EP3: Beyond the Workout with Reece Browning from Browning Performance

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Welcome to Healthy Knox, connecting Knoxville to better health. This is the show where we cut through the noise and get real about what it takes to live a healthier life right here in East Tennessee. Your hosts are two doctors who aren't just talking about health. They're living it and delivering it to this community every single day. Dr. Cherise and Dr. Trent from Corrective Chiropractic, let's get into it. All right, welcome, Knoxville. We're doing episode four and today I'm your host Dr. Trent Hipward, and this is our project is Healthy Knox. We're interviewing like-minded businesses that are in the health and wellness space, and today's expert and special guest is from Browning Performance, Reese Browning. Welcome. Thanks, man. Glad to be here. Now why don't you give us a little bit of background of who you are and what your business is and who do you help? Yeah. Again, you said my name's Reece Browning. I'm the owner and head trainer of Browning Performance. And my background, I grew up playing sports ended up playing college football, and the weight room strength training was always a part of my life since as far as I can remember. And going through college football, it was an even bigger deal for me. And then I got a summer job at Johnny Long's. It used to be off Hardin Valley Road, but, And I was training kids, and I just fell in love with watching the transformation of the kids which led me into pursuing this as a career. And as I've grown, I've found the need to be more so rather than training for a specific sport, but just overall strength, health, and fitness. So what we do at Browning Performance is we do what we call customizable group training, and we specialize in training adults to be stronger, healthier, and just live a stronger and fitter life. Most of our clients are 35 to about 65. All males and fema- males and females both. It's all about des- We design everything around the strength training aspect because that is the main point in longevity, being able to move well, and when we hit our 80s, being able to play with our kids and our grandkids as we get older. 'Cause nobody wants to slow down, right? We all wanna be able to play with our kids and have all the energy for the, "One more, Daddy. One more." And going into future grandkids, the same thing. 100%. And part of this project is that we're looking at Eastern Tennessee stats health-wise. We overall rank 44 out of 50 states in our overall health ranking, so we have a lot of room for improvement. Knoxville is a little bit better if we get specific into the city, but some of our main drivers we see with health issues are smoking, sedentary lifestyle, ultra-processed diet patterns, and obesity. So speak to a little bit about sedentary lifestyle because obviously, I guess I wanna segue into when you get- A new clientele that comes into you, male or female, what are some of the health concerns that you're seeing coming through your door and asking for your help? The biggest thing I get is the weight loss aspect. And like you said, the sedentary lifestyle. Most people they know, for the most part, they know what to do. They know they need to be active. But, as you and I both know, that couch is It just calls your name when you walk in the house. Just sit down, watch TV. And most people that come into our gym are looking for accountability and just somebody to be in their corner. And, hey if I miss a day or two, I need a text or somebody calling me saying, "Hey, where are you?" And so just a little bit of a push. But like you said, the sedentary lifestyle is so easy to fall into, and that's what I see most of the time is that people just, hey I know what I need to do, but it's just somebody needs to be there holding me accountable or I'll get a Planet Fitness or a Gold's Gym membership and I just won't go. Yeah. S- so you see the struggle with somebody just having that accountability and somebody that gives you some guidance. So I wanna segue since we're there. What makes your guys' approach different than, let's say, a Planet Fitness or a franchise that basically just has a low monthly fee and then you show up on your own? So what makes us different is we are... everything is trainer led. We don't have an open gym aspect. So we take you from the time you walk in through a warm-up, through the workout, through a finisher, cool down, all that stuff, and it's designed around, I think I mentioned it before, but it's designed around strength training. That's what separates us a little bit. You have your spin classes and you have your HIIT workouts, and those are great, but they don't hit everything that you need, and strength is a big portion of that. And so we concentrate on the strength training, and we ask you for the most part to get some cardio in on your own. And most of the time, I, on my whiteboard, I... might as well be written in Sharpie, I have it the homework is at least three to five times a week where we want you to go out and hit 30 to 45 minutes of zone two cardio. Just a brisk walk where you can hold a conversation, but every once in a while you got to stop and take a deep breath. And, or if you have a heart rate monitor, you can check it there. But easiest way to think about it is you're on a brisk enough pace that you can still hold a conversation like you and I are, but every once in a while you get... you just got to take a deep breath and then you can continue. Yeah, absolutely. Now, I really like for any of our listeners and followers check out your Instagram because I think you have some really simple but fundamentally