The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Gospel of Fitness: A Rational Approach to Aging Gracefully by Steve McKinney

Episode Date: March 15, 2025

The Gospel of Fitness: A Rational Approach to Aging Gracefully by Steve McKinney Fitnessandmore.net Amazon.com Are you ready to redefine aging and unlock a healthier, more vibrant life? In The Gospel of Fitness: A Rational Approach to Aging Gracefully, fitness expert Steve McKinney combines decades of hands-on experience with practical wisdom to deliver a transformative guide for losing fat, building muscle, and improving overall well-being. Packed with science-based strategies, easy-to-follow workout routines, and actionable advice on diet and lifestyle, this book cuts through the noise of modern fitness trends to present a simple, effective system for long-term health. Steve’s “3-W Approach” focuses on weight training, walking, and watching your diet, making it accessible for all ages and fitness levels. Discover how to: Lose 20 pounds of fat in just eight weeks Combat the effects of aging with proven strength-building techniques Develop sustainable habits for physical, mental, and spiritual health Through heartfelt stories, expert tips, and a clear path to fitness, Steve inspires readers to embrace aging gracefully while living life to its fullest. Whether you’re looking to regain your strength, improve your balance, or rekindle your hope, The Gospel of Fitness will empower you to become the best version of yourself. Your journey to health starts here.

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Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hey folks, it's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, the only thing that makes a fish a welcome to the show, as always, the Chris Voss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you as harshly as maybe the rest of your family does. The world, you know, the world's not very supportive, but that's why you have The Chris Voss Show as your family because they bring you all these amazing authors with their amazing

stories, with their amazing journeys. And you know, I was talking with somebody over the weekend and they were like, do you ever get tired of doing interviews? Do you ever get tired of talking to people and being interested in people? And are you constantly in interview mode wherever you go? We do do a lot of interviews all week, 10 to 15 new shows we bring you a week, but no, I don't. You know, the fabric of life is stories and it's what makes us, it's what builds us. The reason I love this show, the reason I love interviewing the amazing guests we have,

and the reason I love the gift that it gives to our listeners is you can learn so much from people's stories, and you can get different paradigm perspective. I know a lot, I know a few things fairly well, but man, I've guessed on that even if I know something, they'll teach me a different perspective on it. So make sure you listen to all the shows on The Chris Voss Show and refer it to your family and friends. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or The Chris Voss Show. Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today we have an amazing young man on

the show. We're going to be talking about his new book that's out January 31st, 2025. It is called The Gospel of Fitness, A Rational Approach to Aging Gracefully by Stephen McKinney. And we're going to get into his deets and his story and his journey to help you live a better life. Steve has been in the fitness industry for over 30 years. He's the owner of Fitness and More Inc. and is a first-class certified personal fitness trainer. He is the innovator of the 3W system of fitness and is a best-selling author of the book The Gospel of Fitness available on Amazon. 1990 he won the mr.

Southern Illinois's bodybuilding title was a top-five finisher in the mr. Midwest Competition see specializes in private one two one high intensity training sessions He currently holds the rank of black belt in jiu-jitsu. I hold the coffee belt in jujitsu. I just sit and drink coffee while I watch people do jujitsu. He is also the pastor of Grace East Church. Welcome to the show. How are you, Steve? I'm doing great. Thank you for having me, Chris. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Do they have a coffee belt in jujitsu or is that just… I have spilled coffee on my belt, but that's as far as it goes for me.

See, I was close enough. Yeah, yeah, you're good. Black and brown belt, that's even worse. If you've got coffee and you've got a black belt, things are going to happen. Actually, people around me die by jujitsu if I don't have coffee. Give us your.coms, where can people find you on the internet. The easiest way is to go fitnessandmore.net. That is my website and there's an inquiry page right there.

