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Hey, Athletes! Do you monitor your zones in training? Are you burning fat or sugar while working out? Listen to the newest episode to find out how to use fat as fuel while working out!
Episode 28 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!
How To Burn Fat
On this episode of the Garage Gym Athlete podcast we have the whole team join us! After updates and announcements the team dive into the study. They go over the benefits of zone 2 training and when it is best to burn fat.. The team then give the best tips for training and how to use Garage Gym Athlete programming. Lastly, this week’s Meet Yourself Saturday workout is new and interesting…Zone 2 Murph!
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 57-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
- Burning Fat While Training
- Eo3 Book Club Schedule
- Best Tips for Training With GGA
- Zone 2 Training
- Updates From The Team
- Zone 2 MURPH
- How To Train More Efficiently
- 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
- “Zone 2 MURPH”
Be sure to listen to this week’s episode:
Related Resources at End of Three Fitness:
- How Your Daily Shower Can Turn You into a Better Human
- Barbell Training: Leaning, Cutting and Losing Fat
—
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
Burn Fat
[00:00:00] 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 do better humans, unequivocal coaches, and autonomous athletes. I’ve spent the last several years obsessing over program design, nutrition in every other way you can optimize human performance.
This podcast is stills the latest scientific research with what I’ve learned and blends it with the 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 to three fitness.com.
All [00:01:00] right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jared moon here with everybody. So we’ve got Kyle, Ashley, Joe, and FIDI. all the ones, everyone, how are you doing? No, I’m kidding. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Oh man. Oh man. Yeah, I know. I know. It would’ve been too crazy. we’ll, we’ll go straight into, updates because I’m interested.
So Joe updates from you, man. I am almost back to normal training wise. and so last week or previous week, I’d finally started, ran for the first time, just I like . And then this past weekend we actually did a 30 minute run and I’m dead lifting at the front squats yesterday. So hammies feeling almost back to normal.
I’m like 90%. I’m going to try to. Work up to like a sprint speed this week, and then maybe I’ll be playing lacrosse over the weekend. Who knows? But hashtag the real reason he’s trying to accelerate his recovery. Yes. That’s the only way I can get my heart rate up. [00:02:00] 90% is actually playing something apparently by trying hard.
Yes. I try not to. You all. Yeah, so that’s about, I Pope’s you about 67 weeks recovery timetable from the partially torn AME string. Just a slight updates. That’s about how long it takes. A few. Rehab decently, which I did, and I still was able to hit my four workouts per week, during that time span.
Awesome. So you’re better. Yup. I am better in short. All right. Ashley. Doing good week two of shred. Thanks. FIDI. Today was a little spicy. I liked it, liked it a lot. so doing good with shred and just kind of meal prepping, for the week. Started that this weekend, so that way I can take the guesswork out of stuff.
I typically plan my meals, but going a little more in depth and. we’re actually cooking on Sundays. We’re using Cassie joys, cook once, eat all week book. [00:03:00] Yeah. That book you do, Emily. And I’ve got it. So, she’s got some really great meals that are great for macro counting as well, since I’m trying to lose a little bit extra baby weight.
So, and also kind of going dairy free, cutting some things out to, Reduce inflammation in my body. So yeah, this month is a lot of testing things out for me. Sounds like a lot of good tests. Yeah, Kyle. well, I thought that I had to be a little more creative with my update this time, but I still wasn’t able to do it.
moving on. One thing, one thing, I did get a, I do have an update. I didn’t say it and have one. Okay. Right. we did get bumper plates as a late Christmas gift. Oh, bumper. We have bumper plates in the gym now, which is pretty cool. so now you can go on them. You can drop them. I can drop them. Yup. And I got the ones with the dead drop, like it’s like the zero bounce, like, [00:04:00] yeah, like 88 on the scale.
Like the only thing higher than these would be the competition plates, which are just crazy expensive. Not going that route, but not necessary. Yeah. They just get there. Also, they make you look really cool. They make you look way cooler when you’re lifting them, so that’s good to know. That’s cool. Anyway, bumper plates.
That’s a good update. I gave some garage gym stuff last week. Updates, so that one’s a good one. There we go. VD. All right. I’ve got a, I’ve got a couple of updates, actually, I’m looking forward like you were talking about last week, looking forward to the end of Murph. Absolutely. I cannot wait. something else.
Yeah, so we were down to five now, and I’m inching closer to you every week. Keeping an eye on it. Don’t sleep. Oh, I’m not. We got the, we got the gym together at work, so I was in charge of, Procuring, building, planning out this entire gym. And, we finally got [00:05:00] 90% of it done to where we can get in there and train in there.
So I’m super pumped about training in there now versus where it happened. That’s awesome. Yeah. So, doing the thing, man, happy about that. Crushing it. Well, yeah, keep me updated on those Murph times, man. I want to just, you’re in the future, so you get to do it every time before I do so I know right now goal is 25 34 so let’s see.
Got it. All right. Not a lot of updates from me. I just, I don’t think we mentioned this last time. This is more for the podcast. So the last podcast of the month, we will be covering as the topic a book that we are reading or have read, something that we think that would be beneficial for the community.
Coincides with Joe’s book club that he does a phenomenal job of running for under three fitness. and so what, what we have, for this month, if you guys want to get a headstart, there’s no way you’ll read it before the podcast, most likely. But January, his book [00:06:00] is deep nutrition, by, what’s her name?
Catherine Shanahan. Shanahan. Yeah. So she was on the better humanology podcast. Really cool individual. You could go listen to that interview if you want to. but that’s the book we’ll be going over in January. And then February, I believe it is, why we sleep, which I recommended on this podcast, but we’re going to be diving in deeper on that.
And then lastly, atomic habits, atomic habits by James clear, James clear was also on the better hematology podcast. Episode number two. I think. So. Pretty cool. That’s it. Read. Read something. All right. That’s all I have. All right guys, let’s, let’s get into this one. I’m really excited. My only fear is that we come out of this discussion without people having a very deep understanding, of what the hell we’re talking about.
