Hey, Athletes! Do you use caffeine throughout the week? How about in your workouts? Listen to this week’s episode to find out about caffeine and how it can affect your training!
Episode 35 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!
Caffeine and Mental Toughness
On this week’s podcast Jerred, Joe, and Ashley give us their updates and announcements before diving into the study. They discuss caffeine and how it can improve performance for both male and females. Beware, there’s a catch for the everyday athlete! During this week’s topic discussion the coaches give their own take on activities for building mental toughness. They finish out the podcast talking about this week’s Meet Yourself Saturday workout, Broken Arrow, one of the toughest in the Eo3 inventory.
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 59-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
- Caffeine Supplementation
- Mental Toughness
- Broken Arrow
- Joe’s Trip to Singapore
- Changing Your Internal Chatter
- Cold Showers
- Updates and Announcements
- 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
Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week
Be sure to listen to this week’s episode:
Related Resources at End of Three Fitness:
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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:
Caffeine and Mental Toughness
[00:00:00] Jerred Moon: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage IOM athlete podcast. I’m your host Jared moon. The garage team athlete podcast is a result of my desire to build 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.
If three fitness.com.
[00:01:00] All right, ladies and gentleman, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Gentleman here with Ashley Hicks. What’s up actually?
Ashley Hicks: Hey, what’s go.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. We got Joe Courtney, what’s up Joe?
Joe Courtney: Hey,
Jerred Moon: how are you doing?
Joe Courtney: Tired
Jerred Moon: little second. I’m going to let you go first to the updates cause you have a lot going on. I want to hear all the updates.
You’re all about it.
Joe Courtney: so jet lag just got back from Singapore. So that was a huge time difference back and forth in a very short vacation, if you want to call it that.
Jerred Moon: What, what? What is the time difference?
Joe Courtney: I think from California, it’s a head 16 hours, so it’s actually, I think it’s easier for your clock to actually just go back eight hours.
Think that makes more sense than I had 16 but it gets, it gets weird. yeah. So over a week it was two red eye flights and a huge time difference change
Jerred Moon: all along is the flight.
Joe Courtney: The leg, the leg from San Fran to Singapore is 17 hours,
Jerred Moon: 17 hour flight, 16 hour [00:02:00] time change. Therefore a couple of days within a
Joe Courtney: year.
All within a week.
Ashley Hicks: First class flying
Joe Courtney: on the way there. First-class. Yeah, it, it was nice because I actually got like six hours of sleep on the plane, but it was still,
Jerred Moon: that’s a lot of sleep. Yeah.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. Well, it helps with first-class.
Jerred Moon: That’s, that’s awesome. I, I, to be honest, I’ve never done any super long flight.
Hmm. I mean, I was born in Germany, so I did have to come back, but I was a
Ashley Hicks: baby. You don’t remember it?
Jerred Moon: I don’t remember it at all, so I’ve just done it when
Joe Courtney: I was to the
Jerred Moon: States or something like that. Yeah. And living in Dallas, if you’re going anywhere in the United States, it’s two and a half hours away.
It doesn’t matter where you want to go. New York, Maine, Washington, Canada, it’s all TJ. All the same cause you’re in the middle. Mexico, Mexico is like 30 minutes. But anyway, yeah. So I have many long flights. We’re thinking about going to Hawaii next year, so [00:03:00] that would be probably end up being the longest flight I’ve done.
Still 17 hours. I might just not go. Like anywhere. It’s a beautiful place. You got to see it like, nah, that’s a long flight. Yeah.
Joe Courtney: I think 17 is probably the longest I’ll ever do. I think I lost. You ever can do, I don’t know.
Jerred Moon: Well, how are you doing otherwise? Are you, are you fixed, broken? Like where are we at in that?
We have, we. I’m gonna ask you
Joe Courtney: actually just said acupuncture yesterday, so that was pretty awesome. It was pretty interesting. You just laughing. What do you laugh about?
Ashley Hicks: You and your PT?
Joe Courtney: I like, I like, I like getting better. I like being a better
Jerred Moon: human. It’s like a hobby at this point. It’s awesome. Yeah,
Joe Courtney: I mean, I come up to awesome.
It was really cool. It’s, it helped reset some things. They also, so each acupuncture’s has like a different style, and this one, she put needles in my shoulder, which that’s what you do, but she also hooked up in East IM electrode to the needle. For a couple of minutes on the front and on the back, and it kind of like reset the muscles.
So like some of my [00:04:00] shoulder muscles either are hyperactive or inactive, and doing the electric through them with the needle kind of hits a reset so that they actually listened to my brain versus doing whatever they’re doing. so that was really cool and it feels great. Yeah.
Ashley Hicks: Do you like Twitch.
Joe Courtney: Oh yeah, big time.
Is Twitch just in that one spot. But yeah, it was just, it was, it was going crazy for awhile.
Jerred Moon: It was good though.
Joe Courtney: Yeah, so that’s about it. Not much for training wise. Just trying to get back
Jerred Moon: into, did you work out in Singapore? Be honest. No, not a single time, no. Did you walk.
Joe Courtney: Oh, well we walked like 12 miles a day.
Jerred Moon: Okay, so you got an extra day two
Joe Courtney: and it was a very humid there. So you know there was mild sweating.
Jerred Moon: I say walking for you is probably like zone zero. Your heart probably doesn’t even know it’s happening.
