Hey, Athletes! What would you think makes your muscles grow? Full range of motion or half reps? Listen to this week’s episode to find out!
Episode 44 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!
Does Full Range of Motion Matter?
In this week’s episode we have Jerred, Kyle, and Ashley. They go over their updates and announcements before they dive into the study for the week. This week’s study is over full range of motion and how it helps muscle growth. The team has great takeaways on this one. This week’s topic is over deloading and why we program it in garage gym athlete training. Each coach goes over why deloading is important and explains how our programming is for the long haul. Lastly, this week’s Meet Yourself Saturday workout is the Eo3 Iron Mile. This one will definitely get you!
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 48-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
- New Gym Equipment-Leaf Blowers
- The Countdown To Release of Killing Comfort
- Deload-Benefits and The Why Behind It
- Eo3 Iron Mile
- Effects of Range of Motion in Training
- Jerred’s Cherry Juice Adventures
- 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:
- Does Intermittent Fasting Limit Strength and Muscle Gains?
- Perform with Phototherapy, Stir the Pot, and Grog Bowl
—
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:
Episode 44: Does Full Range of Motion Matter?
[00:00:00] Jerred Moon : Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym 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 distills the latest scientific research with what I’ve learned and blends it with the NASO scientific field of mental toughness. We are here to build you into a dangerously effective athlete. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find out more about our training at garage gym, athlete.com and if you want to pursue more into the field of coaching and programming, head to end@threefitness.com.
Thanks for listening.
[00:01:00] All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jared moon here with Ashley Hicks. How’s it going? Ashley? No, I’m great. And then we have Kyle Schrum. How you doing Kyle?
Kyle Shrum : I’m doing all right.
Jerred Moon : And Joe, he’s not here. Oh, you guys are like, wait, we don’t, he’s not, but everyone else has listening.
They can’t see that Joe’s not here. Yeah.
Kyle Shrum : He already found a new PT in Maryland, so
Jerred Moon : yeah, he’s at a physical therapy appointment. I truth be told he had, Technical hardware breakage, so can’t be on if we can’t hear you. So yeah, he will be back. He has a broken mic. I see it in his updates. I’m updating it for him.
I think he wanted me to say that he didn’t, he didn’t tell me he has a broken microphone, so we’re remedying that situation. But. Amazon prime is just not what it used to be. It’s taken, taken longer.
Kyle Shrum : Thanks a lot, Rona.
Jerred Moon : Right, right. All right. Ashley, how’s life updates from you?
Ashley Hicks : Life was pretty good except I am injured, so I’ll be the [00:02:00] Joe of the group this week.
Jerred Moon : I’m broken. Did that happen?
Ashley Hicks : So it’s really weird. We were doing strict presses and, women’s health track and it was 90% of your one rep max. And I was on my fourth one and you know, brace myself, breathe. And. Pushed up and just felt a little twinge, like on the back of like kind of where my shoulder blade is, where my, anyways, it’s, something’s up because it hurts and it’s uncomfortable to sleep.
So I got some Biofreeze and. My, you know, I still did yesterday’s workout though, and I felt fine. It actually felt better. I don’t know if it was just cause I was stiff from sleeping all night long and then all of a sudden I moved and then it was great. So, and I’ve tried to been rolling it. I don’t, I don’t, it’s not that big of a deal, but
Jerred Moon : I call that a tweak.
Yeah. Like, you know what, that didn’t feel right. Now I feel a little weird. And then you get back to normal.
Kyle Shrum : Pre-injury.
Jerred Moon : Yeah. It’s like, Hey, if you keep pushing it, I will. I will hurt you. I will make this debilitating.
Ashley Hicks : I know. And I still went and did my hand pushups [00:03:00] after two, so that could have like aggravated that, but
Jerred Moon : Oh, well, yeah.
You got to stop once it happens. Like I moved days around, was it last week when I. Or no, cause that was de-load is, I think it was the week before, is like heavy squats and I was warming. I warmed up for like 15 minutes and my lower back still did not feel right. I don’t know why. And I was like not risking it.
Nope. Not even not going to squat. I like switched with the pressing day or something and then I just squatted later in the week and my belt, my back felt fine, but that’s how. Cautious I am with injuring myself. That’s a good thing.
Ashley Hicks : Yeah. And then I bought a leaf blower. Finally.
Jerred Moon : Actually Scott bought the
Lakeville,
Ashley Hicks : or it’s like this crazy electrical, not likable.
It’s a battery powered one.
Jerred Moon : So battery power is awesome.
Ashley Hicks : That’s what he wanted. So cleaning out the garage gym is pretty easy now. It’s good. Good advice. We took your advice, Jared. It just took us
a
Jerred Moon : couple of weeks. You gotta have a leaf blower. Gotta love it. So the battery powered ones only do like. [00:04:00] A mild sweep.
The other, my dad has a gas powered one, so I don’t know him this one. But he’s, he’s brought it over to my house before and it looked like Epic. Yeah. I mean, it can get like stains off the floor. It’s kind of not really, but it’s a, it’s super powerful.
Kyle Shrum : So one of those
Jerred Moon : backpack ones. No, not that, that crazy, but it looks like that same brand, like I know what you’re talking about.
And, But you don’t really like, there’s a lot of exhaust coming out of those things and your garage. I just don’t feel like it’s a good idea. You know, I’m good with the electrical or the battery pack.
Kyle Shrum : No batteries use electricity, right?
Jerred Moon : Yeah. But the ones that lecture cool corded in one is batteries. If you don’t note the difference, cause I actually have both.
