Double Edge Fitness
This podcast is dedicated to showcasing to our members and any of our listeners who are interested in how this northern Nevada gym operates. Our mission is to inspire others to bring health and wellness home to truly make a difference in the household with the ultimate goal of making Reno the healthiest city in the country.In this podcast, we will be talking about things that are on our mind and answering questions from our members and our listeners to provide a unique listening experience.
Double Edge Fitness
Fitness Deep Dive: One-Rep Maxes, Deadlifts, Creatine, AI Meal Planning & More!
Join us at Double Edge Fitness as we dive into a jam-packed episode with hosts Derek and Jacob Wellock! 🏋️♂️ In this episode, we cover a ton of fitness topics to help you level up your training game:
- One-Rep Maxes & Percentage Work: Why testing your limits is key to building strength and tracking progress over time.
- Sumo vs. Conventional Deadlifts: Learn how genetics, mobility, and technique impact your deadlift performance and how to fix imbalances.
- Training to Fatigue vs. Failure: Discover the balance between pushing hard and recovering smart for long-term gains.
- Warm-Up Importance: Tips to optimize your warm-up for better workouts and injury prevention.
- Creatine Myths & Facts: We break down the latest buzz around creatine dosages, cognitive benefits, and why quality matters.
- Supplement Quality: How to spot high-quality supplements and avoid the shady stuff in the industry.
- AI-Powered Meal Planning: A game-changing way to plan your meals and grocery lists in seconds using tools like Grok or ChatGPT.
Plus, we share real talk about fitness journeys, overcoming ego, and staying consistent through life’s chaos (yes, even with a giant fly buzzing around the studio 🪰). Got questions or topics you want us to cover? Drop them in the comments or reach out to the Double Edge crew! 💪
Follow us on Instagram here! https://www.instagram.com/doubleedgefitness/
Alright, what up? Double-edged nation. I guess we better start off with some intro music. Huh, there it is. Today on the show got my brother Jake Wellock, hello, hello. We are going to talk about a handful of different topics. Should I give him some applause? Sure, what do the people think? Hey, welcome, welcome, welcome. All right, enough of that stuff. Really got to dial in that intro at some point. I think we will. I mean, sometimes not being perfect is perfect in itself.
Speaker 2:Yep Like authenticity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like authenticity yeah. So last time we were in here it was the last recording in the shithole.
Speaker 2:And we have now. I did a good job in here. It looks really good.
Speaker 1:I mean you took the picture.
Speaker 2:There's that fly, that fly.
Speaker 1:Oh, things are driving me crazy. Try kill it.
Speaker 1:Um yeah, so I'm pretty happy with how our little mini studio turned out yeah, it looks good you know, cassie and I were able to record in here and then I totally fumbled the camera because it overheated and shut off halfway through. So today, you know, we might get a full length on the youtube channel and we might not. We'll see what happens but regardless, I think the audio sounds pretty good and we are here today to talk about, let's see, some training methodologies. There's questions and stuff that have come up with me and members over, I guess, tenure here at double edge fitness, which has been, since we've opened, shocking. Uh, some things that came up with training, such as well, one rep max is using percentage work, this and that. Uh, I want to slip sugar wad into here a little bit, not the negative side. Let's add a little note here. Sugar wad, um, traditional and conventional deadlifts, something that drives, oh, let's just say, a little bit of emotional turmoil amongst some folks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, a lot of things to be emotional, and that's what we choose to be emotional on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I guess you know that's what we're going to get emotional about. I guess life's pretty good. That fly oh, I really want to kill it. Jesus, that thing is fat, that's like that is a big-ass fly.
Speaker 2:It's a big-ass fly. It went to the light, though Maybe it'll stay there. It's not even like barely spring.
Speaker 1:How are these things living so soon?
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:So we got some deadlifting. We have some phone text messages coming through Talk about training till fatigue versus failure. A couple notes there Muscle building and recovering stuff. When it comes to you know that kind of things optimal recoverable volume and intensity that's something I've spoken about a couple times. In brief that we can get into a little bit. The importance of a good warm-up I think people undervalue good warmup and it takes away from their training. Some supplements, particularly creatine, and understanding if you're getting good supplements and how to know if you're getting good supplements. Use of artificial intelligence for meal planning this is a handy dandy trick if y'all haven't dove into this one yet, and then yeah, I think there's kind of it's alright this fly, dude this things like coming at us, take that thing down.
Speaker 1:All right, so we got a massive fly on the first show.
Speaker 2:First, show's a big old fat bastard.
Speaker 1:I'll see him you're gonna get him. All right. I went behind the curtain. Oh, maybe you can get him real good. Jake's stepping away real quick, he's gonna. He's gonna take out this fly. The thing is huge. It's kind of nerve-racking, might have fangs, you know, sorry for the delay. People where this is like life-saving potentially life-saving this thing looks like it's got demons inside of it. I don't hear it. I hear it whizzing around. So, all right, all right, we're back. We're back. So, training based on one rep maxes I got the guy that knows some things about some things when it comes to this, and it's a method of training that we've basically deployed since day one. It's still substantially backed by scientific proof that it's effective and it works, so let's talk about it a little bit. So why don't you explain why we use one?
Speaker 2:rep maxes in percentage work, I mean one rep maxes are really just a they're just a test at the end of the day. I mean, if training and fitness is about like true training and fitness is about longevity and health and wellness, there are certain markers that you have to be able to test in order to you know that whole thing about CrossFit.
Speaker 2:observable, repeatable, measurable, repeatable, measurable I mean the one rep max is quite literally just a, a test of measurement of progress over time. So if you never train to essentially failure, whether it be cardiovascular work or strength work you never know where your limit is. And by not knowing where your limit is, you can never hit adaptations that are going to help facilitate growth in that discipline of training. So, like the five minute bike test we did the other day, like or a one mile run or a marathon, it doesn't matter what it is. If you're not, if your goal is to get as healthy and fit as you can, there are certain ends of these spectrums. When it comes to endurance, strength training, I mean flexibility, for that matter, that you have to see where you're at currently in order to push yourself to the next level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to facilitate change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I first maxed and I'll say this with air quotes because technique and range of motion might not have been as good as it is today, but when I first maxed what's cool about this is the tracking over all of the years when I first hit my one rep max back squat it was either 135 and 155 pounds. The first time I maxed out Didn't even know what a back squat was, until we started doing CrossFit.
Speaker 2:And now my current one rep max is 500 pounds. And now my current one rep max is 500 pounds. So that was something that has been tracked and tested thoroughly over the last, well, 11 years. It took me to get to that point where, when I'm putting in consistent work, if I had never tested my max strength and always stayed within you know a comfort zone or what possibly felt right, or never actually pushed myself, you know, to that max like, let's say, metaphorically, staying in that 60 to 70 percent comfortable range, I would probably still be roughly right around that 155 pounds, arguably like you'll never go and hit adaptation to get stronger and if we're not in the gym to get faster, fitter and stronger than, honestly, what are we even doing here?
Speaker 1:yeah, 100. So you know my interpretation is exactly yours. You have, you have to know what failure is. To be able to back off and then train and adaptation, getting stronger and building muscle for long-term health is absolutely vital and it's relevant to that individual. Yes.
Speaker 2:I know me saying I'm not saying that to toot my horn, even though it may sound that way a little bit. Squatting 500 pounds is pretty cool. It's a big deal. I think it's a big deal from the injuries I've overcome to get to this point. But it's relevant to whether it's 18 year old me, 33 year old me.
Speaker 2:You know I plan on doing this until you know I kick the can. Uh, 70 year old me or whatever. Whatever that age day is going to be, that my one rep max 30 years from now is going to be, that my one rep max 30 years from now is going to be different than what it is now. But my goal is to constantly be pushing the envelope in these spectrums of fitness. So I'm always bettering myself and not falling down the metaphorical um the hole as I get older, that I'm regressing in my cardiovascular system, my strength training, you know what have you? That I'm constantly pushing myself. So I, in this spot that I'm in now, that I hit numbers and physically achieve things better than I've ever achieved before, but as I get older, those things will go down.
Speaker 1:That I'm, you know, fighting the the test of time, if you will that good old disease called aging that we all contract one day at a time. Yeah, so what's interesting? I mean me and you are seven years apart and I'm kind of in this aging question phase of one rep maxes and hanging up the jersey on some of the past one rep maxes, but still training intentionally and building strength based on percentage work still at my current age and strength level. So, for instance, now my one rep max all-time best back squats 400 pounds, and I haven't even been really remotely close to that, nor have I even really truly tried to test it since I hurt my spine. And now I am starting to work on building confidence based on my what I call confident one rep max, which is 365, and I'm going to follow percentages based on that lift to, you know, start rebuilding confidence, strength and stability, uh, and build some lean muscle.
