Hey, Athletes! How much fat do you consume? What if I told you that fat has an impact on your testosterone levels? Make sure to check out this week’s episode to find out more!
Episode 108 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!
Diet Changes that Lower Testosterone and a Book Review
For this week’s episode the dynamic duo are back at it! Jerred and Joe go over this week’s study which is on low fat diets and testosterone levels. The guys give their takeaways and how you can kill comfort with this one. The topic for this week is a review on this month’s book Range by David Epstein. The guys give their thoughts on the book, their takeaways, and their rating for it. This week’s Meet Yourself Saturday workout is ¼ Mile for Humanity. Make sure to pick up some tips and tricks for this one!
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 58-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
- Range
- Low Fat Diets
- Testosterone Levels
- Book Review
- ¼ Mile For Humanity
- Tips For MYS
- 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:
- Low-fat diets and testosterone in men: Systematic review and meta-analysis of intervention Brett McKay from the Art of Manliness Talks Testosterone
- How to Become More Powerful (and Stronger)
—
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:
Jerred Moon 00:02
Alright, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage mathlete podcast Jerred. Moon here with Joe Courtney. It’s up, Joe.
Joe Courtney 00:09
I just you and I. Yep. Just like classic.
Jerred Moon 00:14
Yeah. The the old days when we first started when we were talking about carbohydrate rinsing and all that fun stuff,
Joe Courtney 00:23
wasn’t sure this was gonna be a thing.
Jerred Moon 00:26
What is just us? And hopefully, that’s okay. Hopefully, I’ve got a bunch of people who signed off just these two clowns. excuse. But we are going to get into some science today.
Joe Courtney 00:42
I
Jerred Moon 00:43
and I think this was a pretty interesting study, and it’s really looking at testosterone in relation to a macronutrient specifically fat. So we’re gonna be talking about that. And testosterone levels there. The topic being the book range by is it? David Epstein, right.
Joe Courtney 01:06
Yes. Yeah.
Jerred Moon 01:10
Yeah, so by David Epstein. And then, who knows, we might have some time for some updates, and definitely get into the meat yourself Saturday workout for the week, which is quarter mile for humanity. Brutal one. Yeah. But we’ll get into it. So the actual title of this study was low fat diets and testosterone in men, systematic review and meta analysis of intervention studies would occur at all 2021. So it was done this year, which is pretty cool. And after they whittled everything down, so how they typically do these studies is, and I, you know, I feel like I go over this every time we cover a meta analysis or systematic review, but it’s a study of studies, they look at all these other studies to try and come to bigger conclusions. And this one, I don’t know, they had pretty strict criteria. So they ended up with only six eligible studies, which is a little bit low for a meta analysis. And there were 206 participants, so so it’s a lot stronger than some of the studies that we have covered where it’s like 13 participants or something like that, you know, so it’s still pretty good one. But in the world of meta analysis, it’s kind of small. And so the current reviewed meta analysis sought to determine if short term, so two to 10 weeks of low fat diets 6.8 to 25%, of total energy intake, which I thought was a big range led to lower androgen levels and healthy men. So this is primarily looking at men. And they’re just looking at the effects of high fat versus low fat diet interventions on levels of testosterone and testosterone related stuff in men like all the different binding globulins and all the all the fun stuff, they had a lot of different things that are measuring. But have you ever heard of a higher fat diet, increasing testosterone or a lower fat diet? decreasing testosterone, Joe?
Joe Courtney 03:19
I know I’ve tried to research before how nutrition would affect testosterone levels and what whether adding or subtracting could affect it, but not not much fat. Fat hasn’t really been something that is, has come up. It’s more about certain micronutrients versus macro.
Jerred Moon 03:36
Yeah, so that my first interaction with this was, I’m sure some people are familiar with Brett McKay from the Art of Manliness. He and I are our friends. We’ve known each other for a while. And really cool website cool podcast. Actually, some people listening to this podcast are probably here because they may have heard me on his podcast or, or whatever, but I interviewed him on the better human ology podcast. He was like one of the first. I don’t know, I’d say five interviews that I did. So we’re talking way back. But we ended up talking about fitness. And I think the title of the episode ended up being like how to increase your testosterone naturally, because he had his blood tested and his testosterone was low. And then he was gonna see if he could fix it. And I don’t remember the time period what he did, but it was funny, he was just like, well, I started lifting really heavy weights. I started eating eggs and bacon every single morning and like steak for dinner, you know, just a lot of like saturated fat and, and all this stuff. And then you got to check in like his level, his testosterone levels shot up significantly. And you know, what would be perceived to some people a less healthy diet of like eggs and bacon every morning, and you know, he increased his testosterone level. So that’s the first place I had ever heard of it. But there seems to be some truth to it. And I will say that there’s with an asterisk as we go over some of this stuff. So the actual drop in testosterone was about 50 to 100 points or what is it something per deciliter deciliter in response to low fat diets? So I think 100 is is pretty big, like, depending on where you’re at, as a man, I think I don’t, I forgot what that normal levels are. But I think it’s somewhere from 600 to 900, is considered like a normal range. And then you know, above that is high, and then below that is low, but sort of drop 100 points, based off of how much fat you consume, I think is pretty interesting. And we can get into some of the takeaways because how they did it, I’m not going to jump into as much because it was a review of studies, right. And so each study kind of did it differently. But there were I pulled out three or four pretty interesting things from just having looked a little bit deeper into the studies. But I want to know, what what did you find interesting, or any takeaways you got from this study?