I have a battery one and I have one that I have to use a a hundred foot extension cord on. Not fun and I don’t have a gasoline powered one.
Kyle Shrum : Mine’s not in a garage. It’s a basement, so I can’t use a
Jerred Moon : leaf blower. He’s just like, mixes all around and settles. So
Kyle Shrum : my sister, my sister, vacuum [00:05:00] cleaner.
Jerred Moon : So you could do it with a, with chalk you can, I mean, just blow the chalk around and at least look better.
Won’t actually go anywhere.
Kyle Shrum : That’s it. I’m going to eat. That’s my strategy now.
Jerred Moon : Yeah. Alright. Ashley, anything else.
Ashley Hicks : Just one last thing. We at Conor, and I do a walk after every single, I’ve talked about my family walks, but Conor and I do a walk after every workout. It’s kind of like my cooldown. I make myself a post-workout smoothie and he gets to enjoy that. But now, since we go at the same time every day, even on my rest day today, like we played outside for an hour, and then we went on our walk that we would normally do.
So the same people are also walking. At the same time. And so now, and they’ve asked you to, what’s his name, whatever’s, every morning he gets the hi Connor and he waves at stuffy Wayne’s at like certain cars that pass by time too. So people will stop and wave at us and we keep going and we keep going on our walk.
So.
Jerred Moon : He’s, he’s suspicious of all these people. [00:06:00] Why do you wanna know my son’s name? Why do I see you in the same time every day? No, that’s happening to me cause I’ve pretty much moved my workout time to 1230 every single day, minus the kids portion. But I opened my garage at 1230 cause I’m about to start training.
And the same couple is walking past. It’s like days, like matrix style. Like there’s every day they’re walking past my driveway as I open it, I’m like. You guys must start your walk like, cause they’re not my neighbors. They’re not like, they just ha they’re walking out their door at 1230. They have to start their walk at like 1215 or 12 and they just happened to pass by my house every day at the same time.
It’s been blowing my mind lately.
Kyle Shrum : That’s, there’s something a little suspicious there.
Jerred Moon : yeah, I think they, they want me to ask like, all right, you guys want to come in, you want to use the garage? Is that it? I didn’t think about that til just now. Thanks Kyle. You’re welcome. Updates from you, man. How’s life?
Kyle Shrum : Life is good. I’m Hannah and I actually [00:07:00] broke the, the Rohner rules as I like to call them just now.
Jerred Moon : we have been with adhere to any rules from the beginning.
Kyle Shrum : they have, I haven’t, but they have the, the state itself has, the state is opening back up. I think tomorrow actually, thankfully, and these are supposed to open up tomorrow.
but our, our city is a little bit different. Chattanooga is a little bit different. They kind of kind of doing their own thing, but we broke the rules. We’ve been in Knoxville with Hannah’s parents all week and, the kids are hanging out with the grandparents and Hannah and are getting our work done with less distractions and of, it’s been a good week.
Ashley Hicks : Thank you. Love grandparents, man.
Jerred Moon : Oh yeah.
Kyle Shrum : Well, they really missed him too, so you know, and this was the first thing we were going to do when, you know, the travel ban, quote unquote, was lifted. Anyway. We were going to come up here and hang out with them anyway, so we just [00:08:00] went in and came up,
Jerred Moon : so it’s not good.
Kyle Shrum : But because of that, my switch to the shred track. Has been put off by a week because I left my gym at home. So we did it. We did bring, we brought several things with us actually. and I’m seeing a man of things with us. We brought a lot of dumbbells and kettlebells and bands and all that kind of stuff with us to work out while we were here.
But, nothing like having the full gym, you know what I mean? So shred track is unfortunately, quote unquote been put off for a week.
Jerred Moon : Well, so what are you doing? Nothing.
Kyle Shrum : Absolutely nothing. All this stuff. Moved it out of the car and it’s just said, no, I’ve been doing no gear this week. I added some gear to the no gear, but
Jerred Moon : if you got the gear, you can add it to no gear, no problem.
Kyle Shrum : Like all the running I had to do yesterday, I had a vest on the whole time and, and I’ve been using the kettlebells and all that kind of stuff, but it’s [00:09:00] easier to. scale, well, not really scale, but adapt. No gear by adding gear than it is to scale. Shred without having gear. Does that make sense? Like it’s just easier to move up in no gear than it is moved down from shred.
So.
Jerred Moon : Got it. Well, cool. yeah. I’m, I mean, the band. Bands are lightning, you know, across the United States, which is just great. hopefully that doesn’t cause any bigger issues, but, you know, let’s, let’s get back after it. If we can, everyone who, you know, life might be getting back to some form of normal, updates for me, I’ve been slamming cherry juice, tart cherry juice ever since the last podcast.
so I’ve, I mean, I’m actually on like day seven of taking it. I don’t think I noticed anything different. We did talk a little bit before I had a headache today, and the reason that’s weird is because I don’t ever get headaches. Like pretty much ever. It’s very, very rare. and I have a headache. I had a headache [00:10:00] today.
I’m pretty bad one, so I don’t know. It’s the only thing I’ve changed. They’ll see if I get another headache tart. Cherry juice has gone, but I haven’t noticed any performance benefits. I’ll let you guys know when I, do some more training cause I’m, I’m throwing in wa Murph a little bit more on meet yourself Saturday just with a looming potential world record attempt.
You guys, Didn’t catch up on any of that cause it sounds like I’m that dude, I don’t even remember his name. He’s gonna be trying the world record, down, in Fort Bragg and may on Memorial day. And I’m, I just, I want him to set the record. I just, I’m not, I have no fear anymore. Like last time I talked about it, I was, I don’t think I sounded very confident because.
