Hey, Athletes! Have you heard that beets can improve your performance as an athlete? Listen to this week’s episode to find out about this and more!
Episode 23 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!
BEETS
The four ship is back on this latest episode. Jerred, Kyle, Ashley, and Joe are on the podcast and they give us their updates and announcements for the week. The study for this week is about an unlikely performance enhancer, beets! Beets have some pretty awesome effects when taken before your workout. The crew also talk about their upcoming spartan race and how they have been prepping or not prepping. Don’t forget this week’s Meet Yourself Saturday workout, Dia De Los Muertos.
If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast either on Stitcher, iTunes, or Google Play by using the link below:
IN THIS 50-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
- A Performance Enhancer
- Updates From The Team
- Beets
- Spartan Race in NC
- Killing Comfort Book-Coming Soon!
- Jerred and Emily do MURPH
- Dia De Los Muertos
- And A LOT MORE!!
Diving Deeper
If you want to go a little bit deeper on this episode, here are some links for you:
Study of the Week
- No longer beeting around the bush: a review of potential sex differences with dietary nitrate supplementation.
- Increase Your Performance Today with the Better Human Shot
Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week
Be sure to listen to this week’s episode:
Related Resources at End of Three Fitness:
- Greg Everett on Weightlifting, Combating Negativity, and Becoming a Better Human Being
- What Doesn’t Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength
—
Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!
To becoming better!
Jerred
Transcript
Beets Podcast
[00:00:00] Jerred Moon: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. I’m your host Jerred moon. The garage team athlete podcast is a result of my desire to do better humans, unequivocal coaches, and autonomous athletes. I’ve spent the last several years obsessing over program design, nutrition in every other way you can optimize human performance.
This podcast is stills the latest scientific research with what I’ve learned and blends it with the not-so scientific field of mental toughness. We are here to build you into a dangerously effective athlete. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find out more about our training at garage gym, athlete.com and if you want to pursue more into the field of coaching and programming, head to end@threefitness.com.
All right, ladies [00:01:00] and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jerred Moon here with a bunch of peeps. We have Ashley Hicks. What’s up Ashley?
Ashley Hicks: Hey, what’s going on?
Jerred Moon: And we have Kyle Schrum. Kyle, what’s
Kyle Shrum: up? Hello.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, and Joe Courtney, what’s up, Joe?
Joe Courtney: Oh, Oh, Oh,
Jerred Moon: yup. It’s Christmas.
It’s, it’s officially Christmas because we’re post Thanksgiving. Wait, no,
Kyle Shrum: we don’t have time. We don’t have time to go into this.
Joe Courtney: My Thanksgiving this weekend, so yeah.
Jerred Moon: All right, well, I don’t have time to go into it either, so I’m just going to skip over that one and mention a couple of other things.
So announcements from me. Kyle made it very apparent that due to the topic this week beats the vegetable will be our sponsor because beets are awesome and you’re going to learn all about why they’re awesome in this podcast. And we’ll talk about some stuff, different stuff there. AMA, we’re still getting submissions there.
Just got a new one yesterday. So. Garage gym, [00:02:00] athlete.com Ford. Slash. AMA. I’ve already recorded a couple. There’ll be in the queue. The next couple of weeks there’ll be a on YouTube and here on the podcast. so new content, answering you guys’ questions and then diving into topics when appropriate.
Killing comfort the book. Go to dot com sign up for prerelease information and all that good stuff. But those are my announcements. Now we’re going to go to. Joe for updates. How’s life? What’s new?
Joe Courtney: well, I survived Vegas this past weekend and I came back two pounds heavier,
Jerred Moon: barely.
Joe Courtney: So there’s that
Jerred Moon: weight.
Two pounds heavier. Okay. I’m like
Joe Courtney: everything. So I finally cracked one 90 and I’m not okay with it. So I’m going to go for a run after this and run until a Spartan beast, which we’ll publish. I will not, not publish, which will be the weekend after this
Jerred Moon: publishes. Yup. Yeah. That’s why we’re going to talk a little bit about sparkling today.
So you survived, survived Vegas, man. I just like, what are you tracking? Any data [00:03:00] like heart rate variability? Crotch? No, you just, you don’t, you’re like, I don’t even want to track.
Joe Courtney: I mean I used to, when I, when I wore the whoop cause it was just, it was just spit it out right there. But, the garment doesn’t really give her a heart availability and I just don’t want to look at my resting heart rate.
So I just look at what we walk and we walk like 10 to 12 miles
Jerred Moon: a day. It’s interesting. I always look at that stuff. because I said two weeks ago, my son got sick and I got like half sick. It’s like you don’t get fully sick because your immune system works better than theirs. You know what I mean?
It’s like it doesn’t stop you from your date. It doesn’t stop you from training. I think I’ve explained this before. I don’t consider it sick unless I can’t work out that day. If that’s when I’m like, okay, that was official. I was sick. I didn’t, I didn’t train. But, what was interesting about those like three or four days, my.
Heart rate was like, like 10 beats per high, 10 beats per minute higher than normal, and my heart rate variability was crushed. So it’s always interesting just to see what, what happens when, when your body’s like battling something like that. And [00:04:00] alcohol can absolutely destroy those things.
It’s a battle.
Joe Courtney: All
Jerred Moon: right, Ashley, updates from you.
Ashley Hicks: I’m, I’m back in the States officially, but I mean, you kind of ruined that for me. Last podcast.
Jerred Moon: Thanks. That’s good. We’re even in the same time zone, which is like crazy.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah. So I’m in central time zone, but I’m in Florida, so we’re at Eglin air force base and we’re staying in the TLA lab.
I know. Isn’t that weird? Florida is kind of like Texas, like it’s so big. It’s in multiple time
Jerred Moon: zones. That Eglin, Fort Walton beach area is destined like the cutoff before the time zone changes. And for that reason, I remember, I don’t remember which part of the year, but I would like, I could get off work at like four 30 and it would be dark outside, you know?