Joe Courtney 05:56
The first one would be that the instead of low testosterone
Jerred Moon 06:02
date that are
Joe Courtney 06:04
my science? No, I
Jerred Moon 06:06
had the same, I had the same thought, Man, it’s I, you can only wonder if that’s the truth. You know, I think it might be, it could be,
Joe Courtney 06:15
I think one of their one or two studies even looked at the types of fat like, which ones would with it, whether it’s saturated, unsaturated, those which ones how they affect and, you know, meats have certain kinds and the, you know, nuts and stuff can only have certain kinds of those fat. So it is something to, I guess, look into and make sure to keep balanced. But yes, there, I think that it’s taking a long term approach for nutrition and health and diet. And if you know is, when you when you see these really extreme extreme diets to one side or the other, that could be cleared up for one reason or another. And if you have a specific reason to have to eliminate whether any extreme diet to eliminate something for a specific reason, you identify that, isolate it and then try and regulate back to a normal balanced, whether it’s macro, bounce, micro balance, all those things, but if you just see, oh, this extreme diet got me this, so I should just stick with this for a long time, there are other side effects and some, some could be hormonal, and hormonal side effects take a long time to either adjust in general, like get back to normal, it could take a long time to see the side effects of it. So this is a really good analysis of that. Looking at long term how these extreme diets can can really affect and and even though this is about testosterone, which is you know, foods, folks toward males, I know females will definitely have hormonal imbalances and such when it comes to diets and I wish I was here to, to say that but like she I know in the men’s health track, she does like carb cycling, things like that to help regulate hormones and things I don’t really know too much about carb cycling, but I just know either way, so like even if you’re female, listen to this. There’s still takeaways, because of how, you know go into extreme diets one way or the other can affect your hormones. And then there are other other links to some of the some of the other reasons why for the fat of the lower fat diets and that because they could get lower zinc and vitamin D, which we’ve always we’ve done a few studies on vitamin D, how important that is. So making sure zinc, vitamin D are part of the diets like talking back with the vegetarians again, the vegans again, that might not be getting all those fats, you know, those lower micronutrients. Keep in mind as well.
Jerred Moon 08:48
Yeah, I so actually, one of the things that you mentioned I wrote down as one of my takeaways too is because there was one study that found reducing monounsaturated fat and saturated mono saturated and saturated fat intake while keeping total fat intake constant by increasing polyunsaturated fat intake led to reduced testosterone levels. So now it I mean, that just makes this even more confusing and convoluted to me because it’s like, Okay, now we’re not even just talking about one macronutrient we’re talking about a specific type of the macronutrient. You know, just like protein, like plant protein and meat protein or animal protein are not the same, you know, they’re not comparable, they’re different, and it’s same with fats. And so it does get a little bit crazy, but based on the data, it says, in short term, so tend to tend to tend to to 10 weeks fat restriction. So dropping fat intake from 39% of energy to 19% of energy results in statistically significant reduction in testosterone levels. So if you know if we ever if we’re doing the balanced approach, like my typical fat intake when I’m tracking macros is not You know, 30 to 35%, that’s kind of where I sit. Because we go typically a little bit lower carbohydrate and slightly higher fat, some people go maybe down to 25%. But we’re talking about 19% of your macros coming from fat to just feel like it’s still not that low. And this can have an effect on your testosterone levels, which I think is pretty crazy, when we get really low, and some of the studies down to six, you know, 7%, so super low fat diet, that’s also going to show lower testosterone levels. But I feel like you’d have to be on a very specific diet to even achieve that, even if you’re a vegan. I mean, just if nutzern your diet, you know, that’s gonna be a significant amount of fat right there. So you have to very intentionally do this, to get to the lower ends, but to get to 20% of your energy like that. That’s not that hard to do. And it can have an effect on testosterone levels. But overall, my kind of takeaway was like, I wouldn’t worry too much about this, unless you either are testing specifically testing testosterone levels, or you have like symptoms of low testosterone. And so I pulled those up, just to like, go over it. Reduce sex drive, reduced erectile function, loss of body hair, less beard growth, loss of lean muscle mass, feeling very tired all the time. So fatigue, obesity, symptoms of depression, decreased libido, or sexual activity in fertility. Yeah, increase body fat, and large breasts, all these things, symptoms of low testosterone. Now, some of those are like, a catch all, like, um, you know, I’m pretty tired all the time, like, yo, do you drink a lot of water and get, like, you know, like, some of these I wouldn’t read too much into, but if you are, like, noticing something like you’re actually losing body hair, or your sex drive just isn’t there, you know, and it’s, but I would say, it’s been a more rapid change, and it’s an in relation to a diet, this is just something I would pay attention to, I wouldn’t be like, you know, what, I’m, you know, I think my beard is a little less thick. And so maybe I do have low testosterone, I wouldn’t like jump to any of those conclusions. But if you do, change your diet in some significant way, I will try and pay attention to those things. But that’s like, option B, Option A would be to actually test testosterone, because I don’t like going by feel when it comes to hormones and all this other stuff. Because you can convince yourself of anything, like you’re saying, like, yeah, you can go on web Web MD, and be convinced you have cancer in about 40 seconds, you know, Oh, yeah, yeah, all that I got all of it. And