Hey, Athletes! Want to learn how to gain muscle? Listen in to the newest episode of the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast!
Episode 29 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!
How To Gain Muscle
The four-ship is back on the podcast this week. The team give us their updates and what they are working on before diving into this week’s study. They talk about gaining muscle even while in a caloric deficit and what you need to do in order to build muscle. They also touch on why it is important what TYPE of macro “fits†your macros. Next, the team go over this week’s topic of downregulating. They share their tips and practices on how to downregulate at the end of the day. Lastly, this week’s Meet Yourself Saturday workout is “Sally’s Revengeâ€!
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 51-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
- Updates from The Team
- Downregulating-Tips and Ideas
- How to Gain Muscle
- Sally’s Revenge
- Muscle Protein Synthesis
- Post Workout Recovery
- Leucine
- 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:
- How Much Protein You Should Eat, FIT Week, and the EO3 5K
- Bulletproofing Your Joints with Dr. Lepley
—
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
How to Gain Muscle
[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 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@threefitness.com.
All [00:01:00] right, ladies and gentleman, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast here with Ashley Hicks, Kyle Shrum and Joe Courtney. What’s up everybody? Hey, I did it this week. Last week. I was like, no, don’t, not all at once. And now we did. All right. I don’t have a lot of updates other than, Hey, we’re. Well, one weekend to publishing a lot of podcasts.
I hope everybody out there is enjoying all this new content and if you want to be a part of the conversation, you can go to garage gym, athlete.com/ama and you can@leastbepartofthatandkillingcomfort.com go there. And you will be notified about my next book. Those are the things that I have to announce.
Other than that, I’m going to go to Joe, man, how’s life? How’s the week? How’s everything?
Joe Courtney: Life is a busy, yeah. In short, with, you know, we’re, we’re killing with all this content we’re going on, but, you know, get the, the wife is deploying later on this week. I’m going somewhere as [00:02:00] well, right after that for about a week.
And yeah, things are busy, but I can run fast again, so that’s, that’s fun. That’s great. I was back to playing lacrosse over the weekend, did this full out sprints few times though. I didn’t try all that hard and even though I could have, but in that I did those. The mile runs yesterday, I’m on hard to kill.
We have two one mile runs and I might’ve pushed it a little bit too hard on that. My hamstrings are a bit sore from, from those runs, but it still felt, felt decent to, to run a run a bit fast again.
Jerred Moon: Nice. Be careful. Too much. Too fast. You’re not, you’re not back to normal yet.
Joe Courtney: Yeah, I’m still, I’ll still be smashing, smashing my hamstring with the lacrosse ball, which feels terrible, but does good things.
And you know, I still go to PT and I’ll tell him to tell them what’s going on and they’ll do whatever they need if they need to
Jerred Moon: massage you. Yeah.
Joe Courtney: Insurance, massage.
Kyle Shrum: Let’s be real.
Jerred Moon: Kyle, how’s life?
Kyle Shrum: life is good. My update is [00:03:00] our one year old is walking now, which is
Jerred Moon: a lot of fun.
so Siri, Sage, the wobbly stage is a little scary.
Kyle Shrum: Yeah. Well, she actually has recovered from that pretty quickly. It took her a while to actually start walking, but. Now that she’s walking, she’s kinda just blazing through it and doing a really good job. So now we have to, to keep up with where she was. You know, when they’re in the crawl stage, you can pretty much kind of contain them.
But now. Yeah.
Jerred Moon: And do you have a boy and a girl?
Kyle Shrum: Yeah. And our boy is three and he just runs everywhere. And so that’s kind of, her example is run everywhere. And so that’s kind of what she’s, what she’s learning. And so now we’re, we’re getting there. Our exercise.
Jerred Moon: Who walked first in terms of in their own life age.
You know what I mean?
Kyle Shrum: I
Jerred Moon: don’t know that.
Kyle Shrum: I have no idea.
Ashley Hicks: That would be a mom question.
Jerred Moon: I know [00:04:00] when all of my children walked just saying,
Kyle Shrum: well, did not keep track of that. I would say
Jerred Moon: probably,
Kyle Shrum: I would say it’s probably her.
Jerred Moon: The only reason I think about it more is because Eleanor, my daughter, my only daughter, I have two boys.
Walk slightly later than both of my boys, so I’m just wondering if that’s a normal thing or not. Yeah, she’s way smarter. Given the age, I’m like, seriously? She can say like, she’s almost speaking in sentences. It’s, she’s really, really smart. But, you know, didn’t walk as early as my boys, so I just was wondering if that’s more of like a genetic thing or just my kids, you know, just, just curious.
Just making conversation. I’m sorry, Ashley.
Kyle Shrum: I’ll, I’ll, I’ll try to, I’ll try a little harder for the diet of the week award next year.
Jerred Moon: Right. All right. Ashley, what are your updates?
Ashley Hicks: so our life has become busy to Joe cause our, garage door decided to break on us. So gotta love [00:05:00] home ownership. That just happens.
So, and then we’ve got to fix some landscaping things here in Florida. It looks like a Palm tree jungle in our front yard. So. Trying to fix that, but upon the positive, I talked about my nutrition a little bit last week, and already this is week three, like I started on January 1st so, What, 14 days, and then, already seen a significant difference in digestion and just how I feel overall now I have to figure out what it was.
Cause I kinda cut everything out all at the same time. So starting next month I’ll slowly but surely be adding certain things back in and see what triggers it.
