engaged. So I’m not sitting in a rocker looking down on the kids playing on the floor. I’m down there crawling around with them too. Do you think that

Michelle: Do you think that you need to um, get a personal coach or how many hours, how many how many hours a day should you exercise? How many days a week should you exercise?

Michelle: What kind of, should you have a routine or do you do, do it when you feel like it?

Allan Misner: should you have a routine or do you do it when you feel like it? Difficult. Yes. Well, get down on the floor, use a rail, use something to keep yourself safe. Make sure if you were to fall over, you wouldn’t hurt yourself and then just get back up and then get back down and get back up and you just keep doing that and that will help you build the stamina and the mobility and the balance to be able to do that as often as you want to.

Allan Misner: Um, but the second part of your question I think went into how often and how much. And that just depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. If you start training and you get really good at all this and you’re like, well, I want to run a marathon. Well, you, you’re going to have to train probably a little bit more than someone who just says, well, I just want to be able to do a few sprints and keep up with my grandchild while they’re running through the park.

Allan Misner: And maybe not keep up with them, but at least stay close enough that I can see them and keep them from running out in the road. But it’s just a function of saying, okay, my training. Is a part of who I want to be. And then eventually it does become a part of your lifestyle. And you say, okay, well, I want to get a little stronger.

Allan Misner: So I’m going to go do this this class at the gym and the class lasts an hour. So you’re going to be in there an hour. You do what you can do. You get better and better, better than maybe you move and do something else. But it’s really just a, what do you want to accomplish? Uh, Anyone over the age of 40, I strongly encourage you to do resistance training and resistance training helps you not only build and

Michelle: explain to us, um, you know, everybody says that, oh, do you resist, can you explain what resistance training is and what exercises would be do, good to do that and why is it good to do that?

Allan Misner: Okay. Resistance training just means you’re moving your muscles with some resistance against it. Okay. So that can be as simple yet. We all think of that as weights. Like I got these big iron plates and dumbbells and kettlebells and all this stuff. Yes, those are a form of resistance training, but you can also use bands.

Allan Misner: So they sell these little bands. They’re pretty cheap. They’ve got handles. You can use bands. And guess what? Most of us are walking around with all this body weight. That’s resistance too. So the exercises

Michelle: value, what value does it have?

Allan Misner: Well, resistance. Okay. So putting your body under resistance does two things.

Allan Misner: One is it stimulates the muscle to get stronger. You’re effectively communicating to your body. I need to move this way through this space this way and your body responds and says those muscles need to be stronger. So let’s just say you’re going to sit down on a chair. Okay, so you have to squat down to get down on the chair.

Allan Misner: Okay. And then you have to stand back up the leg muscles that require you that you need to do that have to be strong enough to hold your body weight to make that happen. You’ll see too many people that have to reach over and grab something to pull themselves up because their legs aren’t strong enough to get them onto their feet.

Allan Misner: So for someone like that, I’d say, okay, let’s start with chair squats. And you do the squats, try to use your arms as little as you can. And yes, your legs will get really, really tired. But the next time you come back, your legs will be a little stronger. You do it again. Your legs get a little stronger. You do it again.

Allan Misner: Your legs get a little bit stronger. So the core of resistance training is muscle. Building strength building. But that said, it also helps with bone density. If you put your body under some form of resistance, your bones have to build density to be able to hold that body weight, hold that weight, whatever it is, and they get denser.

Allan Misner: So that’s one of the cool things we talked about earlier, the human body, no matter how old you are, no matter how frail you feel, no matter what’s going on in your life. It is equipped to change and improve. So we put the resistance on it. We build more muscle, we build more bone density. And overall, that’s a

Michelle: So you’re less likely to, you’re less likely to break your bones, let’s say if you fall or trip.

Michelle: Um, which brings me to another point. I guess, you know, there’s some merit in doing balance exercises, I would imagine, or

Allan Misner: Yeah. Yeah. Well, over, yeah, over the, over the age of 65, the, the incidence of falls go way, way up. Uh, there’s a lot of different reasons for why that happens. Part of it’s eyesight. Part of it is, is just how our gait changes and part of it is strength and yes, part of it is balance. So you can train for balance.

