Stronger Together with Sandpoint Strength

Kenny Markwardt
  • 5.0 (4)
  • Fitness
  • Updated Weekly

This is the podcast from Sandpoint Strength and Conditioning, hosted by owners Kenny and Jenn Markwardt. We'll be here to inspire, educate, inform and entertain.

  1. May 27

    Twenty Years of Resistance, Five Kids, and One Dream: How Tonisha Monteith Found Her Way Back to the Gym

    Tonisha Monteith spent 14 years doing gymnastics she didn't want to do, quit at 18 when she dislocated her elbow, and spent the next two decades resisting anything that looked like a gym. In between, she had two kids, fostered five more, adopted three — including one she had a dream about before she knew he existed — navigated adrenal fatigue, panic attacks, and autoimmune issues, and tried CrossFit once when she was at her worst and walked out even more depleted. Last August she walked into SSC and said just get me started. A few months later she became a coach. This conversation covers all of it, including why the gym finally worked, what she thinks about youth sports, and why her mom — a gymnastics coach who wouldn't let her quit — is somehow still mostly right about everything.

    57 min

  2. May 13

    Strength Makes Life Good. Cardio Makes Life Long. Here Are the Five Numbers That Matter

    Kenny loves lifting weights. He will tell you this repeatedly. But as he gets older and starts thinking about being around when his son has kids, and his kids have kids, he's paying a lot more attention to the numbers that predict whether he'll actually make it to that table. This solo episode walks through five cardiovascular metrics — resting heart rate, heart rate recovery, heart rate variability, VO2 max, and blood pressure — what they mean, what you should be shooting for, how to measure them without getting lied to by your watch, and what to actually do about them. There's also a solid rant about HRV wearables that is entirely earned.

    38 min

  3. May 6

    Two SSC Members Did Hyrox. Here's What They Learned

    Aaron has done Hyrox solo and as a partner. Mike found it on his own, signed up, and trained for eight weeks — mostly so he'd have something to actually work toward. They finished together in 1:11, beat their goal time, and are both vaguely considering doing it again despite spending the final two weeks of training fantasizing about going back to regular class. This is a debrief on what Hyrox actually is, what the training looked like, what the event felt like, why the running ruins everything, and whether this thing has staying power. Kenny is cautiously becoming a fan.

    36 min

  4. Apr 29

    What Your Doctor Didn't Tell You About Your Testosterone: NP Sarah Adair on Men's Hormones

    This is Sarah Adair's second conversation, and it's the one a lot of men have been waiting for. She covers everything that should be in a men's hormone blood panel — total testosterone, free testosterone, sex hormone binding globulin, estradiol, thyroid, cortisol, and why most of those numbers mean less than you think in isolation. She also breaks down why the standard every-two-weeks intramuscular injection protocol creates exactly the peaks and crashes it's supposed to prevent, why estrogen in men is mostly not the problem people think it is, what actually happens to fertility on testosterone replacement and how to protect it, and what's behind the broader decades-long decline in male testosterone levels. If you've ever been told your labs are "within normal range" and still felt like garbage, this one is for you.

    50 min

  5. Apr 15

    They Outran Everyone at Camp. Here's What They Did All Winter.

    Nick Bandy spent the winter working with football and softball athletes on strength, speed mechanics, and durability — and the feedback started coming back in April when they showed up to their first camps and outran everyone. The point of this conversation is simple: if your kid plays a fall or winter sport, right now is when the work should start. Not six weeks before tryouts. Not the week school lets out. Now. Nick breaks down why that's true, what the summer speed camp is going to cover, and what the difference actually looks like when a kid shows up to their season having done the work.

    29 min

  6. Mar 24

    Survival Is Not About Being Rough and Tough — Karie Lee Knoke on Alone, Returning Home, and What Comes After

    Karie Lee Knoke called SSC asking about a women's fitness special. She said she needed to gain about 30 pounds and get a lot stronger. When pressed on why, she asked for an NDA. She was preparing for Season 9 of Alone — 75 days solo in Labrador, a 50-pound recurve bow she could barely draw, a blizzard that lasted three days in November, and a final decision she had to make twice because the first time the lighting wasn't good enough. She came in second. She came home at 90 pounds. It took two years for her full self to come back. This is the whole story.

    57 min

  7. Feb 18

    Training for the Person Who Picked You Forever — Kenny and Jenn on Fitness, Relationships, and GLPs

    Recorded around Valentine's Day, this one is Kenny and Jenn talking through something they've had a thousand versions of privately — how your health affects your relationships, what happens when one partner starts improving and the other pulls them back to the couch, and why training for the person who picked you is a better goal than training for revenge. They also get into GLP-1 medications and what's missing from most people's approach to them, why nutrition dogma creates food fear that outlasts the diet, and what the right metrics actually are when you're trying to measure progress. It wanders a little. It's the good kind of wander.

    43 min

  8. Feb 11

    Imposter Syndrome, Flow State, and Why You Better Just Show Up at Your Desk: A Conversation With Ammi Midstokke

    Ammi Midstokke has been on this podcast more than anyone else, and this episode is probably the most honest one yet. It starts with a conversation about why Kenny can't get people to come on his podcast — nobody thinks they have anything worth saying — and spirals out into why that's wrong, what imposter syndrome actually is versus what it isn't, what writing for a living actually looks like, how she left her nutrition clinic to go full-time creative, and the Selkirk Mountain Writing Retreat she's building in Sandpoint for October. There's also a detour through her childhood on a typewriter, her dad asking if she actually gets paid for this, and a very good observation about why a real imposter never asks whether they're an imposter. This one runs long. It earns it.

    1h 8m
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

This is the podcast from Sandpoint Strength and Conditioning, hosted by owners Kenny and Jenn Markwardt. We'll be here to inspire, educate, inform and entertain.

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