Jerred Moon: So interesting. Yeah. That’s cool. Yeah. Yeah. I, So what are you like opening and closing the garage by hand? Like, not
Ashley Hicks: even,
Jerred Moon: not even that caveman.
Ashley Hicks: Nope. Keeping the garage door close. So I’ve done three workouts in the garage or
Jerred Moon: it’s like so broken. It won’t even like [00:06:00] track, like up and down.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah. It comes off of the track and so I’m holding one edge of the garage door as it’s crushing me while Scott’s trying to put it back onto the track if we need to open the door, like that’s how broken it is.
Jerred Moon: That’s great. Yeah, it’s
Ashley Hicks: a good time. Not to mention your real sweaty after workouts because the garage door is not open. So, and it’s
Jerred Moon: warm here. Yeah. You’re in Florida, you’re not getting cold. Yeah, that’s a, yeah. The, my old Texas house, I don’t think the garage door ever worked, which is interesting. Yeah. So I, but it did work.
It was on the tracks. I just had to do a lot of on myself, which was a nice, warm up and cool down for the workout. so for me, updates, I have two one. I don’t want anybody to take our podcast last week, or you know, the one we’ve done about low intensity zone two, all these things to think like don’t slam it in one direction.
Like, well, that’s not our style in general. [00:07:00] So do you know that that’s like, Hey, carbohydrates are kind of bad. Maybe we shouldn’t have them. It’s like, okay, let’s be carnivores. You know, like that’s you. You went too far. And so I also don’t want you to do any, any of that with the same information we’re putting out here.
So it don’t be like, you know what, screw everything else zoned to training for life every day, because that’s also not going to get you. Exactly where you want to go. So we were just highlighting the benefits of one zone of training, how it’s efficacy and burning fat and how it can help you, but don’t go too crazy and be like, Oh, all this great stuff about zone two I’m only ever going to use on two.
It’s really a tool in the toolbox. So I just want people to be aware of that. And also high intensity, while we don’t do it all the time, and there are a lot of negatives to it. It has a time and a place and it very much matters how you program it, frequency and. Whether or not rest for rest and recovery periods or programs.
So just want everyone to be very mindful of these things, and not take anything as like, okay, this is the new way of everything or else we, you know, garage [00:08:00] math. They would just be me programming, walking in zone two, every day. But that’s not what we’re trying to do. other than that, my other other update is.
My garage gym is complete, and I have this phase. I have one secret item. No, no, no. It’s done. This phase. It’s phase. All phases are complete. I bought one secret item. I’m not letting you guys know about yet. I can’t tell you no guesses loud. I will reveal it via video. So if you’re not subscribed to our YouTube channel, go do that work.
YouTube slash end of three I believe is what it is. You can search into three fitness. It’s not garage, gym athlete. It’s the parent company. Anyway. No. Go to YouTube if you want to see it. I might announce a little bit more about it next week. but it’s, it’s way cooler to do a video. So keeping everyone’s on pins and needles, cause I know everyone cares so much.
So what, you have to sit around and wait to, [00:09:00] yeah, you do.
Ashley Hicks: That’s not fair.
Jerred Moon: All right, we’re going to have a meeting after the meeting here. all right, well let’s, let’s get into the study this week. I’m going to let Joe brief it because. I apologize to the team upfront. I just sort of went, else knows I’m going to take this a different direction.
In the study, the study, all it did was help me prove a point and then I’m going to talk about a bunch of other stuff. And so, and then anything you guys want to talk about in the study? so I, it’ll prepare them for the direction I wanted to go, so I’m apologizing to them. But they are very well prepared for this study.
But I’m gonna let Joe brief it.
Joe Courtney: All right, so the title of this study was effects of testosterone, supplementation on body composition and lower body muscle function during severe exercise and diet induced energy deficit. A proof of concept single center, randomized, double blind controlled trial. Awesome.
Buy a whole bunch of people
Ashley Hicks: say that five times fast.
Joe Courtney: Buy a whole bunch of people, buy a whole bunch of people. [00:10:00] So what they did for this study, they, they vetted a whole bunch of people that start off with, I think over 500 people. And they whittled it down to about a 26 no 50 50 people, and they split them into two categories.
One of which they had a, they supplemented with testosterone. The other one, they did not, and during that time they had three phases and the middle phase, which this was kind of crazy because of how big of a study this was. They’d had, they put them in a 28 day. Inpatient facility that they controlled all of their meals and they controlled all of their exercise, which they exercised about three and a half times per day during the 20 day intervention.
And part of that intervention was, exercising in a military fashion while on a about 2000 calorie a day caloric deficit to see the differences between testosterone boosting and, and not. the exercising that wasn’t very specific, but they did a various [00:11:00] different things like calisthenics, some, conditioning, other things like that.
Things as you would expect in a
Jerred Moon: relative. It looks like they did some rocking. Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Courtney: And if you looked way down in this, later in the study. It says they were trying to somewhat simulate a Greenbrae training or an army ranger training, but without the sleep deficit, without the, all the other stressors.
It was just the diet and exercise portion to see how the calorie’s a calorie deficit would, would go for that. So, yeah. When was that blood test, Josh, on the other one not, and the results. Which it was kind of funny how why they would do this. Such a huge invasive study. The results, to me, it was just a, not a huge difference.
More of testosterone got added, more lean muscle, but they both burned about the same amount of fat, and that was the. Biggest takeaway, I believe. let’s see. What else? What am I missing?
Jerred Moon: Collar
Kyle Shrum: people in this study? [00:12:00] It wasn’t, it wasn’t military personnel.
Jerred Moon: It was
Joe Courtney: the civilians. It was just men.
