The Wellness Upgrade on Elevate Springfield featuring Brennan Malham

Summary

In this episode of the Wellness Upgrade, Robert Ferriell and Brennan Malham discuss the importance of establishing a fitness floor and a baseline for health that adapts to life changes. They emphasize the need for consistency in fitness and nutrition, particularly focusing on the foundational elements of a balanced diet and exercise routine. The conversation highlights practical strategies for maintaining health during life's messiness, including the significance of protein and plant-based meals, and the role of enjoyable physical activities.

Takeaways

• Most people build fitness beliefs based on past life stages.
• Drift occurs when individuals fail to adapt their health routines.
• Establishing a fitness floor is crucial for long-term success.
• Plan for messiness rather than perfection in fitness.
• A baseline workout can be simple and effective.
• Nutrition should focus on protein and plant-based foods.
• Consistency is key to maintaining health over time.
• Cardio can be made fun and engaging with family activities.
• Tracking progress helps improve fitness outcomes.
• Setting minimal health goals can lead to sustainable habits.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Elevate Springfield, where we will dive into strategies and stories that help you rise to your full potential. Each episode, we'll talk about how you can take intentional steps to elevate your life and your business while making a meaningful impact on those around you. Along the way, we're gonna bring in the change makers from our community that are already elevating. We'll bring the actionable strategies, you bring the discipline and follow through, and together we can elevate Springfield.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Alright, let's go, Springfield. Time to 10X, time to level up. Hey, you are listening to the Elevate Springfield Podcast coming to you from the big dog construction studio in beautiful downtown Springfield. Robert Farrell here, certified 10x coach, speaker, and mentor, here to bring you actionable strategies. You bring the discipline and follow through, and together, we're gonna Elevate Springfield.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Well, you are listening to the wellness upgrade on Elevate Springfield, where we're gonna bring you specific strategies to help elevate your health and wellness. Say, if you're not elevating your health and wellness, you're not gonna be able to elevate in all other areas. This is the baseline. You know I'm passionate about it, and you know that's why I brought this segment to Elevate Springfield. We're gonna get right to our guest after the break. Looking for personalized insurance with hometown care, David Hilst, American Family Insurance Agent, is here to help you protect what matters most: your family, your home, and your dreams. Whether it's auto, home, life, business, David and his team are proud to serve the Springfield community with trusted advice and reliable coverage. Local service, real relationships, peace of mind. Call today or stop by their office. They can build your dream protection plan together. Call 217-726-6343. All right, and we are back for another edition of the Wellness Upgrade. Hey, if you're watching this, you know I'm not in the studio. We are at the beautiful Crafted Stag Supply. Hey, you've seen me out here before. Before we begin, thanks to Grant Hammer and his team over here for allowing us to use the space. We just had a meeting with Local First Springfield and the Crafted Stag, and we've got a cool event coming up. I'm not quite gonna put it out there yet, but it's gonna be a great one. So uh keep an eye on that local first Springfield Facebook page. But joining me, you remember he've been he's been in a few times by now. Brendan Mallam from Mallam Health Maximization. Brendan, how are you doing, man? Fantastic. How are you doing today? Oh, fantastic. Kind of thanks for coming down and appreciate having me, man. Yeah. All right. Well, today, our topic of the day, a fitness floor. What do you mean by that, man?