Cause it’s, I feel like there’s a lot of prerequisite knowledge. [00:07:00] so we need to unpack it. As carefully as we can. So I’m going to try and be very mindful of what I say and make sure that it gets unpacked. I also listened to anything you guys say and make sure you unpack it and then let’s just make sure that we all understand each other.
That way everyone listening understands what we’re talking about. So I, and the reason I’m saying all this, like prefacing all that, I think that this information is so ridiculously helpful. And powerful and people need to know these kinds of things. it will really change a lot for you, or maybe famous family members or, you know, just having knowledge.
Knowledge is power, right? So you using that. Is the ultimately I want you to do. All right, so the study is assessment of metabolic flexibility by means of measuring blood lactate fat and carbohydrate oxidation responses to exercise and professional endurance athletes and less fit individuals. That is the name of the [00:08:00] study.
I’m already going to unpack a few things right there. Metabolic flexibility. We had Zach bitter, probably the first person to introduce that term in a nonscientific format where he, Zach bitter was also on the better humanology podcast. He talks about metabolic flexibility being, you know, he’s heavily low carb ketogenic.
Most of the time. Then he, when he’s ramping up for race, he or actually racing, he relies more on carbohydrates. He calls this transitioning back and forth to be metabolic flexibility, and that’s pretty much what science agrees with as well. I don’t know who came up with the first. and now the second thing I want to point out is oxidation.
I might say it a lot. You might hear it said, but carbohydrate or fat oxidation. Is burning. So that is when someone says you’re burning carbs or you’re burning fat, oxidation is just a synonym for that. all right. So getting into the study itself, Pretty simple. I’m just going to read the abstract background.
The big why behind it is they were [00:09:00] trying to look at metabolic flexibility and seeing how people can transition between burning carbs, burning fat, how lactate plays into that. but here’s their abstract. And, it really explains a lot of it. So increased muscle mitochondrial mass is a characteristic of elite professional endurance athletes, whereas increase blood lactate levels.
At the same absolute submaximal exercise intensities and decreased mitochondrial oxidative capacity are characteristics of individuals with lower aerobics power. In contrast to professional athletes, patients with metabolic syndrome are characterized by a decreased capacity to oxidize lipids, lipids, or fats oxidizes, burn, so burn fat and by early transition from fat to carbohydrate oxidation.
as well as elevated blood lactate concentration as exercise power output increases a condition termed as metabolic in flexibility, which is awesome that they have that in there. Okay. I think that we need to [00:10:00] completely unpack what the hell that means. and then we can get into the study. Any thoughts anybody wants to fire off before we dive into that?
Not yet. Oh, yeah. Okay. So I just want to make sure everyone understands what that abstract says. So they’re basically saying, increased muscle mass might’ve. Con increase muscle. Mitochondrial mass means you are elite. It’s something elite performers have so more mitochondrial density, more muscle mass, less fat.
And they’re also saying that an increase at blood and increase in blood lack lactate at the same intensities and in a decrease in mocks, mitochondrial oxidative capacity equals lower probate, a aerobic output or power. And so if your muscles lactate, let’s just. Talk about that for a second. If your muscles are starting to burn, they’re forming lactate, and that’s not why you get sore.
That’s, that’s a misnomer or misbelief. But when you are burning, when you start to produce lactate, your muscles will burn. You will feel that. [00:11:00] And so when you are feeling that a me versus an endurance, an elite cyclist, I’m going to feel that lactate building up in my legs. Much sooner than elite cyclist is going to.
And so my legs are going to be burning. This hurts for me. And they’re like looking at me like we’re warming up. So that’s, that’s essentially what that is saying. But they had three different people that they’re looking at. They were looking at, people with metabolic syndrome, so diabetes or on the way to, being diabetic or having some other metabolic disease.
they looked at. moderate athletes, like, moderately active athletes, and then they looked at professionals. So there are three, three, shown in this. And if we were to deem ourselves as garage, mathlete is one of those, it’d be that middle tier, right? We’re not professional athletes. Most of us, I would assume, don’t have metabolic syndrome some good.
but we’re right there in the middle with when it comes to the results we discuss in the study. so that’s essentially what that means. So if you’re really out of shape, you’re gonna start getting a lot of. Blood lactate early on, you’re going to switch from [00:12:00] burning fat to carbs almost immediately because your body is very inefficient and that’s the problem, and that’s what they wanted to prove in this study.
They wanted to find out, Hey, are you flexible or inflexible? So inflexible. That kind of definition of that is like you switched to burning carbohydrates very fast and that’s not a good thing. Not a good thing. All right. Someone else should talk. I’m going to, once you reached, well actually I did that something.
So basically when somebody reaches fatigue, they switch over from fat to carbs and when, so it, it’s just the difference of the levels is it takes people longer to get fatigue. It takes us longer to get fatigue than it would a new person. So if you work on your. Well conditioning you, the longer you fatigue, the longer you, the longer you don’t fatigue, the longer you’re burning fat versus switching over to carbs, right?
And that matters. So if we talk about, you know, information that’s in the fuels course, there’s kind of a sliding scale. So [00:13:00] the lower your intensity, the more your body’s relying on fat as its energy source, as that scale slides towards more intense, moderate intensity to high intensity. So does your energy, the, the energy sources that you use.
So it moves from fat burning to glycolytic to like, just pure carbohydrates. We’re burning. And we mentioned this a little bit in the last podcast, or I did. so that’s just something that people need to understand. The more intense you are, the more you’re burning sugar, the less you’re burning fat.
That’s a principle. Everyone should probably just write down somewhere. who’s listening that way, you know. cause the ultimate thing I want people to get out of this is how do I burn fat? You know, what if I’m unhealthy and how do I burn fat? What do I do to do that? so looking at the actual study, I’m not going to dive too far too far into it.
