Joseph F. Radosevich

I was in my twenties when I started as a trainer. I had some success and had happy clients. Now that I'm in my forties, I see that work a little differently, even though I still follow the same broad programming I did then. One thing that I think differently about is that I would emphasize baby steps more than I did. What kind of baby steps? The beginning and basic parts of each exercise pattern. Learning to hold yourself in a push-up position, handing from a pull-up bar, etc. Doing the part that you can do and working on that until you can do the whole exercise. I didn't encourage and require baby steps because so much of the personal trainer's job is sales--convincing people to start and continue with training. I was always afraid that all my clients would leave and then I would have no income. I would modify push-ups to doing them on suspension straps like the TRX instead of having them work on basic shoulder, stomach, and wrist stability. I would try to figure out how t...

I turn 42 this Friday. I still remember celebrating my 13th birthday at Dairy Queen and being disappointed that the kids menu was no longer for me. I've always liked my birthday, but hated getting older.  I've been thinking about health and fitness again this year. I've written many times about the struggle that pastors and their wives face with weight and health. The constant stress that pastors live with is indistinguishable to your body from physical stress, and I believe that makes the body store fat and refuse to let go of it. This year has been a challenge for this pastor as I turn the corner to middle age. Neither elbow will forgive me for doing pull-ups anymore. My knees can be gimpy if I'm not careful during heavy squats. I've gained 20 lbs over the last 3 years while I've averaged 4 or more workouts per week those 3 years. I've tried all sorts of diet restrictions and workout plans. My weight has crept up very slowly (just .12 lbs per week), but I...

 What I learned last year. I turned 41. I learned that my body can get stronger and do more exercise than ever before, but I will pay a price if I don't rest enough. I enjoy my workouts. I enjoy training 5 days a week, and I love kettlebells. I often did 5 days of kettlebells per week if I was feeling good. I learned that if I train hard 5 days a week, my body won't recover ,and I'll gain weight from it. I'm stronger and fitter than I've probably ever been, but I gained 10 lbs this year and my waist is bigger. Geoff Neupert helped me understand what was going on because he focuses on helping 40-50 year old men. He said that this is normal, so you have to cut down on the workouts.  I thought it was the food that I ate, so I cut out cheese and peanut butter and limited portions. None of that worked. I enjoyed the workouts from Pat Flynn's book Strong On! , but those workouts don't work for my body anymore. The reps and stress were just too high for my 41 year-...

I thought I had outgrown my largest kettlebells a couple of months ago. I made plans to buy a larger one. It's kind of a good problem to have, but it is an expensive problem. I delayed buying one and discovered that I don't have to have a bigger one just yet. I was using Pat Flynn's strength-focused training plan in his book Strong On! I got stronger so that my largest kettlebells weren't challenging enough. When I decided to delay buying a bigger kettlebell (at my wife's urging), I tried another plan from his book focused on building muscle. Otherwise, I would have skipped that plan. Because the rep ranges are different, I couldn't use my largest bells and had to go down a couple of levels. Now, I'm getting a ton out of my medium-sized bells.  The training plans in the book are called Strength, Muscle, Conditioning/Fat Loss, and Mobility. There are workouts each week from each category, but the emphasis changes. You use the lowest reps and heaviest weight ...

Pat Flynn's book Strong On is the best book I've read on fitness. I picked it up and have been using the workouts this winter and spring. What I love: It's fast. Warm-up. Workout for 20 minutes. Stretch. Move on. It's simple. The book explains just enough, but not too much. It's flexible. Even though it is simple, the workouts and the schedules combine for enormous variety and cover most goals. It's got one tool. Part of being simple is the fact that these workouts use just some kettlebells (and occasionally push-ups). I have a lot of equipment, but that can make it hard because I have to choose which equipment, which exercise, which rep range,etc.  It's comprehensive. This covers all the bases. In my workouts this week, I will cover strength, endurance, mobility, and fat loss. I've read a lot of fitness books. This is the most user-friendly.  I'm not recommending it because I get money for it. I'm not a referral website (even though I'm not...

