Dennis is one of my favorite clients. He’s 69 years old and he works out like he’s 39. I often complement that his motor runs high. No matter what I throw at him, his approach to our workouts is always the same: “Ok, fine. I can do that.”

Do you know the fastest way to increase people’s heart rate? Make them go uphill. Or up stairs. Here, Dennis is doing a core component of our workout. I have him do one or two flights of stairs (sometimes with weight, sometimes without) and rest accordingly before we repeat. Sometimes I overload him and he has to rest on the bench outside the staircase. But today, he crushed this set at the end of our workout.