I think that we can link to the PDF so people can read through it. They, I mean, the study itself was pretty straight forward. They had 22 international level. Male professional [00:14:00] cyclist, 20, moderately active, and 10 with metabolic syndrome. And they just did a bunch of bike tests. They had some other parameters like, Hey, don’t do any hard workouts.
over two hours a day before the test and make sure you eat at least 50% of your diet and carbohydrates the night before. And, I think it was 90 minutes before the test, you know, some basic, very basic parameters. And then how they measured blood lactate, blood lactate is very easy to measure. you can actually buy strips like on Amazon and do this yourself if you really wanted to.
It’s not much different than, like a blood glucose test. so you could do that and yeah, I won’t get into all the things they measured, but the charts are pretty interesting to look at. If you look at absolute workload, and fat oxidation, like people who the elite cyclist burning fat like. All the way up to an average or absolute workload of a 300, nearly 310, [00:15:00] 315 Watts, over, that’s like the peak, the highest of like a moderately trained individual, so they can burn fat for a very, very long time before they ever transition to carbohydrates.
And the quick, why does that matter? I think Kyle and I can tag team this, fact. So the fact of the matter is the whole reason, but why endurance athletes love burning fat, or the idea of it is because we have more of it. And so with, with glycogen and sugar in our, in our muscles, there’s only 2000 calories worth of it that you can store.
For the most part, you know, I’m sure it’s plus or minus whatever, but that there’s only 2000 calories that you can store with of that fat. I think Kyle has the stats on that. How much fat can you store to utilize his energy? well it depends on if you’re going for grams or galleries. whatever, one pound of fat, which is 454 [00:16:00] grams, one pound of fat holds 4,000, 100 calories, which is about two days worth of energy.
That’s in one pound of fat. and a pound of hydrated glycogen holds just 680 calories. So you’re looking at a pound of fat versus a pound of glycogen in your body. a difference in caloric. Storage of 4,100 calories versus 680 which means with fat, the fat in your body, you have much more fuel basically to use for exercise than you do with the glycogen in your body, which is this another reason to not have as many carbs in your body as you do fat, because it just doesn’t store as much energy, which is what you use to exercise.
Yeah. And the reason that’s so ideal is because going back to say, my a hundred mile bike race, I could very easily, it’ll take about 60 to 90 minutes. If I’m trying to go fast, I will be out of glycogen at the end of that. So then I, I’m dependent on two [00:17:00] things after that, my body can just, I can be so fit that I’m burning fat for the rest of the race and just maybe need, you know, some food throughout because you will, Or you can just bonk, you won’t really be able to move anymore, which we’ve all experienced, right? That’s when we’re out of, out of glycogen and, we really can’t do much else. And so the ideal scenario is to be so fit that you are really only ever burning fat in that race. And so your body just really doesn’t need much else.
Now, the duration of that race is a little bit longer, so you all will most likely need to eat. But I’d say a really trained cyclists for a hundred miles, they. Other than water and electrolytes probably don’t need anything else. They don’t need. They don’t need a super big or intense fueling strategy. If they were to go this route and try to be more metabolically flexible towards fat, cause you can just take a hit of sugar like the, like we’ve done in these Spartan races.
You can take a hit of sugar every 30 minutes to stay on top of things. but that’s not ideal. That’s not the [00:18:00] best, the most metabolically healthy thing to do. So I’ve kind of laid out the study and I have some more things to talk about. I want to, you know, hit on or whatever, but I’d love to hear just thoughts in general.
if you think something else needs to be explained about just the study or your thoughts on, on the concept. And I will go with whoever wants to go first. I don’t know first. So I think you did a great job of explaining, so I’m not going to dive in too much in that over. Basically restate what you stated because that’s, you know, redundant.
But what I thought of the entire time that I was reading this was our building block. At end of three fitness with our concurrent training. And I actually went back to that blog post that you did and it talked about, sub max, effort lifting as well as tempo, lifting controlled strength. and. did I say that right?
Oxidative conditioning. So, it just made me [00:19:00] think of our training and how we are trying to shape our athletes and give them a good building block before they go on top and do something that is, you know, more intense. I’d also makes me think of. The strengths, for, you know, hotter to kill or even today for shred or whatnot, that you kind of have like a strength and then you go into a more intense, conditioning workouts sometimes.
And sometimes they can be longer, sometimes they can be shorter. but that’s what it made me think of. It made me think of our own training and how we actually utilize a lot of this, information. Yeah. And like I’m not opposed to ever-changing methodologies as best, especially if. I would say revising our methodology if something came up that was different.
But that kind of continuum you’re talking about, we talked about, if you’re on the lower end of the training spectrum, then the only thing that we recommend is submaximal effort lifting and oxidative conditioning. So that’s exactly what this is like, that we think that you should build up your, [00:20:00] Muscle mitochondrial mass while also burning only fat by doing oxidative conditioning.
And then you can go up in those levels. And you know, this kind of ties into last week’s podcast with, you low intensity versus high intensity, right? So, you know, where should you be training? And that’s why I kind of wanted to dive into it deeper this week because I just want people to understand this whole.
Like when, when I’m saying don’t do high intensity all the time, I don’t think that I’ve ever provided a great, like, why? You know, without fully unpacking it like we’re doing right now. Jody, you have anything? Yeah. I think that the main thing that I thought of while reading and going through this and your warm example, kind of solidified it, was that it was kind of training helps to raise your floor so that if you’re completely starting off fresh, then you have a very low floor.
So you’re going to get taxed really fast. But if you go with these lower intervals or lower, intensities, your floor is going to raise. So that. As you’re warming up and as you’re going through things, your, your heart’s not gonna work as hard and you’re not going to get as fatigue as fast. [00:21:00] So. Doing the longer duration stuff and a lower lower intensities will help raise that floor so that you can kind of push it harder or just go for longer.
I know when I get on my bike and stuff, it takes me a while to even get my heart rate in the 70s. Like I’ll feel. So slightly fatigued my legs, but I’m watching my heart rate the whole time and I’m still like mid sixties, because it’s just not working as hard enough because I think I’ve just raised my floor so much that I don’t need.