Steve McKinney on Facebook and then fitnessandmorestl on Instagram. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your new book, The Gospel of Fitness? Oh, Chris, what it is, it literally is a rational approach to Asian Gracefully. Here's what I mean by that when you go and look at wanting to get in shape People get so confused because there's just a plethora of information on the internet So here's how I how this book came about I've been doing this for over 30 years and I do one-to-one private training and so what I did early on was I began to

training. And so what I did early on was I began to track everything that everyone did. Every client that came in, I kept records of everything they did. And then what I tried to figure out is what could they do not for just a short period of time, but what could they do for a lifetime. And so I came up with a system of fitness and I called it 3W Approach to Fitness. It's weight training, walking, and watching your diet. And those three things, and I call it 3W approach to fitness. It's weight training, walking and watching your diet. And those three things, and I can give you all the details on those, working together, make the most efficient safe workout that you can do. And it is relatively short, literally 15 minute workouts, two days per week.

And so I set that all up in the book and I show people how to do a home program. I show them how to do a gym program as well. And it's that trifecta of those three aspects, right? I just can't sit on, you know, normally I just sit and eat bonbons and fatty substances like pizza while I watch aerobic videos. That's not the same as doing all the things with what you put in your mouth and exercise in a gym actually and stuff. I can't just assimilate that through association.

No, you can't. Yeah, getting your heart rate up by watching a scary movie is not the same. What kind of operation is this, damn it? You actually want me to exercise and not show off. Here's the beautiful thing about it though. Everything, it works together, integrates together. And so here's what weight training does. Weight training has one specific purpose

and that is to build muscle. And so that is the idea behind weight training. Now for us, as we age, it's as you age, your hormones change. And so for me at 64, I'm not trying to build muscle. I'm just trying not to lose any more muscle. And that is part of aging gracefully, you know, it's so the reason that this works so well, what I do with the training program, it's called time under tension

or time under load. So I keep a person, we do one set per exercise and then we go to the next exercise. And what I do is I keep them under the load for 60 to 90 seconds. And here's why that works so well. You have four different muscle fiber types, Chris, and they are slow oxidative, fast oxidative, fast oxidative glycolytic, and fast glycocolytic now just keep that thought in mind. There are four fiber types. Okay, okay So flabby I have the flabby type that'll go into watching that'll be going to watching your diet part because that falls in the category of body fat So in those four fiber types, they are recruited what's called sequentially

So when you put them under a load, the first muscle type fatigues, the second muscle type takes over. And at about the 60 to 90 second in that area is when you get to the fourth muscle fiber type. And once you get to that fast glycolytic and you stimulate that, it takes two to 20 seconds to stimulate that, but you have to fatigue all the other muscle fiber types

first. If you don't fatigue them properly, you'll never get to that fourth point, that fourth bundle. And the interesting thing about the fourth bundle, Chris, is it takes anywhere from four to 10 days to recover based on the individual. That's why I only do two short sessions per week. It keeps your heart rate elevated,

so you have an aerobic effect, and you build muscle in the middle. That is the most efficient way to work out. And one set, right? In one set. And then you go right to the next set, keeping your heart rate elevated. We call that global metabolic conditioning,

which means you're doing 15 minutes of high intensity training. So you're gonna get this aerobic benefit, as well as the anaerobic muscle building benefit as well. And I train normal everyday people just like us, but I also train high level athletes with it. I've used the same system on UFC fighters. I have my son's a jujitsu guy. We run a jujitsu school. So I train all my jujitsu athletes the same way because a trained muscle is a trained muscle. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. I've seen these machines at my gym, they're like, they're designed to be slow moving jeans. So when you are in slow moving operations. So when you're doing this set, like how many reps you do or how many, you know, do you do it really slow? You're going very slow and controlled and you want to keep that muscle loaded the whole time. You don't want to let it unload.

If you unload, then you lose that, that fatigue in the muscle. So you don't let the weights go all the way down. Correct. Exactly right. And the movements are done very slow and controlled. Now the loads though, Chris, they're not super heavy. They're moderate because you want to connect your mind to the muscle and you want to feel what's happening in the movements and that's what you're after.