Ashley Hicks: Pretty much.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Yeah. I got up to 37 beats per minute while walking.
Joe Courtney: No, actually I should’ve checked to see what my, mine was [00:05:00] after acupuncture.
Jerred Moon: But, well, while you do that, Ashley, what’s up? How’s it
Ashley Hicks: like life is good? the only big change for me is I changed my workout time cause Florida is, it’s gonna start getting hot and Conner is dropping the morning nap. He’s kind of shifting. He’s, you know, a guerrilla warfare fighter. That’s what I call kids, right.
When you think you’ve figured them out, they changed their tactics and then you got to go from there. Anyways. so from working out at five 30 in the morning, still getting my sleep though. Trump has put a thing out on Facebook, and I’m in bed by eight. I know it’s early for some people, but that way I can get my reading in, and then Scott and I are probably asleep anywhere from eight 30 to nine so I’m still getting an eight, eight and a half hours of sleep, and then crushing that workout so my body’s kind of have to get used to it.
I still am a, I’m not moving slow, it’s just, it feels. Different
Jerred Moon: that early. Yeah. Yeah. It’s hard. I don’t think I ever got [00:06:00] used to it. I worked out that early probably for like three years and never felt. And not that I felt bad, I just never felt as good as I do in the afternoon. My drain,
Ashley Hicks: right when I was doing today’s, subbies, doing a lot of German volume training, and while I’m doing all these squats, 10 sets of 10 reps with tempo, which is lovely.
All I kept thinking about was, man, I probably would have a lot more energy in the, I know that I would have five 30,
Jerred Moon: but
Ashley Hicks: yeah. And then just adding. So Wei and cheese are good for my diet and I’m still not eating refined sugar, or I haven’t had alcohol in two months now. So,
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Crushing it. Yeah.
Joe Courtney: I’m going to have to deal with the dilemma of waking up to work out early or dealing with the heat and Bahrain, and I think I am probably going to go with the heat just because five 30 wake up sound miserable.
Even more miserable than 120 [00:07:00] degree weather, but
Jerred Moon: we’ll see. You can, yeah. I dunno, you’ll get used to the heat, right? Like, I, I worked, I w I mean, I lived in Florida for a few years and worked out in the middle of the day and same in Texas. It’s miserable, but you get used to it. updates for me. Really just everything, effort, energy-wise, is going towards getting the book, killing comfort out and published.
so if you are a part of any of our groups, like garaging mathlete the Facebook groups. We started at killing comfort, or I started killing comfort page, our group in Facebook. So doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff there. getting people involved with the, just everything that’s going on.
And so if you want to be a part of that, you can still go to Kilian comfort.com and sign up for that. Cause like I said, that’s where a lot of my effort is going towards. trying to get the first in hand copy, you know, within the next couple of weeks. editor is like. They do more like it’s, it’s crazy how.
I thought that I did a decent job, like [00:08:00] writing it, like, I’m like, I’m like, I’m sure there’s some errors, but like, I feel like it’s okay. And, I told you guys the first page, in the first chapter when I got back from the editor had 57 corrections and I was like, Oh, wow. And, so that, that’s just a, it’s a time consuming process cause you have to read through what they suggest cause they can actually just completely change how you were trying to say something.
Cause they’ll be like, this is, you need to say this differently to be, you know, technically correct. And I’m like, Whoa, but I want to say it the other way. And so sometimes you have to be like, reject that change, accept the change. Anyway. So going through all that and trying to get the book out, I don’t have an official date yet because.
I need, I need a copy in my hand first before I can really start, start pushing it. But, end of April, beginning of may is my timeline time frame that I want to get it out there. So we’ll see. It’s more pushing it close, like really fricking close. so go to dot com if you want to be part of that book.
I’m really excited to, to get it out there and get it [00:09:00] published and looking forward to doing that. All right. Getting into. Today’s podcast. I’ve mentioned on the podcast multiple times that the two most studied researched supplements out there, and probably the only ones worth you investing any of your money or time into would be caffeine and creatine and.
Really, I think more so creatine because I just, I feel like it’s a little bit safer than caffeine can be. And does it have as many detrimental effects as caffeine can. But today we are going to be talking specifically about caffeine. There was a study, a study done a 2019. It said women experienced the same ergogenic response to caffeine as men.
So Skinner, 2019. So we are talking about, and the reason I really liked this study. And I’m going to, I’m going to reference a lot of other studies in this. I’m just going to kind of read the results, of some other studies just to let you know how proven caffeine is. But the reason I like this one [00:10:00] specifically is because of the whole, it’s women and men.
They tested both in the study. So there’s no, you know, this is just research in general. I don’t really know why, but. Women kind of get the crap into the stick for, I don’t know why. They just don’t, they’re not studying women in performance and fitness and a lot of reasons. So when we find one that we can cover both, and I feel like it’s adequate, we’re going.
So, like I was saying, just getting into women and men, something that’s studied equally, both. that’s great. So we found the study that’s doing that, and we’re going to talk about it in a little bit more detail. So the study itself, see 27 trained cyclists and triathletes, 11 women, 16 men, and they are between 18 and 45 years old.
All had raced competitively in, we’re currently undergoing intense training. All of the women were also required to be using oral contraceptives, more details about that, blah, blah, blah. Okay. And I think you had something to say about that actually, but, anyway, it was. Apparently the best type of study ever.