My heart doesn’t need to work as hard. So I think that’s, that’s also, while I, it’s, it’s good to start off with some max efforts and stuff for beginners because you’re really working on the floor and the foundation, before you run a on a reach for that ceiling. B, do you have anything. Man, I nerded out on this all day yesterday.
Found myself going through the looking glass. In all the way down into like muscle fiber types and stuff like that. So, yeah, I kind of have a lot of, thoughts on this, but at the [00:22:00] same time, I don’t want to get too high level. but basically what I found for applicability to us is that if you train in zone two, which is kind of what we’re talking about in this study, I’m training in this 70 to 80%.
A max heart rate zone, you’re gonna use more fat. You’re going to oxidize more fat, just like everyone is saying, but it’s also going to spare glycogen. So it’s going to save you for the strength training. so you can do your strength training and then do the zone two training on the backside of that.
And you’re not worried about burning muscle or whatever other kind of, anecdotal. Bro science you want to throw out there. and then you’re actually gonna grow more mitochondria in yourselves by training this way, which will then increase your lactate. Oxidation ability. So this is how you’re raising your floor.
And I know that’s probably a little deep or whatnot, but the zone two training is the bee’s knees, [00:23:00] man. Like doing that is exactly what we’re doing over on shreds. So, sometimes I hear stuff like shreds not hard shred, needs to be more spicy. Not picking on Ashley too much, but, it needs to be more spicy and we can do some of that stuff.
That’s part of the human element about it. But you’re going to get the most fat burning the most. Shred ability, if you want to say that in the zone to lower to moderate intensity exercise. Yeah. And that’s, and so combination of what you said and what Joe was hinting out on the . Zone two, like it becomes, if you can clamp your training at zone two, so that becomes the clamp that’s becomes the upper end parameter.
I really feel like that, that’s a good fitness test, right? So Joe is talking about, it takes a while for his heart rate to get up. So Joe’s heart either, I don’t know if it’s broken or I don’t know what’s going on with it, but it, so you put Joe and I on a bike and next to each other and [00:24:00] we’re like, okay, we’re going to see who can ride the most.
Let’s just say most meters or average, the highest amount of Watts in 30 minutes. And then it’s just me versus Joe that might just come down to, a mental toughness test. Who can, who can handle more pain, me or Joe. And so then we go head to head and we see who comes out. But then if we clamp something and we’re like, okay, same test, but we’re going from max meters and you can’t get your heart rate out of zone two.
Now that I think that that’s a more applicable fitness test because what if I’m like barely moving my feet on the pedals to stay in zone two and Joe’s just like clipping along, like at a fast rate because he is, zone two is easy for him to produce, a lot of output. And that’s the desire. That’s, that’s what you want.
You know what Joe was talking about. That’s what you want. You want to be able to perform. A lot of work in this zone too. And this is an argument I’ve heard [00:25:00] some coaches talk about with CrossFit games athletes, they . This is all theory, right? We can’t prove it, and we can’t do scientific experiments on rich Froning.
But that’s their theory is that people like rich Froning. had trained to such a high level that they’re doing workouts that for you, any of us talking right now, anyone listening would be purely glycolytic, sugar, burning, awfulness, lots of pain, lots of muscle burn. But for rich Froning. He’s in zone two maybe, maybe tapping into zone three and he’s only burning fat, and then when someone else is about to catch him in the workout, he then like VD says he’s, he spared all of that glycogen.
It’s not even being used. He then. Pushes to that glycolytic zone. Now he can go red line way, way past anybody else and you know, really burn it up. Now this is awesome and also problematic. So it’s awesome for rich Froning that he can do something like that. If the theory is true, it’s very problematic.
If you’re [00:26:00] trying to mimic rich Froning training and all you’re ever doing is burning glycogen. And you never burn fat. So I talked about this a little bit last week, that that’s where it comes problematic. And a, in the book science and practice of strength, Zara Roski says, you know, trying to mimic elite protocols never works.
So like you should never be trying to copy the Instagram model who’s been training for 25 years, who has like. An awesome physique, or you know, the, the professional athlete who has a new planner program. And to be honest, I don’t fault some of those people. I don’t think they’re smart enough to know what they’re doing wrong.
Like, and I’m not calling them stupid, I’m just saying they’re not like exercise physiologists, so they don’t understand like, this is what I’ve done for the last 10 years. I’m going to put it out there and you’ll buy it and it’ll work. And, they’re, they’re probably coming from an honest place, but they don’t understand is.
I can’t jump in where you, where you’re at. It’s just not possible. It’s not going to be beneficial for me. I’m going to screw things up in that process. Kyle, what do you have? [00:27:00] Well, I agree with you about what you’re talking about with rich Froning. Actually, one of the, the authors of this paper wrote an article as well, talking about training in zone two and it’s what he talks about is the benefits of training in zone two.
The very first thing that he talks about is that storing the glycogen up for the end of the contest, right? So it’s kind of like, and in football, you know, we always talked about the fourth quarter, right? Who, who’s going to be there in the fourth quarter? Who’s going to be able to stick with it? You know, and still be able to play at a high level in the fourth quarter.
And that’s kind of what you’re talking about here. And that’s that zone two. That’s what zone two gets you a zone two training. That’s what it gets you is it gets you that fourth quarter. Boost where you’ve saved all of that glycogen, for the, for the very end, and then you can still sprint past everybody while everybody else is sucking it up.
And so that’s just the benefit of it. I think another thing that this proves is how important fueling your body properly is, and just making sure [00:28:00] that you’re putting the right fuel in there and to. To compliment the top of training you’re doing. If you don’t want to do zone two training, then you know, don’t fuel for zone two.
But if zone two is something that you’re going to focus on, then you need to, you need to fuel your body properly, and that means eating more fats and less carbohydrates. just to make sure that you have the fuel that you need to actually do that kind of training and pull it off properly. Yeah. And that’s the zone too.