Speaker 1:Back squatting is one of the greatest exercises you can do for building lean muscle. But I'm a different chapter in life now, but I'm still using the same idea and concept to continue to progress and build strength. The level of effort that goes into me testing a true one rep max I would put it at about a 90% effort now, like I just call them 100% confident lifts um versus. You know, as you know, testing a true one rep max. I mean you're fighting for your soul, yeah.
Speaker 2:And what I would say to that is that you've, you've been around a block, you've done You've we've been doing this a long time that you know where your limits are and you know where you need to dial back based off of goals like me, training the head, 500 pound back squat was a very specific goal. Do I need to squat 500 pounds to be healthy? No. Does someone need to row a sub seven minute 2k to be healthy?
Speaker 2:no I we're tapping into specifics of your intensity in training and where your goals are. You know I really enjoy strength training. That's always been the case. You know you've always been the cardio guy like being able to do.
Speaker 1:Come on, bro, I'm slightly above average at a lot of things, absolutely.
Speaker 2:But if it were to you know the dichotomy between the two of us.
Speaker 1:I'm one end of the spectrum.
Speaker 2:you're the other end of the spectrum, but true fitness is being able to have both right Like other than me being out of shape and tired all of the time. Right now, like I, have decent cardio numbers and tests, but they pale in comparison to some of the crazy shit you do well or vice versa.
Speaker 1:Arguably, on that same topic, one reason my strength numbers probably aren't as high as because I refuse to give up my aerobic capacity to any degree. Yeah, like I'd to truly focus on strength training and muscular hypertrophy training, it's very advantageous to pull back the aerobic work to allow your muscles to build.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is tapping into specific training Systems and training styles and so forth. So we use one rep maxes, we use percentage work here at the gym and you know a handful, handful like three conversations over the last few weeks people like because I harp on you know basically regurgitating really smart people about the importance of building muscle, building strength. You know I value building strength over just pure muscular hypertrophy. But if you have muscular hypertrophy you're going to have strength follow, and the inverse is also true to a degree, although there's training styles that can optimize strength without growing muscle size, if you will. We know, and proven by science, that the stronger you are and the higher your VO2 max, the much more improved long-term health span, health outcomes, reduction of chronic disease and so forth is significant. It's massive, it's the single most important thing you can do.
Speaker 1:And just for instance, there is some study that people who worked out regularly and smoked cigarettes lived longer than people who didn't smoke and didn't work out and ate relatively healthy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So like exercise has a massive, profound effect on your long-term health span. And I'm not saying you should smoke cigarettes and eat like garbage and exercise, but what I'm reiterating here is just the importance of exercise. So do you need to deadlift five or squat 500 pounds to be healthy? If you can do it healthy, I think it's very beneficial, because if you have a 500 pound back squat at 35, chances are when you're 70 you're probably gonna be able to squat 150 200 pounds, and I don't know a seven-year-old out there that wouldn't be like I would like to be able to squat.
Speaker 2:You know my body weight I saw a video of a 95 year old man a few months ago deadlift 405 for a set of 10 yep.
Speaker 1:So it's like, as long as you can do this training and build this work capacity, both in your vo2 max and your strength, without you know minimal injury to pretend you're not going to get a tweak, an ache and a pain or something here and there, training is ignorant. But if you can do it intelligently, like the benefits of building maximum levels of strength and VO2 max output, is only going to help you be awesome. Every single year you click off the old calendar.
Speaker 2:And managing your ego. Yeah, you know, like if it's not there, you don't have the genetic makeup to be able to do something like this. You know someone who comes in the gym as 5'4 and 115-pound male says I'm going to squat 500 pounds. It's probably not going to happen, you know. But if they train like they're going to squat 500 pounds, they're probably going to hurt themselves. Or someone who's really fat and out of shape and eats like shit and doesn't mobilize, doesn't eat healthy and trains hard, they're going to hurt themselves.
Speaker 2:Like you have to be able to manage parts of your ego. And is this actually pushing you towards being healthy or is this just an ego trip? Like if I said I want to squat 600 pounds, the road to get to 600 would mean I'd probably have to gain weight. Well, what does that look like? I'd probably just be moving. Mass, moves mass. I wouldn't be doing it in a healthy way, arguably probably get to a point where I'm using drugs. Like there are some people that are natural and healthy and are far stronger than I am because of their genetic makeup.
Speaker 1:Yep, I was talking about this somewhere, I don't even remember where. But how important understanding and accepting your genetics Because I mean all the way down to how much type 1, type 2 muscle fibers were you born with. You're kind of set with a set amount when you're born. What develops more over the sports you play growing up and the environmental factors in your life growing up is going to make a difference. But genetics do play a big role in physique. They do play a big role in strength capacity. They do play a big role in aerobic capacity.
Speaker 1:You know somebody that's very explosive and has a bunch of type one muscle fibers, probably not going to be the best endurance athlete. No, it doesn't mean doing endurance work's not going to help them be healthier and you know, fitter and have higher training capacity in their workouts and so forth. But and the inverse is also true Somebody who's more aerobically oriented as an athlete. That doesn't mean that doing heavy strength work isn't going to benefit that side of your genetic makeup. And in the bodybuilding space and physique space it genetics play a huge factor. Obviously drugs and all these other things do too, but genetics do play a huge factor in physique. So just accepting the body God gave you and the makeup that God gave you, working with a coach and identifying these things and optimizing yourself the best that you can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that goes back to full circle, the testing when it maxes, You're probably capable of a lot more than you realize. But you'll never know unless you hit these, say, quote-unquote extremes for yourself to figure out where your abilities lie. If you don't ever actually push it, you'll never know.
Speaker 1:Yep, and regardless of your genetics, regardless of whatever, if your goal is to live a long, healthy, fit life, training and progressive overloading intelligently is one of the best ways to build foundational strength and fundamental strength for long-term health. And again, that's why I use one rep maxes at the gym and then to build muscle and build strength following progressive overload principles, following our percentage work. It does the trick. But what I have realized is, like a lot of people wing it is like a lot of people wing it. You know, oftentimes there's too much training around feelings which, if you feel like crap that day, hitting a true 80%, might not be the best thing for you to do. Like you have to gauge your lifting sessions on how you feel. Like if it would be, it wouldn't be advantageous if you had a terrible night's sleep the last you know, 24 hours of super stressful um didn't eat well. And then you come in and expect your body to perform at such levels. And this is where I can find a bridge between percentage work and RPE to still get value out of training. But in general, I believe over the bulk of your training, you need to be following objective data, especially when it comes to your lifts. So I was writing down SugarWad, for this is for our double-edged community.
Speaker 1:Using SugarWad is a very powerful tool and not going to get into it on this podcast. But you sensitive folks out there with the leaderboard stuff Just know I got a special place in my heart for you and we're going to talk about that at a different time. But you can use SugarWad. You can go into the settings, you can shut off the leaderboard function for yourself where your stuff does not post to the old leaderboard. But you can still track your progress and with that, for instance, right now my back squats and that's what we did yesterday. It's in there at my most recent heaviest lift is 365.
Speaker 1:And you hit prepare and it lays out your percentages for you, what you need to lift that day, and you track it and then the next time when we do a percentage jump, it goes up. It's all there. I track it and by progressive overloading this I'm should be and proven time and time again getting stronger. It's that simple. So you guys out there, when it comes to one rep maxes, I definitely finding value in it and working with your coach to make sure your one rep max is, you know, a correct time in your training. What would you call it your training venture training career? I don't like people testing a one rep max their first month of training.
Speaker 2:It wouldn't really be accurate. When I look at someone testing one rep max, I look at do they have the range of motion, do they have the technique, do they have the mental fortitude and maturity to actually hit a true Warner at max? And that takes time.
Speaker 1:It takes time. It depends on your historical background as an athlete or this or that, what kind of training you've done in the past. But in general, when a new person walks into the gym, I personally am not pushing them to do a winter max. I know there's some coaches and trainers out there that like to go right out the gate with some sort of test, some sort of benchmark. I'm personally one to get you moving, consistently training.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you just use those first couple months to just move and kind of get your feet wet, yep, before you're really throwing in any kind of testing.