Kyle Shrum: They were, they were fairly trained.
I think it was. Two or more days a week, regular exercise. So and not obese.
Joe Courtney: There was
Kyle Shrum: also, it was right, it was civilians. It wasn’t military personnel.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. So the, and the 28 day, inpatient phase was phase two. So there was a phase one and a phase three of a four. And then after that they gave certain limiting protocols and they did, some tests of it as well.
Ashley Hicks: I think to note to the non testosterone, people didn’t gain anything, but they also did not lose any.
Joe Courtney: Well, yes, they are lean body mass was stayed the same. Testosterone’s went up, but both of their weight gain or weight fat loss was close to the same to both floss. A lot of fat. Right?
Jerred Moon: Yeah. So why look at a study that has their, so they’re going [00:13:00] into a 2000 calorie deficit.
So what they are, they’re exercising to the tune of 1500 calories per day. So just think about that in your, your training, how many workouts or workout sessions would you have to do to burn 1500 calories? And then they put them in a deficit of 500. calories that they’re eating if I’m correct. So being a 2000 calorie deficit in total.
So they would restrict their calories and then also make them work out a lot. And so that, that should be, you know. A recipe for losing weight. Right. And it said they lost some body fat, but you would think that they’d lose some muscle as well, and they didn’t. So obviously the cheaters, the cheaters are the ones who are taking testosterone.
And I’m using the term cheater in a very literal sense. you know, Kyle knows, I like to give this definition. Cheating is gaining some sort of advantage over someone else. Right. And, that’s why I don’t like to call eating crappy food cheating cause you’re gaining no advantage there in diet. But taking testosterone is cheating.
It is giving you an advantage whether you know you’re [00:14:00] illegally taking testosterone or not. it’s cheating in the form that I’m talking about by definition. So the cheaters added muscle and loss and fat. The people who did not supplement testosterone did not lose any lean muscle mass, but they added a nonsignificant amount of muscle and they also lost some body fat.
And that. I just wanted to highlight this point for a bunch of reasons. Cause what I want to dive into a little bit more is how do we actually gain muscle? How do we maintain or gain muscle? And that’s, that’s kind of the direction I wanted to go because a lot of people. Are in this, it fits your macros camp, right?
Well, this didn’t fit anybody’s macros. They were all off on their macros and they’re losing weight and and their one group’s gaining muscle. But that’s probably a testosterone effect, which I have a point on. And the other one, they, they added muscle, but it was a non-significant amount. And they’re in this extreme caloric deficit.
So what this shows to me is that gaining muscle, maintaining or gaining muscle is not as much about. [00:15:00] Calories as most people think that it is now, I’m not going to say that you don’t need it need calories at all, but if you want to fast, you could probably still gain muscle. That’s point number one too.
It seems like gaining muscle is way more a hormonal in nature. That’s point number two is, you know. If you want to gain muscle, how do you signal the right hormones to make sure that you’re gaining muscle? And that’s another one of my points. So it’s highly hormonal and gains are not typically impacted by this other stuff.
So you’re doing all this other training. And your gains are not going to be impacted. A lot of people about get worried about that. Here. People ask us how to gain muscle, what they need to do, and I’ve always told people really going on for like 10 years. If your diet is not gonna be perfect and you’re worried about something like that, I need you to focus on.
On your post workout meal. Now, back in the day, that was just kind of like some bro science come out of my mouth, but there happens to be some actual legitimate science that backs it up. And that’s kind of what I wanted to discuss before I do. Do you guys have any other [00:16:00] points on the study? or anything I’ve mentioned so far?
Joe Courtney: I have two small ones. the first as I was reading it, it was, this is, this must be just a really expensive study just to prove almost nothing. which is kind of crazy. Like,
Jerred Moon: yeah, I don’t know why. Like who would hypothesize cause what the direction I’m going is focusing on the people who didn’t take testosterone and the fact that they had this crazy clerk deficit and blah, blah, blah.
They gained a little bit of muscle, but not a lot. That’s my point. Their point is. The testosterone part, and I’m like, I’m in agreement. Like, who cares if you give someone testosterone? They’re probably gonna gain some muscle. But that also helps me prove my point of it being, you know, highly hormonal and not a caloric.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. It’s almost like they were like, well, let’s just start giving our troops testosterone and let’s see what happens. but, and the other part was if, that really struck me. For people who do, who might be take tech, taking testosterone is that once the study was over and the testosterone was, was a in the, the phase two was over, the testosterone group gained weight back a whole lot more than the [00:17:00] non testosterone group and they actually ended up heavier than when they started it versus the non testosterone group was still under.
The other body fat.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Jacqueline with your hormones gets dangerous. Dangerous game if you don’t know what you’re doing. any other points from cholera? Ashley, before I go a little bit further.
Ashley Hicks: No, I think you hit on the good ones. My one was they, you know, maintain muscle mass while fasting too. We talk about a lot of intermittent fasting and, I think a lot of us at garage domestic try that.
So, anyways, I’m excited to hear what you have to say. Jared, let’s dive in.
Jerred Moon: All right, so let’s just get into muscle gain in general. What, Kyle, did you have anything? Sorry. No, sir. So once again, in general, like I was saying, it’s highly hormonal. This study kind of proves that you could probably do it while fasting.
It also doesn’t matter as much what you’re eating. What does matter is kind of what you’re doing with your diet, but not this macros approach. And so how do we, the the two ways to, Really grow muscle is to boost muscle protein [00:18:00] synthesis and limit muscle protein breakdown. And so muscle protein synthesis primarily happens through having an adequate amount of amino acids, acids, specifically leucine is the most important one.