I think it’s really important for people to understand too, because like, it’s fairly easy to find out what your zone two is. Like. You just need to go find your max heart rate or calculate it. And then, Calculate the percentages. And there are lots of apps. I use an app called zones. I’m on my phone that helps keep that stuff.
And then what’s cool about zones is it will just, if you’re using like an Apple watch, it’ll show you where your, where you’ve spent a majority of your training, you can look out over like a week or a month. And what’s surprising is, I looked over the last month and a majority of my training has been in zone two.
UN. Unintentionally, you know, that’s not the, this hasn’t been [00:29:00] a big priority for us to talk about until recently, but the reason is because if I’m doing strength training, I’m probably not coming out of zone two and if I’m doing a lot of the aerobic training I’m doing, while I might get out of zone two, I probably fall back down to zone two and I’m sure it’d be similar for all of you guys too if you looked at it like we probably spend way more time in zone two then.
Then we think, as opposed to like thinking that you have to go like, Oh, well crap, now I’ve got to do garage gym, athlete training, plus go do these zone two workouts, you know, three or four times a week. That’s not what I’m saying. You could probably look at what you’re doing already and you probably spend a lot of time in zone two, depending on what kind of training you’re, you’re following.
And I think that was it on the zone too. It’s something to look at. I think everyone should, should take a look at it. and just some more applicability. Applicability. so if you have metabolic syndrome in the paper it says that you have a decreased capacity to oxidate. Oxidized lipids. So you have a decreased capacity to burn fat and you have an [00:30:00] early transition from fat to carbohydrates, and you have an increase in lactate levels.
So these are just things that you can kind of start to notice when you’re training. When does the muscle burn happen for you? And I actually wanted to ask you guys about that, just as like a small experiment here. Like how frequently do you feel muscle burn or muscle burning when you’re training?
and I can start with a Joe. It depends on, I guess, what the training for conditioning. is that where you’re, I mean, really like, just think back the last couple of training sessions you’ve done. Do you remember or recall. There being a muscle burning sensation, like a lactate build a, yeah, I think I do feel that usually that is more of my limiting factor than my actual heart or conditioning my cardio state.
So usually like if I’m on the bike or running, my legs are getting fatigued before I eat what I feel like my lungs are. My reading is okay. Interesting. Kyle, how about you? I guess I’m kind of the opposite. I [00:31:00] get out of breath quicker than my muscles start burning, so that’s probably not good, but Oh, this is good.
The reason I like to ask these questions, because this, this study is very, I’m looking at one thing, right? Like, so now we have two different, you guys are basically talking about the same thing, which I think is really interesting. It’s like he’s too fit for his muscles and you’re not fit enough for your muscles.
Right. It sounds like Ashley. it, I go with Joe. It depends on what we’re doing. right now with shred, with VD, all I think about is jump lunges or jump squats, stuff like that. The more explosive dynamic stuff that definitely my muscles will start fatiguing out. I can go more. I have more in the tank, but unfortunately, you know, I feel the burn, if you will.
So I’m very interested to hear response to this. Oh, great. For me, it’s more. Endurance type stuff. So on, on the indoor track where [00:32:00] I am the other day, we did like 20 squats or something for a . For one of the workouts. So for me, it’s that high, high number of weighted, weighted exercise, or if I’m running, which I hate, but I do quite a bit, it’s around eight miles or so when I start to just, nobody just doesn’t want to run anymore.
so I, for, for me, it’s, it’s high rep exercise, you know, upwards of 20, 30 reps or. Eight miles if you’re a runner. And so do you feel any muscle burn during Murph? I don’t. Not anymore. And that’s, that’s what I wanted to know cause I don’t either anymore, but I used to a lot like it used to really burn and be really painful, but you do 200 of 200 murders and it’s not really a factor anymore.
So much so that Murph is becoming like boring. It’s that, that’s why it, it’s just like. [00:33:00] The only, like I run as fast as I can. That’s the worst part of the workout. The calisthenics are what they are. They never burn it. There’s no, but, and I’m not saying it’s because I’m awesome. It’s because I’ve done Murph 200 times or whatever.
You know, if you add them all up, like I’ve done a lot of times, so I should see some sort of fitness benefit from that. but yeah, and, and MBD he’s done it a bunch of times too, and he’s about to finish his year, same response. So I think that, that’s really interesting. just anecdotal here from the team because.
That kind of shows you where your limitations could be. Joe and Kyle, I don’t know how to reverse fix your guys’ problems. it’s really, I just need to run more and kind of the same as, I’m kinda the same as VD with the, with the lifting though, like the other day on the strength track, we did a bunch of bare complexes.
those things are properly named, cause that was, that was a bear of a workout. But doing, we had. Seven sets of seven, I think, you know, so late in that workout. You know, I was definitely the only feeling the muscle burn and that one, you know, it’s something that you use your entire body for, [00:34:00] but so something like that, if it’s high reps like that, but.
It’s probably just because I spend most of my time on the streets. Right. And avoid running as much as possible. I don’t burn during Murph either, but it’s because I don’t do it well. And the reason I like to talk about the muscle burning, which is the lactate and then also zone two is because that’s the real test, right?
Like these zones there. They’re not super scientific, and neither is when lactate production happens in your body, but you’re going to know when there’s lactate in your muscles. There’s no way. You don’t know. And so you can be like, I feel lactate and zone two, that’s a bad thing. I’m just going to say like, I’m sorry.
That’s bad. From what we just talked about here. Hopefully you can understand that, but like if you’re feeling lactate in zone one or zone two, that means you’re bad at fact sedation in your increase in your carbohydrate oxidation right away. So if you’re feeling a burning in zone three or four or five, that’s pretty normal, especially four and five.
but that’s, it’s just something that people can go self test right now. Like, just go get on an [00:35:00] Airdyne and see, like, and then try to keep your heart rate and in different zones and see where the, the burning happens. And if you’re on the Enduro track, you’re probably already doing that on, on a weekly basis.
but yeah, that’s it. That’s all I had. I think that’s a really interesting discussion. and pretty cool. Pretty cool stuff. And so if you want to burn fat, train in zone two and avoid lactate. If that, that’s pretty good takeaway, right? Anybody else have a different takeaway than that? Join. Shred. Shred.