Allan Misner: So yes, doing the resistance training to strengthen your muscles and bones will help doing some balance training. We’ll also help keep you from making those falls. And then as far as the cardio stuff, that’s really just about stamina. So that’s your ability to keep moving. To do the things you want to do.

Allan Misner: So maybe you wrote on your bucket list that you wanted to take a trip to a Europe and you want to walk along the streets in Greece. I can tell you they’re kind of hilly. Uh, so

Allan Misner: that walk, that

Allan Misner: walk is going to be pretty tough. If you’re not doing things to build your stamina, you’re losing that stamina.

Allan Misner: You know, hold the whole mantra of use it or lose it becomes so much. truer as we get older. And so you want to build some stamina, maintain some stamina so you can do the things that you want to do in your life.

Michelle: Well, that, That is just the beginning. So

Michelle: I got some of my best exercise, advice from my plumber, believe it or not, he, uh,

Michelle: semi retired and came to the house for an emergency and he’s, I was telling him That I’m doing this podcast. And he said, you know what my advice is to people?

Michelle: He says, if you rest, you rust. So everybody should get out there and get some exercise and not only take your advice from Alan Meissner, who’s our guest today, But from my plumber, who says you

Allan Misner: you

Allan Misner: rest, you rest, so Well, I, I, I halfway agree with them, yes. But if you’ve done the work, your body needs rest to rebuild.

Allan Misner: So,

Michelle: Well, yes. Okay.

Allan Misner: Some people are looking

Michelle: So one last thing I wanted to squeeze in before we wrap it up for today is, how’s it, how is it living as an expat in Panama? Some people are looking for where, where to live next. Can you give us 30 second

Michelle: answer on life?

Michelle: across the border?

Allan Misner: Yeah, it’s great. And it’s horrible.

Michelle: Okay, like, that’s like it is here. Wait a

Allan Misner: yeah, it’s like it is there, but no, I mean it’s different. And so what I mean is if you, if you want the creature comforts and you want everything at your whole foods and you want to be able to do the things that you’re doing there, uh, it might be a little bit more difficult here.

Allan Misner: We don’t have a whole foods, but we do have whole food. It’s just

Michelle: Oh, there you go. Who needs the Whole

Allan Misner: um, right. And they may have a power outage or they may not manage a project a certain way, or they may shut this down or that might happen. And so there’s, there’s a lot of hiccups in the way things happen

Michelle: What’s the biggest advantage, what’s the biggest advantage though?

Allan Misner: Well, the biggest advantages is cost in many cases, and it’s just a lifestyle. Everything’s slower here. And initially that’s very aggravating for someone from the United States or Canada, or even Europe. We want. it now. You know, I called the plumber. Where is the plumber? Well, there’s only one plumber on the island.

Allan Misner: So wherever Gary is, Gary is, and if he could come the day you will, but he’s pretty good about saying no, I won’t make it. Whereas other Panamanians may say, Yeah, I’ll be there in 10 minutes and you’re like 40 minutes later. It’s like, Okay, what’s going on? It’s like, I said 10 minutes.

Michelle: So

Michelle: maybe, maybe the lesson, maybe the lesson for today, whether you’re exercising or moving to another country is and at any age is patience is a virtue.

Michelle: So, uh, Alan, I want to, patience is, yeah. So thank you very much for taking the time today. If you want to learn more about what Alan has to say about health and exercise after the age of 40, 50, and 60, he’s your guy.

Michelle: And why don’t you tell us how people can get in touch with you, Alan?

Allan Misner: Yeah. Uh, I’m going to create

Michelle: Because action, action is the only thing that makes a difference. So

Allan Misner: action

Michelle: take some kind of action.

Allan Misner: imperative, but if you want to do more, here’s where you go. You go to 40. That’s four zero plus fitness. That’s P. L. U. S. F. I. T. N. E. S. S. dot com forward slash uncluttered. And then the number one, no spaces uncluttered. I’m sorry, decluttered.

Allan Misner: And the number one 40 plus fitness. com forward slash decluttered one. And that’ll take you to the page for this episode. And I’ll have links there to kind of help you along the way. Uh, and then of course my email address will be on there. So you can message me if you have any questions.

Michelle: Super. So Alan is a guy to listen to because he walks his talk and we appreciate you being here today. Thank you so much, Alan.

Allan Misner: Thank you, Michelle. It’s an honor.