[00:11:00] And so it was a randomized, double blind placebo controlled crossover study. And so they, that means the people, the researchers didn’t even know what they were giving. The people didn’t know what they were getting. Each person had to be tested with both. So just really that, that is like the best type of study that you can do.
And there were some. Benefits to taking caffeine. But before I get into any of that, I want to just kind of hear what you guys have to say about caffeine in general, what your big takeaways were from the study. And, we can talk a little bit more about some of the findings and what they did and everything.
So, Ashley, I’ll let you start. Sure.
Ashley Hicks: So for the study, basically what I wrote down here is that caffeine obviously seems to improve both the performance for both male and female, but, they kind of touched on it a little bit. And my first point was, if I was working out in the afternoon, I am not sure that I would supplement with caffeine just because, You know, last week’s podcast, we were talking about sleep [00:12:00] and caffeine can affect your sleep. Gosh, what did they say? Is it six to eight hours? Even after you’ve taken the caffeine? It has not left your body. So,
Jerred Moon: everybody processes a little bit differently. Like, I know I could probably have caffeine.
I’m talking about, I don’t know what’s actually in my blood, but just as far as it affecting sleep, if I have something that like two or 3:00 PM, it’s going to affect my sleep any earlier than that. I’m fine. Emily, like if she, she doesn’t really drink caffeinated coffee anymore, but I know if she has caffeine at like 9:00 AM like as late as 9:00 AM is probably gonna affect her sleep.
It just lasts a lot longer. So everybody’s a way different. But yeah.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah. So if you are working out later in the afternoon, then I would. Tell you, you know, it’s, is the juice worth the squeeze and my personal opinion, no. and I would not supplement with caffeine later on in the afternoon, but, and then, I talked about, you know, since I’m working out now or early, I don’t actually drink any caffeine or I just consumed some water before I wake up.
[00:13:00] Plus I’ve heard that it’s easier to wake up with a cold glass of water than a warm drink. so. I don’t know if that’s actually true or not, but I do that anyways and I work out fasted and I don’t have any coffee before, so I thought, Oh man, maybe I should get in a cup of caffeine. Now we’re looking at this, but the caveat, I don’t want to take your point, Joe, but I’m just going to touch on it, is that if you are a coffee drinker, the more caffeine you consume.
the more used to it, your body gets, I guess the more used to the, your body gets on the caffeine. So you like it won’t work as well for you or maybe not even at all. So if you are constantly drinking coffee, and then try to use like, let’s say. You have a cup in the morning and then let’s say your workout time is 10 didn’t they say you drink it about 30 to 60 minutes prior to, so if you drink a cup of coffee 30 minutes prior, it might not be doing anything for you anyways.
So, yeah, [00:14:00] I dunno my, I guess my takeaway for this was I drink coffee and I probably am not going to supplement with caffeine in order to get, you know, better performance, even though it did say that. It did increase both women and men’s performance. So
Jerred Moon: yeah, I think how much is worth noting a Joe? What did you have?
Joe Courtney: Yeah, the, a dual just of that, that, any habitual coffee drinker knows that as they drink more coffee, they get more resistant to it. So there have more cups of coffee. So if you don’t, I mean any of that, it’s pretty much makes sense. But they sent, they gave them what, three milligrams of caffeine. That’s like almost nothing.
I just Googled like a caffeine, a cup of coffee, and it’s 95 milligrams and a cup of coffee. So three, three is like
Jerred Moon: three milligram, three milligrams per kilogram. Okay. Wait, which 1 cents then that was one of my points because. They recommend a range of three to six milligrams per kilogram, and so for [00:15:00] me, 185 pound male, that’s almost 84 kilograms, that’s 250 to 500 milligrams of caffeine.
Now, two 50 is not crazy. I pulled up some stuff on like. I grind coffee like a grind day. Starbucks, I’ve always known that Starbucks has more caffeine cause I can just feel it. I’m like, we have an espresso machine at our house and espresso actually generally has about half as much caffeine as coffee.
And so I drink espresso, which is just less caffeinated. But if we’d go have like. If I get a Starbucks or something, which isn’t super frequently, I can just tell. I’m like, ah. Anyway, grand day, Starbucks is 360 milligrams of coffee. and a normal cup of coffee is 95 to 120 milligrams. So that’s a lot of caffeine.
That’s just, that’s a lot of caffeine, so, yeah. Anyway, what else did you have? Man.
Joe Courtney: they, I liked how they controlled the nutrition the day before. I think they, they supplied them meals and then they went even so far as to eliminating cruciferous vegetables [00:16:00] and charred meats for women, which I thought was strange.
I’d never heard of that, how that affects caffeine. That was insane. But then I looked into how as they were working out, and because we’ve been doing so much zone to the training and stuff while they were working out, they said, even though they’re. Metrics were better, their heart rate was more increased.
So I’m not sure how that would, if, if that would be ideal for most situations, especially doing zone two training, you know, raising it five beats, it gets you out of zone two real quick.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. And that’s what, and then this is why some people crap on heart rate training in general because there’s so many other factors that can increase your heart rate, but, and that’s why you kind of want to stay away from caffeine.