SPEAKER_02 2:54

Well, I think most people have build their fitness beliefs, their health beliefs, on a a life that they had, a season of life that they had when they were maybe single, or they just had a girlfriend or a boyfriend before they even had kids. And I don't think many people ever transition out of how they do that. That's how they go about life. That's what they think about their training, that's what they think about their nutrition. And that's great. That works really well. That's very I'm rigid. It's I'm chicken, broccoli, rice. I'm meal prepping every single day for myself. I'm prepping the same foods, I'm eating it, I train six days a week or five days a week, and this is how I do it. I follow this exact program, but then they have kids. Or then they get a new job, or their career starts taking over, or maybe they get a side hustle or a new business. Or who knows, I mean they have to take care of a um a parent. That's another thing, or health problems, and they never evolve, they never adapt. They're functioning on old software without ever changing, and they inevitably fail. And then they start to get what I call drift, and drift is the biggest risk. What I mean by drift is I mean they drift away from who they are, their ideals around health and fitness and how they take care of themselves and what they believe about themselves, and they look up and they're 30, 40, 50, and wow, how did I become this version of myself, even though that's not who I see myself as? They never adapted. Do you see a lot of people drifting in the summer with all the extra stuff going on? I see drifting in the summer. So if you look at the major points, people drift. It's when uh they vacation, it's when kids uh come home from school on the uh when their kids are off on summer vacation, when their kids go back to school, and it's also when like the wintertime, like Christmas break, Christmas season, New Year's, like they start to have these drifts, these inflection points in their health, their wellness, their choices, and they just never find their way back. Or maybe they find their way back loosely, but it's hit and miss, and it never establishes a new rhythm. So I think most people need to set a floor. This is who I am and how I do it in every season of life. And I think it's important to every season, like at least once a year or twice a year, say this is what my life looks like right now, and this is what I can expect of myself. And instead of building a plan that is based around if everything's perfect, you build a floor. This is what everything's failing. Most people have it like and they're like, I'm gonna get fit, I'm gonna get after it, I'm changing my life forever. They build a perfect plan. They're like, I'm gonna follow this program for 12 weeks. This is how I'm gonna eat, this is how I'm gonna do everything. And that's great. You're planning when it's perfect. What you really need to do, what anybody needs to do, if they want to have long-term success, they need to plan when it's messy. Right. Plan messiness, build it into your life, and that makes a huge difference.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

So, what are some things that people could do to have that baseline? Hey, this is my baseline of what I'm gonna do all the time to keep me from drifting.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

What I do for myself, what I do for a lot of clients, is I set this baseline floor. So, one of my baseline floors I do every single week, I like to mix in different modalities, crossfit. I like to run, I like to lately I've been loving sprinting. I've been loving running with my boys. I I do youth baseball coaching, youth football coaching, and high-level athletes that want to get better. And I love running with them. But a baseline floor, one of my health, my fitness floors is three times a week, I'm gonna do two lifts. I'm gonna do an upper body and a lower body. That is my basic standard. This is a foundational piece that I come back to over and over. Now it can look different, but for me, my foundation, my fitness foundation is three days a week, I'm gonna do two lifts. Just two. Super simple, approachable, not even hard. Like it can take 15 minutes, and I do three sets of eight after a one or two warm-ups. That's three sets of eight with a hard and fast one minute break. That's it. So realistically, three sets of eight, one minute break, we'll say you're doing each three sets, that's six minutes of two different exercises, and one minute break, you're spending 12 minutes. So really question. In 20 to 15 minutes, you got it done. And then from there, that is your floor. That is your foundational piece. If you want to throw in some cool other pieces, do it. But I think so many people they want to mix in all these variables. You know what? I want to do chains or kettlebells, or I got some bags, or I want to start running. Great. Introduce those pieces one variable at a time, add it in there. But have these foundational pieces. And how I build it that really has success for me is I say I'm gonna do an upper body lift. And so I'm gonna start, and I'm gonna do my lower body lift after my heart rate's going a little bit. And you can add in different warm-up pieces, but that's the foundation. I can warm up more or less, and typically a good guideline, I think, for most people, every decade of life, you add a five minutes to your warmup. Okay. So, like for like zero to 10, they really don't need a warm-up. We can get out there, we can we're gonna. No, I'm freaky. But 10 to 10 to 20, okay, we're gonna spend five minutes warming up. Twenty to thirty, we need about 10 minutes. Like 30 to 40, and now we've got 15. We need to spend some time actually getting the joints, greasing the grooves, getting everything going, right? We've got some creaky knees or hips or shoulders. But then we come into our lifts. And then from there, we can add all these accessory pieces. Whatever you want to do. If you want to start a jump rope program, great. You want to do some hit afterwards, great. But that three sets of eight, two different exercises is a foundation that works really well. And I pick a different movement each week. Right. Like, or you can like I am a huge believer in keeping a journal because what you track gets better. No doubt about it. What gets measured gets managed. No doubt about it. I I it's really approachable to have two exercises. You can just write it on a little scrap paper. For me, I always have a notebook with me, a tiny little one that fits in my pocket. I keep it with me everywhere. I write my to-do list on there, I write my lip journals. It's just simple. And you can look back at the book, you can see, oh, I gotta beat the book next time. So, for instance, this morning I did dips and I did weighted lunges. Simple and easy. Right. Boom. And then you know I had a little time, my toddler came out, or my three-year-old, not even toddler anymore, he came out and we wanted to do some stuff with me. So we went and ran around the block. And instead of, like he ran, I put a weighted vest on to add it. So there's my cardio. And that was the fun accessory piece I added in there. But I didn't have to stress about getting a 30-minute, an hour workout. I just, that was my foundation.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Well, and that baseline allows you a lot of people are traveling over the summer and everything. You can do that while you travel easily. I mean, no matter what hotel you're at. Now, me personally, when I'm looking at hotels, I try to get one with a nice gym. But most any of them have the things you need that you're talking about. Absolutely. You could do a baseline workout with it.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