My workout tomorrow will be my 208th for this year. My goal was 200. That allowed time off for vacation, sickness, travel, etc. This is my second year setting goals for the number of workouts. I think 200 is a pretty good goal. I switched this year to a physical journal. I love it so much better. It is lined graph paper so it makes it easy to make lists into charts. I highly recommend it. I have done Dan John's Easy Strength plan twice and am now doing Pat Flynn's kettlebell plan in his book  Paleo Fitness for Dummies . There is a saying in the fitness world that a trainer who writes his own plans has an idiot for a client. That's true. I've largely written my own plans over the years so I've been my own idiot. I'm finding holes in my fitness when doing plans written by others. Flynn's plan has me sore in places that I don't normally feel without beating me up everywhere. I plan to use plans written by others most of the time in 2025.  I made progress th...

I switched my workout journal this month from a spreadsheet in Google Drive to a composition notebook with grid lines. I've kept track of my weight for years in Google Fit and a then spreadsheet so that I can make a chart over time. I had kept my workout journal along with it to make it easy. I decided this month to switch to a physical journal, and grabbed an old composition notebook with grid lines from my garden bookshelf. I started in two places. In the front, I started a chart to track my weight and waist each morning. Halfway through the notebook, I track my workouts, heart rate, and blood pressure. The main use for tracking my blood pressure is that it helps me know when I am overtrained and need a break. It shows when my blood pressure is up ten points over a normal workout. I always thought that having a digital copy of my workouts and the ability to make a chart out of weight, waist, or heart rate made the digital version better. When I switched to the physical journal, I...

 The wagons I pull my kids in during the fall have gotten heavier. My two youngest are bigger, and the wagons at our local pumpkin patch are monsters (shout out to the best orchard and pumpkin patch around-- Greene Fields Farm in Greenfield, IL).  My kids still love riding in wagons, so what am I going to do? I have been teasing that I need to do some training for pulling wagons in the fall.  Today, I came up with a plan for wagon-pulling Dad fitness. Here it is: Load up our wagon heavy with kids and kettlebells or sandbags. Make this a little heavier than I would normally pull. Walk the 2 block circuit around our house. It has a hill on two of the four streets. Repeat for 2 rounds. Because of the weird position of your arm and back, I don't plan on doing too much of this or doing too heavy. I looked up overuse injuries in factories with pulling like this and want to avoid injury. 

Sometimes you outgrow your kettlebell. You get too strong for it, especially on exercises like the kettlebell swing. You can get a bigger kettlebell, but I've used a band to make my kettlebells harder. It's an exercise called the kettlebell banded swing. Why I love it:  It's cheap. Instead of buying a bigger ball for just a few exercises, you can buy a band for $7-$15. It builds strength, especially in the glutes.  It builds explosiveness. It's a fast snapping exercise that is similar to jumping. Here is a video of Matt Chan demonstrating how to set the kettlebell up for banded swings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN9dppWJcGQ He does the American-style swing. I don't care for that type and do the Russian-style that just comes up to the shoulders.

Five reasons I write about fitness: There is not enough fitness content on the internet that is actually healthy and good for you. So much is driven by sex or sexual appeal. So much is unrealistic and dishonest because it is secretly powered by drugs and shortcuts. So much is unhealthy because it focuses on identity and says "you are what you look like." I want to write things that are actually good for people. Physical training is good for people so I want people (and especially pastors) to be inspired to train their bodies. Movement, sweating, training creates endorphins so you feel good and have less depression. Fitness helps people be healthy long-term and avoid knee, shoulder, hip issues and avoid some diabetes and other health issues. I have expertise as a former personal trainer. I enjoyed my time as a trainer and learned a lot. I still use it today. I like physical training. Writing about fitness helps me think clearly about fitness and health. This helps me apply wha...