so I wouldn’t worry too much about it. But if you are going through some significant macronutrient breakdown, you’re trying some sort of aggressive diet, I would pay attention to those things, any kind of symptoms that you’re seeing, and then maybe make a shift, if you are seeing those because it’s, I mean, the more we dove into this there, there are even studies on keto saying that going keto, which is a very, very high fat diet, low carbohydrate, also can lower your testosterone. So my takeaway after looking kind of all the literature is just crazy diets are going to force you to like probably jaql your hormones a little bit. And still, we’re only looking in the short term two to 10 weeks here, we don’t know if those normalize our rebound at three months, six months, you know, a year, maybe things just get back to normal. If you’ve been doing that type of diet for a long time. I do know that. Some guys, I know who specifically test have gone keto. And they’ve seen a huge decrease in testosterone, but then that didn’t normalize like a year later to actually having good levels of testosterone. So I think the expectation is just if you’re going to do some sort of crazy shift in your diet, and I don’t mean crazy being going carnivore or vegan, but I just mean a crazy shift from you, if you’re like, have a crappy diet, or even a well balanced diet, and then all of a sudden, you’re like, I’m going to go crazy low carb, or I’m going to a crazy high fat, then I think at that point, you probably will see some sort of change in your hormonal levels. And it’s something that you should just be aware of is going to happen, maybe will normalize, but maybe get that blood test before you start. Six weeks is sin, you know, a couple months in and then and see if it ever rebounds. If it doesn’t, you’re not going to want to have low testosterone, especially as a guy for long periods of time because it’s gonna it’s gonna affect you in a lot of ways.
Joe Courtney 14:35
Yeah, and for those that didn’t have to listen to the doctor podcast with Dr. Chris Morrissey, we talked about the blood tests and what to get tested and things were tested. So you can check that out, but also when it comes to the testosterone test, so whenever you get a blood panel, you say, Okay, I need to get a fast blood panel. I need you to take everything in and the doctor said, Okay, well, we’ll get you a fast blood panel. You actually have to specifically request for testosterone Because it, they get, they take like a different file, there’s a different solution in the vial that they take or something like that. So I didn’t, I didn’t know that at first, when I when I said I want to get the full panel blood, I thought full Matt, you know, full, but they just they just gave me everything else that I mean, thyroid was on there, but that was like the only hormone that was on there, everything else is kind of specific. So when you get your, your blood tests done, specifically asked for it, and I think it’s good to get done. Even before you’re, you’re showing symptoms or anything just because of like having a baseline, like that’s why I got tested at, you know, 31 when I got got that, um, to have a baseline, because then a few years if you’re noticing things and you get a test, and the doctor is like, Well what your normal range, you can be like, Well, I was 150 points higher a couple years ago. So, you know, maybe that’s a sign or something. So that’s just my cents on that.
Jerred Moon 15:52
I agree. And I think Chris had some good point, I think he said annual is probably where you should go anything more frequent than that, like you have to really be working on it to see a change in any sort of blood marker. And this is no sponsor, no affiliation, nothing like that. I just use the company inside tracker to get my blood tested at pretty extensive levels. So I think it’s inside tracker COMM But you can just sign up for one of their blood blood tests, they have a very wide range of I mean, I think it starts at $79 and goes up to $600 for how many different things that you can test. And I’d kind of decided this is something I’ll probably just do like on an annual basis. But it’s good to check all these things out like testosterone and cholesterol and all these things where you do have this baseline going in, and you can see if there any big changes later. So something I do I do recommend, um, do you feel that there’s any way shape or form the listener can kill some comfort with this information?
Joe Courtney 16:58
Let’s see. If Well, if you’re, I guess we really want one way or the other. If you’re doing one extreme diet, then stop after you know, 1012 weeks and switch to a normal one to regulate. Instead of just, you know, focus on long term health versus that short term, whatever thing you’re going unless you have like something’s very specific, like autoimmune that you’re trying to clear up. But for the masses. I’m really just eat balanced. I don’t know. It’s there. It’s this simple. It’s what we always kind of preach anyway. But this is just more of a Yeah, reason to.
Jerred Moon 17:39
Yeah, I would say along those same lines, how I would suggest anyone listening kill comfort in this scenario would be you know more if you’re on some sort of diet or you love some sort of diet paradigm, maybe you’re like, I went keto I lost a bunch of weight. keto is for me, maybe it is, but I would suggest that you pick a diet that you honestly think you could maintain and do for 20 or 30 years, like that’s gonna be the best type of diet to go for I always, I think like an extremely low carb or any, any of these extremes are going to be temporary. It’s like a tool, you pull out the toolbox to maybe achieve a goal, but then you have to learn how to live life after that, and be normal. So just because you saw some success with something doesn’t mean that, you know, it’s what you should always do. And so I guess I’m asking people to question their own beliefs in nutrition, and back it up with data. I don’t care how you say you feel I don’t care how much weight you say you lost. I think you should get some blood test, look at things and see if things are actually moving the direction you actually want them to. So use some objective data to make better decisions for your diet. Well, yeah, and if you feel like you have low testosterone, maybe go go eat some fat,
Joe Courtney 19:05
bacon and eggs. Yeah, legs lift something heavy.