And that was, I hated that. Really hated this, but Florida’s an awesome place. Otherwise.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah, join it. So we got to see our house that we bought [00:05:00] over FaceTime, which was
Joe Courtney: fun. I
Jerred Moon: bought a house like that once. Almost twice. Yeah. It worked out though. Like what? What do you really need to Scott Walls?
Scott got a
Ashley Hicks: house, a two car garage. It’s going to be great.
Jerred Moon: I can’t wait. Can’t wait for the, garage gym pics. Yeah. Cool. So. Kyle, how about you?
Kyle Shrum: nothing new with me. I kind of have a boring life. No,
Jerred Moon: I’m just kidding.
Actually
Kyle Shrum: speaking to the whole, Tom zone deal. I live, I live in Tennessee because it’s big enough to stretch onto as well. I live right between Eastern and central. when I go to my parents’ house, 30 minutes away, I’m in central time. Here at my house. I’m in Eastern time. So
Joe Courtney: terrible.
Kyle Shrum: I grew up, I grew up, actually, I haven’t, I added, subtract an hour for everything that we did.
if we had to go to Chattanooga, I had to add or subtract an hour every time. So, yeah. [00:06:00] Anyway.
Jerred Moon: that, that was awesome. Basically oil, fun fact,
Kyle Shrum: things going well. Just getting ready for the Spartan. That was my update last time as well.
Jerred Moon: So, are you ready?
Kyle Shrum: Am I
Jerred Moon: ready? And getting ready, like I don’t last time you were on the podcast several weeks ago, so I mean, I just feel like
Kyle Shrum: I’m ready.
I’m ready to go do it.
Jerred Moon: There you go. You’re mentally prepared. I’m mentally prepared. And then where would you put yourself physically on a scale of one to two? One to two? Yeah. No decimals allowed. Oh, come on. I know where else you’d just give me the one to 10 scale. You’re either ready or not ready.
So one or two.
Kyle Shrum: Physically, physically, I would say one.
Jerred Moon: Okay. All right. But
Kyle Shrum: I’m mentally ready. I’m mentally ready to go and see if I’m right on the one to two scale.
Jerred Moon: Got it. So
Kyle Shrum: we’ll see how it goes.
Jerred Moon: All right. Quick updates from me. so if you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know that Emily, my wife did her first [00:07:00] Murph.
It was actually a half merch, but she did her first Murph last weekend, which was awesome. Completely unplanned. There was no like, Hey, yeah, you’re going to do this with me this day. So on and so forth. she just was like, Hey. I’m going to do Mark with you today. I mean, it was in the programming too.
So I think that that kind of spurred or spurred her along. So that was awesome. And I got my second fastest time ever in Murph. So like I just PR whatever a few weeks ago. And then there was the PR I hit last time I did a year of Murph. This was faster than the last year, more PR. So that now has moved, bumped down to my third fastest time was my last year of Murph.
This past Saturday. It was my second fastest Murphy. And the only reason. Is because I was trying to catch her. She, she was doing a half Murph and she was like, she said, you’re going to beat me. She’s like, you’re still gonna beat me even though you’re doing the full thing. And I was like, I don’t know if I can, but I am going to try.
And, she, I just like straight up told her, I wasn’t like, Oh no, I don’t know if I can. I was like, you don’t worry. I was like, I don’t know if it’s possible, [00:08:00] but I’m 100% going to try and make that happen. So, and it almost did, she was, I was, she was finishing her run and I could see her.
She was about. Probably a quarter mile or more ahead of me, and I just couldn’t do it. It didn’t have it in the tank, but it ended up in a really fast time, so that was cool. That was my update there. and then yesterday, instead of doing the programming, which is typically unusual for me, I want it to run.
Cause I have not been running at all in preparation for the Spartan race. you know, we’ve talked about, I had the knee thing. I just haven’t been, I’ve been adding, you know, a lot of bike stuff when we’re doing conditioning. Just not a lot of running. So I did seven miles yesterday, for my run, and it’s going to be fun.
Spartan race, cause my hip, my hip flexors were destroyed. I found what little elevation and Hills that we have around here and just ran them all. And I’m, my hip flexors are torn apart today, so that’s, that’s bad news. That’s pretty bad news because I’m [00:09:00] on concrete. Like it’s easy, like if you’re running just on concrete, I probably have no problems at all, just running as long as you want to run.
But when you start having to pick your legs up just slightly more than normal, that’s when the hip flexor start to get a little more taxed. And, I might try and do that one more time for the Spartan race, maybe 10 miles, and then just call it, be ready. I’m ready.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. I’m gonna run probably after this podcast, having some lingering hip issues from this past year, but, just going to see how it
Jerred Moon: goes.
I think those physical therapists are getting in your head, making you think you’re just like broken.
Ashley Hicks: You’re always broken.
Joe Courtney: Nope. I think they fixed a lot of me, but there’s just a lot of me to fit
Jerred Moon: and then they sell you on what’s broken neck. They’re like, Hey, why don’t you come back? You get a little,
Joe Courtney: I mean, like we said, it’s mostly a social business, social vision with some soft tissue work.
Jerred Moon: It’s okay.
Kyle Shrum: Joe needs friends.
Jerred Moon: I do. Yeah. I’m like, Hey Joe, can we do this a this. Time tomorrow yet? Well, I have a massage. I’m like, dude, what is this physical therapy? I never, I didn’t get one [00:10:00] massage in my physical therapy visits this year. I didn’t, not a single massage. I don’t know how you pulled that off.
Maybe
Ashley Hicks: you’re doing it wrong.
Joe Courtney: It just like me so much.
Jerred Moon: You don’t
Kyle Shrum: gotta be
friendly.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Okay. Let’s get into beats. Right. That’s
Kyle Shrum: what’s for
Jerred Moon: dinner. All right. So we have, it should be, and we’ll get into it. so the actual study, and we’re going to kind of take a broader approach here, but the study is no longer beating around the Bush.