And so if you want to gain muscle. You need to increase NPS. So muscle protein synthesis, and you can do that two ways. One is resistance training. The second way is protein consumption or eating amino amino acids. So amino acids are very important, especially leucine if you want to gain muscle. And so what this does when you do, when you lift heavy weights, You activate a signaling protein called . If you’re in the health fitness world, you’ve probably heard him before. So it’s a signaling protein that elevates muscle protein synthesis. And so that’s one thing they, you have to do. You have to do some resistance training, but then you need to have the proper amount of leucine in your diet to start to, you know, activate, you know, muscle protein synthesis, get your muscles to grow, all that [00:19:00] good stuff.
And so how do we do that other than resistance training where you have to also eat? Like I said, it’s resistance. Training and eating are the two ways to increase muscle protein synthesis and eating enough leucine. It needs to be about two grams of leucine for muscle protein since synthesis. And if you’re taking whey protein as your post workout recovery shake, then you’re probably fine.
a lot of protein shakes that you are taking typically have some sort of amino acid profile breakdown. And so you can get that, From a lot of different protein source sources, way being a great one. If you’re not taking way, then you have to, You’ll have to ask the company or see if they have an amino acid protein breakdown with specifically the Lucien content seeing if it’s two grams.
I know a few of us are a big fan of equip prime protein. I emailed their company cause they don’t publicly list their amino acid profile, Brook breakdown, but they didn’t get back to me in time. Maybe I’ll update like how much leucine content is in there. Protein a, but other ways to get two grams loose leucine, three ounces of steak.
[00:20:00] And three eggs. so just thinking post-workout, like recovery things that you should be doing if you, I really think eggs is the easiest thing, especially since I work from home. So like working out and then having three eggs, is pretty simple. I think that’s exactly what Joe does. he has like six eggs probably, but you know, that’s a great way to get enough leucine.
but what’s funny is I also was looking at some other. Sources. This goes back to like the game changers thing. I watched some stuff with Layne Norton and they’re going back to this peanut butter sandwich, right? So he. In the game changers, a debate between Kresser and Wilkes. He’s like, you can, you can get enough protein in your diet from a peanut butter sandwich cause peanut butter sandwich has 18 to 20 grams of protein if you count the bread and two tablespoons of peanut butter or something like that.
However, they equated it out and it was true. That’s enough protein to have like 20 grams of protein after your workout is fine, that’s whatever. But there’s about a half a gram of leucine in that meal. So. Protein, the type of protein you have [00:21:00] matters, not just the macro. So I like if, if it’s your macros and we give macronutrient breakdowns, but you have to be very careful with these things.
Like you can’t just be like, you know what? I need 20 grams after my workout, so I’m gonna have a peanut butter sandwich. It’s like, well, you don’t have enough leucine in there to properly stimulate motif. A muscle protein synthesis. So it’s not going to work out. Like it’s not going to be not gonna be great.
So I’m not taking a shot at veganism or anything like that. I’m just saying, be very mindful about, cause if you are vegan, the what you would do is just, you’d probably are going to have to supplement with a protein that has enough leucine in it. And so that’s what you need to do. anyway, you got to get away from this mentality that a macro is a macro, the type of macronutrient matters.
And so if you want to have eggs, whey protein or steak right after your workout, that would be. That’d be perfect. so some other other things that I wanted to mention going into programming, talking a little more about high intensity. So training at 70% in below, has [00:22:00] no, has no real effect on, well, let me, let me back up here.
Well, I just, I talked about him tour, right? As a signaling protein. So happens from resistance training. Endurance training can blunt him tour so it can stop it in its tracks. But the dosing is what matters of your endurance program. So 70% and below in a bunch of different scientific studies has shown that there’s basically no effect on mTOR.
It doesn’t, doesn’t matter. So if you want to go do your, resistance training, it gets an MTR going and then. It’s always a good idea to do those things first, and then you want to do some conditioning after the fact. At a moderate to low intensity, you’re not going to blunt any of that. mTOR signaling protein that’s going to increase your muscle protein synthesis.
Anything above that? High intensity, specifically zones, five, maybe the top end of zone four, really 75 80% and above [00:23:00] completely blunt him towards signaling. That’s problematic, right? If you’re wanting to gain muscle or get stronger and you’re blunting him, tore the signaling protein, that’s going to elevate muscle protein synthesis, that’s problematic.
Am I taking another shot at high intensity training? I am. So if you want to go super high intensity and you’re trying to gain muscle, they it just, from a muscle signaling standpoint, it’s not going to work out. If we’re just looking at like the. You know, the chemistry of all this, it’s not going to work out for you.
And so that’s, those are the all the points that I wanted to make. So if you want to gain muscle, cause we get this question all the time, I need you to really focus on your post workout recovery meal. I need it to have at least two grams of leucine in it. And I need you to not do any high intensity training around when you’re trying to do these things.
So. Just don’t do it. If you’re like on our end, your track right now, you’ll notice like this [00:24:00] week specifically we have conditioning, conditioning, and then strength, strength. They’re almost completely separated and then if, if they are combined, which we, I don’t do a lot when I program it, but if I are combined, I typically make sure that it’s not super high intensity stuff right after lifting session because.
I’m keeping those kinds of things. Facts in my brain, like, let’s not blunt the inter, you know, but if you’re not getting a good post workout recovery meal, it almost doesn’t matter, especially if you’re the one who wants to gain muscle. So that’s a lot of different information. I don’t think I have any other points.