Jerred Moon 19:08
That’s that is the answer, according to Brett McKay from the Art of Manliness. Alright, let’s get into this book.
Joe Courtney 19:16
It’s funny that I don’t know how this happens sometimes. But sometimes our like our studies that we pick out and then we just we put a topic and sometimes they just fit perfectly. And I think these two kind of have a common thing.
Jerred Moon 19:28
They do. I didn’t think about it that way. But you’re right. So this book is called range. Why generalists triumph in a specialized world by David Epstein. So, I mean, you really get a lot from the title there. Yeah. The book really is about being a generalist over a specialist and making a case for that. And they I mean, they cover everything from Sports professional athletes to Doctors to, you know, specialists, almost of any kind how people learn. Being open minded, there’s a lot of things covered in this book overall. But the main premise behind the book is, don’t worry so much about being a specialist, there are a ton of advantages to being a generalist in your career and life in general, kind of takeaways being you can, you’re more creative, you have more creativity to solve problems, and a lot of people don’t actually have that level of specificity. And I, I’m just going to jump straight into like, a few of my takeaways, which were the sports side of it, because I’ve done a lot of research on this, I’m not concerned for myself, I’m just always thinking about my kids, because I have a lot of friends who are physical therapists, and they’ve, they’ve showed me a lot of research that, you know, high level, a lot of high level athletes didn’t didn’t play one sport, like they didn’t, it wasn’t like, Tom Brady picked up a football at two, and had, you know, played football all the way up till now. And that’s the only thing he ever did. And I don’t know about Tom Brady, specifically, I understand for most professional athletes, a lot of them were very well rounded, they played a lot of other sports to include their main sports, and that helped them help them injury, prove them and help them learn more about their bodies, proprioception, all these things they learn by playing other sports. And I’ve always thought about that, because I’m not trying to make my kids be professional athletes. But you know, if your kid is good at something, you just kind of wonder like, how, how far Should we go down this path should they be should they play other sports or, you know, whatever, I’m just kind of let my kids do whatever they want. But they give Tiger Woods versus Roger Federer example, where Tiger Woods was that kid and that he I mean, to be honest, he’s probably like, the only one I’m truly aware of, that started training his sport at the age of two, basically forced by his dad did have some natural talent, and then just practice his whole life and became the best in the world. But then Roger Federer was different. Roger Federer played a lot of other sports and this, that and the other and then eventually came around to tennis a little bit later than most people would, and then also best in the world at his sport. And so it’s kind of like, yeah, you don’t have to be that. And there are a lot of other stuff. What were some of your takeaways? I’ll get into some of the other points, what were some of your takeaways from the being a general generalist or a specialist?
Joe Courtney 22:29
I think the sports example that he gave in the book, were kind of the best ones to that, that people can really picture and answer about Tom Brady. He was he was actually a baseball player. He was drafted to be a baseball player before football. Oh, cool. So here we go. I just Oh, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I think the the sports examples really get his point across first, which so it’s good in the book, that that’s kind of how he leads with because he compares tiger and Federer and talks about some other athletes of how you know, being so dynamic and all your sports. And I mean, that’s just how, if you look at a lot of athletes, now, I know I pretty much only watch watch football, and they always talk about how, you know, they were a great baseball player, great track player, basketball player, and all these things. And there’s even some, I think there’s he mentioned this in the book, but there’s some college coaches who will actively recruit multi athletes, multi sport athletes over an athlete, that’s just fantastic, and another sport, because you never know when those skills are going to help you on the field. But then the rest of the of the book is kind of goes over all these other examples of those situations, you know, having a wider base is best for for your overall development. And it might be whatever you’re going into, there can be a textbook, a, a divergence, this is what it’s going to be this is how it’s it’s what you need to prepare for. But there’s always going to be some crazy stuff that that can happen with no matter what you’re either training for preparing for and looking for. And you never know when a curveball is going to come that is added out of the realm of what you know, or whether you don’t even know what you want to do and you need to change but if you’ve only been training for one thing, then you’re kind of stuck. That’s what that’s one another point that happens in I think the book is that from 18 to 20 something the your Brady Brees is still adjusting and figuring out what it what it what it wants to be, who wants to be and what you think you want at 18. Five years later, even though at 18 you were adamant about it, you’re like well, no, this is actually not at all what I wanted to do. And I know just personally I felt a whole lot of that too. At times that changes in like the first year of college if you’re if you’re doing that and then it changes again and all these things so that’s why being well rounded and not pigeon holing yourself into one specific area. Good. And that’s why in this, this book kind of goes over that at times ad nauseum. Some of the, some of the success stories are really long winded. And the there was also one or two, that were, it seemed like a lucky outcome for how they got there. Like, he just, they just kept talking about all these things that these people did. I’m just like, it sounds like they’re just going through trial and error of all kinds of things and just waiting for something to stick versus just like, hey, because I’m well rounded, I got good at this. So that was there was a couple times while I was thinking that, but overall, that’s that’s the general idea is that the more you’re prepared, the more well rounded you are, the better you will be to be able to pivot to something else and possibly even succeed and excel at it. Yeah.
