 One lab value every 6-18 months is not really how data collection works. You need more data to determine trends.
The fact of the matter is that there is currently a reproducibility crisis in science, where the MAJORITY of published outcomes cannot be reproduced by anyone. Some tests are incredibly reproducible (ie - tests for lead concentrations in blood are over 90% reproducible) while others never were (ie - cell size IgG tests). Before you pat yourself on the back or dread the meaning of a “bad” value, remind yourself that this is just data. I’ve done a cholesterol panel three times in the same day with three substantially different results. And of course this is what should be. The body is in different states at different times.
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 Body fat loss and maintenance is an outgrowth of fitness, not the other way around.
People who have a heck of a time getting weight off and keeping it off, will ask me where they can focus effort. My answer: strength. The lower your strength, the less force you can produce in everything you do. Look at this however you want: calories, macros, hormonal signaling. The end outcome is dependent on muscular strength. A person who can generate 1000lbs of force at the hips burns more calories, distributes macros better, and beneficially signals hormones above and beyond a person who can generate 100lbs of force at the hips... during a slow WALK. So people get stuck in a trap. They realize they have to run to progress past their walk. They have to walk or run 10 more minutes, 60 more minutes, 5 hours more per week in order to continue losing fat. Meanwhile, a strength athlete who can now produce more force at the hips burns more calories in a 10 minute walk than they used to in a 20 minute run. Lack of strength doesn’t scale. It can’t take you forward. It’s putting the cart before the horse.  This lift obligates the hamstrings to progress. I learned it from Louie Simmons. Contrast that against some textbook techniques which DETRAINED hamstrings.
My 2nd cert was NASM CPT in 2004. I liked their ideas about muscle imbalance/postural distortion. But the stabilization protocols, which I did to correct hip pain, lost me a lot of calf and hamstring size/strength AND did nothing for my pain. Beforehand, I could rep single leg Nordic ham curls. Afterward, I couldn’t with both legs. The pain remained. No one has THE truth. When I completed NASM PES and CES and Precision Nutrition and RKC, etc., I found value but also vital missing details. Then you listen to Louie for 2 mins and find a golden variant which can only be performed in a way to accomplish the end goal. Once upon a time, I too liked the idea that there would be organizations which we could all look to as unfailing and unquestionable gods. But as you dig deep, or simply exit childhood, you find that former scientific "fact" gets overturned. As much as I too dismiss a lot of "bro science," I have to temper that against the repeated fact that professional research organizations have done complete revisions of long-held recommendations lots of times as well. We are all just learning. Be practical. Don't cast your entire lot in with even an established authority, so much as take a piece of their input. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, scrap it, no matter how "right" it should be. It doesn't work for you. Therefore, as far as you are concerned, it doesn't work. Don't care how authoritative the recommendation was. Just be pragmatic.  2015 ➡️ 2019
15% Bodyfat ➡️ 8% More ➡️ Fewer Workouts Here’s a great longer-term transformation. I’ve known Ryan for a little more than 5 years, starting when he first sought me out for nutrition coaching with his family. It’s a fantastic example of someone who has integrated fasts during the week, and a nearly carte blanche long weekend, every weekend, and STILL gets really tight on body composition. We reduced weekly exercise and streamlined nutrition programming, such that he is NOT doing painful food prep. His lean mass numbers are up; and fat mass is down. Strength is great. Clearly, from the period of time, you can see it’s sustainable. In our last appointment, he noted that it was as if his DNA had changed, and it’s now difficult to gain body fat. Not that he was critically out-of-shape previously; but there is definitely something which shifts in caloric distribution once you get past a certain threshold of composition.  Most people who aren’t “dieting” operate on an incredibly more stringent set of sacrifices than my nutrition coaching clients who lose 50-100lbs.