I mean, I think. I used to take pre-workout supplements like back in the day, like college, like that, I almost couldn’t work out. Like if I ran out of a pre-workout supplement, I’d be like, Hmm, I don’t know if I’ll go out today.
Joe Courtney: I was on that train too
Jerred Moon: that that thought would go through my head. No idea. I [00:17:00] mean, that’s probably a ridiculous amount of caffeine, but what ended up making me stop and actually stop a a long time ago was I played racquetball and racquetball is just like.
It’s super high, high intensity, like the whole time is high intensity, so really high heart rate. And I found like, okay, if I have this pre-workout supplement to do racquetball, I like literally feels like my, my heart is about to explode. So I stopped taking pre-workout supplements and then that all resolved itself and I really just haven’t been on that pre-workout train ever since.
But I know a lot of people out there still like I got up. I mean, the only thing I think about pre-workout now are macronutrients, like or I train fast depending on, you know, most of the time. In recent history, it’s been fast. So yeah, I don’t really think, I don’t do caffeine for pre workout and have for a long time.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. I drink coffee every day, obviously, but I know that if I drink a bunch of coffee within 30 minutes or so of my workout, then I’ll feel kind of jittery and my heart rate will be higher and it’s not as comfortable. so I actually cut that off a little bit before, but I [00:18:00] think the caffeine is already in my system to help at least kickstart things.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. I drink coffee every morning. definitely have to. It’s just, it’s, it’s one of the best parts of my day.
Ashley Hicks: Yes. I look forward to it
Jerred Moon: for the best part of waking up. Oh, no. In my cup. You don’t drink Folgers? I don’t drink
Joe Courtney: coffee.
Jerred Moon: Yeah.
Ashley Hicks: I had a couple of questions though, maybe that you guys dove in. so they talked about the women that were on contraception.
And, so it says, curious if all women were on contraception, like were there ones who weren’t on the pill like, or was,
Jerred Moon: did they know that was a requirement?
Ashley Hicks: Like they had to be on contraception?
Jerred Moon: Women were also required to be using oral contraceptives.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah. So I wonder why they did that and when they talked to.
Jerred Moon: So I think the, I think the only reason in all honesty is too, because if a woman were to have gotten pregnant during the study, that would have completely altered their results. And so I think [00:19:00] that’s the only real, I can’t think of anything else unless there’s something that. That could also be dangerous, right?
Like, I mean, the, you know, it’s, it’s conflicting information. Can you have caffeine when you’re pregnant? And most of the, I think doctors are like, yeah, okay, one cup, whatever. Not a big deal. But these are, if we’re talking about pumping in 300 350 milligrams caffeine into a female and she’s pregnant, that might be a little more serious than that.
Author of the study could be responsible for miscarriage. Like it’s just
Joe Courtney: all mountain views.
Jerred Moon: I think that’s the reason why they did it.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And they also talked about the hormone phase of the one anyway, since it’s a lot of stuff with hormonal anyways in the high hormone phase.
So I just was looking up on, cause. Myself being a woman, like I
Jerred Moon: boast, I don’t ask me about no, hi hormone. That is your department. That’s why you’re here actually, because you’re supposed to give us the insights on the females cause we don’t know anything.
Ashley Hicks: The high hormone pace [00:20:00] is basically after you release the egg.
And so I was wondering like, I mean, why, if typically so all of these. Athletes were, had been working out for a long time. Like that was a requirement too, was that they were, so my thing is, is you’re going to work out all the time. I don’t understand like why they decided to test females on just this phase.
Like, you know, you’re going to work out. All the time during your cycle. So
Jerred Moon: anyway, I wonder, I wonder why that is. I don’t know if they’re just trying to be so, cause it sounded like they were trying to be ridiculous with this study. Joe’s mentioning there, they’re the type of vegetables and they’re controlling the nutrition and it was, you know, double blind, placebo controlled, crossover, all that stuff.
So I wonder if they’re just like, nobody’s going to. Speak badly about my study, so we’re also going to even control for the menstrual cycle. You know, like, I don’t know if that’s, I’ve no idea why they would do that, but I think trying to keep things all all the same, but that, that is a tight study. Now I will say, if anybody wants to go read it, they did five different [00:21:00] tests.
I’m not going to read them all off, like there’s VO two max and some other stuff, but I feel like when I just like. Jabber, those things off, it probably just goes in one ear out the other. If you want to go read the study, you can, and I’ll tell you exactly what they did. They just did a bunch of cycling tests, and, and tested power.
but what was interesting is kind of the improvement, right? So it was 4.6 and 4.3% improvement in women and men respectively. So again, we go back to this, like. We, I forgot which podcasts, what was it one or two ago? We’re talking about a 5% difference, you know, four to 5% difference. Is it worth it and when is it worth it?
And I’m going to say no, not this amount. Like if I had to have 500 milligrams of caffeine for a four, see men were less. So 4.3% improvement. Yeah. I don’t know. Like, I just don’t think that feel very good on that much caffeine. And yeah, like Joe said, like increasing the heart rate. I don’t think I’d want to be doing that too often because I don’t think that there’s anything wrong.