I like how they, they got creative. This is the actual name of the scientific study, so no longer beating around the Bush, a review of potential sex differences with dietary nitrate supplementation by Wickham and Preet. Sprite. here in 2002, it’s disco spree, 29, 2019, done up in the, in the Canada area.
pretty cool. So I wanna I want to give a quick, Just if you, if you guys didn’t know, so I wrote an article a long time ago about beets [00:11:00] in general, then we’ll hop into the study. But, so dietary nitrate, you’ve probably seen, what was that popular supplement back in the day? Everyone took it.
It was like no explode. Yes. You knew it right away. no explode. And so that the whole premise behind supplements like that working, other than the excessive amounts of caffeine and other junk that they put in there, is dietary nitrate. So a dietary nitrate from beets hits the saliva in your mouth and introduces itself to the bacteria and your tongue.
This brings a compound from to in Oh two, which is active nitrite. Next, this new a couple of heads into the stomach and meets another new friend. Stomach acid boom in Oh two is now reduced to Eno or nitric. Oxide. So that’s the process. And it’s this nitric oxide that increases blood flow to your muscles and increases your ability to produce energy.
It’s pretty interesting. And in the study, another thing that they mentioned was in 1992, it was awarded molecule molecule of the year. So that’s quite a prestigious award for a molecule to [00:12:00] get, and I’m sure that, Nitric oxide is holding onto that plaque somewhere and it’s, and its bedroom or office.
All right. That’s the, that’s the breakdown of a nitric oxide and how awesome it is. So, getting into the study, I’ll just go over to the quick, so it was a narrative review. Have you guys seen one of these yet? I’ve not seen a narrative review. This is my first, I
Joe Courtney: was confused about how it related to the, Systemic worry or whatever we’ve done
Jerred Moon: before. So a lot of those other ones, like a meta analysis or systematic review, like they, those are studies in and of themselves. So what they do is they take. They’re like, Hey, we’re gonna, we’re going to study studies as our study. But they have to set all these parameters about what their study will include.
They’d be like, okay, well, if you didn’t have females in your study, we’re gonna throw it out. If you didn’t have this, throw it out. So they said their parameters. That’s what I like. Meta analysis, we’ll do a narrative review, is they just literally pull all of the literature on a specific topic and they give you.
[00:13:00] The findings or the idea. So they’re not studying the studies necessarily, or having any strict criteria, criteria, the narrative review, they’re just like looking at everything, which is cool because it doesn’t throw anything out and you really get to look at everything. But what they found, more than a hundred, you a hundred studies, all had male only samples compared to seven studies with only females.
So there’s just not a, a wide range of male and females. And literature in general. And that’s, that’s something I’ll get into more, but I, I’d love to hear your guys’ thoughts on the study. I can start with Joe.
Joe Courtney: it was very sciency. It was kinda hard to get into at first for that. but it looks like it was, I guess this, I don’t know if other narrowed reviews do this for, it seemed like the main motivation was to spur another study.
So it’s like . They tried to find the limitations and all these, just so that I can propose another study.
Jerred Moon: Did you call a scientific study? Science age? I said, did you call a [00:14:00] scientific study sciency? Yes. It was very tiny science with sciency. A lot of them in that way. They’re like more research is necessary and it’s kind of just taking the next steps.
But yeah, they. They really dive into it. Ashley, what are your thoughts?
Ashley Hicks: Well, from being a female, I wish they would have done a little more female scientific research, but you know, that’s fine. And then, but at the, at the end of it, I mean, at the end of the day, it beats are not bad for you.
Right. And that’s what he says. He’s like, might as well just continue to take these beats because there’s no negative effects on this. So whether you’re male or female. Just eat some beaks, and apparently it’s not bad for you.
Jerred Moon: So, yeah. And that, that’s how I look at almost everything when we dive into these studies, is just the ROI.
You know, what’s, what’s my cost versus the, the ROI, you know? And if, if the cost is, Oh, or you’re going to have to eat a vegetable [00:15:00] to see possible increases in performance. Okay. Why, you know, why not do it when the, when there are other things of like, Oh, well you have to like dip your head in cold water and then get your hands cold and then, and be upside down to see this potential performance benefit.
You’re like, I dunno if it’s worth it, but eating a vegetable for increased performance seems pretty straight forward. Kyle, what were your thoughts?
Kyle Shrum: I’ll just kind of kinda thought about it from a gross from athletic perspective and, that’s kind of what we’re doing is trying to. Boil it down to, you know, kind of the light person level.
And, because I think it, I think it referenced that with some of the studies had, you know, only S only looked at people who are very active. And then other studies looked at kind of a range of people, the range of activity. And it was pretty straight forward of what you would kind of expect of like people who are not as athletic.
and then started implementing. With the nitrate. they [00:16:00] saw better benefits and the people who were already athletic. And so that’s just kind of a straight forward thing of, you know, this is something that, that if you’re just a beginner, you’re going to see better benefits from it. but it doesn’t mean that as you progress, you won’t keep seeing benefits from it.
It’s just that same thing of, as you get more athletic or as you. You know, increase your work capacity and things like that, like these affects are not as big because you don’t have as much work to do. Does that make sense?
Jerred Moon: It does make sense. And sometimes things can be like counterintuitive to that because like if you are not super healthy and you drink a ton of caffeine and then you try a different supplements, like a N a nootropic, you’re like, I didn’t see any cognitive benefit whatsoever, but it’s like, Whoa.
You’re not healthy at all, so your body’s not like working properly to do this stuff. And then you’re kind of saying the opposite is like the non-athletes saw the greatest results and then the athlete saw the least results. Yup.
Joe Courtney: But as long as this all results, I
[00:17:00] Jerred Moon: mean that’s all that
Joe Courtney: is always going to be a smaller percent with the a well trained.
And
Jerred Moon: that’s something that you have to look at and keep in mind. let me, so I pulled up some other studies, just beats in general and then I want to go back to the female versus male thing and, and kind of, well, if everybody has like their own takeaway from this study, like we’ll, we’ll go over that.
Cause I think my takeaway might be a little bit different than. Then just the conclusion of this study, but, from other studies, and we’ll link to a lot of these in the show notes, but dietary supplementation with beet root juice speeds via two kinetics and enhances exercise tolerance during a severe intensity.