Speaker 1:It'd be like walking into a high school math class having never taken math and be like here's, you know, the calculus test yeah, like it's just, and that doesn't mean you're gonna fail, you're not gonna make progress during that time, because you're still gonna make progress. Your, your body's still going to get valuable training in it's just in your training career. This becomes very important for continued progression. Anything else on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's necessary, a necessity. Necessity if you will, uh, but there are things you need to be able to check the box on beforehand. Do you have the mobility to actually hit it? Because same thing leading to this next section like if you go to max, a sumo deadlift, and you don't have the hip flexibility to pull it off, you're gonna hurt yourself. Yep, like you have to be able to have the ranges of motion. You have to have somewhat of a background. Doesn't need to be an extensive background. Um, I mean, you're going to have to hit a max eventually. Like it doesn't need to be like this five-year process. In order to test it, you just have to have a solid understanding of the movements, how you move. Make sure your coach is aware of how you're moving, because maybe your idea of how you're moving and your coach's idea of how you're moving, because maybe your idea of how you're moving and your coach's idea of how you're moving are drastically different um, and the confidence to do it.
Speaker 2:And you go for a one rep max back squat and you do check the box on range of motion, um and technique, but you're like too scared to actually try it. That could be a recipe for injury oh yeah, like you have to be confident folded over on a back squat in doing these things, exactly like you. Like you have to have the confidence, the maturity, the range of motion and the know-how to be able to do something like this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now I will give this one little quick caveat Depending on where you're at in life, age-wise past history, maybe a one rep max isn't ever going to be for you and that's fine. But I would still own the progressive overload concepts and if you're working, you know you're just going to do like three to eight reps of a lot of our traditional compound lifts, but you're still working on building uh load over time. So, tracking how much you lifted and in sugar wad, it'll give you your previous lifts, how many reps you did, how much you lifted, and we do power cleans again. It'll show you your history and you can like okay, I had two and a half pounds this week. How do I feel I can still lift at higher rep schemes, building strength and progressive overloading and being very productive by doing that.
Speaker 1:You know, I do know some folks in the gym that are in their 50s and so forth that just don't have. They don't want to risk, you know, the potential injury of truly testing one rep max and I can respect that. But they still want to get stronger. Where you're not going to get stronger, where you're not going to get stronger, just guessing, yeah I would say someone who's older needs to be more diligent.
Speaker 2:Even if they do want to max it out, they need to be more diligent and understanding of how their body feels and where they're at physically and mentally. In order to test that 20 year old or a high school kid coming in testing a max, they could look like an absolute train wreck and be totally fine and have zero issues with them. You take a 60 year old and they max out and they feel like shit and they're not moving. Well, the range of motion isn't there and they go for it like they could be recipe for a disaster. So someone who's older needs to be more responsible of what's happening internally before they truly apply anything crazy externally yeah, and the rate or the um rating of lifts.
Speaker 1:I would say as we get older the power lifts are probably going to be, the more the safer ones are less complex.
Speaker 1:So you know, pushing your strength numbers on deadlift, squat and bench press and strict press. These are going to be less dynamic movements than the Olympic lifts and these are all areas you guys, you need to communicate with your coach or coach communicate with you on where you can progressively build strength and develop that type two muscle fiber. That is the first type of strength loss that takes place is the bleeding off of our explosive power as we age. So, maintaining explosive movements you know the olympic lifts there is definite value there as we get older, we shouldn't avoid them. But just make sure you're working with your coach and hitting these optimally. I think it's important. I mean this goes for double-edged members, this goes for anybody in the universe.
Speaker 1:So, and yeah, so, leading right into that, regular deadlift versus traditional deadlift, and we go through cycles where we have we're doing a lot of sumo, we're doing a lot of traditional, and I get the comments of why is my sumo so much better or so much worse than my traditional deadlift? Or I'm not going to do sumo deadlift because I always hurt my effing back, or vice versa. Or vice versa, yeah, exactly, or vice versa. And what I've told folks and got some notes here a lot of these two deadlifts do come down to your mobility, uh, your genetic makeup, femur length, torso length these are all going to play into which one's going to work better for you. But like I told a couple people this last time when we went through our sumo deadlift cycle, now we're back into traditional.
Speaker 1:Don't put an expectation that these should be the same. Like a very good friend of mine, pretty intelligent human being coming to my class, and I told him that's too much damn weight on the bar for you. That's too much weight. Why are you deadlifting that? I want to deadlift my future max based on that percentage. I think you just figured out who it was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I sure did.
Speaker 1:And what happened? What happened? Does he lack hair? He hurt himself and he blamed it on the sumo deadlift. I was like, no, you're not going to be as strong at that. You need to train it within its own bucket. And we can still get tremendous value out of developing our hips, our back and our hamstrings.
Speaker 2:Mostly, I love it for my hips yeah, and testing these is is an expression of where you're weak and where you're strong. The cool thing about a sumo and conventional is it's one of the few lifts where you have essentially two variations to test in a very similar fashion to see what you're stronger at. Is it because of your?
Speaker 2:genetics your biomechanics. Do you have an incredibly strong ass, do you have an incredibly weak ass? Do you have really strong erectors but weak hamstrings? Like there's a lot of things that can be highlighted in these two lifts. Like, yeah, that are that can show you what you need to work on. Like, uh, I have a kid, you know him too.
Speaker 2:He's like six, three, six, four, and uh, his winner at max conventional is 455, but his winner at max sumo is 145. Wow, because his hips are so weak and so tight. He's so tall that when he gets into that super wide position with his feet, it places so much taxing and loading on his hips, which is not a bad thing. It's a bad thing that there's that much of a discrepancy. But he's so weak in that area, so when he tries to lift heavy on sumo, it's prone to injury because he is so weak in those areas. So then, arguably, he could train. I would have him train sumo more at a much lighter weight for higher volumes, to help slowly build up the musculature around his hips and ass, based off of what sumo is supposed to do because he is.
Speaker 1:There's such a differential between the two yeah, which, to your point, exactly that's what I did for myself. So I do deadlift I think a lot of crossfitters do, but it's a lot of back, like the number of people in the gym in general over the last couple years that don't get sore hamstrings or butts from doing traditional deadlifts. They just don't feel. It's always back musculature and I need to. You guys need to learn to delineate between back muscle soreness and nerve pain in your back. Nothing sets me more sideways than when somehow I hurt my back. Where's the hurt when I push right here on your ql? That's a sore muscle. Those need trained too. Yeah, uh, if you guys don't know what that is, come talk to me in person. I will specifically show you exactly where that is and that is good to train. So, uh, just what you said.
Speaker 1:I started. I had a big deviation, not that big of a deviation, but I do have a sizable 60 pound deviation between my sumo, my traditional, which isn't terrible, yeah, but on the range of normal. I have to be very conscientious in my traditional deadlift to get my hamstrings and butt to be working, you know, in an equal manner, not just relying on my back. And deadlifting, thankfully, has never been a spinal issue for me, like squatting has been. But, um, when I started and I put a lot of intention into this last cycle of sumo deadlifts and started working that, uh, it really like my hips stronger, my, my back feels better, um, and everything improved.
Speaker 1:I really was able to see the value of putting some more intention into my own training during that time and embracing these and the reason I looked into it as people asking me questions and I'm like, well, I kind of want to understand this better and I started picking it apart on myself and I'm like, well, you guys, you all should train this and there shouldn't be. It's okay to have deviation, but it should not be a dramatic deviation between it. But, like jacob said, it exposes some weaknesses and when you can correct those weaknesses it's going to help overall um.
Speaker 2:So something I learned with uh west side that louis talked about a lot um way back in the day um, and opinions change as you experiment more and stuff like that was that the, the sumo deadlift, helps build the conventional, but the conventional doesn't help build sumo makes a lot of sense a lot of us sumo is more of an accessory style lift for the conventional my my experience with sumo people really preferring sumo as someone who is biomechanically more inclined to lift more comfortably on sumo, whether it's really long legs or you know whatever.
Speaker 2:Long arms Long arms Long arms or torso, yeah, so it's usually directly related to either some prior back injury or their genetics. I had a lady when we tested the OneRotMax conventional deadlift last week or the week before or whatever it was. She hit a 30-pound PR on her deadlift and she hasn't hit a PR on her deadlift in like three years and she's like where did that come from? That's really strange. I'm like well, you've been. You made a commitment to coming really consistently over the last three months that we've been training sumo a shitload. So we just built up your hips and ass a ton under these loads. She's like oh yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 2:And then the next day she came in she's like my hamstrings have never been this sore, ever. I'm like that was from one deadlift. Like your body, you've trained your body and built up your musculature in these areas that were completely lacking in order to complete a very demanding task in the one or max deadlift and you hit a 30-pound PR because you built up these areas that were weak, and that's a great example of when these things are trained correctly, what tends to happen.