Well, he can look a lot of the [00:22:00] research on, on caffeine in moderates, you know, small to moderate amounts seems to be fine and actually can help with some like mental side of things. I think like there’s research on like Alzheimer’s and, Just cognitive decline and things like that. People who drink caffeine typically don’t experience those things as, as early.
now I don’t have any studies on that. I, I’ve read it before, but I forgot where at that factoid. So put me on it. but they’re just some other studies like there that, I pulled up, there’s. Matt meta analysis showed significant effects of caffeine ingestion on maximum muscle strength of upper body and muscle power.
and then improve Wingate performance, which is like where you’re on a bike. It’s really shitty tests. and, overall caffeine ingestion improves, maximum voluntary contraction strength and muscular endurance. And what else do we have. I liked the name of the study was wake up and smell the coffee.
Then it was a colon, [00:23:00] and then caffeine supplementation and exercise performance and umbrella review of 21 published a meta analysis. The reason I liked that is because I always give these people a hard time for the way they named their studies as soon as awesome. Wake up and smell the coffee. anyway.
Also they reviewed 21 studies. Caffeine is awesome. So it, there’s, there’s no debating whether or not it’s going to be helpful, but now that we kind of know like, Oh well. 4%, 5%, you know, and is it worth it? Cause ingesting that much caffeine is gonna make caffeine Weymouth less effective. You drink it in the morning just for work or for life or whatever.
So I’m not a big, I don’t think I’ll do this. you guys, you think you’ll do these. ergogenic size doses of caffeine for performance
Joe Courtney: as a measure what my cup is.
Jerred Moon: You’re like, I might already be doing it.
Ashley Hicks: Do you drink coffee? Black straight?
Joe Courtney: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Mine’s black and it’s a, it’s a
Jerred Moon: really big black as well.
Joe Courtney: Really large monk. Four over two. So it’s, it’s, it’s good stuff.
Jerred Moon: Oh dude, you’re, you’re consuming a lot of caffeine
Joe Courtney: cause four hours even [00:24:00] more.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Like I, I did exactly what you doing. Like the whole time I lived in North Carolina, I don’t know why. I just switched to pour over at that point in my life and we had these giant mugs.
So I do a pour over every day and. I just felt a little bit different than I do now when I drink like a little bit like shaky. so yeah, I just, I can tell when I have a lot of caffeine. Yeah.
Joe Courtney: I try and drink it slowly throughout the first, like four hours of the day and not just pound it real
Jerred Moon: quick. I always like take shots and then I’m, no, I’m kidding.
Yeah. And I, I enjoy caffeine, but, I would say if you do want to do it, so big takeaway. upside, it can help your performance max, maybe 5%, and you need to consume it 30 to 90 minutes before your event. So if you have a one off event that you want to do this for, I wouldn’t remember always, never. Like on game day, don’t try something new on game days.
So probably test it ahead of time. But man, that’s a lot of caffeine. And it’s three to six milligrams per kilogram. So find out how much you weigh in kilograms and multiply that by three to six. That’s your [00:25:00] range of caffeine, of how much you should be consuming if you want to use this. And then the only two downsides we talked about building up tolerance, it’s not great.
And then also sleep. So those are kind of my takeaways is like maybe it’s a tool in the toolbox if you test it out first and then you want to try it, before a Spartan race or something, you know, you want to perform really well in, maybe it’s worth it. But, at the same time, like. Like the a hundred mile bike race.
I couldn’t see consuming that much caffeine and then going, I just feel like caffeine shouldn’t make me like something that makes my heart beat faster. I shouldn’t like go do something that also makes my heart beat faster. It’s a weird thing in my brain, but makes it better. Makes you perform better at least.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. That’s a, the dosage wise, it’s not a situation where some is good, so more must be better.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. That’s, that’s an absurd amount anyway. I’ve said it enough. That’s actually, are you going to start pounding giant size? Does Congress have
Joe Courtney: one like once a week on your car conditioning day? The next time you have your crazy squats or [00:26:00] whatever, you might need some extra motivation.
Ashley Hicks: Well, cause then they talked about that too with caffeine that it actually like decreases the amount of like pain or. But, let me see if I can find it. So that way I don’t say, yeah, so just for me, I don’t know. I would, I just don’t want to Jack with that much caffeine. I’ll stick to my, I drink two cups in the morning.
I’m on my second cup right now. but,
Jerred Moon: make you want to drink more coffee?
Joe Courtney: It’s so good.
Ashley Hicks: It is
Joe Courtney: nice.
Ashley Hicks: I saw him, I swear I’m up to no
Jerred Moon: good. You guys, I don’t even know Harry Potter is
Ashley Hicks: what anyways, so no, the answer is no. I will not drink that much caffeine cause 5% is not. The juice is not worth the squeeze in my personal opinion.
I said it earlier and I’ll say it again. So,
Jerred Moon: all right, well then let’s get to the topic. So I thought it’d be interesting. I’ve asked this question to a lot of people now, so you get asked on the [00:27:00] garage, the mathlete podcast, if you are part of that, and then you also got asked on the better humanology podcast if you’re a part of that.
One of the questions I ask is, in your opinion, what’s the best activity for building mental toughness and school? It’s been cool to see people’s answers evolve and change over the years about what that looks like. I know when I first started asking that question on the better humanology podcast, it would like really throw a guest off, especially if they, I would send prep ahead of time, like, you’re going to get asked these questions, but people didn’t pay attention to that.
They’d be like, ah, okay. I guess I’ll answer that. But anyway, I want to throw it to you guys. I’ll give my answer as well, but would love to hear what you think. you know, and I like to throw it in best activity act. It’s gotta be some sort of activity for building mental toughness. So Ashley. Go. Okay.