I’ve never heard of that before, by the way. That’s how it’s actually labeled in the study. So severe intensity exercise when it initiated from an elevated metabolic rate. Beet root juice treatments, increased plasma nitric oxide concentration and decreased cardiac afterload and myocardial oxygen demand at rest and during three sub maximum levels of aerobic exercise be [00:18:00] root juice positively affects performance of swimmers as it reduces the aerobic energy costs and increases the workload at anaerobic threshold.
A single dude dose of beet root juice lowered VOT during submaximal exercise and enhance the tryout. Time trial performance of train cyclists in normal Barrack hypoxia and ha has been shown to improve 2000 meter rowing performance in highly trained athletes. And there are at least 60 other studies, aside from creatine.
I think beets may not, cause it’s not technically a supplement. There’s a, there are a lot of beat beat supplements on the market right now. We can talk about that. But, like I, I really feel that, after creatine and caffeine beats may be like the most studied performance enhancer for athletes now because there’s just so much literature on it and there’s nothing really that negative about it unless you have some sort of, other than if you’ve consumed a lot of beats, your urine color and your.
Can’t get a little bit scary, like real fast if you don’t know [00:19:00] what’s going to happen with that. But, yeah, it’s pretty cool. So let’s go takeaways. We’ll start with you, Joe. Like, what’s your takeaway from, from the study?
Joe Courtney: Well, one of their things that I wanted to study, male and female, like the, the difference between that, but I think a baseline for those would be good.
And this is probably a, a side thing about, how, or if. if you, if you take a, I, and I’ve seen this before, is that a male, a female on lifting like 90% of their one night max for max reps, I think females will always lift more reps. for some reason. and I forget why, so that if they do more studies on these, cause the, one of the things that they wanted to focus on is, a sub max effort and lifting.
Is to get that baseline first and then do it with that. but yeah, it’s easy to supplement with cause apart from beats, there’s, what salary. There’s a certain other dark greens and things like that that also have it. so you can throw those in the juices as well [00:20:00] and don’t. Another take main takeaway would be, if you’re focusing on the actual.
Was it not nitrate? I’ll supplement with it like actual supplement, like buy supplements.
Jerred Moon: you’re saying don’t submit with like nitric oxide.
Joe Courtney: Well, don’t buy in supplement form. Just get beats just to just get the real stuff.
Jerred Moon: That’s the easiest way. I mean, a lot of the supplements out there that do it now from, you know, the scary version, you know, explode.
I would agree 100% but then there are other ones that are like dehydrated. They’re just dehydrated beets, you know? And so it is pretty easy to just eat it. But I did religiously consumed beats for this reason for maybe a year or more. And I would, I would make an argument for supplementing if it’s like strict organic, dehydrated beets, because.
I was juicing the beats cause I don’t want to, like, I was trying to do it as a, as a pre-workout, right? Not a, I don’t wanna [00:21:00] like pre-workout consume like a bunch of beats. Like that’s just, but I’ll drink it. So I was drinking the beet juice and that’s just a lot of work, man. Juicing it and everything.
Like it just became a lot of work. Even though I did it for a long time, I stopped doing it because juicers are messy and a problem. I also haven’t tried any of these supplements out yet, so I’m, I’m not saying I’ve done it, but. I could see why someone might, so
Joe Courtney: I, I went the more nasty route and just consumed them.
I would just pop, pop a small beat in my mouth 30 to 40 minutes for a workout and call a day.
Jerred Moon: That’s awful. Huh?
Joe Courtney: Yeah. It wasn’t that great because most of the time when I would be eating cause I didn’t want to cook on myself. I would be eat the canned beets, which just have zero flavor.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. I actually hate eats.
I mean I’m, I just really don’t like the flavor of beats at all.
Joe Courtney: So, yeah, I don’t really mind them. It’s whatever. I tried the fermented ones cause they actually taste a little bit better, but then there’s just so gassy in my stomach. And funny enough, as I was perusing through your article and some of the [00:22:00] comments, somebody posted that if you eat the fermented ones, it loses 90% of the nitrites nitrates.
There you
Jerred Moon: go.
Joe Courtney: And they posted a study supporting it. So don’t do it for mentioned once, cause that’s good to know. You lose, you lose the benefits and it makes you kind of gassy. Yeah.
Ashley Hicks: I wonder what it strips the beats of like, I don’t know, make the nitrates away.
Joe Courtney: Fermenting in life in general is just a magical thing that I don’t understand.
Ashley Hicks: But
Jerred Moon: same with, I’m just like cooking things, right? Like you cook a vegetable, it’s not as as good. and I just wanna go back to your, your study on, on females. I don’t know, I can’t remember the name of the documentary, but you just reminded me of it. It’s, it was about some, a female runner, ultra runner who was like trying to break.
Maybe running record across the Appalachian trail or something like that, but they had an interesting fact in that documentary. It was like after, after 50 miles, after a 50 mile, the 50 mile distance, the [00:23:00] difference between male and female athletes drops to zero. Like it becomes a, you know how males are typically.
Higher performing in most sports, in, in distances and everything like that. But after mile 50, in these ultra sports, the difference between male and females is almost nonexistent. And they are pointing to female mental toughness and you know, all these other things like over longer duration and periods.
I just found that really interesting. I don’t know if they’re just talk, it wasn’t like a study they’re just talking about in the results of ultra races that like it can be if it’s over 50 miles, it’s, it’s. Up for grabs, whether or not I’m a male or female will, we’ll win it. So that’s just an interesting fact.
Ashley, what was your takeaway?
Ashley Hicks: My takeaway is beets have the capacity to improve, or influence your muscle function. So I mean, like I said earlier, like why not take them, there’s not a negative effect to them. And then kind of the jump on the. Kyle bat bandwagon, if you will, for us, if it’s like [00:24:00] a garage gym athlete, just kind of like what we tell our athletes too.