I just didn’t really know what he’s capable of and now I’m just like unfazed. I don’t think I just, I’m not scared. I think I can do it. I think if he sets the legitimate world record, I will immediately contact Guinness and be, okay, let’s set up our date for the fall and I’ll be doing a lot more Murphs.
Anyway, that’s that update, a cherry juice update and then book it looks official thing I gave a 95% last time. 19 [00:11:00] may is going to be the drop date of the book. The only thing that could change that. I have like hundreds of books coming to my house right now cause I want to sign a bunch of copies and send them to people in the community.
And you guys will hear more about those opportunities too. But, unless for some reason these copies all turned out like trash, but I’ve already got the first copies and they were fine. But if, if for some reason the mass production ruined it. You know? And that’s just my, like what could go wrong here?
That it would, it would delay it, but right now everything is tracking for 19 may. That’s a Tuesday officially launching the book and probably, launching the audio book on audible the next week on Tuesday. So about a week gap there. And that is it killing comfort book is coming. If you guys want to get notified about it or whatever, you’re already on five on Friday, don’t worry about it.
You’ll hear about it. If you want to make sure you’re on all that, go to. Killing comfort.com and you can enter in your name and email address and I’ll make sure that you’re notified of when the book comes out and all the cool bonuses and everything else we’re doing during the launch.
[00:12:00] Kyle Shrum : You’ll just send us all the trash copies right.
Jerred Moon : If that were to happen? Yes. Yep. Great. That’s what you guys get? Yes. What were you saying actually?
Ashley Hicks : How much tart cherry juice are you intaking? Like, do you remember we were talking about eight to 12 ounces a day. Is that how much you’re taking
Jerred Moon : every day? so Joe got some too, and he is taking tart cherry juice from concentrate.
I’m taking tart cherry juice concentrate. So just the actual concentrate. And in the study they said you could take either, so I’m only taking. 30 milliliters at a time, which is like two tablespoons. And I take it one to two times per day. the study was doing twice per day, but I’m not really testing anything.
So it’s like, yeah, I’m gonna take all this tart cherry juice in, but I do want to, I want to do Murph this weekend and just see how I feel, and especially how I feel after, if everything feels great, like maybe there’s something to it. So. Yeah. This one was just too easy not to test. That’s the real reason I’m doing it.
Like we talk about some of these things and like we’d maybe [00:13:00] have to all through our training program or like do something crazy or buy something really expensive. This one was like, it was like 20 bucks for a month’s supply of a tart cherry juice, maybe even more. And, a longer supply. I mean, I’m like, why not?
I’ll just try it out and see what happens. So nice. I’ll keep you guys updated. All right. This week we are hopping into the, the study, which is basically about range of motion. The name of the study is effects of range of motion on muscle development during resistance training interventions, a systematic review.
So I really liked the reviews, as you guys know, just because they look at a bunch of different studies and try to see what the scientific consensus is on. A particular topic this time, it had to do with a range of motion and muscle growth. Like how much, what, what’s the best for gains? Really. Like what are, you know, what can you stand to benefit from with their range of motion protocols because we all here, you know, you should have full [00:14:00] range of motion on almost any movement, but is that the truth?
And that’s kinda what they’re looking at. So they identified 1,396 potential studies, six of which met their inclusion criteria. That blows my mind. So they were like 31,390 they were like, Nope, no good. And so five of the studies used untrained participants by one use train subjects for examined lower body hypertrophy, which is muscle growth.
While two examined upper body hypertrophy, the average day duration was 10.5 weeks in 135 total subjects, 127 men, eight women were included in the six studies. So. That is the, study. And now I’m just gonna talk briefly about the results and then get a want to hear what you guys have to say. The actual result, conclusion type thing from the study was almost inconclusive.
They were like, we need to, we need to study this more. This wasn’t real clear, but I just wanted to look at the actual breakdowns. And so they have each study [00:15:00] broken down what the range of motion was compared like what are they, was it elbow flection? Was it. More legs, was it triceps, you know, things like that.
And then they put in the, okay, if you had a longer or full range of motion, how much muscle growth could you get? And if you had a shorter range of motion, what was the muscle growth you could get? And what I found interesting was longer range of motion, one out almost every single time. But that’s not a huge surprise to me.
So go through your full range of motion if you’re going to be doing an exercise. But the shorter range of motion wasn’t that far off. Almost in any category, and it actually blew one category out of the water. But I’ll talk more about that. And, in a minute, I want to hear what you guys have to say. So, Ashley, what were your thoughts on this study?
Ashley Hicks : so for this study, I, what I took away from it was that obviously your range of motion, your full range of motion. and I’ll probably just refer, like to squatting if I’m going to talk about, like what, I mean, obviously they did multiple tests on different movements, but all, when I think [00:16:00] of this, I’m thinking about a squat because that’s just where my mind goes.
it can increase your muscle growth, right? So they. They said that the thing that I would take away from this is to be careful. If you haven’t, well, let’s say you’ve only been able to squat to parallel. Like for example, my husband had a knee surgery, so Scott cannot squat really below parallel, or his knee will just get super inflamed and he knows that, right?
So he knows he can get to parallel, and that’s it. So I would say work with just your body weight. If you want to get below to parallel, kind of feel that way if you want it to build muscle growth and then, you know, use weights to do the full range of motion. but the thing that I was more. Wanted to kind of compare and contrast is they also talked about, tension.
he talked about the constant tension and it makes me want to look at like a study of the tension on your muscles versus the full range of motion. Like, one of the things that was quite interesting to me [00:17:00] is, you know, if a full range of motion, if you’re doing a bicep curl, for example, you’re holding a weight.