Speaker 1:And she wasn't the only one. There's a handful of people in the gym that, when we just recently tested, one rep max deadlift that PR'd.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And even through my experiences at the sumo, we'll build up the conventional. You train sumo a lot because it's usually you're lacking in your hips and butt that that carries over to when you go to conventional. You're going to feel stronger. Yeah, yeah, usually the case love it.
Speaker 1:So at the end of the day you guys understand the purpose of the lift. A lot of back injuries in sumo deadlift come from a dominant leg that your hip rotates. One hip will rotate and that'll put pressure at your L5-S1 joint in your low back. Most of the time. Just saying this with air quotes, most of the time a hip adjustment from a good chiropractor will fix that real quick. But that's also exposes an imbalance in your strength because one leg's taking over and it's causing that rotation.
Speaker 1:So a couple quick points. When it for myself, but it's I think these are good training principles. When you're not sure of your position and how to feel the lifts really own the eccentric side of the lifts, the lowering phase of the lifts, you can feel the lift really well doing that at lighter weights and slower reps for a while until you're getting really the hang of how it's supposed to feel through the whole lift. Now just grip and rip reps you know a lot of times isn't the best way to do it and to feel the lift. So I have been having a handful of people really slow their lifts down and in this last bout of sumo deadlift I got some buy-in from folks. So don't blame the lift, Blame yourself and be okay with learning new things, even if you're not good at them, and you have to go a little lighter and it's probably going to benefit you in a big way, correcting those imbalances.
Speaker 2:I think, in figuring out why you're not as good at it or why it hurts you or why you don't like it, like, if you're not sure, ask your coach. Yep, and sometimes it takes like a newer coach might not know, like I mean, we've been having our eyes on.
Speaker 2:I would argue at this point probably millions of reps on certain exercises that you they might need to ask. Let's just say us in this example Some of these things are so nitty-gritty, down to the detail, that it may be very specific to you, but a lot of times it is something that's probably a lot more simple than you realize and just you need to be okay with sucking at a certain lift so you can work on it to be better yep, yep, exactly.
Speaker 1:So just be patient, you guys, be willing to work on your weaknesses. They're only going to make your strength stronger and, uh, it's also going to help prevent injury and keeping your body more balanced. So, yeah, all right. Next, I got on here Training until fatigue versus failure. This is something that I personally believe in. When people ask me how you know I train quite a bit, how do you recover this? And that you need to train until failure from time to time, hence the one rep maxes or five-minute bike tests and this, and that you can't do that crap every day. You're literally going to break your body into small little pieces. But training until fatigue and understanding where these limitations are come from knowing where your failure points are. Limitations are are come from knowing where your fail points, failure points are.
Speaker 1:Now, before doing that one or doing that five minute bike test, my goal was 140 calories. That was based on me getting over 220 in 10 minutes. So experience in the gym, experience, knowing my body so I was able to extrapolate that Um, and that comes from training experience, tracking your training over time and knowing your body like having enough time in the gym training that you really do get in tune with your body, what it's capable of, how it feels during the sets like this isn't normal. And with that, learning to train to fatigue is an area that I like to use for optimal recovery into the next day.
Speaker 1:If we come in here and push in the gym every single day until failure, we black out, we're flopping around on the ground after Metcons, there was a time in all of our lives that we'd done it every day. Was the pain cave day. It's not. It's not going to facilitate optimal recovery. So learning and using, you know, maybe tools or this or that, but training up until you get a nice fatigue point that will facilitate change, growth and adaptation, but not pushing till flopping around on the ground. Heart feels like it's going to explode out of your butthole panic attacks. If you're getting panic attacks before doing a Metcon, your psyche is all messed up. It shouldn't be that. It should be a great workout that you feel good, that you get a nice fatigue, but you're not pushing to these depths of darkness. Does this make sense?
Speaker 1:yeah, I don't know, if I'm articulating this very well.
Speaker 2:I understand what you're saying.
Speaker 2:I think in order for people to understand the positives of majority of our training, being in that you know fatigue zone, you still have to, like you said, understand what failure feels like for you currently not something that happened 20 years ago, but where you're at Hence, like the one right max being a great, very simple mathematical example, I mean you're quite literally going to failure.
Speaker 2:100 max being a great, very simple mathematical example, I mean you're quite literally going to failure. That's how you figure out what your 100 max is. That if you don't know what that feels like, or like the 2K row test, where you are in that flopping on the floor like you know, you really don't have anything left to give. When you know where that limit is, then you can train um objectively and intelligently to facilitate and yield net positive gains in your cardiovascular training and your strength training because you know where that limit is and you intentionally dialed it back to be in working sets mode. Yep, um, if you don't know where this failure is and you're in your mind fatigue, but you're really only training at like 40% capacity and you're never actually in fatigue, you're just in a very subjective state of mind like oh, I'm kind of tired. It burns a little bit. I'm working hard, but you're really not Yep exactly.
Speaker 1:And I think that's where some people get lost in the results part of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and on the flip side of that coin, you've got people in the gym like us, I think, more younger crowd or ego-driven crowd or both where you've got to come in and just beat the shit out of yourself every single day. You're not getting in the work. I have conversations with people currently that struggle with this, that if they're not getting in an hour and a half, two hours of just brutal training a day, then they're just wasting their time. Yep, and it's. That's more of a mental block.
Speaker 2:You have to learn or you will be forced to learn I mean you will hurt yourself and sometimes you have to learn the hard way, even if your coaches are there to help guide you and you're refusing to do it. Unfortunately, you're gonna have to hit that breaking point and sometimes people hit that breaking point and go oh cross, it's not for me, or strength training is not for me, and then they transition to something else.
Speaker 2:They hit that breaking point and then they give up on the yeah, because playing the emotional maturity is not there to either accept responsibility for kind of the dumb shit they did like we have, yeah, hence injuries and other things we've gone through um, or they're too emotionally fragile that they just move on to the next thing and then that state of mind will carry in any part of your life. You have to be able to accept the reasons you know sorry, pardon my language, but for fucking up in the first place, to be able to adjust and make a current change for your benefit, and it's okay to go through that.
Speaker 1:And I would say, like you said, it's okay to go through that, but that's where coming to somebody and working out with us in a gym like us can really help with that learning curve and prevent a lot of these tripping over your feet like we kind of in the early stages of our life we were pretty self-taught and it was. There's a lot of mistakes and injuries and, yeah, beat downs in the process and then you know, as we got smarter, trained more, learn from our mistakes and stuck with it. I mean with.
Speaker 1:I look at myself at 40, you're kind of seeing 25 years of training experience kind of coming together now in an intelligent way of approaching this. And I just want to reiterate to people out there like you know, we kind of know what we're doing and if you work with us and communicate with us, we're here, and if you work with us and communicate with us, we're here to help and you can prevent a lot of this frustration in a training. So you're going to speed up that learning curve because of you know, all the coaches and our experience and sometimes you go through
Speaker 2:seasons of neurological adaptation, where you'll see gains quickly, like it's not just you're going to see neurological adaptation, where you'll see gains quickly, like it's not just you're going to see the most when you first start training, like if you've never done CrossFit or just strength training, for example, and you dive right into it and you do have good genetics to be strong. You're going to hit PR after PR, after PR after PR.
Speaker 2:And then all of a sudden it's going to stop Yep, and a lot of people get discouraged. But there will also be seasons, like I went from going from a 450 pound back squat, or to go from 405 to 450 was a three year adventure. To go from 450 to 455 was another three year adventure, and then to go from a 455 to 500 was a six-year adventure, but from my last pr. But to go from that 55 to 500 window was three months. Yeah, does that make sense? So, like the waves, there are neurological waves that we go through, where we're in a bottom position, we don't feel like we're PRing very often and we're doing all the right things, but then we go back to we ride the wave up again and we go and hit these new adaptations Like even you're at your oldest point in life currently but you're also hitting numbers and doing things that I would argue you're fitter now than you were 10 years ago.
Speaker 1:Everything's gotten better, but you, you know, a couple lifts, and that's purely because of my own personal protective nature of my back.
Speaker 2:And obviously we're owners of the business and we're committed to this process. But it's also because you have done this consistently and intelligently and learned yourself that you are continuing to make progress, like you're not in this downward trend. Just because you're not squatting 500 pounds doesn't mean that you're in a downward trend. You're getting fitter in all areas that are of specific importance to you, from like a sporting looking at it, from like a sport mindset, like being able to do 141 calories in five minutes. Like that's badass, that's pretty elite level of fitness. Someone pulling off 141 calories in five minutes on the assault bike, like if you don't hit 140 calories you're not healthy, like that's like going backtracking a little bit, like that's the extreme right.