I tell clients they can eat anything. There is no can’t. You’re a grown up. You always can do whatever you like, whenever you like, however you like, in whatever manner you choose. There is no can’t. There is no good. There is no bad. There is no should. There is no shouldn’t. The weight of those words is too great to bear. That verbiage is for the teetotalers, the moralists, the ideologues. No thanks. Live free. Meanwhile, the scoffers, the doubters, the non-fitness-progressing individuals routinely, throughout most days, think or say out loud, “I can’t” or “I shouldn’t.” That’s bad self-management. It doesn’t work. Obviously. It reinforces a cycle of disempowerment, guilt, shame, and lack of follow-through on your word. Rebellion against imperatives shackled to you is healthy. And so you rebel. I have never, upon exiting my vehicle, paused and stared longingly at the gravel on the ground beside my car and thought, “if only I could eat that gravel... but, alas, I CAN’T.” It’s gravel. I can. I just don’t. And this is where word choice isn’t hairsplitting superfluousness. There is a monumental difference in the psyche between “can’t” or “shouldn’t” and “don’t.” “Don’t” is final. There is no waffling. I’m not on the fence. You cannot tempt me. I feel no split between my moral imperatives and my basest desires. I. Simply. Don’t. Then there’s “can’t.” Ugh. Just vocalizing it makes me feel weak, victimized, and entitled to the rectitude due to me by setting the record straight. Oops. My indignation is damaging my mental state and physical health. But, oh well, being proven right, even for the wrong reasons wrestles back a sense of agency I left behind with “can’t” earlier. And I’ll eat all of these feelings into oblivion now. Or. I don’t. People: but wouldn’t you enjoy this treat? Me: no thanks. People: oh, you can’t do that on your diet? A little won’t hurt. Me: I just DON’T eat that. Just don’t. “Can” everything. “Can’t” nothing. “Do” what you want, what you must, what you love. “Don’t” what is counterproductive, what you don’t want, what you mustn’t, what you loathe. “There’s always 5 more reps.”
- Tom Platz You go to your limit, your body is ready to quit, that’s all you have in the tank - there’s still 5 more reps. You do 5 more; and there’s still 5 more in there. There’s always 5 more reps. I paraphrase. But he also says, “make your genetics a victim to YOU!” This is more of a thought of the day, and less an article with quantifiable takeaways. Essentially, on average we quit LONG before we're close to finished. In a set, or in life, when you start thinking "this is too much" is right around the time you begin exerting effort. According to Navy Seals, when you start thinking "there is nothing left" is when you are about 40% tapped into your potential exertion. There's always 5 more reps.  There is no time in life where you will reliably know both legs can stand at an ideal distance next to each other in order to squat in the conventional sense.
You don't know you'll always have both legs. You don't know you'll always have both legs uninjured and rested. You'll never encounter a surface where both legs can handle the load perfectly symmetrically. The majority of skeletal body types are not ideal for conventional squat; and most instructors don't know about this. They teach for one set of levers, theirs. I have encountered even very intelligent and educated strength coaches who know absolutely nothing about anthropometry. Especially with this hatfield variant (something to hang onto ahead of you), a split stance allows even individuals with long torsos to keep weight atop the spine without the typical need for excessive forward bow. Unilateral exercises help uncover weakness in specific structures, low activation in one side, or just incite the focus to draw more intensity out of whichever side is currently working. Within this discovery is usually a fairly important subset of findings about foot placement and how most people place feet during bilateral exercises in positions which could never even approximate optimal performance once they take one off the ground. Balance, strictly speaking, is largely borne out of strength (ie - force production capacity and speed). Working one side allows us to encounter more precisely the foot placement and stress distribution which will occur when directing strength and balance in the real world. In short, you'll have to balance on one side at some point. Why not practice? The hip, the glute max, med, and surrounding tissue is generally weak in the average person, even in some high level athletes I've encountered. No matter what, though, with both feet planted, they can push against one another in a transverse lever. That is, they can direct pressure away from each other in order to create central tension that moves us upward in the frontal plane. Split stance reduces this without eliminating it entirely like one would with strict single leg exercises. It's easier to be clear about range of motion sans visual feedback. You can, indeed, use tactile feedback for a standard squat or even a box squat. Split stance has more obvious upper and lower limits of range. A step underneath the front foot can increase ROM. A bolster underneath the front knee can reduce ROM. But shifting the body forward or backward has little to no fudging impact on this, unlike with box squat where one can throw the hips backward far enough to touch the box with hamstrings at a shallower depth than even the prior repetition. Even in deadlift, a bar which bends begins to obscure the return travel distance from the second rep and after. IG post and video here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BwCU-cpjRwX/  Knee Cartilage Can Improve:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/410037 About a third of imaged knees improve without specific intervention. The idea that a loss of cartilage is permanent, or that osteoarthritis is an inevitable outcome needing surgery in ALL cases is defunct as per JAMA itself. I could not bend my right knee without excruciating pain for over a year. Now... this.  Do or talk? I don’t run. I’m not a fan of distance running. I have serious doubts about the benefit for most people. Untrained and three days fasted, I did the Twin Cities Marathon in the Fall. You can burn up a lot of time talking about the steps you’re going to take some day, the diet you’ll start Monday, the process you’ll begin on the 1st, the undertaking you’ll initiate “once things calm down.” Or you you can just DO.
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