It’s just that, okay, if you’re fasting, okay, it’s probably fine. Now there, there are some arguments about. Taking amino acids when you’re fasting, pumping you out of a fast. I think that 100% depends on why you’re fasting in the first place. So if you’re fasting for more caloric restriction, basic health, take your amino acids, you’re going to be fine.
Yeah. It might technically bump you out out of a fast, but most of the time, what I care about with a fast is like a huge insulin spike from a bunch of carbohydrates. even if there’s some insulin spike from a little bit of amino acids, [00:25:00] it’s not going to be significant. So fasting is probably okay if you’re being smart about it.
Vegans. You need to be way smarter about how much protein you’re consuming, if that’s what you want to do. And then if it fits your macros, not really. Doesn’t work like it. It just kinda doesn’t like, I think the study of them being, the only like case of if it fits your macros was yes, these people are at a huge caloric deficit.
They lost a bunch of fat. So yeah, you can train a lot and not eat a lot and you’ll probably lose some fat, but if you’re looking to do anything beyond lose weight, if it fits your macros might not be super helpful. If you’re trying to gain any sort of muscle or strength, then the type and quality of protein you have post workout and throughout the day is very, very important.
And those were kind of my main points. You guys have any questions, comments, or concerns on that long rant of how to gain muscle?
Joe Courtney: Yeah, the, the, the macros part. So just to, I guess clarify or pinpoint when we say just because it fits your macros. Do not do, it’s not saying don’t count your macros, but it’s saying that [00:26:00] actually be conscious of what those macros are, not just, you know, CBC.
Yeah. These, these Instagram posts, the people as like, okay, it’s Saturday my macros for the week. I have all of this junk to eat because it still fits my macros, so I can have this bowl of ice cream with candy and protein on top, or something like that.
Jerred Moon: yeah. That was, or if you think that you’re going to finish your workout and have a peanut butter sandwich and be okay, you’re wrong.
Like, well, you’re, if all you’re doing is looking to like replace the calories that you lost. You’re fine, it’s fine. But if you’re looking to to increase muscle protein synthesis synthesis, you’re screwed. Cause you had half a gram of lutein, leucine and you had 400 calories. Congratulations. You know, that’s, that sucks.
You’re really wasting your postworkout meal by doing something like that.
Kyle Shrum: It’s almost like someone should do a podcast on food quality.
Jerred Moon: Oh, wait a minute.
Kyle Shrum: Wait a second.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, so I don’t know. I don’t remember which number that was, but yeah, we did a food quality podcast. We definitely didn’t go into the weeds with this, this junk when we talked about it, but it [00:27:00] does matter.
And if you want to gain muscle, I think I laid out all the parameters. On how to do that. And you can do it during almost any style of training. but high intensity has specifically been shown to blunt indoor signaling that’s bad. So maybe that’s the only one that doesn’t want to do it. Now, the two other things, I want to throw a caveat out there, because when I have these conversations, people think I’m trying to compare what we do concurrent training, you know, so a combination of like more endurance training and resistance training.
To say only weight training or only bodybuilding, like only power lifting only bodybuilding. If you want to get really strong and only strong, you should only do power lifting, not arguing that point. If you want to get gigantic biceps and like a, you know, six pack and like grow your muscles and quads as big as you possibly can, you should be a bodybuilder.
You shouldn’t be doing what we’re talking about. And I’m not arguing that this method of concurrent training is better than those things for those specific goals. But if you want [00:28:00] to be really well rounded, gained some muscle, be strong, be fast, then yes, what we’re doing is the right thing. And, what I talked about here, how to, how to gain both is very important.
But I’m also not arguing that concurrent training trumps a power lifting program for gaining strength. But it does Trump. Power lifting for being a better human, healthier, who live longer and be able to touch your toes and do a pull up and all those things and breathe anyway. Okay. Doesn’t it doesn’t matter.
We’re going to move on. Any, you guys have anything else? We move to the topic if you’re ready. All right. Just a sec. All right. Let’s get to the topic of the of the week. If anybody has any questions about how to gain muscle, a hit me up, but that’s how you gain muscle. Now we’ll go the topic this week is downregulation and I kind of want Ashley to maybe overall talk about.
Cause you, you picked it, you picked the topic, why you wanted to discuss this. And then we can all kind of chime in with different [00:29:00] ways we down regulate and what are, you know, kind of thoughts and definitions of are on a downregulation
Ashley Hicks: bap. So for this year, Scott and I, you know, moving overseas and, we renovated the house and Scott is flying a new aircraft.
So he starting. More academics learning a, kind of a complicated systems aircraft. I mean, the F 35 is, there’s a lot of computer things, I guess. And then, I’m not going to go into detail because I’ll mess it up and he’ll just tell me how much I messed it up when he listens to the podcast later.
So there’s just a lot of added stressors that we had in our life and we noticed that, . I noticed too, after postpartum depression when I can now notice, when I start getting anxious, I start get that actual physical feeling. And so we talked about just kind of re, Relieving that stress by not just working out [00:30:00] nutrition and whatnot, but cutting certain things out and actually down, really regulating because our sleep was affected, essentially.
So we decided that we were going to make this a priority in 2020 and we set some goals. And so that’s why when we were talking about topics, I thought this would be kind of a cool thing to talk about and how each one of us, you know, do that or don’t do that.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. And for all of our athletes too, if you pull up the app, you’ll see EEO three elements.