Speaker 2:But I would say you probably wouldn't have been able to do maybe 125, maybe 130 five or six years ago. But I would put you currently up against old you 10 years ago would win. So you're still accelerating your progress by. Obviously there's been a huge nutrition side of things for you, but you're still putting in the work. Your body is still going through neurological adaptations as you get older. Yeah, there will be a point when that turns around a little bit, sure, and then our whole goal at that point is just to mitigate how fast we go downhill.
Speaker 1:And mitigate how fast we go downhill, but also still be. I mean me personally. I still want to be, you know, top 1% of society at that age group, at 50, do I plan on beating 20-year-olds? No, but do I plan on being the best version of myself at?
Speaker 2:50? Yeah, and I think it would just depend on what the test is no-transcript but it's just an expression of committing to this process that you're still getting better and better, which is cool.
Speaker 1:I mean I see some people in the gym approaching 50, still getting you know lifetime PRs, still growing, still doing awesome stuff Like you have to learn to train smarter, you have to understand your body, nutrition, sleep. These things become more and more valuable and pay bigger dividends. I think as we get older, you get away with some shit. In your 20s you do you do that you don't get away with as well in your 30s, but definitely, I think, 40s, 50s, these other areas, the other 23 hours of the day if you will become more and more and more and if you start taking care of those other 23 hours of the day when you're in your 20s and 30s, it's even going to make you more badass then yeah but you know, just optimizing all aspects of your health and wellness training properly, pushing your body properly, also recovering.
Speaker 1:A good metaphor that Bobby Maximus talked about was your training is like a bank account you can't just deplete it all the time and not refill it. Recovery and overtraining is not a thing, it's only under-recovering is a thing, so you can train as much as you are capable and have the capacity and bandwidth to recover.
Speaker 2:Yeah, an example that I use at that seminar, which? Is a great example is for every training session you do. Just imagine it's you swiping your credit card, yep. And then for every piece of recovery you do, whether foam rolling, ice bath sauna nutrition. Like each one of those, is a deposit into your account for you to pay off what you swipe on your credit card.
Speaker 2:So, if you're just continually swiping the credit card now, you're just in a ton of debt. You're in. You know, fitness debt if you will, and if you do that enough, you're in you go into fitness bankruptcy, and that's usually the federal government.
Speaker 1:You just print some shit.
Speaker 2:That's where performance enhancing drugs come in. That's the federal government. But unless you're you're, you take care of yourself. You never get out of that hole. And if you hit that fitness bankruptcy, that's usually when people go through some kind of mental breakdown or physical breakdown. They get hurt and then they don't want to. Training bankruptcy I love that one. That's a good one, just came up with that. But you have to put in these deposits. You can't just constantly be in a state of withdrawal.
Speaker 1:So yeah, fitness isn't directly linear.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It looks like a line graph. That's whack-a-doodle, and as long as you're keeping that on a one-year, five-year, 10-year trend line trending up, it's not going to be a straight line, but you look at an overall trend, if that makes any sense so I know we can.
Speaker 2:We say that we're saying the right stuff, but we're going a little off. I guess not off topic, but fatigue and failure. You have to be able to know what your true failure looks like in order to train in a state of fatigue for positive results.
Speaker 1:And a great thing while we're using RPE right now rate of perceived efforts I know I get sarcastic out there and say rate of perceived emotions. I struggle sometimes with subjective feel-goods versus objective hard data. But a good place, once you start learning your body and to keep building muscle and strength, is to train to arguably the rpe of seven to eight, which would be three to two reps of reps and reserve left in your body before you hit failure point. Like you start learning on some of these lifts. Okay, okay, I think I could have done three more. That's a great area to continue to make progress without breaking your body and if you guys want, we can get more into this another time. But it comes down to just learning your body, learning your adaptations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and figuring out if you are failing, why are you failing? Is it true failure? Is it technique related? Is it emotionally related? Yeah, like some people have emotional breakdowns, they'll do it in a five-minute test. I know some people in the gym that really do have the ability to shine on something like that, but can't mentally handle the pressure of doing something like that.
Speaker 2:That's where that emotional maturity comes in Same thing with the one-rep maxes. If you're checking the box on all these things and you're truly hitting failure on something and you need to figure out why and then if you are and it's a legitimate reason, then you adapt and change up the program from there for you, essentially.
Speaker 1:And us here as coaches love having these conversations and helping you guys when you guys do this. Um, this next part, you know I talk about muscle building and recovery. We just kind of harped on that quite a bit. A couple key points. When it comes to building muscle, you have to gradually increase weight and reps over time. If you're not we just talked about that if you're over time, If you're not we just talked about that if you're not progressively overloading, you're not going to build muscle and strength. It's that simple. So if you're playing guesswork and just coming in and training off feels that's not going to be a long-term solution to actually build muscle. So I would suggest journaling, tracking, sugar wad notebook, the main compound lifts that we do.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I mean I was hitting all of my best progress when I was tracking, because it's consistent. Now I'm just happy if I just get any literally anything in with the state of my life right now and I can tell my performance is affected by that, but I'm a. It's the recording. Derek stressed that the camera's going to shut off on him again. That what was I just saying?
Speaker 1:That you're just happy to get anything in. You're in maintenance mode.
Speaker 2:I'm in a stage of life where I'm in a constant stage of failure and fatigue. I'm living there right now.
Speaker 1:Well, you're going through maintenance mode, you're figuring it out. You got a lot of things going on. I get it A lot of things going on, but I went through that too and it does get better. But when you're in a chapter of this live Jacob's a great example right now you can just keep moving two to three days per week. You're going to maintain pretty well and maintain the platform for the next train stage of training. It's when you completely give up on yourself.
Speaker 2:Yes, that is bad, and this is when ego is tested too. Like me being able in the past, being able to squat 500 pounds in my head, I'm like I should still just be able to bust that out.
Speaker 1:Or train percentages off that number right now, exactly Probably not the best thing to do.
Speaker 2:It's just not the case, I'm at a point where just doing an air squat hurts and that's not a good spot to be in. There's parts of my own ego that I know I have to put in check and understand where I am. I can't be like oh, why can't I squat 500 or deadlift you know close to 600, or do these or snatch close to 300. I'm like well, dickhead, you have a 15 month old, you're tired all the time. Your testosterone literally dropped 50 percent in two years. I forget to eat, I'm dehydrated, I mean. The list goes on and on.
Speaker 1:I'm just Baby Z's been fighting a few sicknesses Back to back to back to back To back to back to back, just hospitalized for a week. You gotta handful of things, bro, it's okay.
Speaker 2:Have a little grace?
Speaker 2:No, for sure, but then when it goes, the time, you know, comes where I am in the gym and I'm like, alright, I can have a hard training day and I go to do something like do you know, row of 500 meters, and I'm like dying. Or like go to deadlift 225 pounds, I'm like this feels like 500. I get discouraged to knowing all the information that we just relayed to you guys. So it's okay. But I also know that I'm still committed to this process and that it's not a permanent place of residence. Just like it took 13 years to build up these neural adaptations and, you know, tissue of muscle, I'm not going to lose it over the course of six months to a year.
Speaker 1:There's some interesting studies on that topic. Muscle memory.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like how quickly after you developed a certain level of strength and hypertrophy, you feel like it depletes in four weeks. But it took six years to get there. But the reality is, as soon as you start training again, it's back in eight weeks.
Speaker 2:Yeah even less, even less.
Speaker 1:And there's significant research out there that truly supports that muscle memory. So, bro, don't get discouraged with yourself. You're living a realistic life of overcoming some, you know, obstacles and a what do you want to say? A transforming moment of life when you're bringing minions into the world and this and that and they come with the greatest thing ever.
Speaker 1:But to pretend it ain't work and it doesn't change things up would be naive. So but when you guys are going through these chapters of life, you need to one have grace with yourself. But just remember maintenance is okay. It's okay to maintain, just you maintain just a couple days a week. If you work out intentionally two to three days per week, you're going to maintain and probably still make some progress. If you hit two full-body workouts twice a week, you're probably going to maintain as long as the rest of the time you're not eating like a complete idiot.
Speaker 2:And the intensity is there. Yeah, those two days a week need to be intense, yeah, and intentional.