BD feels so like, yes, we’ve, we’ve been doing it right on back. All right. all right, so, this week’s topic, we can go through this quickly since we spent a lot of time on the study, but. it’s a lot of new athletes and listeners. So I just want to talk about some of the EOP basics. I’ve been getting some questions that I’m like, man, I really should have explained this better, and that’s on me.
I was looking at that. I’m being a me, like not. Not on the person to go look it up. I think if someone had to look something up and we probably didn’t communicate or we [00:36:00] failed. so I just want to get something from each member of the team. What’s something you think that they should know about our training?
whether, yeah, that’s it. What do you think they should know about our philosophy training in general? Joe, I’ll let you go first, man. So I wasn’t really sure what to. Call this, but really it’s making sure you’re getting the desired effect of the workout and not overthinking things. So that could be like, if something’s programmed and you know, we’re, we’re graduate mathy, we program for people who we know work out in the garage and we know that everybody’s going to have a med ball or have a plethora of kettlebells, but really we just care about whatever desired effect for that workout, which is why we try to explain somewhat in the athlete briefs.
But if you might be lacking in either equipment or you’re away somewhere. Just making sure you’re getting the desired effect is the most important thing and reaching out now to either than the team builder feed or on the a closed group. Just if you need a substitution of any kind. Now we have so many vets in the closed group that.
Even [00:37:00] in the past, I’d be the first to answer to get there. There’s already three people that have said, Hey, you could do this and say you could do this instead. And it’s just making sure you’re getting a desired stimulus versus stressing about doing the exact movement or something. Is, is the most important thing, I think.
Yeah. Good, good. A representation of that was the recently we had the med ball carry. Someone’s asking, cause I specifically put in there, don’t wear a vest and a cause I wanted you to carry it. And he was asking why, and there was a great response to the question. And then also, Chris, jumped in and said, Hey, I had a best too.
My kettlebell is too heavy when I did it the first time. I, I have a vest too, so he just. He would bear hug the vest and I’m like, yeah, perfect. And so yeah, there are a lot of great responses and that’s it. That’s that garage gym athlete mentality, right? Like you’re going to get it done some way, shape or form.
It’s like this debate we’ve been having about what a suitcase carry is versus a farmer’s carry. I don’t care. You know? I really don’t care. You just carry something heavy by your side. It can be a both hands. It could be one hand, but [00:38:00] that’s, that’s all I’m looking for. Like you’re talking about a stimulus is what I’m looking for.
Not the exact, like. You know what’s technically correct. So that’s a good point. Ashley, what do you dad, I’m going to tag along to what Joe said about the desired effect, but the desired effect and meaning. give it some time. So when you pick a track, what I would. Suggest to people right before, like if they’re just signing up and then fresh and brand new, look at the tracks and see which each of the tracks offer.
So, and what fits your goals, what are your goals? What are you, you know, are you training just to be the most healthy, optimal human that you can be? Are you looking to get stronger or are you looking to shred? Are you what? Pick the track and then stick with it for at least four to six weeks. Cause I see, you know.
Some of our athletes like to know what other tracks are doing, or maybe they’re just, you know, I’m not really sure what they want to do. So [00:39:00] then they kind of program hop. And I think in order to get the desired effect as well as the optimal training for you, you need to stick at least four to six weeks before you either switch or, you know, say, okay, this is not what I want.
This is not what’s going on. So. I love it. Stick, start and stick. Yeah. I think two of you were flipping flop and right. Right before kickoff, but I know you’re probably going to stick with it until, yeah. You know, kickoff. It’s, it works. No, right. I did, but that’s not, I’m not, I’m not a. Track hopper here. No, but since you guys made the decision, you’re just going to stick with it for the whole cycle.
Yeah. Now I’m screwed. Even I’m like, nah, hard to kill and I get, I get bad FOMO and I’m not on hard to kill because a lot of people will talk about the workout and I’m like, man, I kind of wish I did that work out today. But yeah. Kyle, what do you have? I made my decision for what track I was doing this cycle months ago.
Yeah, you [00:40:00] decided Spartan races like lined up. You probably would’ve just never left drink track. I love it. Unashamedly, I guess I’ll just keep going with the, the desired effect. mantra here and kind of talk about why we program rest Tom in our programming and what we’re doing there is we have the desired effect or the desired effect we’re going forward with our program in is to make you a sustainable and repeatable athlete where you can sustain a certain amount of work over a longer period of time.
So I think as, as one of the coaches is one of the people who talks to athletes a lot, I get that question a lot. We get that question in the Facebook group a lot as well. A, why is there a rest time in the middle of this workout? Because I think it kind of blows people’s minds. They’ve never seen it before that, that we put rest time in the workout and made it part of it.
But the reason we do that is we want you to recover and then hit it hard again. So you hit it hard here and then you recover and [00:41:00] then you hit it hard again, and then you recover. And we do that because we want you to be able to look back and see at what point you drop off so that you can get better as you.
As you go through the training and so that you can kind of what we’re talking about today, kind of increase that capacity, raise your floor a little bit and get better. The next time that we do that workout. And so I think a lot, I get that question a lot about why we have rest time programmed in there.
And I think that’s something that people just, like I said, I think it blows people’s minds. I don’t know of other programming that does that, where they actually put the rest time in there. And so, but that’s the reason we do it is because we have a very specific purpose. We have a very specific desire for each workout.
And. Just as part of it. And this, this entire like topic today, this, this study should help people understand that a little bit more. Like if I want you to be in more of a fat burning mode, like I don’t like saying things like that cause it sounds stupid. But like when you actually know the science [00:42:00] like that, you have now heard, if I want you to be more in zone two fat burning, so I’m going to program something that’s very short in duration and I’m going to give you a longer rest time.
to, to make sure that your heart rate doesn’t bump out or you don’t come out of the zone that I want you in. And then likewise, if we’re just training a top end energy system, and I do want you to just burn sugar the whole time, then we can do that. But what I don’t want you to do is every time you step into our programming, burn sugar.