If you have been working out for a while, you’re going to see results potentially in a longer period of time, in a longer span. So maybe you know the beats, you would see something happened within a longer timeframe versus like, you know, Oh, I’m just going to try this for a week or two, or something like that.
Jerred Moon: So. Yeah, definitely long end. And I really do think the timing matters. If you read into a lot of the studies
Ashley Hicks: before.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, yeah. And then going back, okay. Going all the way back to the game changers movie. You know, they’re talking about, the vegetables, like dilating blood vessels and, you know, making blood flow better and all these other things.
Well, beats do that and so does a lot of like leafy greens and everything. And you can. Eat the vegetables that produce that effect, but also consume meat. it just, it’s not a one or the other. It’s not, it’s not keto or vegan. Like you can. Army carnivore or vegan, you can get the same effects [00:25:00] of, opening up those blood vessels with beats alone, no matter your diet.
Kyle, what was your takeaway? well,
Kyle Shrum: actually, kinda took mine, but I appreciate her jumping on my bandwagon, so I have a bandwagon now. That’s a pretty big deal.
Joe Courtney: wagon up to,
Kyle Shrum: right. Hey, you got to start
Jerred Moon: somewhere, man. It’s true.
Kyle Shrum: I would say. As far as like, one thing that kind of stood out to me was the reason that they said, more studies need to be done for women is because of those, those, biological markers.
specifically of the study, a study of it may show that it doesn’t affect women as much, especially when it talks about like they talk about, heart rate, because beats can help lower your, your resting heart rate. And they made the point that women in general have a lower, has resting heart rate than men anyway.
And so it’s kind of the same thing. Like I said earlier, you know, depending on your athletic level, they’re gonna affect you in different ways. But also, if your heart rate is already lower than [00:26:00] somebody else’s, your numbers may not drop as much, you know, or the percentage may not be as much or something like that.
And I think the point for that is like, when you’re looking at these things and you’re looking at results. From studies and in articles and things like that. you really, it’s nice to have some information, but also the best thing to do is just go and test it on yourself. You know what I mean?
And if it, if it gets you results, then that’s really all that matters. It doesn’t matter what the study says or anything like that. And so. You know, if you eat Bates and they, and they help you out a lot, then eight beats every single day. You know, if you eat beets and they make you sick, then don’t eat beets anymore.
You know what I mean? But don’t compare, you know, like your experience with babies to somebody else’s. Just find what works for you. And. And do it. Also, it kind of convinced me that maybe I need to eat some more beats. I don’t think I’m, I don’t think I’m really there yet. We’ll see.
Jerred Moon: You should start experimenting with as many beats in your diet before the Spartan race.
Kyle Shrum: I am absolutely [00:27:00] not going to do it before the
Joe Courtney: Spartan race. My Fanny bag.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. I’ll have the salt biscuits. They’ll have the, the beat
Joe Courtney: focus. Get some
Jerred Moon: beats. Here we go. Delicious. Rest stops. Okay. so. Great takeaways. I love the N equals one thing that you’re talking about. A lot of people are, I highly.
Encourage that. Like the only experiment that matters is the one that’s going to make a difference for you. It doesn’t matter. These studies are just a jumping off point for everybody, right? It’s like, am I headed in the right direction? It’s like, well, science says this might be effective. Like, okay, and let me go see if it’s effective for me.
I think that’s a, that’s a great takeaway. I would say the obvious takeaway is eat beets. Yes. There might be some difference between male or female. I think it’s all moving in the right direction. I said, the author suggests that compared to men whim, women have higher baseline plasma nitrite and experience larger increases in plasma nitrate, but experience smaller reductions in blood pressure and less consistent improvements in exercise economy following nitrate supplementation.
[00:28:00] So it helps, but maybe not as much. But the big takeaway I had was. Understanding a study, and they mentioned the sex gap in here, there’s off, there’s oftentimes a population gap. There are always these gaps in performance. Things that you guys have already mentioned in our conversation. Like was this study done on trained athletes or untrained athletes?
was it male, predominantly female? Things like that. Whenever you’re looking at a study to try and prove your point or head down a different direction, or you just make a decision. You really have to dive in just a little bit deeper to the study. Then reading the conclusion statement, which is a, you know, beets are good for you.
You need to really put that in perspective of is it helping the same population as you like, is that cause that that does make a huge difference that, you know, they have actual markers here that saying it’s a little bit different from what little data they have on females versus males. But I think that’s true and in a lot of different studies is like.
Okay. Who was the study done on? Are they the same age? You know, all these other factors that you need to look into. So that’d be my takeaway. [00:29:00] If you read studies, if you only rely on us to read studies for you, that’s fine too. We’ll try and give you the best, best information possible. All right.
That’s, that’s it. That’s beats. Does anybody have anything else on beets? Eat them. It’s going to lower your blood pressure and make you live longer. All right, let’s, let’s hop over to Spartan race prep. That’s the topic for today. So the, you guys won’t hear from us again until after the race is complete.
So let’s, let’s talk about, you know, our last parting shots, prep things that you have, anything that you’re doing, thoughts? I’ll start with you, Joe. What prep. So, and the reason I want to go into this, cause none of us has specifically trained for Spartan. Like I just mentioned, I’ve been one SA seven mile run.
Like that’s it. You know? And so none of us have like picked. Yeah. We’re training for this half marathon in the mountain with 30 obstacles. Like we didn’t train for it specifically. So what prep are you. Have you been doing [00:30:00] mentally and nutritionally anything aside from going to Vegas and maybe derailing a lot
Joe Courtney: of your
Jerred Moon: projects?
And at the end there’s nothing. I’ll just move on to the next person, but Joe, what, what prep are you doing or plan to do before the race?
Joe Courtney: mentally I’ve been looking at the weather and hoping it gets warmer. That’s my prayer.
Jerred Moon: Hope it is always a good strategy. Yeah,
Joe Courtney: it’s probably not going to work, but you know, here we go.
and then I’m going to, I’m about to start running, just, I’m going to go for a run now. hopefully address any smashing and flexibility and, and stuff that I just need to work out and loosen up versus, yeah, so focusing more on that. Not too much.