basic, which are important tips about weight loss and making things sustainable, right? And accountable in terms of if it's easy for you to do this, then it's gonna be sustainable for you to do it for a lo- lifetime. And I think that's what your g- your approach is about, at least what I see on your Instagram posts on tips and things. What are the top three things off the top of your head, I'm gonna put you on the spot. Top three things that you would say everybody for maintaining healthy weight, longevity encompasses it all. What would be your top three things activity-wise that people should be incorporating daily or at least weekly for their general physical health? So my top three things I would say was strength train three times a week, and that is follow a program, whether you're in a gym like mine or you go online and find a good program. But stick to a three-day-a-week program of true strength training. And then walking three to five times a week or, for 30 to 45 minutes. Or if you don't have that kind of time, I know we all have busy lives and we're running kids here and there, but try to do 10 minutes after each meal. And then the third thing is more about nutrition. I know you said activity, but trying to eat real food 90% of the time. I'm not the guy that says, "Hey, don't eat that, don't eat this." I'm more about, "Hey, concentrate on getting real food, get your nutrients in, and then if you still want that cookie at the end of the day," which I'm guessing if you get all your nutrients in, you probably won't. But if you still want it at the end of the day, have one. Treat yourself, but don't overdo it. And if you're eating the way you should with 90% of the time eating real nutritious food, and that means if you look on the label and there's not a huge list of ingredients, then if you do that 90% of the time, you're gonna be able to maintain that weight. I love it because th- these fun- fundamentally basic things that you talk about are the things we talk about here clinically in my office with lifestyle prevention and modification. And it all... And really at the end of the day, all these things are behavioral aspects, right? We've just got to retrain ourself because we are very emotional creatures. And base of our emotions, we let those emotions sometimes drive us into decisions and then actions, right? I wanna highlight just real quick why strength training is so important and why that is your core focus. If you can give me a little bit of insight and details of what you found to be very helpful and why you have focused mainly around strength training. So one of the main things is the longevity aspect. And, once you hit about 30, your bones start to get lose density. And how we can prevent that, and sometimes even reverse that, is through strength training. Building the muscle around the bones, around the joints, and it's gonna make those joints feel better because now with the joint aspect part of it, when you're building muscle around the joints, you're not relying so much on your joints to handle things as you are the muscle. So I always say, you think about it, we do squats all the time. Think about it, hey, I wanna be able to get up off the toilet when I'm 80 and without needing any assistance. Yeah. So Yeah, and take care of yourself. These daily activities of cleaning yourself, backing out of the driveway. Nowadays most of our cars are have cameras everywhere. But, it's all about mobility, and you're right. The other thing that I think is worth noting is creating more lean muscle mass and why that's important. I'm sure you know why. Yeah. So go ahead, talk a little bit about that. Yeah. When we're talking about weight loss and everything, it's one of the key things that I tell everybody when we're speaking about weight loss, is the more lean muscle you have on your body, the more calories you're gonna burn at rest. So even while you're sitting on the couch, you're burning more muscle. When you're sitting in the office, you're completely at rest, you're burning more calories because you have more muscle. Fat does not burn as much muscle. Fat doesn't burn calories the way that muscle does, and we're gonna burn a ton more calories when we have more muscle on our body. Yeah. Metabolic- metabolically, m- muscle tissue and adipose or fat tissue are just very different. And I think people have an idea of that. But I think the other cool thing about m- lean muscle mass is you create a bigger disposal of blood sugar or glucose. So- blood glucose is actually very toxic in the blood system. We have maybe about a teaspoon at a time floating around, and that's why the body wants to get rid of it. So when you have more lean muscle mass, you create more of these deposit sites that can soak up that, that glucose, and then you can have a better, healthier blood sugar level, but also metabolism as well. So I think that's another great k- key feature. Now why do you recommend, or at least what have you seen with walking t- 10 minutes after post-meal? Why is that important? It's gonna help the digestion process. Instead of just sitting here, we eat and it just sits on us. So we get up, we walk. And, a lot of people that I work with that sit in the office I tell them, "Hey, after you eat lunch, get up, walk around the office, or walk to the bathroom and back." Pretend you're washing your hands or whatever you're doing. But that way you get that digestive system working, and it's that food, all those calories are not just gonna sit on you. Yeah. If there was one advice, since you being in the fitness industry and the kind of your background, what's what's one thing m- that you would want people to pay attention to the most? 