Jerred Moon 25:51
Another takeaway I had later in the book, and this is kind of like a broad stroke, from my perspective, I would just say, he kind of just talks about learning in general, and how, like, the struggle in learning is very important thing, like actually, like struggling with information. And trying to find a solution as opposed to getting hands or getting help is helpful, and then also taking long breaks. And then he also talks about active open mindedness, which are specialists are much less likely to participate in like entertaining the fact that they could possibly be wrong about a given idea, you know, so, and I think we can kind of my takeaway from there was how a generalist brain work, is they have a lot more input from a lot of different areas. And so I think it makes better output, I think it can make you a lot more creative. And that’s kind of one of his points in the book. And I completely agree with that. I mean, I, I mean, I’ve been in fitness for a long time now. But that’s not where I started, I’ve kind of always been interested in fitness, but then I had to shift gears in college, and then also in the Air Force to that not being allowed, not being allowed for that be the only thing I learned, right. But I think basic aviation principles that I learned in the Air Force helped with me doing what I do now, you know, just in a lot of ways, and I so I do think that a combination of experience can really help help you get better. So I do agree, I think this book for me was kind of preaching to the choir, even in our training, right, like we’re concurrent training, we are the definition of generalists. Like none of us are going to be great at any one thing. We’re just gonna be extremely well rounded. And live longer than everyone else. Maybe that’s what will, that’ll be the thing that we’re best at because of our well rounded fitness routine. But I’m just all for it. Now. I do agree getting to the book itself. Love the idea. Yes. The whole book is is a book of stories, and a book of examples. Which is okay, but I don’t know, like, I guess I haven’t. A lot of books use stories. But I mean, it’s just like story after story after story. And at some point, you have to like, there’s anecdotal, and then there’s scientific, right. And he does talk about some scientific studies in some regard. But a lot of it is just a story. Even the tiger versus Federer, that’s a great story. But it’s still anecdotal. It’s to human beings. You know what I mean? Like two, out of all these other people we could look at who are the best in the world? Because and so I don’t know, I think if you truly want to be the best in the world, I don’t I don’t think that you can just be a generalist. I think I personally think that there has to be some level of specialists if we’re talking about actually being the best in the world. And if we’re going to the athlete perspective, like, yeah, they can do a lot of other things. But at some point, this was their only thing. And then they put in a lot of frickin time more than anyone else, getting good at that thing. So I don’t think the takeaway should be, you can be this generalist who does all sorts of random shit. And then one day, you’ll just happen to click and be the best at something. I think it’s more experiment with a lot of things get good at learning, maybe being the biggest thing. Like, figure out how to learn a struggle and learning and learn quickly. And then maybe when you find something that you do love or can get good at quickly, you can become a specialist from your generalist tendencies, but I don’t think the takeaway should be Yeah, everyone should be a generalist. And that’s how you become the best in the world today, it’s probably just not true. Like you have to really focus to be the best at something. But I love the idea. Too many stories is probably my only con that oftentimes were anecdotal at best. And so overall, I guess we got to get into the writing of the book. How many fractional plates or barbells or kettlebells are
Joe Courtney 29:59
gonna go two and a half
Jerred Moon 30:02
Two and a half
Joe Courtney 30:03
out of five.
Jerred Moon 30:04
Worst rating you’ve given a book. Yeah, I think what was only because like I didn’t I didn’t hear a lot of cons from you. So like what I mean, you slammed fiber fueled way more than this one. So how do we how do we go to two and a half on this book?
Joe Courtney 30:16
See the difference with fire fueled, and this is that fire, we’re gonna have a bunch of positive and a bunch of negative and lows negative or just a bunch of jabs as he goes. But he was always introducing new things. This was just he got on one track and just stayed on that track for the entire way. Yeah, just like this track should be a lot shorter than it is.
Jerred Moon 30:34
Yeah, that’s the unfortunate thing with some of these nonfiction books, is you sometimes you can get the idea in the first chapter. And then they just like, beat a dead horse for nine more hours.
Joe Courtney 30:50
Ted Talks a bit too long.
Jerred Moon 30:51
Yeah. Okay, well, I was gonna give, I don’t know, the rest of the team rated it. Maybe we can update everyone. I’m gonna give it a three. Maybe pretty much same reasons. I don’t. I thought it was cool idea. I agree with a lot of it. Now, I kind of disagree a little bit with it too, as you can tell towards the end. Like, I don’t think the takeaway should be be a generalist. And I just feel like that’s misleading. If you just you try to be a jack of all trades master bound for your whole life in the UK? Yeah, I’ll be really good at something. But just keep thinking it’s
Joe Courtney 31:26
just starting off. You start broad and then get narrow, right. At that point was as hammered.