 A late 30's dad asked me last week what I do for my workouts. Here is what I do 3 days each week: 5:00 warm-up 2 rounds of 5 goblet squats/11 push-ups/2:00 on an exercise bike 10:00 I pick 4 cards from my exercise playing cards. I do them as many times through as I can before the timer goes off. This satisfies my desire for variety. 10:00 I start a timer that beeps every minute. When the timer beeps, I do the assigned exercise and then rest until the timer beeps again.  Monday-4-5 kettlebell snatches with each hand Thursday-double kettlebell 2 cleans/1 press/3 front squats. This is called the Armor Building Complex by Dan John. Saturday-5 double kettlebell clean and presses Test my heart rate and blood pressure. 5:00 stretching I use a stretching plan that I learned in middle school from The Navy SEAL Workout  book. I'm not sure it if is psychological or physical but I don't feel right if I haven't stretched. I do bike sprints on Wednesday too. I did different programs...

When I worked in a local gym, new people came in most days to sign up at the gym. We would ask them what their goal was and what their plan was. They always had a blank look for the plan because the gym was the plan. They planned on using the equipment to reach their goal but hadn't thought about how they would use the equipment. The equipment was the plan. Equipment isn't a plan. I've got 10 workout ideas for a fan bike. A fan bike is a bike that has a fan in place of the front wheel and usually has arms that pump back and forth. The reason for the fan is that the harder you pedal and pump, the resistance from the fan gets harder. As you work harder or get fitter, then the bike gets harder too. Fan bikes usually come with a computer display that shows time, speed, calories burned, distance, and revolutions per minute. It makes for great workouts. Schwinn Airdyne, Air Assault, and Rogue Echo are examples of fan bikes. There are others. Here are 10 workout ideas for someone ...

When I was a trainer, I would do a sample workout with prospective clients. They were often interested in personal training, and the workout was the hook to talk about their goals and consider working together. What I normally did was take them through the warm-up I did with clients. For most people new to the gym, it felt like a hard workout. If they only did slow sessions on the treadmill or nothing at all, then this "workout" was hard. After they trained with me for a little while, then this warm-up was just a warm-up. Here is my current warm-up: 2 Rounds of 5 Goblet Squats (35 lbs kettlebell) 7 Push-ups 2:00 on the Airdyne at and medium pace. All this takes about 6 minutes. For some people, this would feel like a workout. Honestly, you could do that for 20 minutes and get a really good workout in. I've really been enjoying this warm-up.  

Inspired by Phillips Brooks' advice to "write something besides sermons" but to do it as a pastor, I thought of what I would say about fitness from the perspective of a pastor and Christian who was a former personal trainer. I enjoyed being a personal trainer. Losing 50 lbs. improved my life a lot. I enjoyed helping others move better, feel better, and get healthier. There are a lot of pitfalls in the health and fitness world though. I'm not sure that they are different than in other areas of our world, but they exist. Here is what I would say as a pastor to someone about how to pursue health and fitness as a Christian: Don't be selfish or self-centered. 2 Corinthians 5:15 reminds us that we once lived for ourselves before we met Christ. So if our fitness goals or methods are selfish, we are going back to our old way of living. If your goal is to get other people's attention, then it is selfish. If your method requires you to sacrifice your family to spend exc...

We are drowning in more information but less knowledge about the things we use, try, and buy. Whether it is Artificial intelligence-written websites, marketing, content farms, or bad writing, we have lots of words about things. That doesn't mean we know what we want or need to know.  We can help each other out to fix this.  Whatever it is that you know best, share that with others. Many people share their products, plans, courses, etc. What the rest of us need is for real people to share an actual look inside. So whatever you actually know and use, share your story and the results that come from it. I tell the stories of seed varieties, kettlebells, coffee brewing methods. I write about the books that I'm reading. Those reviews are so that people can know about these things.   I'm finishing another Dan John workout plan this week. I think about people like myself who would like to know what my results and thoughts are as an actual user. Someone thinking about doing t...