What do you want me to ask it again? No, I want
Ashley Hicks: can if you want.
Jerred Moon: No, I get it. Okay.
Ashley Hicks: Activity for mental toughness. So I was on the [00:28:00] garage gym athlete podcast. Actually, I was, I think I’m episode one of season one.
Jerred Moon: Wow.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah. Anyways, so my old answer was always try and learn something new. Always try and educate yourself.
which I still love and I still will stick to, but, we recently. Did a podcast with, we had Patrick Sweeney on the episode and he talked about do something that makes, do something that you fear or right. Do something that, is super ratty, your, that scares you every single day that’s super out of your comfort zone.
And so, I would say that is a great way to build mental toughness. Go outside your comfort zone and do something you thought you’d never do. And my example was doing the 15 mile Spartan with you guys. Never thought I would do a Spartan beast or gosh, go that far. I, I before then, the longest I had run, if you will, as five miles.
Now did I run the entire time for the 50 miles? [00:29:00] No, but at the end it was cool cause it was like, man, mentally I. Did this, you know, physically I did this and it definitely, is a cool story to tell people how we survived this. A great exercise. Do something small. Like you could start with cold showers or you could start with, let’s say you’ve want to do a competition or have always thought about it and thought, well man, I just don’t really feel like I could do this.
Sign up for one, sign up with a partner, you know? but I say start with something small. Don’t go too crazy, like, jump out of an airplane tomorrow.
Joe Courtney: but I think.
Jerred Moon: Oh, no. Guerrier but yeah, there’s just, so once you’re out, like it’s over, see you’re the dead or,
Ashley Hicks: yeah, see, I don’t, I that seed it something I’m fearful of.
So maybe one day I’ll jump out of an airplane and that’ll be. Yeah, be my killing, comfort and fuel. But yeah, [00:30:00] I, I agree with what he said, and so I say, do something out of your comfort zone every day. whether that be, you know, working out, like starting the workout or even doing something small with, you know, around your house or with food or something you thought you’d never do.
Go ahead. Give it a try. And I think that’s build great mental toughness. as far as my exercise, I would say cold showers, those suck at Florida. They’re not too bad.
Jerred Moon: So yeah.
Ashley Hicks: England. There were terrible.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. You got to live in the right spot for a cold shower. It makes sense. RDB well, it’s all relative, right?
Everyone, everyone has their own tolerance. Joe.
Joe Courtney: Yeah, I was gonna originally when the question came up, my first thought went to Spartan because that was miserable. so it. Basically be physically uncomfortable for a long period of time cause it’s, that was just terrible. Gold obstacles, torn hamstring, all the above.
You [00:31:00] know, everything’s set. But I’ll go to a direction and more about building habits of doing something to better yourself every day. Like put the little, a small thing and then keeping that up for a long time. So. Everybody wants to build habits and you know, especially when doing new resolutions and doing other things like that, it’s like, okay, for this month I’m going to do this every day.
But then like what happens after that month? You keep on doing it. If you’re already doing it, then just keep on doing it. So I would say those little implementing 1% changes in your life all the time.
Jerred Moon: Great answer. I like, I like both your answers. I don’t know what I really have to add to that. So I kind of agree.
I think to build mental toughness, I feel like you guys have hit the two different areas that. That I think of mental toughness. There’s like these big events, and it doesn’t have to be Spartan race, but just things in life, you know, like, like maybe you’re going through a certain type of school or a [00:32:00] course or something that’s really hard and it, it, you know, it’s going to build some mental toughness in you, but that’s like a one time thing and then it’s over.
Right. And, and so I don’t, I think that builds mental toughness to a certain degree in that, I think what Joe is talking about builds the. The life mental toughness, like can you grind on a same task over and over every single day? And that’s what I’ve been leaning towards more lately is just finding, I try to pick a hard thing every single day, like as just like the start of my day.
Like what’s the hard thing that you are going to do today? That, and really the hard thing is not the hard, hard thing is really something you don’t want to do, in my opinion. And so that is that if it can be the same thing over and over, like a habit, like Joe’s talking about, that’s the most beneficial.
But for me, like. The habit for me is just doing the thing that I don’t want to do a hard thing. And so that it can be different every day. It can be like, you know, we’ve talked about like [00:33:00] I, maybe I don’t want to do the dishes and that’ll be, that’ll be hard for me today, but I’m going to do it anyway. Or it could be, you know, the, they’re just a hundred little things in life that come up.
But I think if you’re picking a hard thing, something that you don’t really want to do, and it can be a workout, like, so there’s some days when I’m like, I just. Don’t want to train today. Well, okay, that’s definitely something that you need to do. Pull the whole, Greg Eisenhower approach. Like the times you don’t want to, is that when you absolutely have to.
so I would say just picking a hard thing to do each day. Something that you don’t want to do and then doing it anyway is going to build up that daily resilience to, get better. But I think what you’d need to pay attention to most, and actually building the mental toughness is the. Internal chatter.
So the self-talk, because I really don’t think if you do something that’s hard or pushed yourself, but you didn’t change the conversation, your brain in the process, I don’t really think it’s improving it. So like say you did the Spartan race and it was miserable for you, [00:34:00] but you just. We’re mad the whole time complaining, like, you know, and like you just never were able to like reframe the conversation in your, in your brain.