Jerred Moon 31:32
Yeah, it didn’t get cuz he was like, prove his point in a story that see this person did lots of stuff. And then they became the best in the world. And it’s like, we’re really skipping over this best in the world part. Like, how did that when did that? Like what was can we go into more detail of what they had to do to get to that point, because he like in the just going back to the tiger Federer example. He really honed in what Tiger did all the way up to being a professional. But then Federer, he just kind of mentioned how he was really well rounded. And then there wasn’t a lot of a story after that. It was like, Yeah, I picked up tennis. And he’s the best. I mean, I know there’s a little bit more than that. But it’s like, oh, anyway, yeah. So I get to three I so I guess we’re not really recommending this book, I feel like gotta be at least
Joe Courtney 32:12
we kind of get gave the entire premise. Yeah, I
Jerred Moon 32:16
mean, if you want to hear a lot of stories, I do think if you have kids, it’s maybe worth reading all a saving grace here. If you have kids, it’s probably worth reading, if you’re worried about them needing to find their passion super early, and you want to help them broaden their horizons by learning new things. I think as a parent, this might be a valuable book to read. I think that’s probably my biggest takeaways are things for my kids and just guiding them as they become older and learn new things. So, so Yeah, that’d be my silver lining there. Oh, all right. You want to get into the workout? Yep.
Joe Courtney 32:52
Yep. So we got quarter mile for humanity. To me, this one is kind of fun, even though it’s brutal and like we have brutal ones that are just that are just brutal and you can’t like you don’t have any agency you just have to kind of do it and, you know, die a little bit. But quarter Farhi with humanity for humanity with a barbell in the front rack performance 10 total lunges five each leg then stop, stand in place and do five reps push press, you will continue until you have completed 400 meters or a quarter mile distance. And if you don’t have a 490 to distance or can do it then you will do 60 rounds. So that means you will do the five lunges each leg plus five push press for 400 meters or 60 sets of that. And that means you get to choose the weight go lighter than you think. Ah yeah, that’s fine. Things may go lighter than you think your forearms are gonna kind of kill. front rack. Yeah, I don’t know. Which Yeah,
Jerred Moon 33:56
go and do barbell eating. Like I don’t think he’s, I mean, most people aren’t gonna need more than that. Warm up the shoulders a lot. And I so I’ve done this one. I haven’t done this a lot. I mean, this may be one of like, the fewest that I’ve done. I know I’ve done it at least twice. We also haven’t programmed it that much a ton of times. So but I do know that I’ve just had shoulder issues over the years they’re not as they’re probably like my least mobile body part. And so holding a front rack for long periods of time like beyond like a set of front squats is gonna get painful if you’re not like accustomed to it, you know. So a lot of what helps me with that is a lot of lacrosse ball on the like deltoid area beforehand. Really loosens them up. Yeah, and lats even. And just do that. I would recommend doing that for your warm up. Go super light and go fast. I mean, you got to go fast on this one because it’ll just be over faster,
Joe Courtney 35:03
right? lats are the number one area I tell people, if they’re having trouble with their front rack, go the lats first, because they’re the biggest need the biggest amount of play. And then between that to your triceps and then maybe a little bit of that, you know, that armpit area in between. Now, it’s not your wrist, say forearms. I’ve done a version of this, like a long, long time ago, I used to do this exercise, I think that seal fit does called Curtis B’s, or P Curtis, whatever. And it has, it also has handlings in it. And face do these just when I was on my, on my last deployment, I saw those as an exercise. I was like, cool, I’m just gonna load up with 95. And I’ll go down, drop it breath and then go back. So I was doing I was like,
Jerred Moon 35:46
actually, what do you do you do lunch, and then a push press and then
Joe Courtney 35:49
lunch? Hang cleans and then push press.
Jerred Moon 35:53
Okay. Sounds brutal.
Joe Courtney 35:56
Yeah. So that was definitely a forearm and short killer. It was an all Callaway killer. So, but there’s no Hank leads here. So you just go right into the push press? That’s fine. We’ll be fine. You can do this, I guess with the same bag? If you have athletes?
Jerred Moon 36:13
Yeah, since we’re embracing the sandbag a lot more these days on the hard to kill track. I just did a Do you have any more tips for this one?
Joe Courtney 36:24
No, I mean, you can rest in between your your sets, you’re probably going to need to so I would set a goal to do like, Hey, I’m going to do three, three, a couple of sets of this, or three or three or five, then I’m going to set it down and rest and shake it out. Because you know, a lot of times forearm and certain upper body. Once that goes it’s going to be hard to hold it in general. So if you kind of rest a little bit because it’s essentially you’re doing a partial a weighted carry during this. And once weighted carries fail, you’re going to be in a lower
Jerred Moon 36:55
for sure. Do it on a track. I think it’d be
Joe Courtney 36:59
Yeah. Take up three lanes. Stay on the inside lane.
Jerred Moon 37:03
Yeah, piss everybody off. That barbell. seven feet two, right, that that’s how long?
Joe Courtney 37:10
Yeah.