It’s all the way down. Your bicep is all the way, you know. Flex out. But is that what builds your bicep or is it when you come up and you are, you know, flexing and in that kind of tension? So that is, that’s kinda what I took away from this study as I kind of wanted to see the two. Like was it just the full range of motion or was it, you know, the constant tension that you’re also putting on your muscles while you work out?
Jerred Moon : So my guests to that question would be. So it goes to like time under tension. And this is where, you know, one of my takeaways from the study was learn how to use your muscles and not just worried about range of motion because what you’re, what you’re talking about, if I were to do a bicep curl up and down are both going to help the muscle growth, but the down, if I just kind of fully stretch out my arm and you know, you, you could do this, like you can do a test with a dumbbell outside or whatever, but like.
You could be fully [00:18:00] stretched out, arm kind of locked out and have no tension, no real tension in your bicep. And you can do the same in a squat. You know, you can get into the very bottom of a squat and then just kind of chill. You know, you can, like, if you have pretty good range of motion, you can just kind of chill in the bottom of the squat.
You can disengage a little bit with your, your muscles and, even, you know, loosen up your core. All these things are bad, by the way. You shouldn’t do those things when you’re squatting, but you can. And, I think if you’re doing stuff like that, you’re going through the motions. You’re not seeing the results.
But if you’re. Like, if you want to grow your bicep like you, you should be focusing, you should be looking for pain. You should be looking for that muscle burn so that like, slow contraction and then that release outward, you know, until you feel like you don’t need to go any, any further, you don’t want to release the tension on that bicep and then come back up.
And I had a friend, still a friend, he. Is just like ripped, like super jacked. any, any, always has been. we, we trained together in high school and like, you know, he’s just always been that way. He’s a phenomenal athlete. [00:19:00] He does like partial range of motions on basically everything any always has.
And I used to give him crap for crap about it, but he was way bigger than me. Like, you know, I was just always, I was always messing with him. you know, and he, but he never really did full range of motion on, on anything. cause he just wanted that muscle burn. Mine. That’s one. He’s the only person I’ve ever met like that.
So that’s an anecdotal, like one person. I know. But yeah, I think that that time under tension is very, very important.
Hi, what were your takeaways, man?
Kyle Shrum : It’s pretty similar to what you guys were talking about with the this, but it talks to, it talks a lot about isolation exercise. And it kind of made me think of bodybuilders and bodybuilders, you know, they have a whole lot of hot perch for you. That’s basically all they ever work on as hypertrophy is building muscle.
And when you watch bodybuilders train, they rarely do a full range of motion or most of the time, most of the movements that they do, they do it in some kind of partial range of motion [00:20:00] and an, and it kind of, this kind of made me think of that, that it’s probably why they’re able, which it’s not the only reason why, you factor in like.
supplements and things like that and their diet and all that kind of stuff. But at the same time, they’re, they don’t go all the way down on a bicep curl. they don’t go all the way down with tricep extensions. They don’t go all the way down on all of these different things. And, and I, I feel it’s because of this.
It’s because they want to keep that bar, that muscle under tension for every rep instead of releasing. They don’t release the tension until the, the set is over. So, you know, however many reps they’re doing there. Keeping the, so to us, they look like half reps, but really it’s intentional reps. You know what I mean?
They’re just trying to keep the muscle under tension the entire time until the set is over. I’m not saying that everyone needs to go start training a lot. Bodybuilders. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that that kind of made this, make sense a little bit more sense to me. And also it just made me think of the issues that I’ve had [00:21:00] with range of motion, especially like with squatting.
actually last week I was doing some squatting and my ankles were felt really tight. And so actually for the first time ever, tried the, the heel plate technique, you know, putting the plate under the heel, like we talked about in the gear episode a few weeks ago. And man. It was unbelievable. You know, it was, it was not in day difference.
It was so much easier. Like I could get down, like there was nothing wrong. Actually, it felt almost better than it does normally. for whatever reason, my ankles were totter that day than normal. And so I just tried it out and man, I could get up and down like crazy, you know? And so, you know, it just showed me range of motion really does make a difference, but this is kind of what it was talking about was can range of motion improve.
Or increase muscle gain. And that’s kinda what it brought up to me was how bodybuilders train and they, it, I, it’s the same thing that you were saying with your buddy. It’s like, I’ve seen other guys doing that as well in the gym. And it’s like, why [00:22:00] are you not going all the way down? What’s wrong with you?
You’re okay. You did half a set, you know, can you go back into the other half? And it’s like, Nope. You know, they’re, they’re just doing it very intentionally.
Jerred Moon : And I think when you’re talking about muscle growth, you know, if you want to be. That that goes along with strength to some degree, like you can get stronger without necessarily having to gain a ton of muscle.
But, I would say they go somewhat hand in hand, but when you look at the actual numbers, they’re not far off like that. To me, there’s not a right and wrong here. I prefer people to go full range of motion because I think repeated lack of know going through that full range of motion is going to. Limit or hinder your mobility later on.
That’s the, that’s the big reason I think that people should go through a full range of motion with really good form. But you know, if, if you have a knee problem or whatever and you’re, you’re going not as far down on like say a squat. We’re talking about, in, in this [00:23:00] specific study, like one and 2% differences between the person who’s going all the way down and the person who’s not.
And so I think that’s really interesting because you could, you could look at this study and just pull the data and be like, you know, they were kind of inconclusive, but if you just look at the numbers, you’d be like, okay, well it looks like full range of motion is better. So full range of motion wins.