I think that’s the hardest part though. When something’s really hard, like it should, the expectation shouldn’t just be. Okay. No, I’m just going to, this is really crappy, so I’m just going to enjoy it and pretend like it’s fun. I was what I’m talking about. I’m like, that’s the whole premise of meet yourself Saturday is like pushing yourself to a point where you find like, Oh wow, I want to quit.
I don’t want to do this. And then trying to just have a different conversation. So I had no matter what that is, I think trying to change that conversation is the biggest point of actually improving the mental toughness. Because if I don’t want to do the dishes, but I do the dishes anyway, but I’m just like pissed off the whole time.
Like, Oh, I didn’t want to do this. I, you know, I want to watch TV or something like that. Did you really like, was that tough, like was that mental toughness or did you just do something because, you know, you knew you kind of had to, I feel like there’s a big difference there, but if you can change the conversation to know, okay, I’m going to do this, I’m going to be able to find some way that [00:35:00] this is making me better to change that internal conversation, I think, is the little silver lining of what I’m trying to get across for, for doing hard things.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah. I like that too. I think that if you can change your critical thinking, you know, if it’s, if you’re thinking negative all day long, you’re like, what is that doing to you? You know what I mean? And if you can change that to a positive and then apply that into something like what we just talked about, shoot, you can do so much if you change your internal thinking.
Jerred Moon: My internal
Joe Courtney: conversation during that Spartan race was not for mass consumption.
Ashley Hicks: It’s certain parts for me. Yes, I would agree with you Joe. But
Jerred Moon: well that’s, that’s the, that’s the point where I actually say you’re meeting yourself. Cause if everything’s just like, like if we all did like a five mile Spartan race, we probably just would’ve like laughed through the whole thing and like had a good time and then been done.
But we would never would’ve got to that point where we’re like. No, seriously, this is [00:36:00] stupid and I’m mad about it, which we all got there at some point. So I think, I think that’s where you truly meet yourself. You’re like, okay, I’m there. How do I change this, this dialogue? I think that’s how you, you hone the skill of building mental toughness.
All right. That’s all I have.
Joe Courtney: Speaking of long mental brutal dialogue,
Ashley Hicks: I feel like you chose the topic as well.
Jerred Moon: It’s almost like I planned it. Oh man. So the workout, who wants to brief it?
Ashley Hicks: I don’t have to
Jerred Moon: pull up. So the workout is broken arrow, which is Murph with a lot of other stuff. I’ll brief it.
So buy in with a vest. If you have a vest. So you’re going to do 150 squats, 100 pushups and 50 strict pull-ups. No partitioning, so that means you put the vest on, you’ll do 150 squats, [00:37:00] then 100 pushups, then 50 strict pull-ups, no kipping a lot, and then you’re going to take the vest off. We always have to to make sure we’re clear on that part.
Take the vest off, then like 10 miles, run three miles and do a 1000 double unders. And then at the end, after that thousand double under, you are going to cash out and no vest, 150 squats, 100 pushups and 50 pull-ups. Kipping allowed, but still no partitioning. And I think the. I’m not going to say them all now, but if you watched the athlete brief video on YouTube or you see it in the app, there is scaling for established and recruit athletes.
So just going fewer on the mileage, fewer on the double unders, fewer on the repetitions for the calisthenics. So establishing recruit a, you guys have those. So that is a lot of, A lot of [00:38:00] stuff. We’ll go over tips, strategies, and everything else. Ashley, what do you have? So
Ashley Hicks: this is the only meet yourself Saturday, I think.
I’ve never done. Done that I have not
Jerred Moon: completed. Yeah,
Ashley Hicks: I did say on my notes, I said, unless I’m sick I will, I will crush this one. So I’ve always either been out of town or I don’t know why. I have not done broken arrow cause
Jerred Moon: a lot of people like,
Ashley Hicks: so Scott has a mountain bike and it’s a boy mountain bike and I don’t think I’m going to bike.
So that means 16,000 meters. Right? Cause one mile is 1600 meters. Yeah, yeah. Times by 10 that’s 16,000 meters of rowing.
Jerred Moon: Oh, you’re going to row it. Wow.
Joe Courtney: That’s not,
Jerred Moon: no, no, no. Yeah. That’s way too much.
Joe Courtney: You don’t equate bike to rowing one-to-one,
Ashley Hicks: so, but you put row on there.
Jerred Moon: Did I? You
Ashley Hicks: did. You said if you don’t have the bike you have, you can row it.
Jerred Moon: Oh, this is one of those where I’m [00:39:00] just like being a complete, like, so if you want to the full amount, but what mindset was I in when I, when I programmed this and I’ll let you know.
Ashley Hicks: Anyways, we’ll get back with the rowing. Like, anyways, but so I’m in a row it, whatever that may be. And so my tips on this, especially with the calisthenics, just do these, don’t go too hot out the gate.
So keep your heart rate at a decent level. It’s going to be a little bit challenging because of the best I do plan to do it vested. I just got a vest. Oop. So, And then for like, obviously the strict pull-ups, we talked about this last week, you know, if you can’t do 50 strict pull-ups without a best, don’t try to attempt it with, and so do inverted rows during rows, whatever you need to do instead.
and then do it at, I can’t believe I’m taking a page out of Joe’s book, but you have to kind of pace yourself for this one. You can’t just go. So, I mean, you [00:40:00] could,
you always
Jerred Moon: have the most user friendly tips. So yeah, you do have great tips.