The very last one there is downregulation. And it’s something that we, you know, we really, I really think that you should be, you have, should have some practice, but I, I almost take it for granted some of the things that I’m doing, Emily and I are both doing, because you know, we have kind of formed these habits that I don’t even really think about them that much.
So I really think it’s an awesome. Awesome topic. so I guess we can go one by one and see what kind of down regulatory processes or practices we have. I don’t know if you can actually use that or if that’s [00:31:00] even, I guess it’s a word, but I don’t know if you can use it, how I just did. Anyway. Joe, do you have any downregulation practices?
Joe Courtney: Yeah, I’ve always been a long night sleeper, so eight hours or so plus, and I’ve always, boy even knew a downregulation was, Calm down. The things, things that I did done, whatever routine I had, nothing was set in place. But now Liz and I will, we’ll watch TV on the couch for for awhile. It’s just to separate from the day, cause we eat dinner so early.
But every night I read at least an hour in bed and that really. Helps to basically get me ready for bed so that I, once I’m done reading, I can roll over, fall and fall right to sleep. just about, I, we do still have a TV in the bedroom, but I have adjusted that to a very warm and turned the blue lights off and stuff like that.
And since we don’t pay attention to it and we’re just looking at our books, it’s not, it doesn’t really affect us at all. yeah, that’s about it really. We just, we just read a lot at night because the reading. Helps [00:32:00] put us, make us tired. And, sometimes my watch actually thinks I’m asleep while I’m reading.
Jerred Moon: That’s awesome. So reading, I mean, that’s a great, here’s where I have, I used to have a problem. It’s like I’m a super, like, let’s be productive. And by productive, I mean every second year awake, be productive. And so what I used to do, I mean, this goes back probably like. Seven plus years, like up until I was falling asleep, I was trying to do something productive.
And so I would be like, okay, what can I take an online course before bed? You know, like, let’s do that. And, I S I still want to do those things, but. It’s not good for me. It’s not good for me to get all, like, you know, start taking an online course or class or something, trying to learn right before bed because that my brain just like, will go forever, you know?
And it’ll be hard for me to sleep. So I think these things are really important, especially for someone, someone like me. Kyle, how about you man? [00:33:00] I
Kyle Shrum: have actually always been a down-regulating champ.
Jerred Moon: Nice.
Kyle Shrum: Ever. I mean, I mean, when I was thinking about this, getting ready for the podcast, I just thought about even as a kid, like going to sleep was never a problem for me.
I mean, I am a human being. There are nights when, you know, maybe something’s stressing me out or something like that, and I have a problem going to sleep, but. In the main, no, it’s not difficult for me to downregulate at all and never really has been. It just gets to a point at night where my body’s just like, Nope, you’re done.
And my brain is like, Nope, you’re done. And like even in college, like trying to stay up and study and all, like I just get to a point where it’s just pointless for me to still be awake because I’m, I’m awake and kind of sludge in through stuff, but I’m not really accomplishing anything or doing any good.
Because my brain is just cut off. And so, but for me, kind of some of those stuff that we have [00:34:00] talked about on the podcast regularly and what a lot of people say, you know, keeping the, the temperatures cooler at night and, My wife gets mad at me when I turn the heat down at night, but I’ve went and bought her a, a big comforter for Christmas to help keep her warm so that I can turn the heat down at night so that we can sleep well.
actually something that we started doing recently is instead of watching so much TV at night. Well, actually, like two or three nights a week, we’ll play either a board game or a card game together. And that just really helps. Instead of having so much blue lights smacking us in the face on that loan, you know, and it gives some good interaction and, you know, it helps our marriage and all that.
Well, she beats me most of the time, so it, maybe it’s not so good for our marriage, but anyway, that was just something that I thought was kind of interesting and I think that’s helped me as well and helped her as well, to, to fall asleep. But I’ll read a book right before I go to sleep as well. I have my Notley routine that I do.
I bring the dog [00:35:00] in and make sure all the doors are locked and brush my teeth, all that kind of stuff. But, I’m like Joe, I’m reading right before I go to sleep. So when I’m done reading, I set it on the nightstand and I’ll lay down and I’m out in. I don’t know how long it takes me because I’ll fall asleep very quickly.
Jerred Moon: 37 seconds.
Kyle Shrum: Probably. It’s probably about that long. But anyway, it’s, it’s, it’s fun to talk about cause it’s something I’m really
Jerred Moon: good at,
Kyle Shrum: but I didn’t, I didn’t, you know, I’ve just never had a problem. Down-regulating
Jerred Moon: it scene Ghana Talon
Kyle Shrum: Hannah does have a problem with it. It’s, it’s tough for her at night.
It’s been getting easier for her. but. It’s for me. No, just never, never a problem going to sleep.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. I’ve never wanted to like crack up on my laptop while laying in bed. I’m going to be on my laptop. It’s actually, I don’t even bring my laptop in the bedroom like ever. Cause I’m going to get it and I’m going to, okay.
If I’m going to have to stand up and go to another room and use it if I need to, but it doesn’t come in [00:36:00] the bedroom.
Kyle Shrum: Right.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. How about you, Ashley?
Ashley Hicks: so we have done certain things pretty much all the time, and then we just started, adding a couple things. And, The beginning of this month. So we at, so Connor, we also kind of have a down regulation for him.
I know lots of people are like, let the kids play all the time and they’ll sleep like champs and he does, he sleeps like a champ, but around seven o’clock we kinda turn the lights down low. We read to him. we pray with them and kind of set him up for a successful bedtime as well. And then after he goes to bed, what we have been doing is we take our, we both have Apple watches and we put our Apple watches on the charger.