And it’s like, well, I mean, it’s. To me, those are marginal differences. And that’s kind of, I think why they, it was hard for them to draw some conclusions, but I think, you know, you need to know why you’re doing it. There’s only your goals in this equation because we see people get, you know, post a video and someone’s like, Oh, you didn’t go low enough on the squat.
And while we have standards for like. Getting a PR shirt or whatever. And if you’re in a competition, yeah, and you’re doing pushups, you need to lock out your elbows because everyone needs to be held to some sort of standard. But if you’re not being held to any standard for anything, you do whatever you want.
You know, like it doesn’t really matter if you’re not worried about limiting or hindering your mobility, then do whatever and know that it’s not going to really affect your, your gains all that much either. you know, I think [00:24:00] people need to know their goals and not necessarily think like, Hey, the, you know, you have to do it because.
I was told that once, and one thing I did want to say about the triceps, that was the only one that was like, I don’t know if you guys saw that, but like
Ashley Hicks : the 45
Jerred Moon : triceps specifically, if you do full range of motion, it was like 28% plus or minus 10% or 11% but the shorter range of motion was 48.7% plus or minus 14.5% so significantly better.
On the triceps if this was just a tricep exercise to go shorter range of motion. And I think it has to do with the time under tension thing that we were talking about. and that you kind of alluded to Kyle and, and actually like, I think that’s really important. And that was one of the conclusions, right?
Accessory movements. It seems to be a little bit more important than anything else. but the last study I wanted to bring up that was kind of in conjunction with this, cause this is a brand new study they did. The first time ever they did in humans where they had, people in Japan, weightlifters eat a certain amount of [00:25:00] protein throughout the day.
It wasn’t a lot of protein, but they tried different things where like, they had like an extremely high protein meal at night. And then other Durant times during the day, they’d have lower amounts of protein or they’d have equal amounts of protein every single day or every single meal to kind of get, you know, it more spaced out appropriately.
And they wanted to see. You know what was the best for muscle growth? So kind of same category. And it was really interesting because you need a certain amount of protein to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. We’ve talked about these things before, but ultimately having equal amounts of protein throughout the day, one, like that was the study conclusion.
But the difference when you actually looked at the data was like this. It was fractions of percent. So it was like one and 2% difference, 3% different, 4% different. And I’m like, okay, so all you’re really telling me here is. It doesn’t matter that much. You just need to get enough protein throughout the day.
People argue about this all the time, but they’re arguing over 2% difference in a lot of cases, or 3% difference. So just. My main takeaway for all this that [00:26:00] I’m rambling on about is just know your goals and what you’re trying to do and only adhere to those standards if you’re going to compete or you’re trying to be a bodybuilder or whatever.
Yeah, you might want to like take into these one one or 2% things into account, but ultimately just know what you want to do and how you want to execute it for your training. All right. You guys ready? Talk. You guys ready to talk about some de-load? this was actually from the Facebook group, question.
cause you, you, you said like what’d you say? W what do you guys want us to cover on the podcast or something?
Kyle Shrum : Yeah, it was something like that. It was what, what are some topic ideas you would like to see covered on the podcast?
Jerred Moon : And your question of the week. This week was kind of. Ridiculous. Not ridiculous question the responses.
So Kyle asked, what was it like? What are some weird food combinations?
Kyle Shrum : So what the, yeah, the question is, what’s a weird food combination that you like that other people think is gross.
Jerred Moon : Yeah. And like Emily had to stop reading at one point cause she thought it was getting so disgusting. I’m [00:27:00] now judging people, you know, in the group.
I’m just kidding. It was, but there were some interesting combinations I would have never, some of them, they weren’t weird at all. Like I think someone said peanut butter and bananas. I was like,
Kyle Shrum : well that one, I know who you’re talking about on that. And I told him he had to pick something else because that’s not, that’s not weird enough.
Jerred Moon : But then they got some of it got weird. I think it was like dozens. Then someone say they mix like almond butter and eggs together. I’m like,
Kyle Shrum : something like that. Yeah.
Jerred Moon : Dang,
Kyle Shrum : that’s, that wasn’t the worst one. No, I don’t want to, I don’t want to say what I thought it was,
but
Jerred Moon : why not you? You don’t. You don’t cause you want to, you don’t want the world to know that you think something’s weird.
That might be normal.
Kyle Shrum : That’s it.
Jerred Moon : You’re not gonna tell us. No. Alright. Okay. All right. So anyway, the other question you did ask was, yeah, what topics can we cover? So we, we’ve added some of those to AMA. Some of them are going to be covered in studies in the future, but one I just thought, you know, if you’re asking more about our training in general, which there were good amount of those questions, I figured we could kind of cover some of those in the topics [00:28:00] section of how we do the podcast.
And we had, someone asked like, you know, what’s the. Yeah. Talk a little bit more about this de-load active recovery stuff and like why you guys do it, because that is, it’s kind of a common thing to de-load and, like heavy strength training world. Like it’s, it’s a little bit more known, but a lot of people walk into our training not coming from that background and they’re like.
What the hell is the de-load and why are we doing it? So I would love to, especially people who, that’s their first week in the program when they come into a de-load week and they’re like, I’m super confused, but I’d love to hear your guys’ thoughts on the load week. And I can kind of talk about big picture like what we do.
But actually, what are your thoughts on, on de-loading and active recovery?
Ashley Hicks : So de-load for, I think all of us, we can obviously say that if, I think if you continue to do, I am non de-load program, so if you never take into account and step back and do less percentage or potentially even less reps and take it back, you could do.