Or you could just buy a kettlebell. Buy a single kettlebell that's a little heavy for you. So, like for me, I bring a 50. For my wife, she brings like a 35. But find one that's approachable for you and you can get any lift you want to get done with that. Now, your rep scheme may change, but pretty easy to find just one piece of equipment and bring it. Yeah, absolutely. You can do that in the hotel room. No one's the neighbors don't need to know. You can be quiet about it and just get it done.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Yeah, I mean, I think that's where a lot of people, you know, take that as an opportunity to, well, I'm gonna take a break and I'm gonna do this. But having that baseline, you're gonna have that discipline. Well, this is who I am, this is what I'm gonna do, whether I'm at home, whether I'm away, whatever, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:52

I think most people get away from a lot of the things they do when they go on vacation or trips. The more momentum you can carry over, the better. So once again, like when it comes to fitness foundation, having a plan that you carry over on these trips, even that's super easy to execute three times. Like you could do one or two workouts on that vacation, you can be done with it. And then go for like, I think another foundational piece that works really well is having a minimum step goal that you just hit each day. It's and I don't even view steps necessarily as fitness, I view it as a mental tool. So I basket everything I do in I have a nutrition basket, I have a lifestyle basket, and I have my fitness basket. And then on top of that, I do think sleep is a priority, but that will that's in topic for another day. Um, but like my fitness foundation is that two movements three times a week. My nutrition foundation that I think is your floor that you should stick with each day is every meal I get, I'm gonna have a protein in a plant. That is super now. Whatever protein, find a lean protein if you really want to be specific, but a protein in a plant goes a long way. Well, I'm having a meal out. What should I do? I need to get a salad. I need to get a side salad with it at least. That's one of the rules we do. No matter where we go on date night last night, I said to myself, okay, we were at Vine Rind. Shout out to Vine Ryan, crushed it. I love them. Um that's a great is what typically we love going date nights there. But um, from there, we also went to Cureate, we go to Bayley, we got a lot of different places around town. Um, but I always say, I need to get something protein-based. So I'm making a good choice like that. Last night I had steak bites as my um meal, and then I had a side salad. And then from there, if you want to have fun, you want to get a glass of wine or whatever on a date night, that's fine. Now, depending on your goal, you have to be a little bit, you'll have to augment that. But if you just have a fitness or a health foundation of a protein and a plant with every meal, that's gonna carry you almost everywhere. And if you have three meals a day, or say you're intermittent fasting, you do two, and then you gotta get a snack. Well, it's either a protein or a plant. If that's your foundation, that goes so far. Then you can add in pieces, you can get fancy, you can add in fermented foods and for gut dysbiosis, you can do all these esoteric things. But most people don't need that. They don't need all the fancy, they need consistent routine over and over no matter what season your life. So if you set these goals, that's how you have success. That's how you maintain that progress long term.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Completely agree. So the folks that want to take it one step forward on that protein and a plan. So you're not gonna be able to, you know, measure out your protein at a restaurant. But after if you're at home, do you have a recommendation for, hey, this many ounces of protein on that plate?