Jerred Moon: You’re just going crack the knuckles. Let’s get going.
Joe Courtney: Yeah, I’m S it’s, it’s kinda like a, I’m just going to ignore it until it’s there and I’m like, Oh, Hey, okay, I’ll, I’ll go do this. That’s fine.
Jerred Moon: That’s a perfect strategy. How about you actually.
Ashley Hicks: I’ve been doing what we did, box step ups, whether that be with, like a sandbag or like a plate.
And then, if we have, [00:31:00] like yesterday I had box jumps and it, so I’ve been doing, 24 inches, not necessarily 30, but just to, I don’t know, explode up more, I guess. And. Make it harder. And then I’ve been running on my off days, which typically I don’t work out seven days a week. I’m only at six.
I’m not at Jerred level, so I’m not
Jerred Moon: getting too crazy. But my schedule has been crazy lately. So that’s five.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah. So tomorrow will be, but I’m not at like seven miles. I’m maybe more like four or five is the longest I’ve done yet. So I probably need to up. That too, but yeah. And then, I’m just staying on my normal macros, especially for the women’s health stuff right now.
But, definitely race day I will not be doing local, so that’s going to go out the
window.
Jerred Moon: Increasing carbon take, probably my opinion is seven days out. And so not any like aggressive carb, [00:32:00] bloating meal like the day before, but if you consume 200 grams of carbs a day, like increased to two 50 every day leading up to just, and I’ve mentioned this for, there’s no way to know if your glycogen stores are full.
Like it’s impossible to know that. So you just have to eat more carbohydrates and. Tell them up, Kyle, what are you doing? it’s gotta be some prayer involved. Right?
Kyle Shrum: There’s definitely prayer involved.
actually, actually, I also chose to work on my mental toughness where I don’t get a peer pressured into stuff anymore.
but,
Jerred Moon: yeah. You know, the only reason we’re doing race traces because of you. It’s not
Kyle Shrum: what? No, I’m not the one who
Jerred Moon: did it.
Kyle Shrum: Well then I got peer pressured by Trampas and the other cow. That’s a good question.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, that’s the gay. They did it to you. It didn’t, I wasn’t like, Hey, this is a great idea.
I was more like, Oh, well let’s, I’ll piggyback onto that. That good idea. Yeah. Okay. That’s what I have. I’m not deleting all of this.
Kyle Shrum: I [00:33:00] remember getting peer pressure. That’s how,
Jerred Moon: that’s a story. Oh my. So
Kyle Shrum: yeah, just trying to stay, just trying to stay consistent with the programming. and actually thinking that maybe this cycle as a team, we should have done indoor track
Jerred Moon: 100 H two K.
Joe Courtney: do you want to do strength? I
Jerred Moon: wanted
Kyle Shrum: to, I want to do strength all the time. That’s just my beef. And then maybe I survive the Spartan race. Maybe I don’t, but I was doing what I wanted to do before him. Anyway. This is going to be the longest distance I’ve ever done. the Spartan race, the Spartan super I did in July was the longest that I’ve ever done.
So now I’m going to break that PR. With this one and we’ll probably be the longest distance I’ll ever do. I don’t really see myself going any further than half marathon, but I’m got some new shoes. This shoe that’s out. That’s one thing that I would say to people, like, don’t skimp on the shoes
Jerred Moon: that you wear
Kyle Shrum: cause I’ll wear, I’ll wear cheap shoes [00:34:00] for the first three Spartans I did.
And yeah, I got some good shoes this time, so hopefully. Those will help out because you can’t really run the race.
Jerred Moon: A shoe game.
Kyle Shrum: Yeah. anyway. yeah, just trying to stay consistent and have a positive outlook and just, you know, try not to die.
Ashley Hicks: We’re going to have an innovate team. Yeah. You got innovate.
Kyle Shrum: Yup. Yup.
Jerred Moon: So you’re all innovate. Great. I’m doing
Joe Courtney: well. You’re in the shoe market, so
Jerred Moon: I won’t get innovative. I’ve tried. I bought one pair and that won’t happen again. Not because they’re bad shoes, because I, my foot so narrow and they don’t agree with that. Apparently I
Joe Courtney: thought they were better for narrow feet.
Ashley Hicks: No,
Jerred Moon: they are. I don’t have narrow feet. What did I just say? I have such Gardner. I don’t the opposite of what I, what I just said is the truth.
Kyle Shrum: You don’t even know your own feet, bro.
Jerred Moon: I have. I have very wide feet at every point of the foot, so I’m running an ultra, [00:35:00] so I have the same ultra as I did the Spartan in.
I bought them when I moved to North Carolina and did a bunch of trail running in them. I wore them for the Spartan that we did last year, and then I left them in a bag with mud on them for about eight months and just pull them out and hose them off. And that’s what I’ll be running in next week.
They’re a little stiff. I think that things are breaking, a little stiff. they could use, they could use in like, conditioning. Well, that’s what. I don’t. Okay. You know what, I’m going to, I’ll just re, I’ll, I’ll take this as a personal note. We don’t have to talk about it anymore and I’ll, I’ll address it later.
So, shoe game I think is important. That’s right. But they are good shoes. I love the ultras when they’re newer. All right. The only other thing I’ll hit on, so things I’m doing to prep, if you are supplementing or plan to supplement during the race, we’ve talked about this before, just making sure you test that stuff ahead of time.
[00:36:00] You see what I got here?
Joe Courtney: Gender biscuits or fuck biscuits.
Jerred Moon: That’s what it looks like, doesn’t it? Biscuit
Joe Courtney: containers.
Jerred Moon: Emily brought these two. I’m going to open it up real quick, and for all of those who can’t see this, this isn’t going on YouTube, so I apologize. let’s see here. I’m going to open it up where I can shoot in
Kyle Shrum: unboxing video.
Jerred Moon: It’s an unboxing audio, but look, it’s like a KFC box. Like, yeah,
Joe Courtney: that’s why it’s viscous,
Kyle Shrum: what it looks like.