Harm in the long run. [00:29:00] Right? And so what we’re here to do is we were looking out for you for, you know, not just the cycle and not just the here and the right now, but obviously in the long run as well, we want you to be able to continue to work out later on, right? and. How have you de-load weeks.
Sometimes people talk about de-load as man, you know, I thought it was supposed to be easier. De-load is not necessarily easier. Sometimes I am more sore on de-load weeks than I am on the normal weeks. And sometimes it’s, you know, we’re maybe doing less weight, but higher reps or you know, maybe we’re just doing stuff that we haven’t.
You know, done. But it is not as taxing on our bodies as it was. You know, you still have to view it as a workout. You still have to view it as training and still get after it. but it’s just a week that your body can kind of, you know, take a little bit of a break. And then the one thing I would suggest to people on de-load week, Jared, you talked about it last week and I think it is a [00:30:00] great point.
If you are feeling beat up and you have to. De-load the weight that’s on de-load week. Like let’s say we give you a certain percentage and you’re like, I can’t do this. Take it back. You know, that’s the whole point of de-load week is for you to kind of recover, let your body kind of recover from what we’ve just been doing for these past three weeks, which may have, you know, taxed your body significantly.
So that is a huge takeaway for me on de-load weeks. and then, yeah, just be smart about it. And. Still get after dealer week, even though, you know, people call it an easy weekends, it should not still be an easy eight. You should still get after it. So
Jerred Moon : yeah, I don’t hear many people call it an easy week.
Most often it’s complaints about it not being right easy. Kyle, what are some of your thoughts on this? So
Kyle Shrum : something that I think a lot of people aren’t. Really familiar with is your central nervous system. And I think that’s one of the biggest reasons that we do de-load [00:31:00] weeks is because our training is so taxing on your central nervous system, especially if you’re doing something like strength track and you’re, you know, working up and up and up or with the hard to kill track, you’re blending the two so much that you’re going to need a week for your central nervous system to catch up.
And that’s not something that we’re like. Super consciously aware of. It’s just kind of there. But if your central nervous system is out of whack, you are out of whack. I mean, it, it, you know, it, it controls you. And so doing a de-load week every four weeks, the way that we’d do it, I mean, you’re, you’re seeing this is really gonna thank you.
and you’re gonna, you’re gonna be, like Ashley was saying, you’re gonna have better longevity as far as training goes. And it’s like you said, Jared. This is something that people who exercise or compete athletically for a living, like they all do this. You know what I mean? All of them do. I mean, it’s something that everybody does.
And even like. Strong men or [00:32:00] powerlifters are weightlifters like they all, when they’re coming up to a competition, they always have a taper off week before competition. Like they’re working really hard up until competition, and then they taper off right before they really need to perform. And it’s, it’s something that we, that we have to do just to, just to keep our bodies.
In competition mode or just in in life mode for most of us Gresham athletes where we’re not competing in a, in a whole lot of things, but that’s, it’s not just that we have a de-load week every week or every. four weeks, it’s that we have that, you know, three elements every day as part of that as well.
You know, it’s not just the load, it’s active recovery. You know, we throw active recovery days every single week. and you need to be taken advantage of those, you know, don’t just, don’t just, you know, if you’re super beat up, take it off. Don’t do it, you know, don’t do anything that day. But something that I’ve found over the last few weeks is.
I’ve just been, and you know, we’ve been reporting in our team meetings too, of how many sessions we get every week. I’ve been trying to hit [00:33:00] seven every single week, you know, and I’ve been hitting it, you know, more than I used to. But what I found is doing something every day. Actually, it helps me every day, you know, it doesn’t, you know, doing, doing something that even on my, on my active recovery days or my rest days, actually it helps me only other days that I train as well.
And so just being intentional about your recovery is extremely important to being able to perform and being able to compete or whatever it is that you’re, that you’re trying to do. And so it’s, it’s not, it’s not a break. It is a break, but it’s not like, it’s not. Just veg out and be lazy and do nothing.
It’s, this is very intentional. It’s just kind of like what we talked about with the zone. Two stuff. You know, it’s not like zone to Murph. It’s not lazy. Murph, it’s intentional. Murph, you know, it’s like there’s a specific purpose to it. So I feel the same way about the load and active recovery. Like there’s a, there’s a purpose behind it and if you skip it, it’s going to hurt you in [00:34:00] the long run.
Jerred Moon : So. Yeah. And I think, you know, a lot of people don’t look at training that way, or just in general, like I love physical activity, so it’s more on me to like, to not do something is harder for me than. Yeah, like taking a full day off I, it’s just kind of hard. Like it happens. It happens to me frequently and it normally life related or something, but I would have always preferred to move.
Now I’m not going hard on those days. So groggy mathlete we have four programmed days that are typically, you know, programmed to move you forward. There’s a meet yourself Saturday. That’s optional. but those other two days, like what am I doing? Cause I’m typically doing meet yourself Saturday and the four program days, it’s, it’s something light, you know, zone two maybe.
And I, I say zone two, but I’m not, I’m an, I’m not, I’m not even like measuring my heart rate most of the time. Like I’ll go for a bike ride or I’ll, you know, I’ll do something like that. Just some, but it’ll, it’ll be an hour long bike ride. It’s not like this 10 or 15 minutes thing. I’ll go for an hour long ride and it doesn’t affect me in any way.
And for most people, I think that’s the same once you get out of this [00:35:00] mentality of like, you know. If you don’t enjoy fitness, I could see like you’re trying to get away with the minimal effective dose. You’re like, what’s, what can I get away? Is it three days a week? Perfect. I want to do three and then I want to do nothing every other day.