Jerred Moon 37:14
Yeah. All right. So no more. No more tips on that one. Just really, it’s in the warm up and making sure that you’re ready for it. Don’t go super heavy. Those are the main things, main takeaways, updates. We got some time. Only two podcasts this week. So we blew through mostly information pretty quickly. But uh, do we have any updates? Joe, do you have any life updates that we should let the community know about?
Joe Courtney 37:38
I’m in a hotel right now. So
Jerred Moon 37:40
we’re the face. Yeah,
Joe Courtney 37:43
I don’t know what’s been stated. I’m back in the states in Northern California doing my Air Guard drill days for a while and some order stuff. So I’m doing wearing two hats right now for a couple of weeks. And to just talk about the training and nutrition part. But while doing this, because you know, I’m still working, doing our stuff and then working full time. During the day. trades still fine. I’m actually still getting my average in my five days a week. You know, luckily here there’s built in PT time. And then I will go and train during lunch. When I my plan coming here at all. It’s because I was already thinking about it. I was already planning on doing it during lunch and then just kind of like hammering my lunch on eating it. But luckily, they have some time baked in. But I still have my workout during lunch on those non PT days. And then Saturdays I’ve been going for like a zone to run just to kind of help do a little bit and I have a I will have a PT test coming up next weekend, most likely. So just kind of preparing for that. But nutrition was the biggest, especially traveling it’s always one of the hardest things to do. And luckily the hotel that I’m at, I asked for a separate fridge. So I’m that guy asked and bring me a second minifridge. And they did.
Jerred Moon 38:56
They did. Wow. That’s great. That’s the Air Force for all of our listener base. I thought you’re on base, which would have been just so embarrassing for the Air Force.
Joe Courtney 39:12
Base. How’s it? Yeah. The hotel? Yeah. Because there was a lot of times it’s like a shared bathroom. But sometimes they have big purchase. Anyway. Yeah. So I asked, I went to I went to the front desk, I was like, Hey, you know, can I get a second fridge? And the guy was like, I think all of our fridges are in the room. So we have to take one out of the other room. So probably not I was like alright, cool. And I left and I came back 10 minutes later, he’s like actually we have some stairs so you’ll get one. As soon as that happened. I got to my room and I got online and I ordered Ice Age meals. ordered a 16 pack ice age meals. That’s my lunch. Super easy.
Jerred Moon 39:45
Not a sponsor.
Joe Courtney 39:48
Oh yeah. Breakfast is I got heal. So it’s kind of like a meal replacement protein shake, the heel black and I also got sprouted rolled oats that I do. overnight oats with because, well it’s better for you to do the overnight oats not actually cooked them put in chia seed, some high fat granola and protein to that. So that’s those are my two breakfast options. And then dinner is on the weekends I’ll order over some Thai usually ties like a cleaner kind of food to get I usually especially carry because it’s coconut milk and spices and then like vegetables and like lean meat. And I put that over top of some cabbage salad mix and some other you can get like little individual things of steamed vegetables and rotisserie chicken at sprouts that I’m sitting by. I just put it in the bowl, mix it all up. And that’s basically dinner. So still pretty dang even pretty dang clean for being living in a hotel remotely. The weekends might not be as much But still, I was pretty happy with my nutrition situation here and what I was able to get done. So that’s just a little little bit of tips. If you are traveling some things that you can do that are really easy. And you know, I don’t have much of a new way of food prep. It’s just kind of there and I just kind of thought everyone ate it.
Jerred Moon 41:12
Yeah, I think you just crushed everyone’s excuse who travels frequently. Oh, you have to do is ask for second fridge people. Yeah.
Joe Courtney 41:20
What the heck? I don’t know how we’re gonna get that I didn’t get that I probably would have invaded the fridge at work did like Alright guys, this is my corner.
Jerred Moon 41:27
Yeah, put your name on it. Yeah, it’s Yeah, it’d be too healthy for anyone to steal. No one’s gonna be like, yeah, I want that.
Joe Courtney 41:34
Yeah, right.
Jerred Moon 41:36
Um, you know, I, I’ve been TTY for long periods of time. And then the exact same situation, many times, many times done the exact same thing. And I drafted a blog post a long time ago, and I never published it. And it was to card tables in a microwave was the name of the was the name. That was the the name I thought up for the blog post, because I actually had two card tables in my hotel room and one microwave and one mini fridge. And so that was going to be the title of it, which I thought was super creative. And I pretty much just highlighted everything that you kind of just said, you know, because my diet is very similar. In that situation, when I get in those situations I normally have, like huel is not just a protein supplement is basically like a meal replacement. And I haven’t taken you on a while but I’ve had a lot of supplements like that that are more meal replacement. So those are always good to have if you travel frequently. If you’re
Joe Courtney 42:32
the only time I’ve used it as a meal meal replacement back home, I’ll do like a half serving, but then I’ll do a different kind of protein on top of that, as well as a protein shake. But now I’m actually using like the full serving appeal. Because that’s just what I got to work with.
