By David Tepera, September 30, 2020

Wherever you are in life today, the only way to move forward is by taking full responsibility.

Just because you’re unhealthy with multiple medical problems, is it up to the doctor to heal you? At what point do you accept making destructive decisions of food, drink and others that put you into that condition? Are you expecting more pills and medicine to cure you? Maybe they will, and maybe they won’t. Now it’s time to take control and start a healthy diet and lifestyle.

Is it the teacher’s responsibility to make you learn? I was a high school science teacher back in the 1990s. I could give all the information needed for a particular subject, but unless students wanted to learn, it wasn’t going to happen. I did my best to engage each student and make learning fun.

Is it the coach’s responsibility for you to be a starter on the team? A coach’s job is to motivate, game plan, teach proper skills and create leadership among players.

Unless that athlete wants to grow and become better, he or she must take responsibility to put in the extra effort and work. To truly reach your best athletic ability, it’s up to you.

If you utilize a personal trainer, is it up to them to get you fit? If you’re not gaining wanted results, maybe you should look within yourself. Are you really engaging and putting forth the energy required? Are you only exercising with a trainer or are you taking responsibility and exercising on your own? How bad do you truly want it?

How about your relationships? Are you being the partner you’d want your partner to be? If the relationship is without trust, can you take responsibility and make it secure? As we all know, there’s typically two sides of each story. Someone needs to step up and take over maturity.

Do you still wake up each day dreading the work day? Why and how long have you been miserable? Is it a coworker, the hours or the actual job description? Do you blame others for having another bad day or do you take responsibility and flip your attitude?

Don’t let others keep you down. Be the uplifted person everyone wants to be around. Someone needs to step up and create an exciting teamwork workplace environment.

Now, it doesn’t matter what circumstances you’re under today because to succeed, you’re going to take responsibility.

By David Tepera, September 23, 2020

OK, I’m going to try and keep this as simple as possible. Within all muscle groups, there are a subset of fast and slow twitch muscle fibers. What type of exercising you’re performing will determine which muscle fibers you’re developing.

Slow twitch muscle fibers are aerobic which means “with oxygen,” so they are used for long distance exercise. These particular muscles are elongated and small. For example, those of you who enjoy jogging or spend hours of cardio, your body type will be more lanky without much muscle definition, but your cardiovascular system will be in good shape.

To give you a better example, think of an Olympian marathon runner, what body type do they possess? Typically, skinny Ethiopian people are top champions — right? That is definitely the definition of a slow twitch muscle fiber body.

Just know, if all you perform is cardio, your body is tapping into its muscle and causing a catabolic effect, which means your body is burning muscle tissue for energy. It prevents you from building muscle.

Now, what about fast twitch muscle fibers? These fibers are anaerobic, which means “without oxygen.” They are explosive and big. This is what body builder’s muscles are composed of.

Let’s use another example of Olympian sprinters. What do their body types look like? To me, they are like bull frogs. Their legs are huge and muscular. How long do they run? Ten seconds? These runners might take one breathe during the entire race — it’s explosive. Weight lifting is explosive.

If you want to grow lean muscle and have an athletic look, weight training is a must. Applying weight resistance to your body is the only way to grow muscle. This is the exact reason why at Ageless Muscle all our clients learn proper weight training. It’s exciting to watch people into their 70s get rid of shoulder, hip, knee and back pain to grow impressive muscle definition and mass.

Just curious, what type of personality trait do you possess? Are you like slow twitch muscle fibers and just take your time and cruise through each day? Or, are you more like a fast twitch muscle fiber and blow and go a hundred miles per hour? Either one is OK according to your lifestyle as long as you are productive.

My goal today was to give you a better perspective of the body type you’re creating from your workouts. If you ever have any questions, just know, I personally answer each email I receive.

Now, put your training plan together and build the right muscle fibers you want.

By David Tepera, September 16, 2020

You’ve read many times about our weight training programs for older people at Ageless Muscle Fitness Center. We truly love changing lives for those who thought it was too late, or they were too broken.

Today, I want to focus on our younger generation. It’s already difficult being a teenager these days, and then the coronavirus shutdown has given many of them anxiety and depression.

My personal thought is we live in a world where people are being over-medicated. Yes, medicine is necessary, but I also know exercise, proper diet and laughter has many curing effects.

The following information in this article is not just about our gym, but for you to seek at other facilities near you.

My 22-year-old son Dylan personally trains and manages our fitness center. Dylan trains people of all ages, young athletes, but his specialty is teenagers with depression, anti-social issues and other mental and physical challenges.