Jerred Moon: but there, those Clif blocks that they actually give you in the, in the race, I had a good experience with them during that Spartan race. I think Joe vividly remembers it. I was like a ghost.
I’m about halfway through the race and then I had like five of those blocks and I started running again.
Joe Courtney: What, Oh, is it the, the, the little gel things?
Jerred Moon: Yeah. They’re
Joe Courtney: like Gatorade ones, although they may be Gatorade, but I didn’t know if they were also those.
Ashley Hicks: Oh, and I have,
Jerred Moon: I have two boxes. So if you guys.
Joe Courtney: Two Fanny packs. We’re good to go.
Ashley Hicks: I also have a lot, so [00:37:00] I think we’ll
Jerred Moon: be going. Yeah, I’m, I’m really bringing more for everyone else who’s not listening or ignoring our advice right now. They’re like, gonna run with us, and they’re like, no, no, no. I’ll be fine. And like, well. Maybe I’ll just, I’ll give you a little glucose halfway through.
Just make sure you’re all right. so that’s it. Making sure that that stuff’s good with you. I mentioned carb loading, doing that. Probably starting the Friday before the race or Friday, a week before the race. I’m increasing my, this Friday increasing carbohydrate intake. I’ll start doing that.
Cause of whatever, it’s almost noon right now. I haven’t had a carbohydrate yet. That’s a bad, that’s a bad boat to be in when you’re, when you’re going to these race. So I have to flip that around. and then maybe I’ll just go vegan. That’s a good idea. No, that’s a, that was a big reason I stopped that.
And then hydration. Hydration really starts at least three or four days before. And hydration also involves electrolytes, not just the water. So I’ve already started, there you go. Oh, wait, what? We’re going to talk about that in a second. I’ve already started increasing electric intake and water and I’m not trying, like [00:38:00] a lot of the stuff I’m doing is more performance based.
Like the recommendations, like, Hey, if you really want to crush this race, do all these things like, and that’s not what we’re going out there to do. Like, we’re not trying to set PRS, I’m just looking to finish. I don’t want anybody to get injured. I want to help people out if they need help and, and have a good time.
So some of this could be overkill, but I think we’re going to kill enough comfort doing a half marathon on a mountain that I don’t also need a cramp or, you know, a dehydration or something else to add to that misery. So that’s why I’m taking a lot of these things into account now going to a vote, because I think that, of the four here, we may have a split, kill cliff or fit aid.
All in favor of fit aid, say aye. Aye.
Joe Courtney: Aye.
Jerred Moon: Aye. So that’s Joe and I. And then all in favor of kill cliff say no.
Kyle Shrum: I’m not saying
Jerred Moon: no.
Kyle Shrum: I actually haven’t. [00:39:00] I’m going purely based on taste. Because I think Eric covered the same from both of them. So the kill coach just tastes better. Like
Joe Courtney: no,
Ashley Hicks: stop a and fit aid, I think is what it is too.
Like I was trying to figure out what is it, and then I read the ingredients. I’ll like, Oh, it has a Gamay in
Kyle Shrum: it. I like that. And I’ll, you know what, I’ll drink my food aid at the finish line. Because I’m going to want to drink something and that’s going to be fine, but I
Ashley Hicks: just,
Jerred Moon: I, I normally drink a lot of fish AIDS after I’m done.
It’s not normally just one anybody who doesn’t want theirs. If I can go back and act like I didn’t get one already. Yeah. Any, any tricks I can do to squeeze at least two or three fit AIDS and then
Joe Courtney: may be way less ingredients. Just say,
Jerred Moon: maybe I’ll bring some fit AIDS to the house afterwards and, all right.
Anybody on the fence? This your last chance. Last chance. If anyone is listening to the podcast register, join the garage team, athlete team. Get off the fence. I [00:40:00] know there’s at least one guy listening to this in Kansas. Not going to go any further into naming names, but he talks about coming.
You need to come, and that’s about it. On that. Now we can move to the a workout. Let’s see, Kyle, you are going to brief it. What’s the workout man and ho?
Kyle Shrum: Yeah, I forgot I volunteered for that. yeah, this one’s easy though. the, not the workouts, not
Jerred Moon: a brief is easy.
Kyle Shrum: DIA de Los Muertos, that’s as good as my Spanish excellent is going to get, it’s, to death by workouts.
so have you never done a death by workout? They’re actually really fun. It’s actually one of my favorite formats of workout. Very simple, but, you really got to push yourself, in the later rounds, and they’ll sneak up on you sometimes. But, the first workout is the death by 10 meter sprint.
So in the, you’re going to have a running clock. and so in the first minute, you do one 10 minute or sprint in the second minute, you do two to 10 meter sprints there a minute, you do three all the way until you [00:41:00] cannot complete the number of sprints you have to do within the minute. So each round, whatever time you’re not spending sprinting, you’re spending resting.
so like I said, the early rounds. can counter trick you and kind of low you, low you into, a sense of security. And then those later rounds come up and, really kick you in the butt. after you die on the sprints, you’re going to rest in death for five minutes. Then you’re going to do death by pushups.
and it’s the same format. So the first minute you’ll do one pushup, second minute to, on and on and on until you can’t finish the number of pushups in the minute anymore. And then you’re done. And officially
Jerred Moon: dead. And it is, this was my, other than Murph or the , this is probably my favorite workout to program when I was in the military for large.
Groups, when I was physical training leader, because especially if there are a lot of new people because you start off so easy, it’s incredibly [00:42:00] deceptive. Like if it’s your first time ever doing a death by workout, you’re like, this is dumb. Like, that’s how you start. You’re like, this is dumb.
I thought I was going to get a workout today, especially in the running one. You run 10 meters in a minute and you’re like, ah, okay. But by the end, you’re like sprinting your ass off. And it gets pretty serious pretty fast. So there, there are a lot of fun. I’d like to hear Joe’s thoughts on how it’s, I, I feel like it’s impossible to game this, but you know, he always has a strategy and I think maybe this one might stump him.