Put our phones on the charger and leave them there for the rest of the evening. And we don’t look at our [00:37:00] screens anymore at seven 30. It’s just kind of a thing. Of course, now if somebody calls us and there’s an emergency, we can hear our phones. It’s no big deal. But, for the most part. Nobody really needs to get ahold of you in the evening.
And, kind of what Kyle said, we don’t, we try not to watch TV. If we do, it’s maybe an episode of something and then we both get in the bed and read. and we have been starting meditation is what we started in January. So we both have a devotional we do together. And then after that. When we’re both ready, after we’re done reading our books, whatever it is.
Cause we also read, Oh, we read physical books. So neither of us have Kindles or, well, Scott has a Kindle, but we try not to read on a screen in the evening. So we read physical books in the bed and then, right before we want to, you know. Head on the pillow, you’re going to sleep. We do five to 10 minutes of meditation [00:38:00] and kind of set us up for a good night’s sleep, kind of rest.
Focus on your breathing and focus. Kind of just be aware of your body and how your body is. Responding to the day. And it’s kinda, it’s been really, it’s been really awesome. And I’ve slept like a champ since starting the, the meditation, which has been great. And then one quick thing to note, doc jocks are dr Alison bragger.
She said, she talked about light when you, like even as something as simple as going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, she said, do not turn a light on if you can prevent it. Now, obviously, if you’re going to. Fall into the toilet or do something and he needs some light turn some light on.
But, we have implemented that as well. just so that way, if you do get up in the middle of the night that you’re able to fall asleep faster. And I have noticed a significant difference, but I’ve started that since. we had her on the actually better terminology podcast, so that was, gosh, once a month back.
Jerred Moon: So, yeah, she’s been on twice [00:39:00] a lot of good information, sleep expert, cool. Lots of, lots of good ideas, tactics and strategies. I cause I’ll share my brief, down regulatory practices. so I, I’m not like Kyle or Joe. I’m like a race horse that has to be beaten to submission. but not, I mean, not really anymore, but this is how.
I feel like I picked up, I honestly picked up a lot of these practices. We’re talking about a borderline 10 years ago, B out of necessity. Not like, Oh, I think this might be healthy. Let me try it. I heard it on a podcast. Like I had to find these things because of like, just how crazy my brain just would not shut down.
you know, had trouble falling asleep. Once I was asleep, I never really had any issues. But then just, you know, interviewing all these people, reading, blah, blah, blah. You know, I learned a lot. And, and have, and so, yeah, we, we have some pretty strict process. Like I, I put on blue blocker glasses around 7:00 PM.
and so I. Were those every night. Super cool, [00:40:00] look awesome. And so that blocks a lot of the blue light. I do have breathing practices. the ones that I use primarily right now is Wim Hoff. I kind of vary between them, but I do have like a breathing practice I do once or twice a day. So the Wim Hof method, I’m actually just going to plug his app because they did a huge update and it’s just awesome.
I think I talked about it a few weeks ago on a, an update of this podcast, but. Before it was just kinda like, here’s the Wim Hof method. Here’s how you do it. Now in the app, they actually have like a voiceover that walks you through it and like actually has like a breathing bubble for you to follow the inhale and the exhale.
And when you’re doing the Wim Hof method, that’s really important because it’s not the easiest thing to do if you’ve never done it before. so I do that breathing. And then, another app I use is shift state. and then if I’m not using any apps, I just do box breathing and count in my head, which is about five seconds in five second, hold five second.
Exhale, five second hold. And so that’s the, the box that you’re doing. And you can vary that five to seven seconds for whatever. so breathing practices limit blue light. I [00:41:00] do. we do watch some TV with our blue light blocking glasses before bed. and that is kind of, again, out of necessity, this, this race horse mentality I was talking about.
For some people that might get you jacked up for me. For my brain to follow a storyline that’s not a entrepreneurship or fitness or whatever the hell else my brain wants to think of is really, really helpful. It’s really helpful for my brain to be like, get in, you know, ingrained into some sort of story.
And then, you know, I’m not a, I don’t normally fall asleep to the TV or anything like that, but we’ll watch something and it’s very limited. Just, I mean, I have three kids and. We have a lot of crap to do after the kids go to bed. So it’s normally like a lot of work. Emily and I joke about this all the time.
It’s like our quote unquote me time is like 30 minutes at the end of the day, cause we like to go to bed at a relatively like early hour. So it’s like all this work for like a 30 minute portion of the day where you’re like, yeah, this is, this is a nice time to myself, but if I want to get [00:42:00] enough sleep, I need to go to sleep right now.
so yeah. Anyway, that’s, that’s breathing practices limiting blue light. And, All that stuff has been really helpful for me. I do watch TV, but I, I feel like that’s a hit or miss. Like I’ve heard the whole like, Hey, don’t have a TV and you’re in your bedroom and don’t watch it. But I mean, I dunno, like you said, Joe, it’s on, it doesn’t affect you.
Like it’s never, I sleep like a baby, you know? And it’s typically eight or nine hours, so I really don’t think I’m having any problems there and probably cause of blue light blocking classes. But anyway, those are all my, my tactics and strategies. It’s fun stuff.
Kyle Shrum: I’m starting to downregulate just talking about downer.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Did I bore you there?
Kyle Shrum: That’s not what I was saying.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. It was straight, straight hit. yeah, so hopefully that’s helpful for anybody listening different. A downregulation of don’t don’t drink alcohol, if that, if you’re like, yeah, I down-regulate. I drink alcohol every night. That’s hopefully you’ve listened to some other podcasts we put out.