  I recently bought a new kettlebell. It was my first new kettlebell in 10 years. I read lots of reviews, but few of them included details about how the kettlebell worked with certain styles of training. I am very happy with the REP Fitness Kettlebell and thought it would be good to review it along with details about how I use it. My style of training is similar to what you see in RKC or Strongfirst. I do kettlebell swings to shoulder height. I like kettlebell snatches and cleans, but I don't do long cycle. I didn't want a competition bell. I wanted a kettlebell with a slightly matte finish.  I already own kettlebells from Lifeline, Muscle Driver, and Fringesport. My Lifeline kettlebell is my favorite. It has an amazing matte finish that doesn't rip my hands. The Fringesport One Fit Wonder kettlebells have narrow handles and are rough and slick at the same time (they no longer sell that line).  When I first got into kettlebell training, the reviews I read said that Dragon...

I'm starting a series called "How Pastors Workout." My hope is to feature a range of pastors who describe their workouts. I want it to be reality, not hype like most online fitness content is. I hope it can be an encouragement to pastors to be active so they can love their families and fulfill their ministries. I hope to feature runners, martial artists, climbers, weightlifters, etc. If you are a pastor or ministry leader, leave a comment and let me know you want to be part. My Goals Be able to fulfill my roles as husband, dad, and pastor. This is what fitness is to me: being able to live the life in front of me. That includes strength, strength endurance, cardio, and flexibility. Stay injury-free. No fitness goal is worth anything if my elbow, shoulder, or back hurts and keeps me from training or living. Get my waist to 1/2 my height. This is for long-term heart health. I'm close but not quite there. My Workouts I follow Mark Sisson's suggested weekly schedule:  ...

 I decided to do Dan John's 10,000 challenge in the month of July when I turned 39. I want to share what I did, why I modified it, and what my results are. The challenge The challenge is this: Do 500 Kettlebell swings on a 2 days on/1 day off cycle. That works out to 20 workouts and 10,000 swings.  In each workout, superset one strength exercise with the swings for low rep ladders of 1/2/3. The strength exercises are kettlebell presses, goblet squats, dips, and pull-ups (because I was concerned about my elbow which I've injured a couple of times, I replaced it with ab wheel rollouts. I think Dan John would approve because he has written that they work the same muscles.). I used a 52lbs/24kg kettlebell. That is a lot for me because it is almost 1/3 of my bodyweight. Why I modified it I tested the workout in June, and I realized two things. One, my grip gave out between 200 and 250 swings when I used the 52lbs/24kg kettlebell. Two, I can't get that workout in during my normal...

"Vacation workout"  sounds like you are obsessed and should take a break. In my case, I don't think I'm obsessed, I just wanted to keep feeling good and be free to eat a little extra and enjoy myself on vacation. I've worked hard for the last two years to get my waist down to a healthy size. One week wouldn't necessarily blow up all that work, but keeping my metabolism running each day would help. I finished my workout before my kids woke up. The days were filled with swimming, sight-seeing, and other play.  This is what I did: Ladders (1,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,1 or 2,4,6,8,6,4,2 of the main four exercises) Split squat Push-up Lying Back Press or Lying Scapular Press (an isometric exercise) Single-leg Glute Bridge 2 sets of RKC Isometric Plank for 10 seconds Stretch The only equipment this required was a dining chair for the Glute Bridges. The whole workout took 20 minutes. I felt good on vacation and think it was worth it.

   A couple of months ago, I had a few thoughts about what I would do differently if I were a personal trainer or fitness studio owner again. *I don't want to do that. I have no desire or plan to be a trainer again. These thoughts are based on what I've learned about growth, fitness, aging (your thirties are different than when I was a trainer in my twenties), life balance, etc. In no particular order: I would focus on giving workouts that are an experience. I would make them fun, good workouts. I think that when I was a trainer, I gave people what I thought was the perfect workout, but there was not an element of fun, games, and what makes this interesting. I was all about efficiency and effectiveness. I would have tried to find ways to make it an experience. Now, when I workout, I think about what makes it fun and effective. If I don't enjoy it, then I won't do it. I would inject my personality. Out of fear, I was not myself. I was very calm and straight-laced. I thin...