Once you do that. And here's the other part of that. I was on a, I was talking to a doctor and he was, he's a DO and he said that as I was talking to him about this system, he said, you know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna Really look at what you're talking about. He's 50 years old. He goes because he uses different a different method He goes but my joints are hurting so bad and I told him I go that's part of anti-aging and Longevity is keeping your joints healthy. So I when I talk to my clients. I just say hey listen, we are training

muscles and saving joints. That's the whole idea behind it. And so that keeps us healthy and it allows us to be very functional as we get older. I like that. I've seen people talking about doing slow movements. You don't even have to have a lot of weight. Correct. You can, it's all about the, I guess that load. That makes sense. One of the challenges I have at working out was sometimes you hit those peaks or pinnacles

and you're just kind of stuck. You know, I'm doing, I'm doing three reps of 10. You know, I try and push the weights up and make sure you try and advance if you can. And but I like this system better because number one, it's a lot less reps and a thing, but it really focuses on that load because yeah, you know, you drop the weight all the way down to where it's sitting.

Now you don't have a load and then you lift it back up between, you know, reps, you're going up and down, up and down. So you're effectively stopping somewhere in between there. Absolutely. Chris, what you just mentioned is what I call the point of diminishing returns. And here's what I mean by that. What you said was you're doing three sets of 10,

and then you're trying to push the weight up. There's a certain point where you could only, strength is finite. It's not infinite. And so you get to this point to where you can only lift so much weight. And now you're using other muscle groups, you're bracing, that's not the goal. See, the goal is not how much weight I can lift. The goal is can I deeply stimulate the muscle that I'm working and I could use the weight, the moderate weight to do that, but I make the weight feel heavier on purpose by just really feeling what's happening and it

connecting my mind to the muscle. Yeah, that would make sense. I mean, it really does because yeah, I mean, that's the problem I have topping out and then trying to push the next level. But usually by then, you got to go load something you don't have, but then you're using the same process. But yeah, and so I can see how this... And you say it takes 40, 10 days to recover after that. Yeah, generally, I put my clients like a Monday Thursday Tuesday Friday Just to give them enough time to recover because most people Go to the gym and they recover enough to go back to the gym the next day But they don't recover enough to get stronger the most misunderstood thing in

Fitness is recovery. Most people see what everyone else is doing and they end up over training in the middle of that. Yeah and then not making any progress. I mean correct. Yeah and then the other parts of that I talk about walking and watch your diet. Walking, most of my clients that come to me, most people want to lose anywhere from 20 to 25 pounds or more and so what I do with them is I obviously help them with their diet because exercise is a very inefficient way to lose body fat. Body fat levels are primarily controlled by dietary intake. They're not controlled by exercise. Exercise does not burn that many calories.

Now if you're building muscle, Chris, what happens is your basal metabolic rate begins to increase if you have more muscle. And that's really important. But what I do with the walking aspect of it is I have people walk for 30 minutes a day, preferably after dinner. Within 15 minutes of your dinner, you take a 30 minute walk and there was a study done. And the study, it was, there was three different scenarios that this guy looked at BMR after, after the scenarios. The first one was walking alone. And then he checked how many calories you're burning three hours later. Then it was eating and walking. And then he checked the same thing. And then it was walking and eating. And what he concluded, what he found out was eating and then walking increased your basal metabolic rate by 25 to 30%. So when I put these, all these things together, Chris, what I

do is I optimize everything. Everything is there for a reason. It's not just very random. It's there for a reason. And so that's how I approach the, that's how I approach the walking part of that as well. reason. It's not just very random. It's there for a reason. And so that's how I approach the walking part of that as well. Would it help if I ate and walked? Like I'll just...

At the same time. At the same time. Would that work? I mean, I'll just take and set up a table, some sort of weird high table over my treadmill. And then I'll just sit there and eat spaghetti while I walk. You know what? I don't think that's been tested, but you can test it and let us know. over my treadmill and then I'll just sit there and eat spaghetti while I... You know what? I don't think that's been tested but you can test it and let us know. Yeah, I mean, I'm hungry for spaghetti. I tried to get spaghetti last night at a place and I went there and it was full. So now I feel... you ever feel ripped off and you're like, I need to get that spaghetti from somewhere.