You know, there are a lot of people who have that kind of mindset, but you can do stuff every single day. Now, why do we de-load we have. There’s really three reasons. two of them are the types of de-load. The first one is a volume de-load. So if we’ve been going really high volume on a track, just meaning lots of sets, sets and reps, where the barbell orders cut that volume typically around in half.
And so we’ll do a volume dealer and then sometimes it’s not a volume de-load it’s an intensity de-load and that is more of what we did. And that’s, that’s where people complain more is when we do an intensity de-load because the volume. Didn’t change that much, but we just dropped percentages. So too, it feels almost the same, but you’re hitting much lower intensities on lifts and efforts.
and so that’s the other type. And those are more sparing of your CNS, [00:36:00] like you were saying, Kyle, these intensity deloads. Now, the third reason I like to do it, it’s kind of a mental, not related to like CNS mental, but like, like just this, I know I have to go hard for three weeks. And then I’m going to take a week, you know, back off a week and then I’m gonna go hard for three weeks.
Like that just kinda keeps you in the game a little bit more when, you know, you only have to push for a certain amount of time. Like I’ve always said that that’s why Parenthood is so hard because there is no end of the tunnel, right? It’s like you need to try hard at being a parent. Every day and for at least whatever, 18 years.
And then after that you’re still parent, but it’s, it’s going to be very different. Right. so that is, you know why I think Parenthood is hard, but also fitness is the same way. Like, I don’t plan on really ever stopping. Like, I always want to be training. There’s no end to this. It’s not like I, you know, after this end of three fitness thing is over, I think I’ll probably just like, I probably won’t work out anymore.
Like that’s not in my plan. It’s like I want to work out until the day I die. And so. I need to stay fresh and able to do that, and I need to take that [00:37:00] de-load week, every three weeks. And you know, for the more serious athletes around, groggy, mouthy, and I don’t mean. High level athletes, I mean committed athletes, like I want them to stick around for 10 years or longer.
You know, doing the training and making sure it works for them and that they’re going to be healthy and happy. I’m not, I’m not really, I don’t do any of this for the person who signed up and wants to be here for a month or one cycle. Like I’m glad to have you if that’s what you wanted to do. If it wasn’t for you and you wanna move on, I get it.
But my long game strategy is for the people who are super committed. And that’s how my programming is, and that’s what I’m taking into account. And that, you know, I can even see their faces and know their names of the people I’m thinking about in the community. And so that’s, that’s kinda why we do it.
They’re kind of the big three reasons right there. alright, now working out, not de-load guys ready workout of the week. EO three iron mile. Does anybody know it off the top of their head?
Kyle Shrum : I do.
Jerred Moon : Let’s go. Go for it, Kyle. My,
Kyle Shrum : okay. This one is, this one is my favorite one. My favorite meet yourself [00:38:00] Saturday always has been.
it is as simple as it gets. You have a mile to walk, but. The kicker is you have to have a barbell or something else that’s really uncomfortable and made out of metal on your back for the entire mile.
Jerred Moon : It’s basically a barbell or a yoke. You can’t have a sandbag or a vest or whatever. Yeah.
Kyle Shrum : Yup.
Something, something very, very uncomfortable barbell or a yoke. You pick the weight and that’s actually, that’s one of my, tips is, be careful about the weight because it’ll sneak up on you for a mile. and, and don’t think that you’re all big and bad or whatever, and, Oh, I’m going to do a whole bunch of white, Nope.
That White’s going to crush you. Probably literally. but anyway, yeah. Walk them out with a barbell on your back. That’s it. Yeah.
Jerred Moon : I would say I typically do like one [00:39:00] 35 if I’m just trying to do like a fun, fun, meet yourself Saturday iron Ironman, and it still sucks, but I, when I started doing it, I did body weight, so I did one 85 and I was okay the first half mile.
Like it wasn’t that bad. I could, I mean, I don’t even think I set it down. Like I think I made it the half mile without setting down one 85 but then I had to walk back and that’s when I was like, Oh wow, this is gonna really suck. Not only does it suck because it’s 185 pounds. I had to clean and press 185 pounds over my head every single time to get it back onto my back.
And it was. Very close to the end, pretty much too heavy to do that anymore. Like I got it done, but my form was not looking, not looking great for a, you know, clean and jerk in the middle of the street. and so yeah, it gets, it gets really dirty really fast. And I always tell people, walk out the distance, turn around and come back because that you, you’re forced to meet [00:40:00] yourself because the only other option is to leave your barbell, like in the grass somewhere and walk back and get your car.
And if that happens to you, just think about. Just, I want to know what’s going on in your head as, as you’re walking back to your car, like, are you okay with what just happened? Like, are you okay with this? Like this failure that you’re embarking on now, if you went too heavy and you’re, you feel unsafe, okay, walk back to your car.
But if you’re just like, you know, I don’t feel like doing this chair’s an idiot. This is a dumb workout, which is where I like for people to get. definitely make it back. Make it 800 meters back.
Kyle Shrum : You’re taking a risk on someone. On someone’s stealing your barbell at that point, though, at the same time,
Jerred Moon : I didn’t even think about that.
Kyle Shrum : Especially right now with everybody’s snapping up gym equipment.
Jerred Moon : It would go fast.
Kyle Shrum : Yeah. So, anyway, I would say, Ashley is going to give you a musical suggestion for this one. I am going to tell you on this one, and maybe it’s just because I love this one so much. I do no music at all. It is just
Jerred Moon : me
[00:41:00] Kyle Shrum : in the street, man.
I love this one, man.