Jerred Moon 42:48
Yeah, and then overnight oats that’s just a phenomenal it’s easy, right? You just put it in the fridge and then you you have breakfast the next day or whenever you want to eat it. And yeah, I think normally I would I would actually go buy like random stuff from the grocery store. But it would be like meat and vegetables. I mean, it would be kind of like I’m eating a bag of broccoli and like random deli meat. That’s probably not the healthiest type.
Joe Courtney 43:14
I mean, I had the little containers of steamed vegetables a rotisserie. And then like they do like the coleslaw mix, which is basically just cabbage mix, like three cabbage, three color cabbage mix, and I got kimchi so I got my from my fermented
Jerred Moon 43:28
even in the evening and fermented stuff on the road. Look at that. Yeah,
Joe Courtney 43:31
because they had a nice bag really delicious. Kimchi and some tart cherry juice. I got I got it all man. Oh, also good eggs, I just cracked eggs and whatever I’m eating for dinner and then make cooks in the microwave. Sounds like
Jerred Moon 43:43
it might be healthier than when you’re home. Cool, man. Good update. Also a lot of great tips and takeaways for anyone listening who travels frequently just got to put a little bit more work into it if you want to eat healthy on the road updates for me, I don’t have a lot I’m back feeling better. I’m back to running and haven’t had any pain. I’m back to squatting a little bit heavier not I haven’t gone like I’m pushed it to like 90% or anything, which I don’t even know what my 100% is anymore. But I did have that back injury for a while but I feel like I’m finally fully recovered from that. Definitely will get nowhere close to a five minute mile 500 pound back squat at the end of this cycle, which is where this project the BCT thing will conclude and then I’m kind of on the fence about whether or not I want to keep going for it. I might and if I do, it’ll just be super slow burn. Like I might just follow the htk track and like put in some extra squatting. Like on a strength day. If I continue and
Joe Courtney 44:48
we have an extract that was like geared towards strength.
Jerred Moon 44:51
Yeah, but I i wanted i miss htk I missed the some of the work that’s done there.
Joe Courtney 44:57
You always do like, gravitate back. It’s like Go This is I’ll come back to ah, can I do this? I’m gonna come back to
Jerred Moon 45:03
h two K’s my medicine man, I feel like that’s like saying my vitamins, I got to take it to stay to stay state stay sane. So yeah, anyway, we’ll see where things end up but I’m just kind of slow playing that one and but I’m happy to be feeling good and being back fully recovered if anybody has any any back problems and they want to talk about all the ridiculous things I did to drag my back better because that’s what happens with me if I get hurt. It becomes the only thing I’m like focusing on until it’s better. And now I’m better and I feel great about it. HQ yo three HQ? No, I’m not in it yet. All right. So why does everyone just back off, Quit making fun of me. It is very hard time for construction. But we’re actually really close. They’re in the process of painting it, which I didn’t know was a very long process. But now that I just use my brain for like five seconds. It’s like, Oh, yeah, they have to paint like every square inch of this thing inside and outside. Fill all the holes, make sure the trim work is good. Like that’s a that’s an extensive project. So it’s taking a while but after the painting is done, probably only about six more months. So no, I have no idea. I should after the paintings done. We’re pretty much done. We should be able to move in there. Not too much long after that. But knock on wood, cross my fingers, all those things because every time I think I’m almost in there, I’m not.
Joe Courtney 46:29
But then you can you can move in there with your two card tables into my microwave.
Jerred Moon 46:35
Yeah, and I could just live there. You like that? You like that blog post tighter? Don’t you? Come on?
Joe Courtney 46:39
Cuz I like I like back.
Jerred Moon 46:43
Yeah, it’s a deep, deep meaning there. Yeah, I think that’s about all I have. I’ve just been just been training. Life’s good. I did the 35k this morning just randomly and sucks a lot worse on a true form. Just like everything else does. A little bit slower on the true form, but I’m not too bad. But yeah, that’s it. Now as far as the garage, not the end of the fitness goes. It’s not sexy. But we are in the process of doing a giant migration, which I mentioned on the webinar. It’s either you’re either not going to notice the thing or you’ll notice something or everything will break. I don’t know. We don’t know what’s going to happen in our diehards will they will know they will know what happened but we’re hoping that it’s so flawless you barely know what happened. So
Joe Courtney 47:36
the whole team back to battle stations when it happened that
Jerred Moon 47:39
everyone, man your battle stations as we flip the switch.
Joe Courtney 47:44
I’m just picturing the movie down Periscope. Are you familiar with that? Huh? There it was, like this crazy Navy movie is really funny. And this guy that is like an electrician. He always is messing with stuff every day how he made messes with the electricity and stuff, he gets shocked. And then there’s one time where he does a bunch of crazy stuff put on a rubber glove looks the other way and flip the switch and he’s expecting to get shot but he wasn’t he didn’t think that’s gonna happen.
Jerred Moon 48:08
I hope that’s because he didn’t get shocked. So that’s what should happen. But that’s it. Thanks everybody for listening. If you’re part of the community, thank you so much for following the training being consistent, you know, and being a part of everything that we’re doing here. If you are not a part of the training, go sign up, go to garage, gym athlete comm sign up for a 14 day free trial and see what this is all about. But that’s it for this weekend. From a weekly reminder if you don’t kill comfort, comfort will kill you.