And just only sugar. And that’s it. And so that’s, it’s kind of what the, these rest times help you do. And I think Kyle hit the nail on the head. VD. How about you, man? I kinda have a goldfish memory right now. So it was the original question. Yeah. Just what do you think people should know about our training or programming or philosophy?
that isn’t, I dunno, super parent or maybe questions you could ask . Oh, well, that’s easy, man. Stuff like this right here. You’re not going to get the athletes support, the scientific knowledge, the discussion of that knowledge and [00:43:00] how to apply it to the training that we owe. Also provide you every single day, every month.
Every year, for the long term, you’re not going to get that anywhere else. So that’s the big takeaway for me. Come here and train with us. Get to science that you can then use in your own garage, period. That love it, man. I, and I agree. you know, I, I have a bias, but the reason I agree with that is because there are podcasts or groups out there who provide programming, right?
Yup. They exist. There are also groups out there who only want to talk about science. They don’t provide any programming. They’re just like, here’s the science. Here’s what we think about it. And, but I don’t see a lot of people saying like, okay, here’s the science. How do we apply it? Cause that’s really hard to do.
It’s really hard to do that on a weekly basis. so, and that’s why I think a lot of times the reason people don’t do things is because it’s hard. And so that’s just something that we’re willing to do. So I, I’m going to double tap that one. The only other one I wanted to hit, which is very obvious one, is block programming.
because I’ve gotten a few emails about this and when someone asks me. [00:44:00] What a block is. I look like, I mean, I feel like the biggest failure on the planet. So again, you asked me a question. I never see it as your fault for not looking it up. It’s 100% my fault, especially if you’re subscribed to our programming.
And so if someone asked me what a block is, a, my heart sinks and I feel dumb, like I should have explained something somewhere because it’s really important part of our training, right? And it often gets overlooked. We put blocks on every part of our programming. So one block is 10 minutes. And an entire training session for us is five blocks, and we give you one secret block.
We call it the invisible block, because you’re going to do that somewhere. You’re going to rest too long. You’re going to check your phone, and you’re going to talk somebody. Something’s going to happen. and so all of our training sessions should be done in an hour. And so we have things that are like programmed at two blocks.
If it’s two blocks, that’s 20 minutes. That means it shouldn’t take you longer than 20 minutes, and if it is you need to move on. That’s a big thing about the block programming that people don’t understand. They’re like, Oh, that block. It sets two blocks, but it took me, you know, 36 [00:45:00] minutes and I’m like, you did that wrong.
It was two blocks, 20 minutes. You should have moved on that way. The training is never longer than an hour, and it always works itself out. And the reason I know this is because I follow our programming. I, I do the, at least do two different tracks. And I never. Bust the time cap because I, I wanna keep my training to an hour.
That’s important to me too. And so I’m always right at, you know, 50 to 60 minutes for my training session. And that’s because I follow the blocks and I know how fast I need to move through things and I know everyone else can get there as well. So I think block programming is very important. Follow the block, stick to the blocks, utilize the blocks if you’re not a part of our programming.
but I think it’s really good and that’s all I have now. This week’s workout. It’s a new meet yourself Saturday. It’s an, it’s an old one and a new one. So we’ll have a video for this one coming out soon. It’s not a, you know, a, a meet yourself [00:46:00] Saturday, like brief type video, but it’s pretty easy to explain and coincides perfectly with our discussion today.
So it is Murph. Do the workout, Murph, and don’t get out of zone two. So do a zone to Murph. if you follow me on Instagram, I did this a few weeks ago, I think, like two weeks ago, and it is brutal. Li challenging mentally, but not. Overly hard physically, I guess is the best way to put that. And I want to challenge everybody to do it because selfishly, I want to collect a lot of data.
I want to collect a lot of data on this, a workout. I want to know how many of our athletes can complete Murph while being in zone two. And yes, people could lie to me or whatever, and that’s fine because these, I don’t publish scientific papers or research. All the data that I use from our athletes is really just to utilize more for our athletes.
So, yeah, do Murph and stay in zone two and I would like for all of you guys to try it out as well. [00:47:00] and see how far you get. So there is a time cap of 60 minutes that is the time cap. That way you’re not a. I think Joe mentioned a three or four hours doing Murph. Yeah. That’s not what we want. And so some tips from having done this, a lot of you maybe don’t start, don’t wear a vest.
I wouldn’t recommend it cause like your heart rate’s gonna get really jacked wearing a vest, even if it’s just 20 pounds. so do Murph stay in zone two? That might mean a walk at the beginning. This is very different than Murph. I just want everybody to be very clear about like, okay, zone two. Does that mean I’m walking?
Yeah, you might be walking. for the first and last mile, you might have to do pushups very slowly. You might have to do one pull up at a time. It’s going to be annoying. but Hey, it’s gonna make you better. And I think it’s going to be really interesting once I have all the data. Any comments, questions or concerns on zone two?
Murph? So I don’t think we’ve actually defined zone two. It’s 60 to 70% max heart rate, correct? Yes. Yeah. Let me make sure that’s right. [00:48:00] I’m 90% sure that you’re right. He’s fact-checking you, Joe. 60, 60 to 70% so if you’re a heart rate max, I raise 200 beats per minute. that would be 120 to 139 beats per minute.
It would be zone two. And obviously with age, that changes drastically and so on and so forth. So yeah, zone two, staying in zone two. Good clarification. So we’re also not trying to go below zone two right? Yeah. You gotta be in zone two so you gotta be, you gotta be in that, in that range. So it’s not just, Oh, well I’m just gonna, you know, kind of walk through the thing and whatever.
You know, you’re actually, you actually need to get into zone two and you need to stay there. So you don’t want to go above it, but you don’t want to go blow it either. Yeah, my recommendation would be warm up until you’re very close to the bottom threshold of zone two and then start to work out, which shouldn’t take very long.