I feel you. I totally understand that. And that leads us to the watching your diet part of that as well. And there's just, you know, like I said, there's a plethora of information out there. But you know, the bottom line with body fat level, it's dietary practices. So if you want to lose weight, you have to figure out a way to create a calorie deficit. That is the biggest thing. And you want to get about a 500 a day, 500 calorie a day deficit, which will end up helping you lose one to two pounds per week. And that's kind of what you're after in the middle of that. Yeah. One to two pounds a week.

That's interesting. You know, it's, it's, what are your thoughts on protein? One of the things I've been coming back to is protein and I am a big intermittent fastener. Me too. And I was really struggling with that and lifting weights and everything else. And recently I started kind of abandoning the intermittent fasting and I've been making sure that I have that one gram of protein to ideally body weight or something like that. Yeah, lean body mass is what you're after. I'm like, I weigh 300 pounds right now or less than 290 maybe, I don't know.

But at 300 pounds, that's a lot of goddamn protein to drink every day. It really is. And let me ask you this, Chris, how do you feel eating that much protein? Because I don't feel good eating copious amounts of protein. I have trouble with digestion in the middle of that. It causes flatulence. You've got all of these things that go on. And so- Flatulence might be a little bit of lactose intolerance.

So I solve that problem. I buy a protein called naked nutrition and it's really simple. It doesn't have a lot in it. And I'm also lactose intolerant. So yeah, if I drink normal protein whey, there's a nuclear strike that happens within my body and it's not good for anyone nearby. But so what I found is I shoot for 200, a weight of 200 and so I try and eat 200 grams,

which is about four or five protein shakes. Yeah, by the end of the day, I'm kind of grossed out a little bit. Yeah. It's really been working for me. Like I've never felt better in all my life. I love that. I love to hear that. That's great. So I don't know if I'm doing anything right. All I know is I feel better. And the intermittent fasting, why I love intermittent fasting, I lost 100 pounds in intermittent fasting. I love it for, you know, if I need to correct some stuff in my diet or just kind of maybe

feel better. I've actually felt more better having a protein shake in the morning and having four to five of them throughout the day at about 30 to 40 grams a pure. And I think I average about five. I think I try and get to six, but I think I average about 30 to 40 grams of pure. And I think I average about five. I think I try and get to six, but I think I average about five. And I've never felt better ever before. I love that.

That's good. Now, do you have, what are your goals? I'd like to lose weight. And I seem to be losing some weight with, I've reached a point where I'm, I seem to be doing a lot of muscle fat burning and I can work out maybe twice a week. And I could do more, but I've kind of felt, I've kind of found I can kind of maintain

a little bit. But I like your system. I'm going to try your system because I've kind of peaked. Yeah, Chris, what I would say too, and I talk about this in the book, what you need to do if I were advising you and I do a lot of that one-one advice for people when I get people who are very busy and wanna get some stuff done, and I'll do about four or five of those a month, but what I do in that situation is I would say,

we need to measure what you're doing. And what I mean by that is, you're obviously measuring your protein intake, but we need to measure overall caloric intake. That way we can come up with that. If we can measure it, then we can adjust it. So my advice in this situation for you would be I would weigh on a regular basis. I would weigh under the same conditions. Like for example, every morning when you wake up, if you need a

feed, a day feedback, some people like once a week, it's just based on the individual. But I would check my weight, then I would look at how many calories I'm eating, and then I would look at am I losing one to two pounds a week. And if I'm not, then I would look at how many calories I'm eating, and then I would look at am I losing one to two pounds a week. And if I'm not, then I make that slight adjustment to make it happen. So, yeah, measure everything so you know what you're doing wrong, what you're doing. Tell us about your journey through life. You've done a lot of cool things. People like to hear the history of what people got into it.