Speaker 1:So you know, give you guys. You know, if you're going through a chapter, give yourself grace and you're just building a more solid base for the next launch pad of you know, your fitness journey. But, um, giving up and just quitting and hanging up the towel, that's something you can't do because that becomes harder and harder and harder to get back and at a certain age it doesn't come back. You don't use it, you lose it. Yep. So just be intentional, you guys. Yeah, progressive overload, track your weights, build building weight. Whether you do this based off one rep max or if you're just tracking your weights week by week and you know, say we're doing back squats, this week you do 95 pounds, the next week you do a hundred pounds, you know just something to track progress and increase load on a uh, consistent basis until you hit some sort of failure point. Now, if you're working in that constant five to eight rep range, your failure point might be only getting four reps or five reps.
Speaker 1:You know, a way I think of a training sequence with one of my clients is we train the same weight week by week and we work from six, eight reps up to 12 reps. When we get up to 12 reps and that's consistent. We know on those exercises we're going up in weight the next week down to six to eight reps. So it's two to three weeks. You build up a little more volume and then it kind of resets. So we take time and build up slowly and that's how we do that with a couple of clients and you can do that right in group class. I do that right in group class with myself. You just have to track. If you don't track, you don't write it down, you don't know. It's all guesswork and it's all based on feels and typically that doesn't go anywhere and louis simmons coined this expression you know, uh, without a plan you plan to fail.
Speaker 2:So unless there's a plan in place and being able to know where you're at in that plan, aka track progress, then it'll only work for so long yep, and then the other 23 hours of the day.
Speaker 1:If you want to gain muscle and strength, you can't, you can't be a ding dong in the other 23 hours a day. You need to get your protein in. You need to eat a balanced diet. You have to do these things or it's simply, you know when you could be making consistent 70%, 80% progress. You're making 20% progress or not making progress. You know, optimizing your intake on protein, carbohydrates, your micronutrients these become vastly important if you want your body to function well. This is the fuel that drives results in this world. Your sleep got to sleep. So, just yeah, figure out the other 23 hours a day and improve the quality of those just as much as your gym quality, because it really does matter. Um, we've already talked about volume and intensity. Those are the only quick little recap. You're not going to make progress without volume or and or intensity. You need one or the other to make progress in training, any kind of training.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like what you talked about earlier, having too much intensity too often can break you to pieces. Having people romanticize this idea and think it's sexy, just having a shitload of volume is what's going to yield results. That's also going to break you down. Even if your intensity is not there and you're doing just just working for the sake of working, it's going to break you down too.
Speaker 1:So this is a way to frame this for you guys if you're doing high volume, the intensity needs to be low. If you're doing high intensity, the volume needs to be low. The breaking points happen on the volume when volume and intensity are pushed together at the same time. These are typically around maximal effort tests, depending on what the test is. But I will argue that high volume, high intensity, leads to more issues from injury standpoint, endocrine standpoint, sleep disruption. So, being very mindful of volume and intensity, I do do quite a bit of volume, but my intensity is pretty low.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really like using analogies, metaphors and stuff like this to drive these points home. Like if you take the 100-meter sprinter in the Olympics versus the marathon runner two very drastically looking different people. If you took the, if you took the a hundred meter sprinter and had them accumulate the same amount of volume of sprinting as the marathon runner does volume? That person would be broken in the hospital and no longer with us.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep.
Speaker 2:So there's some imagery, if you will yeah, well, and that different.
Speaker 1:Somebody who trains at high intensity, low volume is going to develop their body and structure differently than somebody who trains at high volume, low intensity. Also, I would say in our space general physical preparedness space we do pretty decent job at kind of training both, but not the best at either. Um and that's gpp. We're just trying to be generally physically fit. Like I always say, I want to be slightly above average at everything that I do. Um, so take that for what it is. But uh, when you're going to push the volume and intensity buttons at the exact same time and often expect all bad things to happen, Unless you're on performance enhancing drugs.
Speaker 1:And I will argue bad things will still happen, yeah because it's not going to last long. I mean, I am a guy that is on exogenous testosterone, yeah, but it's not no. No, I mean, there's the really extreme peds out there that overcome a lot of this. Yeah, your t ranges are in a range of normal they are, they are like, but to pretend it hasn't helped me from my abnormally low ranges yeah, from going from a 10 year old girl ranges to an actual 40 year old healthy man.
Speaker 2:40 year old healthy man is going to have.
Speaker 1:But I will say, like I still have to be mindful of recovery. Yeah, and some people I bring that up because there's an assumption that you don't- yeah, no for sure.
Speaker 2:And tapping into these ranges that are in the 1,000-plus, you know, nanoliter, whatever, that deciliter, whatever is measured in testosterone, that performance-enhancing drugs like a lot of athletes are on, they don't last long. There's a reason why bodybuilders in the last couple of years have been dropping dead left and right.
Speaker 1:I mean, look at a couple of them too. They don't look like they're functioning so well in their older years.
Speaker 2:No, I mean they have this extreme external expression in their bodies and performance, whether it's a bodybuilder or an elite, elite athlete that we know is on drugs. They don't last long.
Speaker 1:They're not in it for longevity. No.
Speaker 2:They're in it for absolute peak performance for a very temporary amount of time or fame, and glory, yep, and the body pays for it.
Speaker 1:So again, regardless of what drugs you're on, still got to train smart. Probably avoid the drugs unless you're using medical supervised interventions for your long-term health and happiness. But when it comes to PEDs, well, don't be an idiot. Yep Sums that up. Another little quick part on this that kind of relates to all this is value in the warmups and all the coaches at the gym kind of do their own warmup. But one of the big things that's consistent across that is getting a high quality warmup blood flow, feeling out your joints, feeling out your body, seeing how things are going to go that day. Blend together the objective and subjective data of how you're moving during the warm-up and the more intention that you can put into your warm-up, the better your training session in that hour is going to, the more value you're going to get out of that training session in that hour.
Speaker 1:Now I often hear folks say I'm not warmed up until 40 minutes into the workout I start actually feeling good. Well, that tells me two things. You either take a long time to warm up and I happen to be one of those people. For me to feel really good for a training session, a 20-minute. Good warm-up is something my body needs. I don't get warmed up, you know, traditionally really fast, um, and everybody's different. Some people can warm up pretty quick, feel great, start moving quick. Some people take a long time. This is also age dependent. When you're a little bit older, this also is dependent on the time of day you work out. Somebody working out in the morning needs more time to warm up than somebody who's been moving and awake. And blood flow and oxygen, you know all day long and they work out, you know, midday or afternoon. These things actually do matter if you want to get the most value out of your one-hour training session session.
Speaker 1:A couple of things that I want to touch on is the subjective and objective parts of knowing if your body is primed and feeling good during a warmup. So for me personally, you can chime in uh, high skill techniques kind of stuff. If it's not going well, I'm either not warmed up enough or I'm very under recovered. So, for instance, if I'm tripping over my feet doing double unders, which is something I'm kind of good at like I consider myself good at double unders If I'm not getting them in a warmup, it's not like I just lost all my double under skill. Chances are I'm pretty under recovered and that is a sign for me to check in on my body and, you know, maybe wrap my head around training is going to go that day.
Speaker 1:Another area that I like to pay attention to is the power clean. If we have power cleans in the workout and 135 doesn't feel light and crisp, I'm either not warmed up enough or I'm under-recovered and that's going to guide. If there's no snap in that, that's going to guide my training session that day. But a good warmup changes that you get on a rower, for instance, if I'm, if the rower feels heavy pulling a two minute row time for 500, for me I'm not, you know, feeling it that day.
Speaker 1:But if it feels very snappy, like you know that first, 30 second machine you're going to warm up with some, you know class coach, 30 seconds on machine, you jump on there and that 30 seconds on the roar feels just like really crisp and the pulls feel strong. Okay, this is going to be one warmup is going to be a little quicker, but it's going to be probably a good training day for me. And then the last one is just when I hang from a pull-up bar. If I jump up there and grab the bar and I feel like I'm 500 pounds chances are, I'm not 500 pounds.
Speaker 1:Chances, chances, but that's the body, just not feeling great and I'm under-recovered and I bring these up only because sometimes a good 15-20 minute warm-up can change all that. Now I get a good blood flow going and then everything changes. Some days I'm feeling great right out the gate, but most days I definitely need that good warm-up and I bring this up, you know, for anybody out there listening get a good warmup. And, um, I bring this up, you know, for anybody out there listening get a good warmup in. But our members just being intentional, I know it's a time to socialize. I know it's a time to catch up with your friends and this and that, which is great, we love that about the community. But just, you know, making sure that you know you guys do understand and believe that there is value in this training volume of a warm-up to get a great workout. Your workout's going to be better if your warm-up is better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the biggest part of people in a warm-up, myself included, is just being intentional about it, whether you're one of those people who needs to warm up for an hour before you do an hour workout, obviously in a class setting sometimes you may not have that luxury, but if you're being intentional about what it is you're doing, just as simple and I know it can be very basic If you're going to hop on and do two minutes on the machine and you're just sitting there on a salt bike and your hands are off the handles and you're just barely pedaling with your legs, it's not doing shit.