So what do you have, Joe?
Joe Courtney: I don’t think there’s a strategy, but. yeah, I dunno. The only thing that I would do for the sprints is not actually sprint. The first couple.
Jerred Moon: I knew that’s what you’re going to say,
Joe Courtney: cause I’ve done those workouts in the past where you start off like that and you’re like, okay, I’m just gonna lead you really do this.
but other than that, no. There’s nothing. No, not really. I think you could do that
Jerred Moon: would help on the hunger on the sprints, but I actually, this isn’t just a go faster advice that I always give, but with the pushups. [00:43:00] I would actually recommend trying to get the pushups as done as fast as you can, because if you, if you want to stretch your 15 pushups out over the course of a minute, that’s actually gonna hurt you in the long run.
So like, get the, get the pushups done as fast as you can. That way you get as much rest as you can sprinting. That’s a little bit different metabolically. So, yeah, if you want to, you want to coast until you can’t. I mean, I had some pretty, I mean, I’ve never seen someone get into the 30s on the pushups, but I’ve seen high twenties.
And I’ve also seen, above 20 on the sprints. Wow. Yeah. Pretty intense stuff. And normally Boston individually. Yeah, normally done on like a, yeah. You need like running it. Cleats styles are like shuttle style. I mean, it’s the best way to do it, in my opinion. All right. Strategy from Kyle or Ashley?
You guys have anything ladies first.
Ashley Hicks: Take your beet juice. no. And then don’t coast on the sprints cause then it’s nice
[00:44:00] Jerred Moon: Brent, disagree. Just
Joe Courtney: getting warmed up. Don’t pull something. Don’t buy something in the first couple of
Jerred Moon: rounds you
Kyle Shrum: warm up before you go.
Jerred Moon: All right, Kai, you have anything.
Kyle Shrum: no, I don’t, I don’t think there’s really any strategy to it. It’s one of my favorites to do actually. I, I liked the desk by the desk by format is just really simple. and especially for this one, you need no equipment, like anybody can do it. You know what I mean? If you’ve got, if you’ve got 10 meters to sprint and you’ve got a timer, you know, you can go get a cheap watch at Walmart, you know, to keep your time and you find a way to.
Wallach golfer, measure out 10 meters, you know, you can do this workout. So like there’s really, there’s really nobody that can’t do it, you know? Except people who just refuse to do it, you know? And I think that’s what I like about it, is just, it’s the epitome of simple, not easy just to get out and do it.
Yeah. Don’t, don’t skimp on the sprint. And it’s not a [00:45:00] sprint. If you’re not sprinting, it’s a, it’s a job.
Ashley Hicks: It’s a young,
Kyle Shrum: it’s a young, you can’t even jog for 10 meters anyway. You might as well just sprint. It is 10 liters. Yeah.
Jerred Moon: I would actually, when I did program this in the military, there are people who would, there are people who just don’t care.
Right. And so they would gain it. Because the whole thing is like, once you can’t do it anymore, you’re out. So some people would like, just kind of try just enough to look like they’re trying. And then, you know, in the, yeah, they’re done at like seven or something and like, Oh, and then I would put caps on it of like, if you don’t make it too.
This number, you know, you’re running five miles or you’re, you’ll do planks until the rest of us are finished. Like I would always do that. Unfortunately, I can’t do that to anybody listening. just cause it’s not enforceable. But Hey, Joe, maybe. Yeah, maybe we’ll do that workout.
Joe Courtney: Jog the first couple.
I’ll make it way past
[00:46:00] Jerred Moon: 10. Let’s see. Well, I’m going to have to fit in Murph, while we’re. Well, we’re in North Carolina. You guys thinking in the day before or the day after
Ashley Hicks: the, no,
Kyle Shrum: not day before.
Jerred Moon: Not before. Okay.
Kyle Shrum: Maybe. Maybe this Thursday.
Jerred Moon: I’m actually, I’m not joking. I will probably do it the day before, not cause I want to be hardcore, but after way worse.
Cause I’m be so jacked up. You know, you guys don’t have to do it. Don’t worry about it. I just, you can watch. I’m not doing it. It wasn’t even a thought in my
Kyle Shrum: head. You don’t, you don’t have to give me that permission. That’s not happening.
Joe Courtney: RSVP note.
Jerred Moon: Well you guys are just going to sit there at the cabin and watch me do it.
Then. Yup. Probably. Okay. Or watch something.
Joe Courtney: You’ll probably be done by the time I get there.
Ashley Hicks: I’ll, I’ll do like a mobility session while you do Murph. We’ll be rolling mountain.
Joe Courtney: Kyle and I can do the tight rope.
Jerred Moon: I want to do, I want to kind of swim to my black line. Yeah. I’ll bring the Slack line.
I also think I should do a. How about a [00:47:00] mile swim instead of a mile run? No,
Ashley Hicks: in the cold water. What is wrong with you
Jerred Moon: and miles swims way longer, like way harder than a, than a run. That’s like the worst thing on the planet. Okay, that’s, that’s it guys. I won’t, I won’t drag this podcast on anymore except for saying I’ll take it this week.
You guys are off the hook. Join garage, the mathlete because it’s awesome. And we are meeting up as a community here in like a week in North Carolina. To get together some bad ass athletes and do a really fun race, and it is going to be fun. It’s going to be a good time. And I think the community is the biggest thing that sets us apart from, from anything else.
Like I, we, we have, amazing programming, but programming is only as good as the people who do it, you know, and the people who will stick to it. So I think that’s what sets us apart from a lot of other programming. services out there. So sign for garage gym athlete. you can go to garage gym, athlete.com do that at anytime.
You have 14 day free trial and that is it. All right guys, [00:48:00] thanks for joining me and that’s all we have on beats in Spartan, this piece. Thanks for listening to the garage gym athlete podcast. If you want to learn more, go to garage gym athlete.com you can learn about our training. Let us send you a copy of our book, the garage gym athlete, or you can even get featured on the garage gym athlete podcast.
Thanks for listening.