What got you into some of these fields? I know that you called the the gospel of fitness, you're a preacher. Tell us about your journey through life and kind of how you got down some of these roads. Okay. So the weight training thing, it actually happened when I was like nine years old. My grandfather took me to a place, he said, I'm going to buy you a gift for your birthday, some event, I think it was my birthday. birthday and he said we're going to Kmart. Remember Kmart? Oh, yeah. So he bought me some Alcatran weights and they were some cement weights, but I just fell in love with lifting weights and I read all the books about it. I lifted weights six days a week, made no gains whatsoever. I'm nine years old. But I stayed with that.

I stayed with that whole, my whole life, I've always lifted weights and I've always loved it, played a lot of sports. Now with the preaching thing and how that came about, it's a very odd thing, but I talk about this in the book, it's one of the reasons that I do fitness, but both of my parents died at a very young age.

Both of them died at 49 years old. My mother died on Christmas morning in my arms at 49. And her dying words were, Sir, Jesus, tell your brother to serve Jesus. Now, for me at the time, I didn't even know what that meant. And so that began the journey into that field there. And still to this day, you know, I'm still, you know, I'm running a church and you have a very a very nice church for people to gather in. And it's really, really a cool place. But that was where my passion came from,

because I'm like, man, my parents died so young and they missed so much in life. And it was just, if I could help people not have to experience that, that was my goal there. Yeah. Did you ever, some people see that and they have survivor's guilt and they worry that that's their cap on life. Like I have that with my father. My father died about 74, 74 I think it was. And so sometimes I look at my time that's left at am I going to follow my dad's DNA? And my health is much better than his by 10, 15 years at this point.

And he had some things that were pretty much with him and his heart and his liver and kidneys. But did you ever wonder that? Did you ever think maybe I'll only live to 40? Absolutely, absolutely. Because when I would go to the doctor and I started going regularly in my 40s, I would tell them my family history while they're filling out a chart and they would always look over the chart at me,

like, oh, hey, you got about nine years left. But here's the way I look at it now. I look at every day as icing on the cake. You know, I'm 64 now, I'm still in very, very good shape. I'm very thankful for that. I still train a lot, you know, I still go to the gym regularly. But yeah, there's those thoughts in the middle of it. And you're going, Holy cow, this is, you know, it's really crazy. That mortality thing, when you're around death, it really, really opens your eyes. It really does. I have a guy in my gym is named Steve.

He was actually in the gym with me this morning and he started early on. He was, it was over 30 years ago. And when he came to me, I was like, Steve, what is your goal? So I think he weighed two 58 because I remember at a before and after picture him. And I said, what are your goals? And he goes, I just want to be able to play with my grandchildren because his dad died at a very young age. And so now he has 30 years later has two grandchildren tells me stories about them all the time. So for me, I just look at that and I go, what a, what a great accomplishment on

both of our parts, being able to help him do that and he's still in the game. Yeah. Yeah. The, you know, some people that happens with suicide too, suicide survivors. And sometimes you'll find that there'll be a generational of suicide. It's a blueprint that gets set. It's an example that gets set. It's a bad example, sadly.

So yeah, you kind of wonder where you're at. And that's kind of one of my obsessions. But I think it shapes you in a way. You mentioned that you value every one of my obsessions. But I think it shapes you in a way. You mentioned that you value every day, you wake up, you're very appreciative that you're above ground. And so, it seems like it had an effect on you to appreciate life more. Tim Cynova No question. No question. I live my life with gratitude. I really honestly do. Every morning I have a journal. I journal, I always say the secret of your success

is in your daily routine. And part of my journaling is I have three things that I'm thankful for every morning. And that's just part of my daily routine. And so what caused the proponent for you to write the book? So it was really odd how it happened. So I train a lot of different people. And when I take people through a workout or I advise them in one way or another, every

single time, here's what they'll say, Chris, that is the best workout I've ever felt in my life. And so what happened was I have a private Facebook page, I call it the Gospel of Fitness Inner Circle. And in the middle of that, I have all my clients over the years, and what I do is I just add value to their lives. I just write stuff for them. I always have fitness tips and things like that.