Speaker 2:If you have and you only have those two minutes to jump on a machine before you start doing something else, let's say that's the only monostructural movement you're going to do. You need to make those two minutes count. You're getting your arms involved. You make those two minutes count.
Speaker 1:You're getting your arms involved. You're pushing the pace.
Speaker 2:You're getting off tired. It's the first time you're getting your heart rate up in the day. Your lungs are like getting jump-started for the first time. You should be a little fatigued. I still don't. You should be a little fatigued when you get off. If you get off and you're just using your legs and putting around which I see more people do that than be intentional then, you're just essentially and I yell at people I'm like there's no point in even doing the two minutes.
Speaker 2:No, like you just need to be intentional about what it is you're doing. Like I coined something in the gym for some people that are the other extreme, if you will Like strength training, for example, let's say uh, you and your, you have 400 pound back squat. You go to warmup. How does this warm up? Even being older, how does this warmup sound?
Speaker 2:You're going to do two sets of 20 empty bar. Then you do a set of five at 95. Then you do a set of five and you're trying to get to 400 pounds. You can do a set of five at 135. Then you do a set of five at 155. Then you do a set of three at 185. Then you do a set of three at 205. Then you do a set of two at 225. Then you do a set at 275. Then you do a set at 295. And then you do a set at 315. Then you at 315. They're going to do like there are people in the gym that are also too far on this spectrum of now you're just wearing yourself out before you actually are doing the thing that needs to be done. Yeah, so.
Speaker 1:That sounds terrible. By the way, you asked me how this is a sound. It sounds terrible and dumb.
Speaker 2:So I coined something in the gym that I have. I only tell this to my veteran lifters that need to get out of this funk that they need to do 75 reps before they actually get to any real working set. It's called BJO big jump life. So, like me, I'm on the other extreme. I know how in tune my body is. Before I even start the reps. I get my knee sleeves on. I get a little movement in a couple air squats, a couple glute work with the reps. I get my knee sleeves on, I get a little movement in a couple air squats, a couple glute work with the band. Boom, I do one rep. If I'm trying to get up to, let's say, 405, this will be my exact squatting regimen. I will do one rep or no. I'll do five reps with a barbell. I'll do one rep at 135, one rep at 225, one rep at 315, one at 405, done, I'll be done with a squat session in three and a half, four minutes.
Speaker 1:But I know my body well enough that I can do that. That's experience, right. That is experience. But again, if you're squatting over 400 pounds there's a high probability of training experience. Not many people just kind of naturally do that.
Speaker 2:No, and that's why I was saying for my veterans. If you're taking so long to warm up, then it's also a disservice to you, because you're just wearing yourself out. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you need to, okay. So there's. I got a person in my brain right now who we had a conversation with about you know he has to get up to pretty big numbers now to get his working sets based on the percentage work in his legitimate one rep max and it's like, oh, I don't feel like because class has to also function on a structure right. And two things you brought up there that I did tell him One you need to take bigger jumps than your weights. Like in my mind there's no reason for me to ever back squat an empty barbell. I don't know why I ever would, unless I'm just I don't know. But if back squat is the strength, that day my first lift is going to be a 135. I might hit some air squats and some lunges and a couple of things before that to get the joints greased. So to your point, taking bigger jumps but also knowing your own body. If you know you need extra blood flow for like. For me to have a great squat session, I need 10 minutes of monostructural work at a, you know, mid intensity for my muscles to like feel good. I'm more of an endurance oriented person, so it does. I do take a little longer to warm up, um, unless I'm just feeling really good and recovered that day. But, um, knowing your body, and if you need a little more time to warm up for big lifts, get in early, get a little more blood flow going, a little more movement going before class, because the Jacob's Point drives me nuts when I'm seeing people building up their back squat and using five-pound plates. No, we're taking big jumps and anybody that comes to my class, I typically know where their lifting ranges are and who wants to build strength in those lifts. And, um, I've said it quite a few times like, here's our warm-up rep scheme, but nobody's squatting an empty bar for the first one. Like, your first 10 reps is at 135 85 and we build up and we take big jumps and we get the work done.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, know your body, get warm, be intentional with your warm ups. I do prefer quite a few reps in my general warm-up, but that usually involves monostructural machine work, some air squat, you know, just whatever, but I I do prefer that. So, um, jess would probably say, do you, though, because I often show up to class late when I do get to jump into class, but, um, I also don't approach the workout the same way when I don't get a good warm-up in. But but know your bodies, be intentional with your warm-ups, work with your coach. Your coach, if you go to the same coach, is going to know your warm-up style and is going to get in tune. Sometimes it looks like I'm just creepily staring at people, but watching people move during the warm-up tells me a lot about how they're feeling that day. You know somebody I know moves a certain way and I'm watching them kind of creak around Like I know something's off and I'm going to go talk to them about it and see where they're at on that day and guide their training appropriately for them. So your coach actually picks up quite a bit just watching you guys and you know your communication in both ways heavily matters and it helps. So, getting short on time, but I want to crank through these last couple topics Hot topic in the longevity space and the gurus online. And you know, you guys know I think most people are dipshits, but I try not to be one of those.
Speaker 1:Let the old creatine back in the hot seat again on the, the interwebs, if you will. Uh, some new research came out about. Now people are saying 12, 10, 12 15 grams of creatine per day because of all this mental, cognitive function stuff. So you got the big names out there in this space, you know, citing this new study and saying five's not enough anymore, we need 10 to 15 grams. You know, and uh, two members specifically I'm not going to say the word a lot because it sounds weird, but two people asked me about this and I honestly, at this juncture I don't know the answer that I'm willing to say it's good nor bad. Here's what I can say on creatine. It's extremely important in your body and it supports high-intensity training efforts. It helps with recovery. It helps with building muscle. It does and has shown to have positive effects on cognitive function. It does and has shown to have positive effects on cognitive function. It is the most researched supplement out of all sports supplements of all time. I can't think of another one. It helps with brain farting.
Speaker 2:Explosive.
Speaker 1:Explosive power, but that that's gonna be the main one. Creatine is not gonna be a huge impact on the super long endurance side of things, but in our kind of training that we do in the gym it has a noticeable impact. I can attest to that and the research supports it. But all the research has been based off five grams per day on average and there's an equation, so it's anywhere from three to seven grams per day depending on how big you are. But that is the bulk of the historical data of research, this new stuff coming out where they're testing some cognitive function in regards to higher doses of creatine. You know, completely saturating your body to where it's, you know, crossing the blood brain barrier, maybe more effective.
Speaker 1:This and that I'm not here to say it's neither good nor bad. I think there needs to be a little more studies before you start. You know, doubling and tripling your dose of creatine in your body. There's kidney things to think about potentially here. Body, there's kidney things to think about potentially here. And I just a little bit, I've looked into this I'm personally not one to jump right to this 10 grams per day deal Like I'm not. I'm, I'm. I'm all in on making sure I optimize my cognitive function long-term. You know I don't want any sort of neurodegenerative things as I'm getting older, but I would caution people to jump to this based on you know a few people in the influencer space now spouting off this new study. You know, I do think people that have a low protein or non-animal based protein diet do get bigger benefits from creatine, because the way our body synthesizes creatine naturally it'll synthesize some, but the majority of the creatine we get comes from animal-based protein.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and to get five grams of it from animal-based protein you'd have to eat five pounds of red meat in one sitting.
Speaker 1:It's something ridiculous like that.
Speaker 1:It's nearly impossible to get full muscle body saturation points. So supplementing creatine does have a profound effect on everybody, and I will say those that don't eat animal-based products probably has a more profound effect. Is that more profound at 10 grams versus 5 grams? I personally believe if you're taking it consistently your body's going to hit saturation and you know I'm sticking with the 5 grams per day until you know there's some mind-blowing research on major cognitive function improvements. But you do you, I would just caution it. This is just a very recent deal. You do you, I would just caution it.