SPEAKER_02 11:00

I think if you're working with me like as a health coaching client or a nutrition coach client, we have specific goals. Yes, I think the more specific we can get, the more like into the details in the weeds, the better. But for most people, like just on a day-to-day plan, because if we're talking about floor, I think a fist-sized portion. So for me, my fist is different than your size fist, which is different than my wife's size fist. So if you just look at your fist and say, this is the amount of portion I need, at least, good, that wins. That wins. That's for me, that's about five to six ounces, right? That's a decent portion. Now, for me, I'm a I'm a protein eater. I'm a guy. I'm a carnivore, I like a little bit more. So I might go up, but that's the minimum. And the same with my plant. My side salad, that's gonna be that probably times two. So I get two portions of protein or plants with that, which goes a long way.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Is there a is there a too much protein in terms of how much your body can actually process that one meal? Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 11:43

So University of Illinois does a lot. Brad Schoenfield does a shout-out, um, does a huge amount of research on like protein conversion and relates to lifting. There's no limit, but there's an amount that starts to displace the other things you want to do. So in when you're in a growth phase, I think you can get too much protein. I think that pound per uh that pound of lean mass is always a good goal. But I think when you're in a kind of a glow phase, I think someone that could displace you could get like 0.8 uh grams of protein per pound, but you still do that fit-based portion. But the reason is you start to push out some of the carb-based things, some of the things that have been shown to actually help you build muscle. Like not to say you can't build muscle on a keto diet or anything like that, but it will be slower. And if you're trying to maximize it and do it naturally without all the accessories of like exogenous substances, peptides, steroids, anything like that, it's better to introduce things that you can maintain long term. And it's better to utilize your tools at your disposal. So for me, I'm a huge fan of introducing a little bit more carbs and pulling down the protein a little bit, just dialing it back a little bit. Now, in a fat loss phase, I dial up my protein. A lot of people do the gram per pound, right? I think it's a little bit better to when you're at the end stages of that fat loss. It's been shown that it's very hard to convert protein. It's not hard, your body can, like gluconeogenesis of the process of building proteins from other sources, but it's very hard. It's taxing on the body. So it's very difficult to put too much protein into fat. So in a fat loss phase, I want to introduce more protein. It causes you to be anabolic to its little sneaky thing. So you can maintain more muscle in a fat loss phase. So there's a simple little tool that you can do if you're trying to switch things. So one of the things I always think about protein in a plant, if I'm in a growth phase, every meal is also gonna have a carbohydrate. Like a starchy carbohydrate, something simple. When I'm in a fat loss phase, I'll probably remove two meals with like if just to make it easy, remove two carbs from two meals. So, like you can have a little bit of fruit if you wanted to, but removing any starchy carbohydrate from one or two meals, and that makes it simple. That's it's just little switches that make it simple, and that's the whole goal here. Most adults struggle because they make it too complicated with their long-term plan if they're doing it themselves. Right. And at the end of the day, if you're trying to get acute results very quickly, do everything as maximal as possible. Having a coach, having accountability, having a plan really works. But if you're trying to maintain it long term, I teach a lot of my clients that it's more important to set a floor, and this is just who I am. This is my behaviors that I go about. Just like brushing my teeth, I'm doing a protein at plant. My fitness foundation, for a lot of people, they they buy this new program, they're like, I'm doing this for 12 weeks, and that's great. If you're gonna stick with it, that's great. And once you've demonstrated you have discipline to do that, good. But plan ahead for messiness. And I think the week is the perfect interval to measure. Not the day, but think about a messy week. In a messy week, you could say, I probably can get 20 minutes three times a week. I can do that. That's doable. So for me, what I'll do is I'll say, This is what my week looked like. Then the day-to-day can change, but in the week, that's what I'm doing. If you're playing 12 weeks, you're not factoring the messiness. That's too much time to think about. Like it's good to have a program there, but when you have that floor, you're able to maintain that for a week. Like, for instance, this week's crazy. We're traveling, we're going on a little family vacation. I'm still working, or got health coaching, we got kids' sports, everything's all over the place, football, baseball. But at the end of the day, I can execute the minimum floor, and then I can always dial up the volume if I have the time in that day. Right. But no matter what, I don't go below this. It can't drop.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

It's my safety. Love it. Well, we're here in the, I guess you could say Mecca for men's clothing in Springfield, right? They've got a little bit of everything in here.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

I might have to go shopping. I know, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:50