'Cause in the fitness industry and space, there's a lot of confusion, there's a lot of talking. So in your experience, what would be that one thing you want people to pay attention to with their physical health? What would that be? One thing I'd say is, people talk about the scale all the time, and they don't wanna get on the scale, and I like to think of the scale as a tool. When you're tracking food, that can get tedious. I know it does. But one thing that I've done with the scale aspect is I try to weigh myself last thing at night and first thing in the morning, and that just helps me track what I ate without actually putting it in MyFitnessPal or something. 'Cause that, like I said, I know it gets tedious. But it's really comes down to watching what you eat and thinking about... one of the things I always go back to is trying to concentrate on eating real food 90% of the time, and that is eating it in its purest form. My wife and I, we love french fries. Yeah. Can't get away from it. So what we do as an alternative to going to McDonald's or Chick-fil-A or something is we'll take a, just a regular potato, slice it up, throw it in the air fryer with just a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, maybe a little bit of salt, throw it in the air fryer, and that's our french fries. Yeah. And the first time we did that, my wife was like, "Oh, my gosh, this is how we're eating french fries from now on. We don't need Chick-fil-A. We don't need McDonald's or Burger King or anything like that." Yeah. "These are fantastic, and they're so much better for you." Yeah. Real quick in two... I forgot to talk about this, but you have a little bit of a personal story of your health and physical weight gain and stuff like that. If you can in two minutes or less talk a little bit about that origin story, and I'm sure it spurred you into creating Br- Browning Performance. Yeah, absolutely. So over the past few years, I've lost about 85 pounds. I was sitting at right around 290. I was in a job that I didn't really like. I wasn't really happy and mostly in my job, and it was a lot of sitting, and I never really did some of the principles that I talk about now, is get up and walk and, y- eat lunch, get up and walk. And so when I kinda had that moment where I had that realization of oh, my gosh, look at all this weight you've gained, it was from poor nutrition. I wasn't watching what I ate. I was sitting all day. I still lifted weights, and my excuse was I'm strong." And so- First thing I did was I started walking. On my lunch break, I started walking. I would go up to the track and I would walk for my entire 30 minutes, and at that point it was like I could get a mile in, and then pretty soon after that it was, I could get a mile and a half, then it was two miles. And I was losing the weight because I was more active. I was actually thinking about what I was taking with me to work to eat. And I w- I li- I was limiting alcohol. That was a big thing. Alcohol is poison. It is a killer. It will make you gain so much weight without even realizing it. So I was limiting those. And then once I had that transformation, I dropped about 50 pounds and I was like, "Man, I can do this for me. I need to help people do the same thing." 'Cause it felt like I would put a weight vest on to go walk after I'd lost some weight, and I was like, "Man, I was walking around with this all day every day." Yeah. Yeah. I was like, "I can't imagine going back." Yeah. And then really the biggest turning point was I had my son. And I thought I was doing the right things, or I was telling myself I was doing the right things, but then I had my son and I was like, "I am so much better than what I am right now, and I wanna be..." I decided, I wanna be around, I wanna play with him as long as I can, and personally I wanna beat him in a foot race as long as I can. Yeah. But, and then I wanna play with his kids. Yeah. And I don't wanna be the grandpa that's just sitting on the porch and, "No, I can't get down and play with you." I wanna get up and play. So I really dialed in the nutrition. I really dialed in the programming with my workouts, and I started doing things the right way, and now I'm down to about 205. I still got at least 10 more pounds I wanna lose, but, you know- No, you look- The more weight you lose, the harder it is yeah, you look great. You sound great. I love what you're doing at Browning Performance. I love that you're family-focused too, 'cause your facility does sh- show that as well. Now, with our listeners and people who are listening to our podcast, how can they get connected with you if they're looking for accountability or a gym that kinda offers what you guys have? The easiest way to go about it is just look us up on Instagram. We're Browning Performance, or we're @browningperformance, and you can DM us, follow us, all that good stuff. Awesome. I appreciate your time, Reese, and I love what you're doing. Everything really resonates with like our values of what we do in our office here. And so I love that we've got a great partnership with you. So if you guys are looking for accountability, looking for a great gym that's more than just a gym to help you lose weight look at Browning Performance. Thanks for your time today, Reese, and we'll talk soon. Yeah. Thanks, man. That's a wrap on Healthy Knox. Thanks for spending some time with us today. If something we said stuck with you, share it with someone in your life who needs to hear it. And if you're ready to take the next step toward feeling better right here in Knoxville, come see us at Corrective Chiropractic. We're not just your doctors, we're your neighbors. We'll see you next time.