It’s about the worst thing you could possibly do. and then [00:43:00] from a more mechanical standpoint, downregulation is lowering your cortisol. So ways you can lower cortisol are. Like scientifically proven, like controlling your reading and also very low aerobic exercise helps. So if you have like a really stressful job and you get home kind of late, the best thing you could do to kind of down-regulate if you’re not into any of this other stuff would just be like go on a 10 minute walk, like at a very low pace, not trying to get a workout in, just do like a really light walk and a that will help reduce some of the cortisol because it’s hard for your body to sleep and you’re all jacked up on the mountain.
Do that, is cortisol. All right, I’ll get in to meet you. So Saturday workout. I think Ashley’s going to grieve it.
Ooh,
Ashley Hicks: Sally’s revenge. So for Sally’s revenge, you have a mile run followed by Sally style pull ups. So you’re going to do pull ups to bring Sally up, the song. And every time she says, bring Sally up, you pull up, bring Sally down, you let yourself down, [00:44:00] then you’ll do.
The exact same thing after you finish the song with pushups, and again, so every time she says up, you’re up. When she says down, that’s when you’re down in the pushup position, and then you’ll do the same thing with air squats followed by, or you can use barbell.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, correct.
Ashley Hicks: It’s fun with a barbell. It’s spicy.
Yeah. And then, followed by a mile run after you do the squat version of bring Sally up. So this one’s a fun one. I really like it.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Any tips? Joe? What do you have on this one? You can pace it. There’s no pacing it. This is the song that you can paste a mile
Kyle Shrum: pace in the run. Yeah.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah.
Jerred Moon: All right. He’s got nothing.
Joe Courtney: I mean, it’s pretty forward. You’re going to a cadence.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. I love the workouts I created that you can’t cheat. It’s maybe the only one
Joe Courtney: start starts scaled down basically.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Play with the weights before you do it. [00:45:00] Ashley, what tips you up?
Ashley Hicks: That was my tip. if you know that you don’t have pull-ups, don’t try to do it.
Or if you just starting out and finally can start doing strict pull ups on your own. Don’t try not to, do inverted rows. Do I remember I did this with a band one time? And for the pushups, do knee pushups if you need to. yeah, it gets spicy. Especially for me on the pull ups and the pushups. I know that’s where I struggle.
So, I make sure that I don’t try to go hard by doing strict pull-ups, cause I know I will not finish the song if I do it.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. To be honest, I think if you can’t do. I’m going to throw out a number there. If you can’t do 25 strict pull-ups, you probably can’t do bring Sally up with strict pull-ups. I mean, that would kind of be my like, Oh, should I do strict pull ups that, can you do 25 at the answer’s no.
Then you should probably scale down seven and you can, you can drop from the bar if you want. I, the first time I ever did it, I tried just hanging from the bar the whole time. [00:46:00] Ooh. And a three minute bar hang or three and a half minute bar hang is very, very difficult. and we’ve been doing a lot of bar hangs in the program, this, this time around and on all the different tracks.
As I kind of a finisher and bar hangs are, are tough, so you can come down, but it would be for a short amount of time. So, my pull up bars are really tall. What I’d had was a. A step up box. Yeah. So I would have a step up to where I could get back on the pull up bar relatively fast. I think I made it halfway through the song just hanging, and then after that it was like, okay, I’m going to have to step off.
And so then I would, when I’m down, I would come down and like try and rest my arms for a second and then get back up. so my tip there is shorten. If you do pull up, shorten the distance to get on and make it as easy as you possibly can. And the squats go light. The may probably start with air squats.
That’s painful enough for most people. and if you want to try the barbell of just go empty the first, first time. And then if you think you’re awesome, throw on one 35. See what happens. [00:47:00] Whoa. I said, if you think you’re awesome, you don’t think you’re awesome. Then don’t try it out. I don’t think I’m awesome enough for that,
Ashley Hicks: so no.
Jerred Moon: All right. That’s it. That’s a, we call. Did you have a a tip?
Kyle Shrum: No. Since we’re moving on, no, I don’t. No, I’m just kidding. Actually, I’m going to move on with my tip so. also we forgot to mention there’s a three minute rest between the pull ups and the pushups and another three minute rest between the pushups and the squats.
No resting work in the mouse, but resting in the calisthenics. So don’t forget about that part. You’re not just moving straight from each one. but what I was going to say. Is, and this is my plug for garage, a mathlete, which always comes at the end of the podcast. So I get to go first system
Jerred Moon: entirely.
Kyle Shrum: If you join with Grazia mathlete, then not only is this workout programmed for you in our app, but [00:48:00] we also have a link in the app to the song where you don’t have to go anywhere else to get it.
So we had to go right there for you. Everything you need, literally everything you need to do this workout and feel the burden and hate yourself. We have it right here at garage messily
Jerred Moon: we tried to think of everything. You know, the only thing that we need, and this I think are the app and the programming would be perfect.
It’s like a timer. That’s a request we get often. The other requests we get is, can I enter in my own stuff into the app? I don’t care about that feature. I don’t want that feature. If you want to do your own thing, why are you doing our programming? It doesn’t make any sense. But the other one is a timer.
And so I do wish I had a timer cause then we could program that stuff out for people a little bit more. There’s a rest timer and I’m, anyway, I digress, Kyle. That was great, man. You should join garage gym athlete for every reason he said. And that’s about it. I’m gonna end it there. Have a good week everybody.
Thanks for listening to the garage gym athlete podcasts. Do you want to learn more? Go to garage gym [00:49:00] 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.