I know. Anything specific maybe for men in the older 40s set? Anything that they should add to their fitness floor that maybe we haven't talked about.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

So for men specifically, one of the things I find that most men miss is they miss cardio in their life. So I they think running, but you know what's one of the things that's been helpful for muscle density, it helps with balance, helps recovery. I'm a huge fan of jumping rope lately. I think jumping rope has been a great tool, and not just like I'm doing single legs or double unders, like mixing in different movement patterns and skill sets, it trains your brain. It's a kind of like a cognitive tool that's a little bit of a brain tool too. It's cognitive, it's physical, it's at the same time. I'm getting a rhythm with it, I'm bounding, I'm getting a little jump rope. So that's been an easy tool. But finding a place, a way to get some form of cardio in each week is great. And cardio for me is like 30 minutes. And one of the things for you, especially people who have kids who are young that you want to interact with, make cardio fun. Make cardio fun again. I'm coining that. Make cardio fun again. So one of the easiest tools I do is we got the weighted vest. I'll either do jump and rope, or if the kids are out there and want to go play with me, great. Well, throw on the weighted vest. I'm gonna go on a bike ride with them. Or make it easy. Have tools that make it simple for you. So one of the things I'll do is I'll either throw on the weighted vest, or if the kids want to go on a bike ride, I can bikes is too easy for me with them. Like, especially my three-year-old. He's he's like, Dad, slow down. So, what I do is I make it easy. I'll either jog with them or I got a little razor scooter. Not an electric one, old school fashion razor scooter with a wheelie bar so I can pop up, but it's hard and it's a single-legg balance. And if you go for a razor scooter ride as an adult, try this. You're gonna have some glute burning from balancing on there. You're kicking and driving. And most adults never get their heel past their butt. And that's a that's a little bit more of a technical term, but like that's what sprinting is. But once we hit like 20 for most guys, we're not sprinting anymore. We're not getting our heel, we're not getting hip extension, where we're getting our heel past our butt anymore. So razor scooter is a great way to train the glutes, train the butt so we don't have this glute amnesia anymore. We're not activating our butt muscles.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

I will at I will attest to that. I did that about three weeks ago. My younger daughter got one of those and I got on that thing. I hadn't been on anything like that forever. And yeah, it was burning.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

You gotta learn like people want to do all these booty workouts, these thrusters and everything. I'm like, get on razor scooter, try, try balancing it. It works really well.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Heck yeah. Yeah. Well, Brandon, so much great stuff today. Hey, if somebody wants to work with you on any of this, get a specific plan for them, where do they go, man?

SPEAKER_02 16:57

They can reach out to us on Malum Health Maxization on Instagram, Facebook, or Malum Health Maxization.com. And we try to make it easy for everyone to be healthy long term. We have Fed Kitchen too through my wife and I. I want to make it easy for people to be healthy, and I want to make it cool again. Like I think people think like I'm so structured, I can't have fun with vacations or anything like that. But no, it can be super cool. You can still be a fit parent and the healthy parent that gets to have fun on vacation. As long as you set these minimal floors and continue to execute those, it gets easy. And that's that's really what needs to happen long term. If you make it easy, you're gonna make it consistent. And if you make it consistent, you'll have long-term results.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Let's go. Well, appreciate you hanging out with me today, man. Appreciate it, bro. Good stuff. Thank you again to Crafted Stag, Grant Hammer, and his entire team. If you haven't been out here, check it out. But we're gonna let Brennan get back to elevating Springfield. But for the rest of y'all, be right back. Hey Springfield, when it comes to reliable, high-quality roofing, you don't want to leave things to chance. That's why you should reach out to Acosta Angeli Ruffing, your local roughing expert serving Springfield and surrounding communities. From quick dependable repairs to full replacement, from residential to commercial, they are your trusted pros. Call them today at 217-993-2748 or visit their website to book your free quote and inspection. Don't wait. A little leak now could lead to major damage later. Trust the local experts, protect your home, and get peace of mind with Acosta Angeli Ruffing.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Well, thank you for joining us today, everybody. Appreciate you making us a part of your day. Hope you're enjoying these quick hits of actionable strategies here on the wellness upgrade on Elevate Springfield.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

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