Like I on an Airdyne, I can get in zone two in about 15 seconds. But [00:49:00] otherwise, every, everything else a little bit more challenging. But for some reason Airdyne will, will do to me every time. So I would say with this. I think a lot of people looking at Murph, it’s a, it’s a really popular one. People, you know, really love to do it, you know, especially for certain times a year and for certain causes and things like that.
People really love it. And they may look at this like challenge as, Oh, I’m just going to do lazy Murph. And I would just say, don’t think of this as lazy. Think of it as intentional. instead of saying, well, I’m just gonna kind of, you know. just kind of crawl my way through this instead of that like, you’re actually, that’s why I brought that up.
But you don’t want to be below zone two either. You don’t want to go above it, but you don’t want to go below it. You want to stay in that range, and so that’s going to force you to be really intentional and really focused with it. And that’s kind of the challenge here, is it’s a new challenge of being intentional with Murph instead of.
You’re not trying to be lazy and you’re not trying to crush [00:50:00] it either. You’re trying to be really intentional with it for a specific purpose, and it’s the ultimate fitness test to me. That’s why I like it because. It’s a 60 minute cap, so you’re either going to finish or you’re not. And that’s the same as condition me to the grave.
So conditioned me to the grave, had a 60 minute calf. I programmed it, I created the workout I couldn’t do it for, and I didn’t know. I thought like I calculated things out. I was like, I’m pretty sure this is possible. But the first, you know, year I had programmed that workout. I could never do it. I got really close but I could never do it.
And now I can do it with like, you know, plenty of time to spare. Cause I’ve gotten more conditioned, I’ve gotten fitter and that’s the same with the zone two is like. You could be, you’d go lazy approach like Kyle was talking about, but then you’re going to get capped and you’re not going to finish it.
The goal is to see, okay, if you, where did you get, that’s the benchmark. Cause like I finished a quarter of the, of Murph and I was capped at 60 minutes. Or were you like, Oh man, I was on that last mile. I was almost finished, but I couldn’t run any faster. You’re not allowed to run any faster. You can’t get out of zone two, so you’re just going to get capped wherever your cap.
you know, [00:51:00] so where’s that going to be for you? So I think it’s the ultimate fitness test. That’s why I love this workout. I think we just got our new shirt. I’m not lazy. I’m just in zone two. I love it. Write it down. Somebody write it down. The historian, the historian IVD. Do you have anything on this one or are you going to try it, man, I think, I think you should.
I think I kinda have to, I feel like you’re sandbagging me a little bit by making me do this, but it’s going to increase your muscle, mitochondrial mass and make you fitters. So definitely, but then I’ll have to buy bigger zone. Two t-shirts, two t-shirts. Yes. Yeah. All right. Yeah, I’m definitely gonna do it.
I’m definitely going to do it to try it out. so kind of like we were talking about, we’re still kind of bored with Murphy. I’ve in thinking about ways to do different things. There you go. I think this one’s going to be more like, I call people out on the iron mile, like I’m like, you’re going to get halfway and then you’re going to get mad and you’re going to, they’re going to get mad at [00:52:00] me and you’re going to be like, this is stupid, Jared.
So stupid. This is dumb. There’s no point. You just stupid. And you’ll say stupid a lot and then you’ll blame me and, and if that happens, that’s exactly what I wanted to happen on the iron mile. Congratulations. You’ve just met yourself. See if you can control yourself. Talk a little bit better. The same thing’s going to happen in the zone to Murph.
You’re going to be moving so slow that you’re pissed off and then you’re getting mad at me. I’m stupid. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Well, we just gave you about an hour’s worth of information on. Maybe we do know what we’re talking about with the zone two in low intensity. So give it a try and get mad.
But that’s, that’s what we call meeting yourself. Ashley, do you have anything? Yeah, I think this one is definitely going to be mental, just because again, you’re trying to slow it down, but not too slow. Not too fast. I’m not going to reiterate that, but I think for me the challenge will be, everybody knows I love me some good tunes, right?
So what tunes are going to keep me [00:53:00] in zone two. That’s what I’ve kind of figured out before we do it. All right. Interesting. Yeah, I didn’t think about that because there are certain things that can, this is actually a funny story. I’ll tell about my zone to Murph. I was doing Murph. I’d finished my jog back.
And then I was doing very slow calisthenics, at the, right at the top end of zone two is where I was trying to keep it. And then Eleanor, my one-year-old, came into the garage with Emily, and they were in there and she was eating something and she. Choked on it? No, just momentarily, but like, just like all parents probably know her, have experienced it where you’re like you, I mean you don’t, you don’t jump into action like trying to get the thing out of their throat, but you’re in that like assessing phase.
Like is this actual choking or is this not a problem? And it went from like, sometimes it’s just like, sounds like a choke. Then they’re immediately, okay, this [00:54:00] was like choke. It kind of stuck. And then she did clear it herself, but it like took. A couple of seconds and my heart rate got out a zone to nothing, had nothing to do with the workout cause I thought I was about to have to perform some like lifesaving procedures on my, my one year old.
so there are different things that can affect your heart rate. That’s why some people talk crap about heart rate training at times, but music may be a big factor there. If you have like some really hardcore music that gets your adrenaline going and gets your heart racing, yeah, maybe avoid it.
Maybe listen to some classical, smooth jazz or put some Kenny G on. There you go. Got you. Yeah. No, thank you. I’ll listen to Enya over Dave Matthews. There you go. In in your zone. This is like the best meet yourself Saturday ever. I can’t, that should be required in Ja zone. Love it. All right. I’m not going to say, why should you join garage gym athlete?
Because I feel like we’ve sold ourselves really well this entire podcast. So if you don’t, if you’re not seeing the big [00:55:00] picture yet, that’s on you. but everyone, thanks for listening. I had fun with this one. And then 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. Let us send you a copy of our book, the garage, the mathlete, or you can even get featured on the garage gym athlete podcast. Thanks for listening.