Speaker 1:This is just a very recent deal and I'm just not sold on a double or triple dose of this being any more effective outside of creating potentially expensive pee and yeah. So that's my two cents on the new creatine deal going around and, at the end of the day, just a reminder creatine monohydrate in its simplest, unflavored form is the best one to buy. It's also the one supplement companies make the least amount of money on. So oftentimes companies will add their proprietary blend of this and that and this absorbs better and blah, blah, blah. It's all bullshit. You need creatine monohydrate unflavored. Add it to your shake, dry, mouth it however you want to do it. But uh, gummies, I think, are garbage. Um, anything with a proprietary label when it comes to creatine garbage, simple just marketing.
Speaker 1:It is at that point it's to squeeze out another 20 on a product that can't be patented and on a product that's easy to make. So simple creatine monohydrate, unflavored, is the way to go. It's the only one I sell and yeah, so keep it simple. Next, quick on this deal, is understanding quality of your supplements, Knowing that your supplement is third-party tested. Transparent Labs, Pure Encapsulations, Designs for Health and First Form all subject their products to third-party testing for validation of what's in them and confirmation of what's in them. So if you're buying big-box store supplements and you're like, wow, I'm getting four pounds of this for half the price of that, well, you're getting four pounds of garbage most likely.
Speaker 1:It's not subjected to third-party testing. It has a bunch of fillers and additives and I'm telling you in the supplement industry, it's dirty and if you don't look things up well, you might feel like you're saving money, but at the end of the day, you're just wasting money and putting a potentially harmful but non-valuable product into your body. So you get what you pay for. In this space, oftentimes I get people to take less supplements than more, but taking higher quality supplements is important. And you want to look and see if it's third-party tested.
Speaker 2:You can look it up right online, search it yeah, a big part of that is avoiding things like you said on on here is uh, things that say proprietary blend. All that means is that they could literally put in whatever they wanted to to fill up the jug or whatever it is. There's a documentary older one now. It's called Bigger, Faster, Stronger, Mark Bell, who's an old power lifter. His brother actually did this documentary and he made a point of how dirty the supplement industry can be, that he hired two illegals to help him bottle and label like 400 pounds worth of shit Not literal shit, but it was advertised as like a creatine. But it was just like flour, Like it wasn't even actually the supplement, and it cost him per bottle. The label and the material to put in the bottle cost him 10 cents and then he turned around and sold it. I think he had people refund but, as they didn't know, sold this for $70 a bottle.
Speaker 2:But, he had proprietary blend on there and said all this marketing jargon as a point of just how dirty the supplement industry can be. Yep, literally and morally.
Speaker 1:Yep, it's a gross industry and it's worth spending the extra money. I personally believe that we carry brands that value quality and reasonable cost pretty well. There are a handful of companies out there that we don't care. That I do believe in. It's just I don't want to put the effort into carrying every company. It's not my goal to be a supplement store. Our goal here at the gym is to offer things that we believe in, that are high quality and at a fair price point for the quality that you're getting. So, yeah, just be mindful. You buy cheap shit or stuff that sounds cheap that you're getting. So, yeah, just be mindful. You buy cheap shit or stuff that sounds cheap.
Speaker 2:You're getting cheap shit and and a lot of times, a lot of these brands, flashy brands when you walk into a GNC or vitamin shop it's still going um. They're usually made by a parent company, which is different labeling. Yep, like if you walk in and it really catches your eye cause it has all these flashy colors, or some celebrity or influencer is promoting them. It's usually not always, but usually a jug of shit.
Speaker 1:Yep, and a lot of this stuff is a lot of supplements are made in the same couple facilities around the country. So somebody comes up with a marketing plan, they subject the recipe, these companies create it and bottle it, and it's just a few manufacturers so they can create top-of-the-line stuff, they can create bottom-of-the-barrel stuff and yeah. So, as a dirty industry guys ask, you know, I'm always happy to give you my two cents on supplements that you're looking at and give you my opinions on. So there, I actually think I got a video coming out on all the supplements I've taken. Why? I think that's scheduled for like two weeks from now or something, I don't know. I recorded it. I wasn't happy with the recording because we weren't fully set up, and now that we have this set up, I'm thinking about re-recording it, even though it takes a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:It's legit now, though. Yeah, it's much better. I think I did it on my iPhone.
Speaker 2:Or when I first got this.
Speaker 1:I can't even remember Because I recorded and I've been conflicted about putting it out because either the audio wasn't good or something, but whatever. But you guys will get an update on all the supplements I take and why, if that's something that interests you. Last little piece of advice I got on this podcast today is using artificial intelligence for meal planning. I personally think that the nutrition coach of modern times writing you macros and everything is going to be a thing of the past. I think the artificial intelligence, I think the nutrition coach that can help you with lifestyle decisions and guide you and you know, for better or worse terminology, hold your hand Still very valuable to have that mentor and leader in your life.
Speaker 1:But when it comes to, like, figuring out macros isn't rocket science, it's really not, and paying somebody to write you a meal plan is dead, like I'll never write a meal plan for anybody. I've made that decision 20 years ago. It's so much work Not anymore, but it was so much work for very little return on investment. Like, as far as a service offering, it's not something that ever made sense to me. But now we've got artificial intelligence and it is freaking, mind-blowing.
Speaker 2:And chances are a lot of these again fitness influencers that are doing these meal plans. There ain't no way that some of these Crossfit games athletes and I put my life on it are at home. When they say you know, apply for my program, I'll write you a fitness plan or a meal plan specifically for you. A load of shit. Yep, they probably don't even see it. You submit your plan and then someone else inputs that information into an ai and then it spits it back out to you in an email 100, and I'm just to tell you guys how to skip the bullshit and do this yourself, and I will happily show you the prompts.
Speaker 1:But use a platform like ChatGBT or Grok. I personally use Grok as my artificial intelligence powerhouse and you go in there. So coach me. Any of the coaches can give you your macros and starting point for calories. That's something you should still discuss with somebody. Get an in body scan and then that gives us a starting point for calories based on your goals. Uh, we can give you a starting point. So, for instance me 2,500 calories per day. My goal is to build muscle 500 calories per day. My goal is to build muscle. I'm going to have 40. Actually, this is backwards, but I want 40% protein, 35% carbohydrate, 25% fat. I think that's 100%. Is that 100%?
Speaker 2:40, 35, 25. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I did write the Stunning Guys guys, I'm not this big of a cluster, but so I can take those numbers, plug it into you know, chat, gpt or croc, and say build me a meal plan for this week with a shopping list based on this calorie need and this percentage of um macronutrients needs and you can even type in there do not include tuna. Do not include Brussels sprouts, like things you hate, things that you just won't eat. Do not include goat cheese this stuff I won't touch. And you hit enter and it will create you a seven-day meal plan. You can even put in there for the whole family, create a meal plan for the family. But if you're trying to analyze your calories, you'd want to do this just for yourself and it will spit you out a meal plan and a shopping list in seconds and it's detailed. And if you don't like it, all you do is say remove this product and it re-spits it out without that product and it literally takes seconds yeah, it's pretty fascinating and a couple members.
Speaker 1:I actually had a member show this to me how she meal plans for her whole family and does it every saturday spits it out, takes the shopping list, punches it into instacart. All the food is delivered to their house and they have their meal plan, prep everything for the week. And they do it for a family of four and she said on average it takes them about two hours on Sunday to literally do everything and have it set up and accomplished for the week. That's pretty impressive and their kids are pretty young. So that's a tool Use it, don't use it. But I thought that was pretty interesting and pretty cool and it's something that I've been playing with for myself, even though I eat the same stuff all the time, and I'm okay with that. But if you need ideas and you need some meal plans and some ideas I think that's a great, great tool to trap and all these companies I think they got free versions of this or that or whatever. So got anything else bro.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, I think that was a pretty solid amount of information, yeah. I mean what helps us to come up with more content and things to talk about is, if you guys have specifics, uh, questions, things that you're curious about, please feel free to ask any of the coaches, yep, or get back to us. Hell if you got something that you're a leader on or that you really got some insight on, we'd love to have you in here.
Speaker 1:I got JP coming pretty soon for some mental health stuff.
Speaker 2:Perfect.
Speaker 1:And if you're a member that wants to be on the podcast, we'd love to have you. Now, if you got story insights and this, and that a lot of the people in the gym just having casual conversation have pretty awesome stories, it's cool. Yep, we are set up now for this and looking forward to all things content. So, yeah, all right. Well, that's all we got today, bro.
Speaker 2:Sounds good. Love you man Love you too.
Speaker 1:All right, outro music. Let's fade it in. All right, everybody, get out there and have a great week. What's the other cues on here?
Speaker 2:all right, enough screwing around see you guys, see you later.