Ashley Hicks: so just a steady pace. Don’t burn out quickly and, try to get the calisthenics done, as efficiently as you possibly can. But again, don’t, don’t try to kill yourself.
Jerred Moon: All right, Joe, what do you have? Great. Yes,
Joe Courtney: it was just the grind.
A slow and steady wins the race, kind of, you’re not gonna win any races, but it’ll be fine. I say with the double unders, they took a little bit longer than expected and I’m really good at them. But break those up, have a plan to break those up, whether it’s in, you know, 50s, 20s. I did mine in hundreds, but that’s me.
and after I would do them, I would like, so I would grind through and do whatever my partition was or whatever that was, and then I would break out, set the rope down, shake out my hands, because. The first, you know, quarter four third of them, I feel really good. But then toward the end, that last third, [00:41:00] your shoulders are tired, your, your forearms are cramping.
Like I, I clipped sometimes because I actually couldn’t hold the jump rope, so wow. That happens.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, that’s insane. It’s double
Ashley Hicks: under heart rate is spike too with that many Dumbo lenders.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. Also keep your, don’t get up into your high 80% of your heart rate if you’re monitoring that stuff, because it’s a long time.
It’s probably like, I think it took me around like an hour and 20 something hour, an hour and a half. Awesome. Like that.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, that’s, that sounds right. I think that’s a close to where I was at. So it’s, my tips on this one. You know. I like to say just go faster. I like to signal fast, but I would say go fast through the calisthenics.
That’s where I would say don’t pace yourself. So, because at the end, like at the end you’re, you’re done. Like, yeah, let’s just get them done as fast as you can. it’s really not gonna screw you up. I think in the bike, cause bike can be such a recovery modality. Like you can go slow as you want when you first get on the bike.
So I would say do the calisthenics as fast as you can, but then the rest of it. [00:42:00] Minus the double unders I think does take some extreme pacing. but I think you should also push yourself because if you don’t push yourself on the 10 mile bike, you’re going to lose a lot of time. and you know, I think I’m going to do this one.
The last time I did it, I don’t think I had the, concept to bike ERG. And I think I might use it this time cause I think it’ll shave a significant amount of time off just cause stationary bikes are. You just go so much like I can, it’s easy for to keep 20 to 25 mile an hour pace on a stationary bike, but when you’re on a real bike, that’s not the case.
It’s like, Oh, there’s wind and there’s a Hill, and like, you know, there’s all these other things. So I’ve never done it on that. I don’t think so. I’m going to do that. and. Push myself to, I dunno. I’m trying to think. The upper zone three maybe just for people to up, like actually know where I’m at and then the three miles is always kind of like, we’ll see what happens.
You know, like, three miles is a long, if I could do seven minute miles [00:43:00] on for each one, that would be great. Any faster would be phenomenal. And then double under just fast. You can. Same with the ending calisthenics, but
Ashley Hicks: am I going to base on so I can bike this thing?
Jerred Moon: What if I was looking at
Joe Courtney: this helmet on and all those things?
Ashley Hicks: No, but I mean by bike, like stationary bike, they have concept too. Bikes on base. and so, and there’s a great path for like a three mile run and, and obviously I can do all my Cal calisthenics. They have a rogue rig, so I can do my pull-ups and stuff there.
Jerred Moon: So if anyone who does use our app, you can click more than you cook documents and links.
And then there is a substitution conversion chart and I think it looks like bike to row. is half for women. Oh, so, and it’s not, it’s not half for men, so pull up that net chart. but that’s, that’s what it looks like it is. from a technically a bike ERG over to women [00:44:00] rowing, you would be a half.
So if you do that, and anybody else who wants to look at the, if you’re thinking about using a different apparatus, definitely go check out the substitution chart and you can change it. Maybe I’m in a nicer mood today, I dunno.
Ashley Hicks: But
Jerred Moon: yeah, go. Go substitute appropriately. And a
Ashley Hicks: is don’t row 16,000 meters.
Jerred Moon: That’s a, that’s
Joe Courtney: a big row.
Jerred Moon: Like, cause I’m trying to think like I’ve done 60 minute, 60 minute row for max meters. And I’m trying to think of like where I got you. I can’t remember, but I feel like it’s
Ashley Hicks: nowhere. Any of that?
Jerred Moon: No, I think it is. I think it’s like 16 to 20,000 meters. I don’t, and I can’t remember now.
Maybe that’s a half hour. I have no actual clue at the moment. I haven’t been rowing a lot less lately, so I’m not, not fresh in my brain, but. If it’s an hour, that would be hilarious because yeah, you would row row for an hour and then you got run three miles and a thousand double hundreds left. So,
Ashley Hicks: and then you got to do the other calisthenics.
[00:45:00] Jerred Moon: So good luck. It’s a, I am not doing Murph anymore, so you will see broken arrow. Conditioned me to the grave. All of my favorite workouts are going to pop up in the program and just so I can do them,
Ashley Hicks: it’s gonna be so
Jerred Moon: great. Yeah. All right guys. That’s it. That’s all we have for this podcast. I’ll end it how I’ve been ending it every time.
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