Within a short period of time, it’s exciting to watch these kids come out of their shell, build confidence and start loving life again.

When searching a facility for your teenager or young adult, here are some of my suggestions.

Typically, these young people do not like crowds or large groups. A one-on-one personal trainer will be a must. The training style should be a slow progression through a weight lifting program. It cannot be a screaming loud coaching style trainer who from day one is flying 100 miles per hour. Your kid will hate it.

Also, I’m not putting an age range on trainers for your teenager, but a connection will be needed.

Dylan is a former high school athlete of multiple sports, a Texas Teen Beach Physique champion and a role model for all his clients. He has a gift of connecting with people according to their challenges.

Dylan has learned to become part of his client’s mental world to understand their way of thinking. Dylan uses our weight training program as a tool to get his clients to smile, communicate and build confidence as their bodies grow.

I’m sure each of you reading this knows someone who has tried about every medicine or therapy session possible. Why not give a kid a better opportunity through health and fitness? Maybe, one day they won’t need to seek medicine for every ailment.

We hear it often from our clients, “I’d rather pay you than pay a doctor.”

By David Tepera, September 9, 2020

Throughout my youth as a growing athlete, I was involved with multiple team sports as well as individual sports. It was always surprising to observe an extremely talented athlete that wouldn’t listen to his coaches.

Remember, I grew up a coach’s son, so respecting my coaches was second nature, as was respecting all adults.

Once I became a high school coach, one aspect of my job was to mentor and help kids grow into young adults. As my father taught me, the discipline in sports helped students to become more successful in the real world. I took this responsibility seriously. I didn’t just lead with words, but with my actions. I jumped in and led all the drills with my athletes.

Yep, there was always those one or two kids who just bucked up against authority. This wasn’t a time to give up on them but to help guide them in understanding the path to winning championships. Most of the time, I was successful, but of course, some just refused to listen and had to be released because they just weren’t coachable. I was saddened not only because I felt I failed them, but I knew they had a rough life ahead.

You see, once you’ve made the varsity team, there isn’t room for bad attitude, slacking effort, being late to practice, disrespect and so on. This is a team sport, and we are all giving our best effort to win a championship. One bad-attitude player can disrupt chances of winning, so if you won’t step up, you must go.

Now, are you starting to make a correlation to your current day situation? For those who work for others, are you coachable? Do you put in the extra effort to be a team captain? Can your employers count on you to get the job done correctly?

Here’s a thought for you, if you owned the company you work for, would you want to hire you? Only you can answer that honestly.

I told the same story to my kids when they were young. I asked them if they are the kids they would want? Believe me, it made an impact.

Look, we can’t change yesterday, so don’t let that impact you anymore. Today is fresh and you get to make the necessary changes now. Step up your game, listen to your employers and understand the rules and regulations. Make sure you not only fit your job description, but attack work to help win championships because you are coachable.

By David Tepera, September 2, 2020

At Ageless Muscle Fitness Center, many of our clients are business owners of a variety of sorts. Every one of these clients have different backgrounds, ethnicity, with some from other countries. One thing they do have in common, as of today, is their businesses are successful.

Now, since Tina and I own a family business, I picked our clients’ brains to have a better understanding of their journey to success.

Just like life, it’s a bumpy road out there, but refusing to lose and a hard work ethic will climb you to the top of the mountain.

My client from Vietnam came to America 28 years ago, didn’t know English or have an education, but was good at baking specialty deserts. She went to work at a bakery to learn how to start and run a business and, after 10 years, she opened her own shop, which has expanded to several bakeries.

Other clients are in fields such as medical, engineering, masonry, machine shops, construction and so forth. Every one of these people hit hard times from economy to wrong business decisions. But, they paid their debts and kept pursuing their dreams because this was the strong character they possessed. They had families to feed, so failure was never an end result.

Believe me, we dealt with many obstacles and setbacks at Ageless Muscle, but the desire to help others kept us on the path to success.

So, you’re probably wondering what does any of this have to do with fitness? As I started this article that all these successful business owners are from completely different backgrounds. They range from the age of 50s to 101, but they bring that same work ethic into our fitness center. They never miss a session, give their best, and have a wonderful zest for life.

There’s so much our youth could learn from our elderly. If you want it, learn it and earn it.

OK, where are you today and where do you want to be tomorrow? I told my adult children from youth that starting from the bottom position of any company will help develop hard working skills. It’s these early skills that you keep adding experience on top of, and through time, you’ll start your own business of success.

Now, let’s all of us find our strongest trait and we’ll make it in life. Don’t give up.