Jerred Moon : Right. Everyone. That’s
Kyle Shrum : right. you know, I’m, I’m taking away my, I’m taking away my Metallica recommendation. Don’t do Metallica for this one. Just you and the barbell and the street, and that’s it. and I would say my biggest struggle with this one is not really the weight. It’s not really the walk.
it’s, the blood flow to my hands. And so in that barbell up there is tough and your hands get to tingling and you’re trying to shake them out and you gotta hold, hold it with one arm, you know, and, and shake out the other one and all that.
Jerred Moon : So, have you ever tried stretching your arms across the Barbeau?
Kyle Shrum : Yup. And that works for about 30 seconds, and that hurts.
Jerred Moon : That really works for me. Like if, You guys can’t see what I’m talking. I’m like reaching my arms out all the way and I’m kind of holding the plates, 45 pound plates with my, with my hands. And
Kyle Shrum : that’s probably my range of motion limitations.
Certain more than anything.
Jerred Moon : Yeah. You don’t want to cramp up in that position. That would be,
Kyle Shrum : yeah. That’s not a, that’s not a good position to cramp [00:42:00] open
Jerred Moon : actually. What do you have?
Ashley Hicks : Well. Kyle poo-pooed on one of mine and then you stole my other, so
Jerred Moon : I’m sorry. I didn’t read, I didn’t read, I didn’t read the, it’s fine.
I’m sorry.
Ashley Hicks : I would say I put on my rock playlist for this and I just kind of mentally go somewhere else.
Jerred Moon : Just this one faster than Kyle. Because of it though.
Ashley Hicks : We’ll see. I don’t know, but
Kyle Shrum : I’m probably doing.
Ashley Hicks : Well, we’ll have a test on this, but I’m doing less weight than Kyle. I don’t think I could do my body weight.
If I could put 145 pounds on my back and walk it for a mile. I don’t know. I would get like you, Jared. I don’t think I could clean and jerk that cause that’s about 10 pounds away from my max
Jerred Moon : when it comes down to like, what do you have time for? Because if I do one 35 this is this workout, it’s not super long.
But that day, like I said, I made it out there, but then, I don’t know, I had to set it down like 15 times on the way back and I was like, I need to go. Like I got other things to do today. Like I can’t, I can’t just be doing this workout. I mean I finished it, but [00:43:00] it depends on how much time you have.
Ashley Hicks : Yeah.
Take two hours on this. Yeah. So choose to wait wisely. and then pick a good mixer. Don’t do a good mix, whatever you want. And then that was my, my suggestion is you move your hands. Cause again, mine is not necessarily the weight on my back. it is exactly what Kyle said. Like if I hold the barbell with like normal grip, I guess.
My hands go tingly. So then I go over and I’ll just do that as well. And then I come back in slowly, move it again, kind of shuffle. So, yeah, just get down and back as fast as you can. You’ll, you’ll thank yourself later. It’s
Jerred Moon : very interesting for me. It’s 100% the weight on my back. That hurts. But I’m sure that I’ve, I’ve come across the tingling.
Okay, but tingling is not pain, is it? Is it painful?
Ashley Hicks : It’s not painful. It’s just like your hands are going numb.
Jerred Moon : It’s like scary.
Ashley Hicks : It is. It is kind of scary. And I mean, for us, like, I don’t know, I’m not speaking for you Kyle, but I’m only doing maybe 95 pounds, so [00:44:00] maybe it would be more of a weight issue if I went a little heavier.
Kyle Shrum : Well, at the same time, if your hands go numb. How are you going to hold the bar? Yeah. It’s just, just balance it on your traps while you’re walking, you know? So if you can’t feel the bar with your hands, you know, then you’re in a pretty sticky
Jerred Moon : situation. That’s a real thing. You know? I’ve told, I wrote an article about it.
It’s on the podcast, like a. When I did that a hundred mile bike race the very first time, and I basically hadn’t written a kid a bike since I was a kid, like in middle school, you know, for, you know, any serious length of time. Anyway, I did that a hundred mile bike race and I didn’t know there was a legitimately a thing called handlebar palsy and I lost the use of my left hand, like altogether lost it and it doesn’t come back.
Like, you know, a day later. Yeah. Everyone thought I was gonna say our, you know, it took several weeks to get the feeling all the way back in my hand. So when you start going down that road, you don’t want to stay [00:45:00] there. So do shake out your hands. Cause I was ignoring it like you guys were. I was like, yeah, whatever.
Some tingle tingliness in my hand or whatever, just keep, keep riding or whatever. Eight hours later, I can’t use that arm anymore, you know? So it’s, it’s not something you want to mess with. Yep. All right. That is it. we are going to get out of here. I do want to say, if you guys are joined the podcast, want to try the training out and, you know, experienced the de-load weeks experienced the iron mile and what we have, you know, eight different training tracks now.
Go ahead and go to groggy mathletes sign up for a free trial. We’d love to have you try things out, whether you are that longterm athlete or you do just want to stick around for a cycle and see if it’s something you want to be a part of. Just know I’m programming for the person who’s in it for the long haul and want to make sure they see results for a very long time.
That’s my goal and everything that I’m doing from a programming standpoint, and we have this amazing, you know. Coaching crew that’s here right now on the podcast that does an amazing job helping take care of the athletes. We just have a really good team, really awesome community, and would [00:46:00] love for you guys to be a part of it.
And don’t forget that killing comfort book is right around the corner. So go to killing comfort.com sign up to be notified when it comes out. That is it. Until next time. Thanks for listening to the garage gym athlete podcast. Do you want to learn more? Go to garage gym, athlete.com you can learn about our training.
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