Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Train for a Great Life. The response to the rapid fire Q&A was quite good, so I figured we'll do another one. I think you guys are going to like this one as well. Okay, so we'll get right to it.

Speaker 1: 0:15

Number one what's one mistake most people make with nutrition? I'm actually going to default to two here, because there's two pretty common ones. Number one is not enough protein. If you were to do one simple thing with your nutrition, it would be focus on protein. People do not overeat it by accident. It's very easy to overeat carbs and fats because they taste good. Protein is the one to focus on.

Speaker 1: 0:44

Second one is going like all or nothing. You know, if you're going to make a change, you basically flip your entire life upside down. You're going from like eating like crap to eating super strict and weighing and measuring, and that is way too much friction to continue on. Uh, when life happens. Number two is lifting heavy going to make me bulky? No, I don't hear this one as much anymore, but I do still hear it like oh, I don't. You know, I don't need to have these big, huge muscles. Do you know how freaking hard it is to create big, huge muscles.

Speaker 1: 1:27

First of all, the type of training that we do doesn't promote like hypertrophy in the same way that bodybuilding does. We're just we're training more functional movements. We're not doing joint, isolated stuff. We're not focusing on rep ranges and and volume in ways that's going to have that as the primary goal. I mean I use myself as an example. When people say that, I say look at me, I've been doing this for 16 years. I put on muscle. I wouldn't say easier than everybody, but like I have a fair amount of muscle. I'm not a huge frame, I'm 175 pounds. If I put on a hoodie or a jacket, you know it's hard to tell that I even work out. Okay. So don't worry about that. It doesn't happen by accident. And the things that have people have in their head with like these crazy muscle bound freaks, it's not natural. And even with it not being natural, it doesn't happen by accident. It is super intentional. It's like the biggest goal of their life.

Speaker 1: 2:20

Number three what is your favorite warmup drill? I like things that take people through full range of motion. So I I mean world's greatest stretch. It's named that for a reason. It gets both hips. It's hip flexors, hamstrings, um quads, the whole anterior chain. You're doing um, you're getting thoracic rotation. I like that one, so I've had to pick one. Sure, that's it.

Speaker 1: 2:44

How do rest days actually help? Your body needs to recover. So work happens. It creates, you know, micro trauma signals to the bodies and the rest is when your body actually repairs and gets stronger. Right, you break down to build back up. Your nervous system has to actually kind of like recharge as well.

Speaker 1: 3:11

If you don't take rest days, you can do active rest and you can do light work and stuff like that, but you're going to run into problems with it. You'll even notice if you've been training for a long time, if you zoom out, you know to like a two or three month span, you're going to have weeks where your body just responds and is like you know, you PR everything you do. And then there's days where you could not like, weeks where you couldn't buy a PR. Right, your body's just, it's on a lower frequency and, yeah, you just, you can't be at top notch all the time. It's just how our bodies work. So you got to rest if you want to be at your best. Didn't mean for that to rhyme.

Speaker 1: 3:51

Number five what's the deal with mobility. Do I really need to stretch? Yes, I mean, the best time to stretch is before bed. It sends calming signals to your body. It's going to help with sleep. I'm a big fan of dynamic and active mobility before you train, not just stretching. But yeah, if you're someone that sits a lot and is in shortened positions all the time, like your wrists on keyboards and holding phones and your head down looking at a phone and sitting in a chair, your hip flexors shortened you're going to need to move your body and stretch those through bigger ranges of motion, or you are just going to be compromised when you start moving right. Think of you want to be able to bend, not break. You know, to put it a different way.

Speaker 1: 4:43

Number six is CrossFit safe for older adults? Yes, absolutely. Is moving safe for older adults? Yes, and do you need to train movement in a controlled and structured manner, in a way that gets you stronger and more capable for the movements outside of the gym? 100%? Or are you going to run into problems? Yes, I hate this mindset of like training is not safe for older adults. You just modify the movement, you modify the intensity and you do what you can. Okay, this is your life. I know how I view it. You can view it however you want.

Speaker 1: 5:17

Number seven what's the best time of day to train? The time that you're going to do it, okay, the time that you have available in your schedule. Beyond that, people are just wired to do things at different times. If you're not a morning person, then don't try to train in the morning. There's just going to be too much friction and you know, if your, if your body feels more ready to train later in the day, do that. If you're a morning person, do it right. There's not. You're not going to have better progress at one time or another. I mean, we're going way too nitty gritty with that.

Speaker 1: 5:53

Number eight why do we do so many squats? Well, the squat, if you've heard the saying. If you were to only be able to do one movement for the rest of your life, I would choose a squat. It is the most bang for your buck. It is a lot of joint opening and closing. It's a compound movement. It's going to give a great stimulus for strength and there are tons of studies that indicate strong correlation between hip and leg strength and longevity. I mean longevity we've talked about health span as well, so quality of life. It's going to make you run faster, jump higher, okay, so, yeah, we squat lots.

Speaker 1: 6:35

Uh, number nine how do I get better at pull-ups? This is a great question, um, a very common goal for people, and I think there's I literally think there's something primitive about it that if you were hanging off the edge of a cliff and you can't do a pull-up, you're dead, dead. So it's a very common goal and you have to get stronger and you have to improve your strength to body weight ratio. So sometimes there's just no other answer than you're going to have to lose some weight or you're going to have to get ridiculously strong. Okay, being able to do, I mean, if you get these really really strong, I the being able to do, I mean, if you get these really really strong, I've been able to do up to, I think, 100 and 115 pound weighted pull-up.

Speaker 1: 7:20

Um, that's the fairly strong. It's fairly strong pulling strength. But just think about, like, if I added that amount of body weight to to my, to myself, or or even 50 pounds, just how much harder a single pull-up is going to be. Okay, so, aside from the the obvious of like strength to body weight ratio, uh, vary your, your pulling training. So ring rows are my favorite, uh, because you can adjust the angle and make them really hard and you're you're pulling, usually a bit horizontally, which people tend to just use their back more, and a lot of times, like we use our arms lots, but like getting into a position where you're kind of walking in and using your lats and your back, like your mid traps, to pull. We don't do that a whole lot and people are just generally weak there. So I would say, how do I get better? When pull-ups come up, sub in ring rows two-thirds of the time and then like a vertical, like a ballerina pull-up where you're on your toes one-third of the time. Sometimes, when we're mimicking a kipping pull-up, you're going to do a jumping pull-up and that's fine too. You're not going to get the same strength stimulus from it, but they're still good.

Speaker 1: 8:34

Okay, and number 10, do I need protein powder? No, you don't need protein powder, but it makes getting protein in readily accessible. You can keep it in your car and have it right after the workout. Just gulp it down, and it's a lot easier than carrying food and eating like right after a workout when your body is craving that nutrition. So, no, you don't need it, but it makes things a lot easier. And if we go back to that first question about the mistake most people make with nutrition not getting enough protein it'll help satisfy that. Hope it helps. See you in the gym.