And I was just writing this book just for my clients. I was just going to send it to them. There was a guy that I trained probably eight years ago. We were at a conference and I trained him and he said, wow, that was the best workout I've ever had. And he's had me on his podcast a few times and he's always asked me questions, his name's Pete. And one day he's asked me questions. I said, Pete, you know what? I have a book and I'm about 90% done with it. I can just send it over to you." And he goes, I'll tell you what, he goes, please do, because we have a publishing company and I didn't know that. And so he

looked at the book and they said, hey, yeah, we'd like to work with you. And so from there, we, you know, I went back and just redid a lot of things, made sure it was how I wanted it, and then we released it on the 31st and it immediately shot to number one in a couple of categories. So I was pumped by that and so I've been on a book tour in Florida. I got some local stuff I'm still doing, a lot of podcasts that I've been doing. So I'm just having a blast with it and I love talking about this stuff. So that's where the idea of the book came about, just to get it to a broader audience, cast a wider net and get people to understand that, hey,

even though there's all this information out there, you can narrow it down. You can narrow down the amount of information. And that's why, like I recently was, I did a session and I had several hundred people there. And I opened it up for question and answer. So when question and answer comes through, I can always answer the question because I run it through a certain framework and I run it through that 3W approach to fitness framework and I can answer questions in that way. So that's kind of how it all plays out. And what a journey.

What effect did the turns and trials of our lives make? Oh my gosh. And how we can do new things and stuff. So as we go out, tell us about some of the offerings you have on your website, things you do for people. Yeah. How they can work with you. What we do is we do, I do online consults for people.

So that once again, just the easiest way is that fitnessandwar.net inquiry page where you're just looking for a free intro workout. And so then what I do is I train a lot of clients. I train clients all over the country, people in Hollywood, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Alabama, and we do it just virtually, but also I coach them. So that's one way we do it. The other way obviously is people who buy the book, they can come into that gospel of fitness inner circle and we help them out with that. And then emails are steve at fitness and more.net. And so those are there, but we help people in all kinds of

ways. I have several different programs, but the biggest way is just that, that virtual training thing so people can get just some very good advice. I just had a new client last week and it was her first workout. She's a gym goer and her workout took about 13 minutes and she's like oh my gosh I'm so in on this. Yeah so we work with people in that way. That's awesome. That's awesome. So give people a final pitch out to onboard with you, how they can reach out, how they can get to know you better, you know, calls, whatever the case may be, and then also how, you know, people can order the book. Sure.

So the book is available at Amazon. It's also on Barnes and Noble online, but Amazon is the easiest way. So that's how you can get the book. I'm going to give you a final thought too. The way I look at it, here's how I go about it. Weight training is good for your body. Walking is good for your brain. And watching your diet is good for your biology. And those three things together seem to really work.

Then if people want to inquire more, that intro workout page on fitnessandmore.net is very helpful and we can communicate from there. Email steve at fitnessandmore.net and then Instagram is fitness and more STL those are ways that people can reach out to me and you know people who don't have time have gotten themselves out of shape I can work with those people online and just make a huge difference in their life I love how online can do this now

it's amazing where you are in the world you can you can get some help yeah so definitely wonderful thank you very much for coming the show Steve we this now. It's amazing. No matter where you are in the world, you can get some help. Yep. So definitely wonderful. Thank you very much for coming to the show, Steve. We really appreciate it. Hey, Chris, thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. Thank you.

And thanks, Ron, for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortune's Chris Voss, and all those places we are on the internet. You can order the book where refined books are sold, The Gospel of Fitness, a rational approach to aging gracefully. And boy, I need some more grace in aging. Less lactose. Out January 31st, 2025. Thanks for tuning in everyone.

Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have us out.